Posted on 03/20/2022 3:32:34 PM PDT by Spktyr
Subtitle: The oldest Littoral Combat Ship on the chopping block is just seven years old.
The U.S. Navy will reportedly seek to decommission between eight and 10 Freedom class Littoral Combat Ships, or LCSs, as part of its budget proposal for the 2023 Fiscal Year. This would despite the oldest example still on active duty being only seven years old. Last year, the service admitted that it would take years to implement critical fixes to the propulsion systems on all of the Freedom class vessels it has acquired to date.
Politico first reported this news today, citing three individuals familiar with the plans. The outlet said that the Navy and the Department of Defense had declined to confirm or deny that the 2023 Fiscal Year budget request, a public version of which is expected to come out sometime this month or in April, would propose decommissioning these ships. The Freedom class is one of two distinct types of LCS, the other being the Independence class, that the Navy currently has in service.
Last September, the Navy decommissioned the USS Freedom, leaving it with only nine other Freedom class LCSs in service. All of the remaining ships were delivered between 2015 and 2020, making the entire fleet extremely young. The Navy officially took delivery of another one of these LCSs in November, the future USS Minneapolis-Saint Paul, but has not commissioned it. It also has five more on order, one of which is in the process of being fitted out and the other four being in earlier phases of construction.
Given the total number of ships involved, it seems more likely than not that the eight to 10 Freedom class LCSs that the Navy may now be looking to mothball includes four that it had previously announced it wanted to have withdrawn from service by the end of this month. That quartet includes the second Freedom class LCS ever produced, the USS Fort Worth. Freedom and Fort Worth, which were commissioned in 2008 and 2012 respectively, have different configurations from later ships in the class and have already been relegated to test and training roles years ago.
If the Navy does ultimately pursue this decommissioning plan, it could amount to an effective resetting of the Freedom class, which has been plagued by major issues with its water jet propulsion system. A design flaw has led to repeated failures in the combining gear on multiple ships in this class in recent years. The combining gear connects a set of gas turbines to the main diesel engines that power these vessels, allowing them to hit top speeds of over 40 knots, something that was a key Navy requirement during development. These LCSs can only sail at between 10 to 12 knots on the diesel engines alone.
Sub Brief on YouTube, a former Navy sub sonarman, gives further details and discusses the LCS debacle here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRccQo9vTI4
“Navy Wants To Retire 10 Littoral Combat Ships According To Report”
Sending another STRONG MESSAGE to Putin. But the Bidenistas here will LOVE IT!!!
Billion dollar boondoggles is what our military does best.
How many billions in taxpayer money snarfed up by fat, connected defense contractors? With campaign kickbacks to the politicians.
You’re going to have some failures and some successes.
Spot on. Some of these are made in my backyard and this will impact the state, but these things have been a disaster pretty much from the get-go and riddled with billions in cost overruns, redesigns. Yeah, honestly about a decade too late.
Shane no one said this would happen 10 years ago! Great plan. Build a class of ships for an undefined mission. Without the “mission modules” to support. To date, I don’t believe any of the planned interchangeable modules have actually been delivered.
It’s enough to make you sick sometimes.
“Billion dollar boondoggles is what our military does best.”
I can attest that the DoD is rife with money holes. This probably applies across the entire Federal government, but I only have first-hand knowledge of DoD shenanigans.
Just saw one of these sitting in the decommissioning row at Bremerton today.
Except the Navy was told this would fail at the outset and no one put in the brakes.
Ping
Everyone associated with pushing this disaster through congress should be in prison for no less than 20 years.
If we were at war, they should be hung.
Combining gear technology.
Yeah, that’ll work,
if they add NSFO(NavyStandardFuelOil) boilers, wind, solar and sails.
It was a bad idea from the word GO.
They should have said STOP years ago.
Actually, these ships had *huge* problems and while they were advertised as combat ships they were not actually combat capable. They had been relegated to a training role as they were far slower than they were supposed to be. Watch the video I linked. Those things are deathtraps.
Could someone summarize the problem with the propulsion system?
So they have 9, and want to decommision 8-10? Sounds like they are planning to buy more to immediately decommission.
My suggestion - make Lockheed eat the ones that are in various stages of pre-commision work.
Who is getting kickbacks?
Actually, a lot of people were saying this back when the ships were first put in commission. Those in the Navy criticizing the idea were purged.
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