KUALA LUMPUR, March 12 — Delays with the production of the Royal Malaysian Navy’s first littoral combat ship (LCS) will be overcome by June this year, Defence Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said.
He said said project was 67.75 per cent complete, just marginally under the target of 68.77.
“The company, Lumut Naval Shipyard (Lunas) will work on ensuring we are able to carry out mitigation on this obstacle and it is expected that in June the LCS project will be back on its scheduled progress.
“The delay of one per cent will be back to normal by June,” Khaled told a press conference at the Parliament building here today.
Responding to criticism of the delay, Khaled said shipbuilding has four major areas to consider: design, construction, equipment, and testing.
“Following progress planning, by November 2024, the project progress will be 85 per cent, when it hits that progress, it will enter into the fourth component — sent for testing — harbour acceptance test and sea acceptance trials — that will both take two years.
“Even though the ship is at 85 per cent completion, it will not be considered as completed if it has not been put through the trials, as trials are part of a ship-building element, need to understand this and this will take up two years,” he said.
Once these are complete, Khaled said the ship will be commissioned in 2026.
He clarified that the 86 days of delay cited by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was an accumulation of days according to the separate components.
“But in actuality, the progress of all four components is done concurrently,” he said.
On February 29, the PAC expressed concern over the LCS 1 project delay by 86 days.
In December 2011, the Defence Ministry was awarded an RM9 billion contract to Boustead Naval Shipyard Sdn Bhd for six LCS as part of the Royal Malaysian Navy’s fleet renewal plan.
The first vessel was slated to be delivered by 2019, while five more ships to be handed over in 2023. However not one ship has been delivered to date.
