How Navy’s Warship of the Future Ran Aground

[Feuer Frei!]

With an enormous splash and cheers from spectators, the 378-foot-long vessel Freedom slid sideways into the Menominee River in Wisconsin. It was Sept. 23, 2006, and the U.S. Navy had just launched its first brand-new warship class in nearly 20 years.
Freedom also represented a new strategy. Where previous warships had been tailored for open-ocean warfare using guns, missiles and torpedoes, Freedom — the first so-called Littoral Combat Ship, or LCS — was designed for a new kind of coastal combat. It was smaller, more maneuverable. And instead of relying on sheer firepower, it carried few of its own weapons. Instead, it would function as a mothership for super-sophisticated robots that would do most of the ship’s fighting.
Freedom was also cheaper than older ships: just $600 million, compared to more than $1 billion for most other vessels. The Navy hoped to buy as many as 55 LCSs for around $40 billion, reversing the U.S. fleet’s steady numerical decline that began in the late 1980s.
There was so much promise invested in one “small” ship. “It comes none too soon,” Adm. Mike Mullen, then chief of naval operations, said of Freedom’s arrival, “because there are tough challenges out there that only she can handle.”



But the fanfare and Mullen’s optimism masked deep problems in the LCS program. Freedom was years late and $400 million over its original cost estimate. None of its robotic systems was ready for combat. Five years later, they still weren’t ready, preventing Freedom from undertaking any real-world missions more serious than a Caribbean drug hunt.
Meanwhile, mechanical and structural problems festered inside the ship, the symptoms of a rushed design process. In 2010 and 2011, Freedom and a sister vessel would both suffer serious maintenance failures within months of each other.
The LCS’ biggest problem, however, was conceptual. Five years and billions of dollars into the LCS program, the Navy still hadn’t figured out what the coastal combatant was really for. Today, the sailing branch is no closer to an answer. “Apart from the Navy’s inability to properly forecast how fast these ships could be built, fielded and paid for, there is a similar tone-deafness to how they will be employed,” ace naval journalist Christopher Cavas wrote.
What is the Littoral Combat Ship? Is it a heavily armed brawler meant to wade into bloody coastal battles and sacrifice itself while taking out multiple enemy missile boats? Is it a mine-clearer? A sub-hunter? A low-cost patroller ideal for slowly stalking pirates, drug runners and weapons smugglers and training alongside allied navies?


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[Torplexed]

It always seemed to me that if you're gonna build a coastal defense ship you could start by saving a few fancy words. Instead of Littoral Combat Ship, call it Monitor. It's cheaper and no less useless.

[Oberon]

At least your 'Warship of the future' only ran aground figuratively.

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

I just can't avoid laughing to this after following this "Littoral Combat Ship" program last five years.

[Growler]

I wish the Navy would leave the small-boat and shallow-water (littoral, coastal) seamanship to the Coast Guard they so often deride for exactly that.

Shoot, even the Army handles small-craft and shallow-water seamanship on their own.

Stick to the blue-water, Navy.

[papa_smurf]

Well, to coin the phrase.....Whoops!!

[Anthony W.]

Woohoo! New lolbootage!

[Highbury]

I am surprised he didn't also mention the other ship in the LCS program, the Independence class. The first one is actually disintegrating..

"Austal, America’s newest warship-builder, is still scrambling to recover from the late-June revelation that the USS Independence, the Littoral Combat Ship it just built for the U.S. Navy, is “aggressively” disintegrating."


http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011...aring-warship/

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Highbury

I am surprised he didn't also mention the other ship in the LCS program, the Independence class. The first one is actually disintegrating..

If you are referring to me when you say 'he', then I have already posted an article on that here in GT a while ago.