Austal aspires to new LCS contract

Australian shipbuilder Austal is hoping to receive confirmation from the US Navy to build another littoral combat ship (LCS).

Austal was behind the US$500 million LCS ‘Independence’ which was built at Austal’s shipyard in Mobile, Alabama. The vessel is scheduled to be handed over to the US Navy in five months. Austal’s Chief executive Bob Browning said that the US government had some concerns with budget issues associated with the credit crisis. However, US President George W Bush signed off on a US$1 billion allocation last week for two more navy ships. It is most likely that Austal would receive one contract while rival US shipbuilder Lockheed Martin, which built ‘Freedom’, would receive the other contact. “We would hope to be sitting down to finalize these two contracts in the next several weeks,” Mr Browning was quoted as saying. “All of the signals we have got from the officials out there is that they are going to move ahead quickly to do that.”
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