Posted on 02/12/2020 4:34:09 AM PST by mowowie
It was something many of us saw as a near-certain eventuality, the Navy has formally announced that it wants to retire its first four Littoral Combat Ships. Split evenly across both the Freedom and Independence classes of the failed Littoral Combat Ship concept, the oldest of the vessels was commissioned just 12 years ago, the youngest a mere six years ago. Yes, you read that right—six years ago! The troublesome fleet within a fleet has been serving as a training and test force, a dubious role from the start that the Navy says isn't even needed anymore. Giving up on the vessels as front line ships began a few years ago as part of a restructuring plan that was initiated as the program became increasingly mired in technological and logistical turmoil.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedrive.com ...
Well, in that regard they were a success. If the intent was to learn from them then we did. We learned we don't want to build ships like that. An expensive lesson to be sure. The real question is, have we learned that lesson now? Or are we going to continue to build out the rest of the planned fleet? I would think maybe they should apply those $$$ toward getting the next/replacement class of ship into service sooner rather than later and not build any more.
A galactic waste of funds, as many here said at the time.
and the politicians that line their pockets with kick backs.
I have got an idea. Strip them of any or our most sensitive equipment and sell them to Iran.
Then we can use them for target practice. Win win.....
I thought the Belknap fire already proved the hazard of using aluminum in ship construction.
Call Glen Beck. He’ll find out which congressmen and senators had their pockets packed to push the pig through the pokie.
flammable ships make no sense?
nor do escort F-35 that cannot go 3x
the distance to the current missile gouting targets?
unless planned for failure by obola?
Give them to the Canadians.
[A very expensive experiment. There must be a balance between innovation and real world function.]
From the Navy, "A total of 35 LCS have been awarded to date: 19 ships have been delivered (LCS 1-18 and 20); 11 additional LCSs are under various stages of construction and five are in the pre-construction phase."
Lots of detail by the Navy at https://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=4200&tid=1650&ct=4
“... the defense contractors make out like the bandits that they are,...”
As with everything, the real truth is much more complicated and messy than a breezy label suggests. I spent an entire career in military contracting and even had a fifty-four million dollar project that was ruined by putting it aboard these floating turkeys. (The small helicopter they use could not safely tow my equipment so, (and with other reasons) the project was cancelled.)
In every case I dealt with that ended up being a huge drain on assets, the engineers tried to warn management and the customer about what problems they foresaw. And, in each case politics and money (pork) prevailed and political decisions, not engineering decisions, caused the projects to miserable, expensively, fail.
Virtually every military and civilian contractor I spoke with about the littoral ship knew it was a failure in the making. This was years before we had four of them. I gathered the littoral concept was backed by some admiral with a lot of pull.
I noticed as engineers and professionals rose in power and their jobs increased in scope, they still applied the solutions that had worked before, but were now outdated. I think as (some) people rise in power and prestige they become isolated and stop developing technical skills because they are now developing political skills. They also stop listening to, or are isolated from, those who have the skills and advice that would make the project a success.
Well, that was a waste of money.
Make that a lot of money. Money available is not a bottomless pool. Between this and retrofitting ships and subs for diverse crews is money just plain blown to hell.
So, rather than say developing a new ICBM (The Minuteman was designed in the 60s), we spend money on fantasy.
But, not only that, it pushes back the timeline for having ships that actually work. A few corporations hired enough former DoD personnel as lobbyists and the rest is a sad history. The bunch of suckers living off the DC swamp is beyond what our nation can stand IMO. The satire movie “Pentagon Wars” is a commentary on how this stuff happens.
That could be their ultimate contribution to the Navy. Anchor those things off shore and put a harpoon into each one of them, and let the results be a lesson for future builders.
Ummm, no. HMS Sheffield was made of steel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Sheffield_(D80)
The sinking of Sheffield is sometimes blamed on a superstructure made wholly or partially from aluminium, the melting point and ignition temperature of which are significantly lower than those of steel. However, this is incorrect as Sheffield’s superstructure was made entirely of steel.[30] The confusion is related to the US and British navies abandoning aluminium after several fires in the 1970s involving USS Belknap and HMS Amazon and other ships that had aluminium superstructures.[30][a] The sinking of the Type 21 frigates Antelope and Ardent, both of which had aluminium superstructures, probably also had an effect on this belief, though these cases are again incorrect and the presence of aluminium had nothing to do with their loss.[31][32][33]
Please - MAKE IT STOP!!
Nobody wants the LCS in the US Navy configurations. The Saudis are the only people that have ordered some; they dumped the stupid modular mission system and significantly upgunned them with the space and weight savings.
Yes it did.
>>>thank god we only bought 4. You know there was at least one congressman who wanted a thousand
Two Congressmen perhaps. The shipyards building these ships are in Green Bay and Mobile.
To be fair, in this case it was the government that kept stacking missions and capabilities on top of the LCS designs. As originally envisioned, on their original mission, they probably would have been just fine (think Persian Gulf shipping escorts), but (among others) the Obama Navy decided to make them replace multimission frigates instead of keeping them to brownish-water oversized patrol craft.
I’m sure the defense contractors didn’t say no, but all the reports I’ve read have said the contractors were not pushing the government to expand the mission of the craft.
When The Guided Missile Cruiser USS Belknap Collided with the Aircraft Carrier USS John F. Kennedy
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/uss-belknap-collided-aircraft-carrier.html
I remembered the event, but needed some refreshing. In military equipment, there is no room for forgiveness and what works, Works.
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