We need a ship in this class to replace the failed LCS idea and we need it *yesterday*. We don’t have the time to have US industry start one of this class from scratch (and the Obama Admin killed off any possibility of this for 8 long years) so we need to buy an off the shelf design. FYI, it would take 10 years to come up with a similar modern combatant and we don’t have 10 years to fix our badly weakened Navy. We need ships and we need them *now*.
No matter which design is selected, initial production will be overseas but US built ones will follow as soon as US production can be set up. We’re buying a design, a license to produce it and the first flight of ships, that’s it.
Oh BS. The USA designs and builds it’s own ships. This is a crap sandwich.