Update: Littoral failure upsets Lockheed subcontractors
Nineteen companies to be affected by production stoppage, including five in the D.C. area alone; Argon ST, BAE Systems, EADS, Angle, and Terma face the future with gloom; fortunately, only one ship out of four is effected
Unless our readers favor Michael Vick’s favorite pastime — see yesterday’s issue for details — they will easily recall another story from that same day regarding the Navy’s decision to halt production for ninety days on the Littoral Combat Ship due to cost overruns. Singled out for attention was Lockheed, whose work on the third ship in the series had ballooned from an estimated $220 million to nearly $410 million. Yet this is not just a blow to Lockheed. The project has five subcontractors in the Washington area alone, plus fourteen others scattered around the U.S. and the world, and now all of them will have to stop work as well. “Anytime that there is an interruption … there’s impact. No company likes to see that happen,” said Darrell Campbell of Argon ST, a systems engineering firm with a $500,000-750,000 dollar subcontract, which will now have to shift employees to other programs.
Other that Argon ST, other D.C.-area companies with subcontracts in the balance include: Angle, Inc. a computer modeling and analysis company in Springfield; EADS, a global aerospace and defense company with North American headquarters in Arlington; Terma, an Arlington-based company that provides high-tech solutions for combat situations; and BAE Systems in Arlington, which makes combat vehicles, artillery and other combat-related products.
(Correction: In yesterday’s account we stated that production on all four ships in the LCS program — two built by Lockheed, two by General Dynamics — would cease. This was incorrect, the error due to initial but unsubstantiated reports. Production has been halted only on one Lockheed ship, the USS Freedom.)
-read more in this Washington Examiner report
