Free Republic

The U.S. Navy's close-lipped effort to pick a winning design for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program is generating more rumors than Lindsay Lohan's love-life. Maybe it's the approaching mid-term elections or maybe it's the lack of official information about how the selection process is progressing, but interested parties seem to be working overtime to formulate fanciful conspiracy theories about what's going on. The competition pits two second-tier shipyards teamed with giant defense contractors against each other for the right to produce dozens of unconventional warships that are the only new class of surface combatants to survive recent course changes...

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm’s way,” reads the quote from the larger-than-life father of the U.S. Navy, John Paul Jones, which is posted above a stairway leading to the mess deck on the USS Independence. On a clear, calm day in late March, on only the ship’s fifth full day at sea, the crew saw how fast the Navy’s second Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-2), designed by General Dynamics, could go. In the blue waters far off Florida during its maiden voyage from Key West...

Where are all the sailors? That's usually the first question visitors ask when they step aboard the Independence. The littoral combat ship's unusually small crew -- it takes 40 sailors to operate the $700 million vessel -- is only the beginning of what sets it apart. And if all goes as envisioned, the Independence, which ended its maiden voyage Wednesday at Norfolk Naval Station, could change the way the Navy does business. The Independence and its cousin, the Freedom, were born in concept nearly a decade ago. The military was looking for a quick and cost-effective way to increase its...

The first time Chief Petty Officer Gary Thomas took his place on the bridge of the Navy's newest ship, he remembers, he felt a little nauseous. It wasn't nerves or anything like that. The chief engineman was just more used to being below decks, where most vessels don't sway as much. "As an engineer I had never stood watch on the bridge before," he said. "It's a lot different from being down below the waterline." On this ship, multipurpose monitors allow engineers to oversee the entire operation from a seat on the bridge rather than having to stand watch in...

MOBILE, Alabama (Reuters) – The U.S. Navy commissioned its newest warship on Saturday, a 379-feet (115.5- meter) aluminum three-hulled vessel built by General Dynamics Corp, one of two designs vying for billions of dollars of follow-on orders. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead told reporters as he traveled to the ceremony that the new class of fast, flexible shallow-water warships would be useful for a wide range of missions, including responding to humanitarian disasters like the earthquake in Haiti. Roughead said the first Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) built by Lockheed Martin Corp, a more traditional steel monohull ship which...

I have no idea how GenDynamics is doing, but this first ship looks absolutley wicked! Its tri-maran hull combined with the capabilities and look of a warship makes it something out of this world!