It’s always hard to figure out how much a ship costs, and compare prices, but I was a bit alarmed when I saw this report from the Navy Times concerning the FY2012 budget, “$615 million of the $1.4 billion set aside in the request for acquisitions will go to the fifth NSC.” I add this to the $89M for long lead time items in the previous budget, and I get $714M for NSC #5. Can this be right? Wasn’t the forth NSC $480M? The Navy’s latest contract for the admittedly smaller but high tech, LCSs came in at $440M each.
When we contracted for number four it was “fixed price with incentive” with an option for number five. Did they really give us a price of $480M for #4 and and an option for #5 of $714M? Or had we already paid for long lead time items on #4 as well. I’m so confused.
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 
Chuck, the hull structure of the LCS is not the same as the WMSL/NSC. An LCS as designed won’t do well or last as long doing Bering Sea patrols for instance.
No, I would not recommend the NSC for the Coast Guard either. Not sure its was even a good choice for the Navy, but the first in class of all three classes, NSC #1, LCS-1 and LCS-2, all cost about the same, around $650M. Since the first in class, the price of additional LCS-1 and LCS-2 ships has dropped substantially, while the price of NSCs has actually gone up. This is a little surprising. It may be in part because of the break in construction between NSC-3 and 4. Primarily I think the Navy is benefiting from large scale series production. Hopefully see will see similar benefits with the Offshore Patrol Cutter program.
The $615m request for NSC 5 should include the long-lead materials already under order. Not sure if they call it advance procurement funding for CG as well, but that may be how it is done. And the cost may include GFE not included in the NSC figure of $480m.
I just made another post that gives a relatively complete funding history.