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LCSs that the Navy may now be looking to mothball includes four that it had previously announced it wanted to have withdrawn from service by the end of this month.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.
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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