Posted on 03/20/2022 3:32:34 PM PDT by Spktyr
Summarize? OK, here ya go: The primary power, for cruising , is a diesel engine. But big diesels are low RPM so top speed would be limited. So the hot idea to get to the speed the Navy wanted was to add gas turbine boosters. But they rotate fastly so they needed a cute gear box to connect the turbines to the diesel outputs. That combo drives the pump which runs the water jet propulsion unit-—kind of like a fast river runner. As mechanical/hydraulic plants go it is way too complicated. Everything has to work perfectly, all the time, especially if somebody is mad at you.
But then another unspoken problem is that those gas turbines are really whiny. Sonar can hear them all the way across any ocean, take your pick. They were supposed to be stealthy but they turned out to be the opposite. Every body who signed off on adopting these fruit cans needs to be held in stocks for three days then drummed out of whatever gummint job they had.
Had enough, yet?
“We looked like idiots already, because everyone knew the LCS was a disaster years ago. We didn’t even buy the best version of the LCS - the Saudis did.”
Yea, exactly...all they see are 10 more ships they don’t have to bother sinking.
Was that from a sailorette ?
Not really. The Russians don’t run into merchant ships for no good reason. Plus both we and the Russians lost a capital ship to in-port fires recently.
Oh, and their lead ship of a new class managed to sail around the world without needing to be towed back to port or suffering a major breakdown. Our Zumwalts, not so much...
Thanks for the summaries! That does sound like a nightmare of fail from drawing board to shakedown.
Little Crappy Ships
To be fair, CODLAG is a well proven concept and many warships have implemented it just fine. But CODLAG as implemented and misdesigned into the LCS isn’t working.
To be fair, that thing was supposed to be decommissioned in 1996 and they’ve kind of been keeping it duct taped together since then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Frank_Cable
If they’d kept them to the initial design brief of small, cheap warships useful in relatively shallow waters - such as in the Persian Gulf - they probably would have worked out fine. Unfortunately, it got some of the worst ever mission creep...
Geez. That didn’t work out so well did it. They should have asked some sailors.
7 years old is too old ???
Yikes !!!
Send ‘em to the Ukes, then feel real good about ourselves for having done something.
Lockheed was mentioned back up the way. Are they responsible for this boondoggle of a drive system? Somewhere, somebody(s) signed off and certified these messes.
Wow. That sort of gearing design should be relatively trivial with modern finite element analysis. What did they do? Outsource production to the Chinese? (Only half kidding)
Heads should roll over that.
It’s also a Seventh Fleet unit. You know, the fleet where destroyers run into merchant vessels.
Turn them over to CBP to patrol the Rio Grande./$
Do we hate the Ukranians enough to send them Freedom LCS? That’s kind of like giving your carless neighbor a Yugo.
Did the USN run out of paint before a foreign port call?
That used to be a VERY big deal.
Not now, I guess.
Thanks.
There are a whole lot of people who need to be fired in DOD, Contracting, and Congress.
These are the tranny ships of the Navy - Politically Correct, weirdly wired, complete disasters, and total frauds - and these can't even swim across the pool.
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