US Navy Procurement Disasters - The Littoral Combat Ship and Zumwalt Class Destroyer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odS3Kn5oGl0 ^ | 3/10/2024 | Perun

[Chode]

weekly Pereun...

[BobL]

Take that Putin, we don’t need no Navy ships because WE ARE AMERICA and therefore WE ARE INVINCIBLE!!!!

[brownsfan]

As long as they’re diverse and get pronouns right, doesn’t really matter, does it? /s

[Gen.Blather]

I had a project that was killed by putting it on the Littoral combat ship. Our sled, a mine sweeper, had to be towed by the largest helicopter. Towing it with the small copter on the littoral combat ship was very, very dangerous. the connecting cable which was a zero profit item, cost $50,000. Every time the sled hit a wave, the copter pilot would hit the emergency disconnect, which guillotined the cable. Pretty soon, we’d run the entire project out of budget. Something we warned the navy about, and which everyone involved understood. But the admiral in charge wanted to put every mission under the sun on this crappy little boat that couldn’t do the jobs they wanted. So, count in fifty-four million dollars lost because of this and it won’t be in the totals. Put it under “other.”

[Chode]

perfect...

[Reno89519]

I was once stationed on the USS Coral Sea (CV-43) that had real armor. Got tours aboard the littoral ships and was struck by the complete lack of armor. A 50 cal would likely go in one side and out the other. These ships were never made for any level of combat.

[rktman]

Roger that. My first ship was a DE built-in ‘54. May have had more armor but likely not. 😂👍

[dangus]

OK, discuss: Provide examples of an overly literal combat ship.

[packagingguy]

Yours is an interesting post…I bet people on FR see this at work often. That is, leadership that doesn’t listen to engineers and other employees who try telling them what will and won’t work.

Sometimes the leadership problem is incompetence but often it’s arrogance.

[Ahithophel]

As long as they’re diverse and get pronouns right, doesn’t really matter, does it? /s

Buoyancy isn't a function of diversity and right pronouns.

[John S Mosby]

The small ship-board chopper did not have the power to tow the sled— and they ignored this in the quest for more “capabilities” to be lumped on the new littoral warfare ships....

costing 54 million in the failure. Wow. And that figure in pentagonese is chump change.

[FrozenAssets]

“Sometimes the leadership problem is incompetence but often it’s arrogance.”

Ignorance, incompetence, and arrogance go hand in hand. Arrogance is generally a cover for ignorance and incompetence. This is not limited to government. There is an alarming lack of true leadereship and even basic competence in all levels of government AND commercial enterprise. Here is a minor case in point. I was in a large home improvement box store (brand L) a few months ago. I was attempting to purchase a roll around tool chest. I was told that the only person in the whole place who could operate a fork lift to get the thing down off the shelf was in a meeting. Huh? It eventually took over 2 hours to give the store money. A chat with the boss was more important to them than a $450.00 sale. At all levels of government and commerce incompetence and arrogance are the norm these days. The customer/citizen is always wrong.

[Reily]

Probably a DEI training meeting. Yes, that is more important in the modern whiz-bang corporate world then a $450 sale!

[packagingguy]

I agree with what you’re saying.

On the flip side a good leader can make all the difference in the world.

The only reason I and hundreds of employees have jobs is because the company hired one marketing director who changed everything.

We almost went under in 2008, but he came in, turned things around and grew the company into a market leader.

[llevrok]

When I drive by Bremerton Naval ship yard, I see two of these berthed there in moth balls, sitting rusting.

[Chode]

cryin shame...

[Phlyer]

Sometimes the leadership problem is incompetence but often it’s arrogance.

I worked for a long time as a systems engineer, and I can absolutely attest to the saying that Systems Engineering is a useful servant but a terrible master.

The first post-WWII class of US destroyer was the Mitscher class, of which (like the Seawolf submarine and the Zumwalt destroyer), they built only three. There is a book, "US Destroyers" put out by USNI that talks about the development of the requirements for the Mitscher destroyers. It went like this:

Atlantic fleet - in the new destroyer, we need to have 100 depth chargers and 2000 miles range at 15 knots.

Pacific fleet - that's good, and we need ten torpedo tubes and at least six five inch guns. And 35 knots top speed.

Atlantic fleet - that's all good and we need the new Weapon A ASW system (basically a turret Hedgehog system).

Pacific fleet - all that's good and we need state of the art radar

Atlantic fleet - all that and we need state of the art sonar

And so on . . .

All the studies showed that each increment was a good idea, but the overall cost grew out of control. (Sound familiar?)

In the case of the Littoral Combat Ships, when the cost for all of the 'goodies' grew out of sight, they decided to 'modularize' everything so on any one mission you'd only have one set of capabilities. The result was that the modules were delayed, did not work right, and were eventually dropped leaving an under-armed tin box that went really fast (for a short time) - until the hulls started cracking and the gearboxes started burning themselves up.

The most successful programs are those where someone with some spine puts a limit on all the nice-to-have features and requires a balanced design within a top-down size limit. See Arleigh Burke, or Fletcher (of WWII). The Navy forgets this every time a new generation of bureaucrats takes over at NAVAIR or NAVSEA.

[SauronOfMordor]

More like the admiral decided his retirement plan depended on the LCS’s supplier staying happy.

It’s not stupidity, it’s corruption.

[DesertRhino]

The dirty secret? A litoral “combat” ship doesn’t have anywhere near the capability of just a Fletcher class destroyer. And it can’t come any closer to the shore. Most embarrassingly, it would likely be unable to survive a duel with a single T-72 tank sitting on the shore.

That would be a 2 inch gun going up against a 5 inch gun. With zero armor, accrue much too small to do damage control. Hell, the thing doesn’t even have a paint locker.

[doorgunner69]

The navy got jealous of the air force and all the gee-whiz stuff they kept tacking onto every new airplane?

Hey, let’s do with ships what the Germans do with BMWs, more and more electrical crap to fail.