I can only guess that it’s a test ship to see how it performs. They are finished testing it, so they are now decommissioning it. They should give it to the Coast Guard, so it is designed for to patrol the US coast.
Seems similar to the Zumwalt Destroyers. The plan was to build 32 of those, but then they were seen as too expensive. They built 3 and considered them to be sort of experimental. I don’t expect them to be in service long. So far, our 21st century ship-building track record is not stellar.
Test ship? Are there any other ships in that class?
The USS Fort Worth was the test platform.
The ships have propulsion issue problems & the anti-submarine system being developed for the ship never worked out.
The story is that US Navy is cutting its losses on this class of vessels. They were poorly designed, and they performed poorly
Not only that, the maintenance costs were huge on it.
I think they’re doing the right thing. This is a classic case of when you were in a hole, stop digging
They are undoubtedly catching heat for doing so, and they are deserving of that, but it is a lemon that cannot be squeezed.
The USN is decommissioning two entire classes of Littoral Combat Ships (Independence and Freedom) because they're useless in combat.
Much of the modular mission specific systems couldn't be made to work, the crew was designed to be minimal, but the Navy found out that there aren't enough crew for battle damage response during war, and without the mission modules the ships have no real purpose in time of war.
What's worse, the US Coast Guard doesn't want them either because they're too expensive to operate with Gas Turbine engines (ship mounted jet engines), and do not have enough range.
The Coast Guard is building their own advanced cutters that do meet their mission requirements.
Were I Commander in Chief, I'd stop new construction of the Coast Guard's Offshore Patrol Cutter program (but complete the ones already under construction,) turn over both classes of LCSs from the Navy to the Coast Guard, tell the Coast Guard to spend the rest of their OPC program money on installing conventional diesels into the LCSs, and suck it up, buttercup.
The Coast Guard counters that it would be just as expensive to retrofit the LCSs as it would be to just build new OPCs. I am skeptical of that claim.
“I can only guess that it’s a test ship to see how it performs. They are finished testing it, so they are now decommissioning it. They should give it to the Coast Guard, so it is designed for to patrol the US coast.”
your guess is wrong ... if you had read the article you’d know they’re decommissioning nine of them ... furthermore, this whole class has been a boondoogle and disaster from day one ... the two-engine transmissions are faulty and apparently unfixable ... these boats basically don’t work, and the cost to TRY to operate them is astronomical, which is why the navy is dumping them and also why no other service is ever going to want to try to operate them ...