The Navy’s New Class of Warships: Big Bucks, Little Bang

Time.com ^ | October 5, 2012 | John Sayen

[sukhoi-30mki]

The Navy’s New Class of Warships: Big Bucks, Little Bang

The Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is not only staggeringly overpriced and chronically unreliable but — even if it were to work perfectly — cannot match the combat power of similar sized foreign warships costing only a fraction as much. Let’s take a deep dive and try to figure out why.

The story so far:

– Congress has funded the LCS program since February 2002. Its publically stated purpose was to create a new generation of surface combatants able to operate in dangerous shallow water and near-shore environments.

– By December 2009 the Navy had built two radically dissimilar prototypes, the mono-hulled USS Freedom (LCS-1) and the trimaran-hulled USS Independence (LSC-2).

– A year later it adopted both designs and decided to award block buy construction contracts for five more ships of each type.

– Since neither design had yet proven either its usefulness or functionality it seems that the Navy’s object was to make the LCS program “too big to fail” as soon as possible.

– It may be working: the 55-ship fleet is slated to cost more than $40 billion, giving each vessel a price tag north of $700 million, roughly double the original estimated cost.

Both LCS designs were supposed to be small (about 3,000 tons displacement), shallow-draft coastal warships that relied on simplicity, numbers and new technology to stay affordable and capable throughout their service lives.

he new technology was mainly robotics (unmanned air, surface and underwater vehicles) and modular weapons and sensors. The modular systems were a

[Timber Rattler]

Papers Released Show Problems with Littoral Combat Ship (Severe hull cracks, speed limited to 15kts)

More LCS-1 Troubles: 6-inch Hull Crack, Leak…

[Salgak]

I think we have a situation here similar to that of the old A-22 “Avenger” program. Specification creep. Someone wants to add “X”. So they add X. Then somebody else wants “Y”. . . it goes on an on until you have a platform that does anything, but nothing even close to “well”. . .

[QBFimi]

Littoral? I thought it was “Clittoral”. Whoops.

[NVDave]

And those had big cost overruns too.

I’m seeing a pattern here...

[Little Ray]

So it didn’t work the first time.

This is NOT the first time something like this has occurred. The US Navy’s first steel “protected” cruisers were completed in 1890. They were a catastrophe, too. Most of them were decommissioned by 1897 after about 6-7 years service. They then re-commissioned for the Spanish-American War because we were short on modern ships. But we learned from the mistakes pretty quickly and better cruisers were built.

As long as the USN and the Federales learn from the mistake and don’t continue to build the same defective ships, all is well.

[Little Ray]

You’re right.
They should have been called “Gunboats” and given a designation of “PG” instead of LCS.

[Mr. Jeeves]

But do they help the Muslim world feel better about itself? That’s the key consideration. :)

[Lazamataz]

7.9 TRILLION articles? Surely you exaggerate. I only count 7.4 trillion.

[midcop402]

This story reminds me of the Vasa, the swedish ship that sank about 5 minutes into it’s maiden journey around 1500 or so. It was discovered and raised and a portion sits in the museum. It has been determined that the failure occurred because of the constant changes the were added during construction. It was made longer, then taller, more guns, etc. Sounds eerily similar to this article in which changes were added without anticipating the impacts to other parts of the ship.

[Oztrich Boy]

The are pretty much rubbish. A small corvette combine with the capability of a very light transport. minimal combal ability, minimal transport abilty.

That's not to say the role couldnt have been done right, as it was by the Danish Flexible Support Ship

Combat abilty: compared the the LCS self-defence only, each is the equivilent of a frigate, not a corvette.

Accomidation above basic ship crew 70 (compared to LCS 15), Add the accomodation modulle to the mission bays and ut goes up to 200 vs LCS 40.

Grippping Hand: cost. The two ships total cost a little over $US500M - less than one LCS.

Down side. The LCS is 14-20kts faster, but at that speed runs out of fuel after a day. At crusing speed they have twice the range of the LCS.

[Oztrich Boy]

Actually the real classification is LPR (Amphibious transport - Small), 1947 reclassification of the Big One's APD (High Speed Transport)

[The Working Man]

I like the concept of an in-close-to-shore vessel. We were discussing the concept way back in the Viet-Nam War era days as there was a definite need for them.

The problem as I and many others have said before is Mission-creep. The desire to do all things with just one platform. Ship/Aircraft/Vehicle etc. Also for the U.S. Navy there is the added need of Blue-water capability just to be able to get the LCS into a theater of operations outside of Continental U.S. Waters. All of these things add on to size and cost. Add in the inevitable modifications to the vessel while under construction and they become very expensive indeed.

As I remember the original war-gamed designs the vessels were Corvette sized. Now look at them, they rival the size of WW II destroyers.

Oh well, I am glad to be long gone from that world. It was fun in some ways, others though...

[IMR 4350]

A lot of that had to do with the unions.

I worked at Ingles when they were being built and IIRC the unions demanded 1/3 more workers on the job than were necessary.

They also refused to correct the mistakes found in the blueprint design. They continued to build the ships with the mistakes as laid out in the blueprints, then cut out the mistakes and rebuild it where it would work.

A lot of the mistakes were small mistakes because of equipment upgrade from the time the ship was designed. New equipment simply didn't fit the design.

A lot of the union workers were just plain lazy SOB’s too. What should have taken one person 2 hours took 2 people 8 hours.

They also did sloppy work that had to be redone or even rip out other work just do it for the first time then redo the work that had to be ripped out.

Because of the different unions the work could never be coordinated so things could be completed in any kind of order.

Simply coordinating the work with the different departments would have cut cost dramatically.

[tanknetter]

Watch the movie “Pentagon Wars” starring Kelsey Grammar. Particularly the scene that quasi-time lapses the development of the M2/M3 Bradley.

The Brad actually ended up (partly due to original design, partly due to evolutionary enhancements) as a really good platform for the wars we ended up fighting (Desert Storm to Iraqi Freedom) but it would gave been an expensive mobile coffin if used in a European conflict against the Warsaw Pact circa 1990.

[TChris]

A lot of the union workers were just plain lazy SOB’s too.

I'm astonished! Just astonished, I tell you!!

Anyone familiar with unions can tell you that the word is synonymous with "lazy".

[tanknetter]

You have no idea just how right you are. The LCS-2 design has had “water wings” (large sponons) added to the stern to compensate for the lack of reseve bouyancy and the placement of the main mission module bay too close to the waterline. If that bay were to flood, not just combat damage but also issues with the doors, the ship would be a repeat of Vasa and Mary Rose.

[tanknetter]

Sorry, should have been LCS-1 design above.

[nonsporting]

Reminds me of these: