Shoulda asked the Dutch to design it.
Doesn't have the LCS speed, cause it's weighed down with stuff the LCS doesn't have:bigger gun AAW and ASuWMissiles, sonar, more versitile flex deck and hanger.
But does a combatant really need all that?
I worked on the program for 10 years. I’m not surprised it failed. It was incredibly complex due to the constantly changing requirements and long development time. It used modular payloads for each mission and they had to talk to the ship’s computers. Every time one of the systems was upgraded it required retesting.
The ship was designed to run very fast in shallow water, so every ounce of weight was critical. One of our engineers was responsible for paring down the tools that were kept on board. She concluded that they could use an adjustable wrench instead of a whole set of metric and standard wrenches. It was a concept the looked good to the bean counters on paper.
They kept very few spares on board and even fluids like oil and solvents were measured down to the number of ounces required for a mission.
The modular concept required dozens of different contractors and commanders coordinate specification changes to keep all the other contractors in the loop for software changes. I remember one change that moved a bulkhead hatch that wasn’t coordinated. They ended up putting the door where our payload was supposed to go. The door became unusable when the LCS was configured for our payload.
Whenever they proposed cutting some of the funding or needed more money, someone would come up with a new mission so they could get funding from another source.
The whole thing was a swiss army knife. A jack of all trades but not good at any one mission.
“She concluded that they could use an adjustable wrench instead of a whole set of metric and standard wrenches.”
I’m speechless. This thing has to weigh hundreds of tons...and it comes down to this...wow.
To me this looked like a poorly executed attempt to duplicate some of the same modular concepts as the MEKO and Stanflex designs, and making it over complicated. Your opinion on this?
Shoulda asked the Dutch to design it.
Doesn't have the LCS speed, cause it's weighed down with stuff the LCS doesn't have:bigger gun AAW and ASuWMissiles, sonar, more versitile flex deck and hanger.
But does a combatant really need all that?