.....taxpayers’ dollars at work.....!!!! why am I not surprised... the defense contractors make out like the bandits that they are, while the American taxpayers get screwed.... yet again.....
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.....
“... 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rose in power and their jobs increased in scope, they still applied the solutions that had worked before, but were now outdated.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.
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.
Pork Floats!: Congress Inserts Three Littoral Combat Ships The Navy Doesn’t Want Into Budget
While adding ships, Congress cut funding to mission module development, creating a nasty paradox in which critical LCS missions are left in doubt.
By Tyler RogowaySeptember 19, 2018: