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Littoral Disaster: Navy Wants to Retire 10 Littoral Combat Ships

8 points by ourmandave 5y ago

themodelplumber 5y ago
What a situation. Sounds like the ships are stuck traveling at around 12 knots until the issue is addressed, but the fix is a huge time & cost suck? On the one hand, it's never fun to hear about tax-spend disasters. On the other hand, this sounds like it could be a stop-loss opportunity since the fixes involve throwing tons of money at the problem. It's too bad though. Combining the turbine & diesel energy seems like a neat trick.
mikece 5y ago
Good riddance. The LCS wasn't a bad idea in concept but as only the DoD can, they took something good and screwed it up. The original plan was for only one of the ship types -- either the mono-hulled Freedom Class or the trimaran Independence Class -- to be authorized after prototype hulls of each were built and carefully evaluated. Then 9/11 happened and Congress authorized all the money that could be spent in the name of counter-terrorism. A core mission for the LCS was dropping off and picking up SEAL or Marine RECON teams, groups who definitely do counter-terrorist work. So the Pentagon authorized BOTH classes which is a giant problem because these are two very different ships with very different maintenance needs. And by having both classes going into production you have to create, staff, and pay for maintenance programs for each (and those didn't qualify for counter-terrorism financing). Also, the time-tables were pushed forward while Big Navy decided to change the specs and make them Jack-of-all-Trades vessels through the use of multi-mission modular containers (shipping containers filled with gear, essentially) to plug in and deploy on the fly. Again, this is a stupid idea because a ship's crew is usually trained to do one thing well and having the same crew pivot to radically different missions with as little as 12 hours warning is asking for mediocrity at best. In summary: they could have been excellent ships but the Pentagon didn't let it happen. A testament to how sound the design was can be seen in the designs for the next generation frigate which looks very much like an enlarged version of the Freedom Class LCS. As usual with military acquisition programs I hope for the best but fear for the worst.
- quantified 5y ago
  Follow the money. I’m sure it wasn’t “the Pentagon” any more than Ukraine is being invaded by “Russia”. Congresspeople can be really responsive to their donors, too, in steering the direction of stuff. This just smells like another wealth transfer to Lockheed. Money sloshes around and can get recycled, but the energy inputs and a bunch of the material inputs to these will be just wasted. Along with the opportunity to build stuff that works. Wonder how incompetent China is. At least we know something about Russia now.

8 points by ourmandave 5y ago

What a situation. Sounds like the ships are stuck traveling at around 12 knots until the issue is addressed, but the fix is a huge time & cost suck? On the one hand, it's never fun to hear about tax-spend disasters. On the other hand, this sounds like it could be a stop-loss opportunity since the fixes involve throwing tons of money at the problem. It's too bad though. Combining the turbine & diesel energy seems like a neat trick.

mikece 5y ago

Good riddance. The LCS wasn't a bad idea in concept but as only the DoD can, they took something good and screwed it up. The original plan was for only one of the ship types -- either the mono-hulled Freedom Class or the trimaran Independence Class -- to be authorized after prototype hulls of each were built and carefully evaluated. Then 9/11 happened and Congress authorized all the money that could be spent in the name of counter-terrorism. A core mission for the LCS was dropping off and picking up SEAL or Marine RECON teams, groups who definitely do counter-terrorist work. So the Pentagon authorized BOTH classes which is a giant problem because these are two very different ships with very different maintenance needs. And by having both classes going into production you have to create, staff, and pay for maintenance programs for each (and those didn't qualify for counter-terrorism financing). Also, the time-tables were pushed forward while Big Navy decided to change the specs and make them Jack-of-all-Trades vessels through the use of multi-mission modular containers (shipping containers filled with gear, essentially) to plug in and deploy on the fly. Again, this is a stupid idea because a ship's crew is usually trained to do one thing well and having the same crew pivot to radically different missions with as little as 12 hours warning is asking for mediocrity at best. In summary: they could have been excellent ships but the Pentagon didn't let it happen. A testament to how sound the design was can be seen in the designs for the next generation frigate which looks very much like an enlarged version of the Freedom Class LCS. As usual with military acquisition programs I hope for the best but fear for the worst.

quantified 5y ago
Follow the money. I’m sure it wasn’t “the Pentagon” any more than Ukraine is being invaded by “Russia”. Congresspeople can be really responsive to their donors, too, in steering the direction of stuff. This just smells like another wealth transfer to Lockheed. Money sloshes around and can get recycled, but the energy inputs and a bunch of the material inputs to these will be just wasted. Along with the opportunity to build stuff that works. Wonder how incompetent China is. At least we know something about Russia now.