The US Navy has finally decided to abandon the unworkable Littoral Combat Ship modular concept, and to turn the ships it has on order into dedicated, single-mission vessels. Both LCS variants are shown here. (USN photo)
The US Navy has finally decided to abandon the unworkable Littoral Combat Ship modular concept, and to turn the ships it has on order into dedicated, single-mission vessels. Both LCS variants are shown here. (USN photo)
How much money spent? How much time wasted? To discover a small, fast ship made of aluminum was bad idea for a surface combat vessel.
Actually, the LCS series was a complete success, transferring taxpayer funds to the districts of favored politices and businesses of their contributors, and thence back into the coffers of the politicians.
What? You didn’t think the bastards actually cared about creating an effective warship did you?
The important thing is that the right people made fortunes from another ill conceived boondoggle.
It failed because it dounds too much like a female body part. What’s next a Enis?
I worked on the program for 10 years. I’m not surprised it failed. It was incredibly complex due to the constantly changing requirements and long development time. It used modular payloads for each mission and they had to talk to the ship’s computers. Every time one of the systems was upgraded it required retesting.
The ship was designed to run very fast in shallow water, so every ounce of weight was critical. One of our engineers was responsible for paring down the tools that were kept on board. She concluded that they could use an adjustable wrench instead of a whole set of metric and standard wrenches. It was a concept the looked good to the bean counters on paper.
They kept very few spares on board and even fluids like oil and solvents were measured down to the number of ounces required for a mission.
The modular concept required dozens of different contractors and commanders coordinate specification changes to keep all the other contractors in the loop for software changes. I remember one change that moved a bulkhead hatch that wasn’t coordinated. They ended up putting the door where our payload was supposed to go. The door became unusable when the LCS was configured for our payload.
Whenever they proposed cutting some of the funding or needed more money, someone would come up with a new mission so they could get funding from another source.
The whole thing was a swiss army knife. A jack of all trades but not good at any one mission.
forgive me while I laugh.
Lockheed-Martin hosed up again and the Defense Dept. gets it in the #6.
Uh oh! Bad news for Austal Shipbuilding in Mobile, AL; one of the largest employers in an area that doesn’t have very many large employers!
So...no USS Gabby Giffords?
Both were doomed to failure from inception.
Ping.
They should beg the contractors to let them convert the orders into Burke class DDs.
Sometimes the only way to find out if a system is feasible is to try it out. This one fell short, apparently.