Posted on 10/31/2011 5:00:50 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
LCS "Ugly Duckling" Turning Into A Swan
17:17 GMT, October 26, 2011 Until recently, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) has struggled to overcome the impression that it was the U.S. Navy's "ugly duckling." There were questions regarding the mission for the LCS -- operations in littoral waters, the possibility of building warships in commercial shipyards according to commercial standards, and the plausibility of equipping the LCS with plug-and-play mission modules. There were complaints about the designs of both variants. There was the crisis of rising prices as the cost for each ship rose when the builders were required to meet the design requirements set by the Naval Vessel Rules. There have been delays in fielding several of the initial mission modules.
Slowly but steadily the LCS program is morphing into a pair of swans. When the first two LCS went to sea, both demonstrated tremendous capabilities. Design changes have been implemented to address problems experienced with the first two ships. As a result, when both variants go into serial production they will be able to go faster, carry more fuel and be easier to maintain.
Progress is being made on the mission packages. The first generation mine countermeasures package is undergoing testing. Candidate unmanned underwater vehicles are currently being developed. A redesign of the antisubmarine warfare package will be rolled out soon. New mission modules for the Marine Corps and Special Operations Forces are being considered. There is even the possibility of a missile defense variant with a downsized radar for the foreign market.
One of the truly transformational changes in the LCS program was cost. The competition between the two LCS teams for what was supposed to be a single award to produce the new warship resulted in each team proposing a price so good that the Navy decided to buy both LCS variants and got an extra ship in the bargain. This effect was the result of innovations in ship construction by the two builders, Marinette Marine and Austal. But it was also the result of LCS program office's absolute determination to constrain the corporate Navy's attempts to add requirements and hence costs to the program. The program office is being ruthless when it comes to engineering design changes. There are no changes not necessitated by safety issues or to enhance affordability.
Mother Nature wrote the biological rules that govern how an ugly duckling turns into a beautiful swan. The LCS program office and the two LCS teams have shown that by rewriting the acquisition rules the same transformation can be achieved on a major weapons program.
---- Daniel Goure, Ph.D.
Early Warning Blog, Lexington Institute
I'll bet you won't hear too many complaints about Naval Vessel Rules from men who made it out of burning aircraft carriers and cruisers in 1942 and 1943.
When I was at the Orange, Texas, Naval Inactive Ship Facility toward the end of 1971, I saw a group of APD's, all in dark paint, sitting at a pier -- they were on the new "stricken" list, along with about 55 DD's and DE's, all WW II construction, some with low steaming hours, nearly-full SK cages, and one with a brand-new boat motor sitting atop a big coil of 5/8" wire rope in the after quarters, in the deckhouse. The waste that Nixon committed was immense, and I always suspected that it had to do with Litton Industries and their newbuild shipbuilding programs.
One of the stricken ships was a CLAA, reclassified AG: it was the USS Spokane, CLAA 120 iirc; the senior chiefs working in the facility told me that her 36-knot hull had been subjected to large blast waves as part of the Navy's nuclear warfighting research.
You must not have been reading your newspapers for the last 10 years.
If you don't go kick their ass in their back yard, they'll come over here and kick yours in your back yard. But then, you're still making exceptions and excuses, aren't you, for refusing to accept what's as plain as the nose on your face.
$6B is for a new aircraft carrier with all the new technology.
LCS is being defunded. A combination of Obama and the Dems’ rabid hatred of the military and of an overwhelming number of problems with the class. I don’t know what the author’s connection to the project may be. The US Navy is being quietly euthenized as was tried in 1947.
Original budgeted cost: $220M. Rebudgeted cost: $420M. Now $1B and they still don't work. In a war they will serve as targets for enemy SSKs.
Lexington Group lobbies for several major contractors including Lockheed Martin.
Lexington is nothing but a paid industry shill. If they had existed in the 50’s, they’d be doing press releases about how great the F3 Demon was (a plane that was notoriously bad because of its rotten engine).
Really, when you post this stuff, you’re literally just posting a paid-for press release.
Umm, isn’t pretty much most defense-industry related news paid-for in one way or the other?? Most of the anti and pro- JSF reports keep hashing and rehashing the same lines.
Just read back issues of Navy Times. LCS is a dud. So may problems. It’s a too big coast guard cutter with too many bells and whistles for way too much money carrying way too few sailors and mission modules that don’t work. The traditional hull one also cracks in half in rough seas.
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