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This is nothing new. It’s always been like this, whether Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines.

In WWII, the torpedoes wouldn’t explode. We lost a lot of sailors due to that.

Watch the movie Oppenheimer. The guy Robert Downey Jr plays, Lew Strauss, was instrumental in getting the Navy to accept and fix this issue.

This is nothing new. It’s always been like this, whether Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines.

Oh, I know, first hand. I served in the NAVY in the early 90’s. Got a front row seat to how the federal govt wastes our money.

My favorite was at the end of the fiscal year my ship would go 55 miles off the coast of San Diego to pump all of our perfectly good Oil and Jet fuel overboard so we could keep our allotment for the next fiscal year. Brand new furniture and engine parts would also go over the side. Was too much of a pain to send it back to where it came from.

My dad was the project officer for the patrol gunboat hydrofoil. PGH1/PGH2 Flagstaff (Grumman), Tucumcari(Boeing). Both were prototypes to support the SEAL team in Vietnam. He also had another ongoing project assigned to him. Dad went to inspect the other project and found the supplier placing barrels of water on the deck to get it to float level in the water. He refused to sign off on project continuation. A US Senator called him and was begging for hours to sign off the project. Dad refused. Consequence? He was passed over for Captain and headed out to be XO on USS Arlington (later CO for decommissioning) and XO of 32nd St Naval Station (San Diego).

The guy at the desk across from my dad was responsible for sending the USS Pueblo with inadequate armament into North Korean waters where it was captured. His reward? Promoted to Captain.

Suffice to say, there is a lot of politics involved in getting a promotion to Captain in the USN. I don't know who is in charge of the Littoral Combat Ship project, but I'm betting that person will enjoy a promotion for signing off on the project.

I'm reading Clay Blair's Silent Victory right now. I'm still in early 1942 and the boat skippers are starting to see the problems with duds and torpedoes running at the wrong depth.

The US Navy Bureau of Ordinance was one of the best friends the Imperial Japanese Navy ever had...

As far as the LCS are concerned, cut your losses and see if the Coast Guard can find a use for them. Assuming the Coasties will even take them.