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?
I think you're correct. I found several references to these projects in the early LCS briefings.
The more payloads they tried to implement, the more complex the whole thing became. Technology was advancing very quickly but the construction wasn't. The process made software and hardware obsolete before it ever finished testing. The Navy specified which computer processors had to be used when they designed the original ship and 15 years later the technology was so outdated that it was unworkable.