I was a program manager on a Navy project. It peripherally involved with the LCS. I interfaced with a lot of Navy personnel, and they knew what they were doing...very competent. When I asked about the multiple decisions that gave us LCS every one of them knew the decisions were bad and said so. According to them, all those decisions came from one admiral who had a bee up his bum that the LCS was going to put him in the history books. He didn’t listen to any of the contrary reports or information. (All of which turned out to be correct.)
The idea of the new frigate was to leverage off an existing design because we needed to catch up due to spending so many assets on LCS. What did the Navy do? They immediately made massive changes in the frigate design adding risks and cost, thus negating the whole reason for buying a foreign design that already existed and was well proven.
I think the Navy lacks competent oversight. It’s not a competence problem lower down. It’s massive, massive egos wanting to put their personal stamp on something they really shouldn’t be allowed to touch.
Sometimes you just need a ship that’s good enough. You don’t need a ship that can do absolutely everything at fifty times the cost of good enough. The Navy needs some competent oversight from someone with a rolled-up newspaper who can slap an admiral across the head.
Wrong-headed, top-down decisions seems obvious even to me, who never served in any service. (My VN era lottery number was just high enough)
I was a sonar tech on USS Biddle, DLG-34 in the mid ‘60’s. She was a beauty. It was a shame to see photos of her dismantling in the early ‘90’s.