More photosPosted on 09/10/2012 2:12:26 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
GALVESTON — Several thousand onlookers will crowd Pier 21 in Galveston next week, eager for a glimpse at a new breed of Navy warship and the crew that will man her.
The vessel is a football field in length and so fast designers compare her to a sports car on supersized steroids. She’ll arrive at Port 21 as the Fort Worth and gain the official title of the USS Fort Worth after commissioning ceremonies Sept. 22.
Ernie Connor, U.S. Navy retired, director of the Galveston Naval Foundation, described how events will take place during the ceremony.
“Congressman Kay Granger says, ‘Captain, man our ship and bring her to life,’” Connor said. “Sailors will man the ship, light off the various systems, and then, as the newest ship in the Navy, she and her crew stand ready to complete her role as part of the mightiest Navy in the world.”
The Galveston group is the host of the commissioning ceremony.
Granger, a Republican from Fort Worth, led a small army pushing for the name “Fort Worth” to be placed on the new ship, a maverick among more staid Navy vessels.
Where older warships similar in size carry crews of more than 200, the USS Fort Worth operates with a crew of 40, using cutting-edge technology and switchable modules to reconfigure the high-speed vessel for different missions.
[SNIP]
On a recent visit to Galveston, Cmdr. Randy Blankesnhip, commanding officer of the Fort Worth’s Blue Crew, and Lt. Cavell Thomas invited the public to tour the ship, meet the crew and ask questions.
“Our crew is really looking forward to the hospitality of the city,” Blankenship said.
[SNIP]
(Excerpt) Read more at galvestondailynews.com ...
The crew is probably really looking forward to seeing the sun and blue sky. Not much for going out on deck, like a surface running sub.
Waste of money on obsolete death traps.
We should nuke our enemies into oblivion or else leave them alone.
Why throw able-bodied young boys at our enemies as cannon fodder when we have the technology to wipe them off the map altogether?
10 nukes would have fixed Iraq and Afghanistan - but instead thousands of dead and maimed boys later, those conflicts still simmer on unabated and they are more fixated than ever on Islam.
Fighting with this junk is a total waste. Now that we have nuclear weapons and airborne delivery capabilities, what good is something like this?
This is sort of like a highly trained prize-fighter learning how to scratch or pull hair when they can deliver a knockout blow.
Serving as a plank sailor on the first of a new class of ship is a real career enhancer so it goes without saying, in Obama’s Navy, that the crew have political connections...
...in other words, a third of the crew will be women, a third homosexual and a third people of color.
The flight deck will make a fine steel beach.
I was reading at one point that, in real life, the "switchable" modules, instead of being switchable in days would take weeks. Plus:
A key LCS failure identified by the OPNAV report, sources said, is its inability to effectively defend against anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs), a weapon carried by hundreds of small, fast-attack craft operated by virtually all potentially hostile navies.The Navy tried for a multi-capability ship, and instead got something that can't do anything well, has low survivability if hit, and needs to be protected by "real" warships.
If they get to go out there while underway. Doesn’t look like that kind of ship, but if they have good skipper, yeah.
I had a friend of mine who worked at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren VA tell me that the LCS “was designed to sink in shallow water”.
I thought that was the function of Destroyers and Frigates - roughly the same size but each has different roles - missile defense and ASW (but each are sort-of able to multi-task A/R)- what makes this new class (supposedly) better than either?
kinda like a k mart...
by attempting to provide you with a little bit of everything, they actually succeed at providing you with nothing...
They certainly did a good job of hiding the weapons. Don’t see any with the exception of one gun. Of course, one assumes that Navy ships are still allowed to have weapons. That assumption may no longer be operative in this Politically Correct age.
Planners originally envisaged the LCS as a replacement for the fleet’s frigates, minesweepers and patrol boats, but the new assessments conclude the ships are not equal to today’s frigates or mine countermeasures ships, and they are too large to operate as patrol boats."Littoral" means the shallow waters close to shore. So the Littoral Combat Ship was supposed to bring capabilities close to the enemy shore, mainly by carrying unmanned floating and flying vehicles which it could deploy and control.
The problem is, as joe fonebone pointed out, by trying to have too many capabilities, you got an expensive, vulnerable ship that is not very good at any particular task.
I would have guessed that supporting navspecwar ops would be a key mission, but it looks like it's not.
The weapons suite changes out depending on which mission package is installed. In the picture in post 5 you see three rectangular patches on the top of the ship aft. These are the weapon locations (guns and missiles). This paricular ship doesn't have any installed yet.
This design was actually based on a cruise ship. It is incredibly maneuverable, very low maintenance while deployed and can be operated with minimal watchstanders (I believe 5 sailors can operate the entire ship. There will be additional people operating the mission package)
The linked article makes many good points but it never establishes that swapping modules would take weeks. If you include the entire effort of getting the modules to the swap point (assuming forward deployed) then yes it takes weeks. But EVERYTHING takes weeks if that is your measure.
Swapping an entire package out and in can be done in about a week if all the components are on hand.
Understand.
Which is probably why we don't combine carriers and subs....
(Somewhere in DC there's a bean-counter thinking: "Hmmm - but if the carrier can submerge....")
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