It was an unprecedented admission that the Navy did not feel that these vessels were even worth keeping around in a primarily test and evaluation role and as the seagoing force continues to struggle to find a pathway to reaching its long-standing goal of a total fleet size of 355 ships. These first four littoral combat ships were commissioned between 2008 and 2014, making them all relatively young vessels. However, the reflected early iterations of their respective designs and had already been relegated to test and training roles for years.
Sometimes it takes this long for a bad idea to work its way through the system. The Army suffers from sticker shock at much lower price tag,but has its own share of bad ideas. This is what you get with all those smart guys (generals and admirals) finally rising in rank to be in charge for three years and then moving on.
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Wonder if all those wunderkind program managers who ignored ALL the warnings of an impending train wreck will have their promotions and medals retroactively rescinded.
ReplyDeleteHa, ha, ha..... just kidding.
Incredible. How many actual warships could we have built instead of these things? Heads should roll but im sure most are retired and living well.
ReplyDeleteLighten up, guys. It's not like all our other ships were actually out in a war before they get mothballed.
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can the f35 be far behind?
ReplyDeleteThe F-35 actually works. It's the Bradley of planes. Issues are getting fixed.
DeleteThe A-12 was the LCS of planes. It fortunately got killed before it totally destroyed naval aviation.
The LCS project is an example of the reason Kelly Johnson had his unwritten 15th rule. Too bad what has become of his former company did not remember that rule and built one of those two ship designs.
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We have an opportunity here. Maybe the Navy can sell them to Arab sheiks as luxury yachts. I can now see a bevy of bikini clad beauties lounging on the upper decks.
ReplyDeleteThere's a reason (several, actually) that they're called "Little Crappy Ships".
ReplyDeleteWhen you weed out your senior warriors and replace them with career administrative lickspittles, you lose the capability to make shrewd decisions informed by battlehardened experience; and thus are stuck with legacy foolishness like these ships, which have made defense contractors a fortune. Just think of all the lapdances it took to get approvals from Congress for these.
ReplyDeleteComments about the F-35 are pretty on target, I think.
At the least, and the best, they never served as sarcophagus for our sailors. Those responsible for them, their design, implementation and decision to build them should all be pilloried. They were almost by design and default built to be little crappy inexpensive ships that let people pretend they were building a navy. We knew at the outset what they were.
ReplyDeleteBudgetary problems are likely to reduce the Navy to 200 ships rather than 355.
ReplyDeleteOur Navy is run by a bunch of top level "Brassholes" ! Our ships and planes are not that seaworthy or at the readiness levels that they should be .
ReplyDeleteI served on old ships but they were still good ships. The LCS were never good ships.
ReplyDeleteI work on these ships. Crack prone, maintenance nightmares. All the components are made in Europe so getting tech reps is damned near impossible and when it is, they are EXPENSIVE! The crews do no maintenance on the ships, literally everything, even the simplest of tasks (such as replacing the lock on a file cabinet door....no i am not shitting you) is contracted out. When they "deploy' from Singapore (one of their forward bases) they take along two civilian contractors to repair any engineering equipment that may break while out. Useless pieces of garbage. so much so that the Navy does not really consider them warships. They are not counted on to survive the first day of hostilities, they are only used to "show the flag" and engage with partners. The Chinese have to be laughing themselves silly when they see these floating garbage cans siling in the South China Sea.
ReplyDeleteScrap them, and build NANSENs under licence, as DEGs
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