“This is going to be devastating for [Fincantieri’s] workforce. They invested heavily buying the yard in 2009 and invested a lot to win the frigate class competition,” one analyst told Breaking Defense.
The $22 billion shipbuilding program has been under increasing scrutiny for years by lawmakers and top Pentagon brass.
Reducing cognitive overload on warfighters while improving “time to trust” for autonomous systems is a matter of design.
“The question is, are we at a point where we either quickly recover and get back on track with this? ... Or do you say maybe we're too far along with this and we go in a different direction?" said Rep. Rob Wittman.
The HAC-D's version of the spending bill contains a heavy focus on culture war issues, but does increase spending for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Defense Innovation Unit.
GAO found the Navy's frigate now hardly bears any resemblance to the ship from which it was derived, characterizing them as "distant cousins."
The company spent $300 million on four projects with the hopes of seeing two frigates being bought every year, which is faster than the Navy's current projection.
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
The report provides specific details about the design changes Fincantieri made to the parent design they proposed for the FFG(X) competition.