With the Navy and Coast Guard looking to buy a total of 83 smaller vessels, CBO was asked by Senate Banking Committee member Judd Gregg, R-N.H., to examine alternatives that would perhaps allow the services to consolidate small combatant programs.

The result was "Options for Combining the Navy's and Coast Guard's Small Combatant Programs," which CBO released last week.

The Coast Guard and Navy are looking to buy four types of ships -- Coast Guard national security cutters and offshore patrol cutters and the Navy's two versions of littoral -- near-shore -- combat ships. CBO estimated a cost of more than $47 billion in acquisitions over 20 years.

The first 418-foot Coast Guard NSC coast $641 million and was built by Northrop Grumman Ship Systems in Pascagoula, Miss. The 357-foot offshore patrol cutters aren't scheduled to begin to be purchased until 2015 with a total of 25 bought at an average of about $450 million per ship, CBO said.

The Navy's Freedom class LCS is a 378-foot ship, which had its keel put down in June 2005 at Marinette, Wis. Marinette Marine, Lockheed Martin, Gibbs & Cox and Bollinger Shipyards are among the firms involved in development and manufacture.

The first Independence-class LCS, which is having builder's sea trials in July in the Gulf of Mexico, is a 417-foot vessel manufactured by General Dynamics at Bath, Maine, with partners including Austral USA, BAE Systems and L-3 Communications.

The Navy is expected to buy 55 LCSs by 2015.

CBO noted that the four ships are of similar size but are planned to have different missions. The Navy is looking for vessels that have perhaps less range but operate at greater speeds and close to shore as part of a naval battle network. The Coast Guard ships generally operate independently at sea for longer periods and aren't expected to join in major combat operations.

Still, it was thought there were enough similarities to consider whether the services might see savings by cutting the number of different types of vessels or using the same hull design.

CBO looked at alternatives including whether the Coast Guard might utilize a variant of the Navy LCS and the Navy using a version of the Coast Guard NSC in place of some LCSs.

The CBO analysis said the "alternatives and the services' plans would have similar costs, regardless of whether they are calculated in terms of acquisition or total life-cycle costs." The office also said "alternative plans would not necessarily be more cost-effective to provide more capability than the services' existing plans.

"Specifically, even if the options addressed individual problems that the Navy and Coast Guard might confront with their small combatants, the options would also create new challenges," the CBO report said.

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