Other industry players joined in, targeting key House lawmakers in Virginia where work on the littoral combat ships is also performed. Letters, emails and other appeals, including opinion pieces in trade magazines, began to pour in.RTWT. The link should vault you over the paywall.
“Don’t give up the ship,” Tony Parisi, the retired Navy captain, wrote in an opinion piece for Breaking Defense, a trade publication, citing the War of 1812 warning from a Navy captain, James Lawrence, as his ship was sinking.
Mr. Parisi did not mention that he was part of the team at General Dynamics that trains the crews that operate the littoral combat ships at Naval Station Mayport.
One Fincantieri executive, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said he was instructed to be careful not to be too public about the campaign, given that they were also trying to convince the Navy to buy its new class of ships as replacements.
Soon enough, several lawmakers, including Mr. Rutherford and Mr. Wittman, were introducing amendments to block the retirement of all or at least some of the ships, even as other lawmakers, mostly Democrats, pushed to allow the Pentagon to retire all nine ships.
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