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I guess I’m dumber than a box of rocks; wouldn’t the engineers have known that partnering these metals in saltwater would’ve caused the accelerated corrosion or don’t they test, or read of prior results, before going ahead and spending billions of tax dollars? I guess I’m even more suspicious thinking that they know these products will need more regular maintenance thereby keeping their coffers full of annual repair bill invoices. Greed, stupidity, and outright fraud, someone should go to jail, but they won’t. Worst case, you’re in the middle of an effin’ global war and your ships spend too much time in drydock being repaired because of something like this. Am I dreaming or what? Who were the engineers on this project, chicoms, russkies or muslims? Just askin’.....

Who were the engineers on this project, chicoms, russkies or muslims? Just askin’.....

My vote would be Chicom saboteurs or haughty H1Bs from India.

Cheers!

I guess I’m dumber than a box of rocks; wouldn’t the engineers have known that partnering these metals in saltwater would’ve caused the accelerated corrosion or don’t they test, or read of prior results, before going ahead and spending billions of tax dollars?

You'd think. But there are other possibilities as well. For example, the engineers may have known about the potential for corrosion and come up with mitigation strategies that simply didn't work when translated from a lab/test environment to the real world.

Also, the first two LCS ships (Freedom, which is a monohull design and Independence, which is the trimaran) were bought under the "try before buy" principle and have been run VERY hard. Possibly much harder, and in a shorter period, than the follow on ships will be. AND examined earlier and in a more thorough manner - meaning that the problem might have gone unnoticed in "production" ships (like what happened with the structural issues cropping up in the Burkes.)

Beyond that, it's possibly a construction or operational rather than engineering issue. Not putting the right amount of anti-corrosion material on during construction, or not maintaining it during service use.

“I guess I’m dumber than a box of rocks; wouldn’t the engineers have known that partnering these metals in saltwater would’ve caused the accelerated corrosion or don’t they test, or read of prior results, before going ahead and spending billions of tax dollars?”

Having been involved in similar contractor’s design problems I can tell you that even 15 years ago this wouldn’t have been an issue. The problem is the ultra-green military contracts. They forbid coatings like chromium and cadmium that would make the parts last forever. If you’d buried a cadmium coated connector in the ground in 1950 and dug it up today you could still use it. But the environmental requirements of contracts have reached past ridiculous and are pegging the stupid meter. As a supplier, you can’t even buy a product that uses a banned chemical or process in its manufacture, even if there’s no trace of the chemical in the final article. These green requirements (eliminating lead from solder, for example) are building in failure mechanisms we haven’t seen since World War 2. The contractor’s are fully aware and there’s nothing they can do about it.

You over look the salient fact.

The vessels were built to Navy specifications.

Nope, this was all a part of a new style building program, which included companies big and small some with no experience at all working with the military or aluminum. Amazing stoopidity