Multi-Year Amphibious Ship Buy

As reported by Naval News website, the Navy has awarded a multi-year contract for the purchase of three San Antonio LPDs and one America LHA. 

The deal, which will fund three San Antonio-class LPDs and one America-class Flight II LHA, will save taxpayers an estimated $1 billion.[1]

I have a couple of problems with this contract award.
 
Savings – The supposed savings is estimated at $1B.  In the aggregate, that sounds impressive.  A billion dollars!  Wow!  However, across four ships that’s just $250M savings per ship.  That’s not nothing but it’s not a miraculous savings, by any means.  More importantly, you know those savings will never materialize.  With 100% certainty, the ships will come in over budget and behind schedule with a litany of excuses like supply chain disruptions, parts shortages, design modifications, and all the other usual suspects.  There won’t be any savings.  The absolute best case is that the ‘savings’ (let’s be optimistic and assume there will be actual savings) will slightly reduce the magnitude of the inevitable cost overruns.  Again, better than nothing but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking we’re actually going to save money.
 
Make no mistake, the Navy didn’t do this to save the taxpayers any money; they did it to lock down budget commitments.  The Navy doesn’t care what a ship costs.  It’s not their money.  Congress will always give them more money.  They did this to lock down budget share.
 
Doctrine – This is the real puzzler.  Neither the Navy nor the Marines have any intention of ever again doing an amphibious assault.  The Marines have publicly and explicitly stated that they are out of the assault business.  The Navy doesn’t care about amphibious assaults and, indeed, balked at procuring more amphibious ships when they instituted a ‘strategic pause’ in amphibious ship procurement. 
 
Similarly, the Navy’s total indifference to the Marine’s Light Amphibious Warfare ship is yet more evidence of their disdain for amphibious operations.
 
Further evidence is the Navy’s total abandonment of naval gun support for amphibious operations and the doctrinal decision to move amphibious ships 25-50 miles off shore – a distance at which it is impossible to conduct an amphibious assault with current technology. 
 
The Navy is never going to conduct another amphibious assault so why are we continuing to buy more amphibious ships?
 
Legality – By law, multi-year procurements can only be applied to a single design that is mature and stable.  While I’m not a lawyer, the mix of ship types and the inclusion of a single (not multi) LHA would appear to be illegal.  Of course, this would hardly be the first time the Navy has ignored the law.  Here’s the verbiage describing the main requirement for using a multi-year procurement. 

FAR17.105-1(b)(3) There is a stable design for the supplies to be acquired, and the technical risks associated with such supplies are not excessive [2]

This is intended to be applied to a single, stable design.  The Navy is most certainly violating the spirit and intent of the law, if not the actual verbiage.
 
 
 
Discussion
 
So, with no savings and no intention (Marines) or interest (Navy) in ever conducting an amphibious assault, tell me again, why are we continuing to procure any amphibious ships? 
 
It seems clear that the only viable reason for the Navy going down this path is the desire to lock in budget share.
 
Layer the potential illegalities on top of this highly questionable contract and it becomes even more clear that this is a budget machination, not a sincere attempt at saving the taxpayers money.
 
 
 
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[1]Naval News website, “U.S. Navy’s First Ever Multi-Year Amphibious Ship Contract Awarded”, Carter Johnston, 25-Sep-2024,
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2024/09/us-navy-finalizes-first-amphibious-multi-year-buy/
 
[2] https://www.acquisition.gov/far/subpart-17.1