Watch Senator King’s questioning HERE, and download broadcast quality video HERE

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, today continued highlighting the importance of multi-year defense contracts that will provide long term stability to America’s national defense and shipyards like Bath Iron Works (BIW) and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (PNSY). In a hearing of the Senate Armed Services’ Subcommittee on Seapower, Senator King asked Frederick Stefany – Acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition – to affirm the administration’s support for long-term procurement packages, and to explain how they save taxpayer money while strengthening America’s national security. Senator King has long championed multi-year procurement contracts, and earlier today highlighted the importance of these more stable funding agreements.

“At the hearing that Senator Scott mentioned this morning, former Secretary Lord was one of the witnesses, and she confirmed the importance of multi-year procurement,” said Senator King. “She said the problem is ‘lumpy procurement.’ You want procurement that can provide some continuity to the industrial base so that they can make the investments necessary. Do you share that? The importance of multi-year? I think it’s also better for the taxpayers, frankly.”

“Yes, I want to completely agree that planning for investment and planning for the workforce and those other things that shipyards and suppliers need to do completely benefits from a long-term, four or five-year commitment, on multi-year type process,” replied Acting Assistant Secretary Stefany. “I totally agree with Ms. Lord in that case. And to the previous question about cost, that’s one of our main ways to reduce the costs of our programs, is to make those long-term, multi-year contracts and put them in place.”

“Well, there’s no question that the learning curve, we’ve built three Zumwalts, and the learning curve just on those three - it should’ve been a dozen - but those three it was quite remarkable,” Senator King concluded. “From ship to ship to ship and you’re not going to ameliorate those learning curve costs, particularly on DDX, without a long-term, multi-year procurement.”

Notably, the exchange between Senator King and Assistant Secretary Stefany was reinforced by Seapower Subcommittee Chairwoman Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Ranking Member Kevin Cramer (R-ND), who both supported the benefits associated with long-term contracts for military work.

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Also during his questioning, Senator King asked Acting Assistant Secretary Stefany to keep shipyards like Bath Iron Works (BIW) involved in the ship development process instead of giving them a design to build without consultation. The questioning builds on Senator King’s longstanding work to support a collaborative design process between the Navy and shipyards including BIW.

“The other piece that I wanted to touch upon is the industrial base itself and their involvement in the development of the new ship. So that we don’t have the Navy handing something to the yards and saying ‘here it is, build it’,” said Senator King. “I think [more involvement by shipyards] is a very productive way to avoid some of the problems that have been incurred in the other programs.”

“It’s a lesson, sir, that we’ve learned in the Virginia submarine program. Bringing the two shipyards and the major suppliers, the engine makers and others, in upfront. Talk to the Navy as we’re putting together the spec and come up with the design criteria to take the best of all, right. To learn from each other and come up with a single computer model and a single design that then both shipyards can build,” replied Mr. Stefany. “That is the most efficient way we’ve seen to actually get - we call it the collaborative design process - to get to a final state that has the least errors, the least defects in it.”

As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Seapower Subcommittee, Senator King has long championed multi-year procurement, and has repeatedly highlighted the necessity of these long-term contracts to Maine employers like BIW and PNSY. In the 2022 NDAA, King secured language urging long-term funding for destroyers beginning in fiscal year 2023 to support the shipbuilding industrial base and expansion of the Navy battle force to congressionally mandated levels. He also secured $3.7 billion for the procurement of 2 DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in fiscal year 2022, which Bath Iron Works (BIW) can compete to build and $120 million to fund long lead material for a third FY23 DDG-51.