[sukhoi-30mki]

USS Independence. Photo via Wikipedia

[Jet Jaguar]

Active Duty ping.

[Slings and Arrows]

Is it me, or is that thing ugly as sin?

[Yes, I know that appearance is not an issue in designing a warship, but...damn.]

[2ndDivisionVet]

Modernize the Fletcher class destroyer instead.

[Ready4Freddy]

"Mechanical problems were so common that the Freedom lost 55 days at sea, which in turn limited the amount of useful data that the Navy could collect about how reliable the LCS is in the first place."

To the contrary, sounds to me like they got all the useful data they needed...

[HiTech RedNeck]

It is littorally a disaster.... (duck’n & runn’n!)

[Moonman62]

It’s a BUFF. Big Ugly Floating something or other.

[cva66snipe]

Typical work day at sea on a carrier 1977-80. 7:00am Muster on Station go to work. Two men have been on watch in the shop since 0400 that morning. Work till about 6:00pm including time for lunch. The typical 24 hour routine was working and standing 2 four hour watches. The morning 0400-0800 watch would likely also stand the mid watch 0000-0400. Next morning your watch time rotated. You'd likely get the 4:00pm-8:00pm watch and hit the rack at 9:00pm. That was under ideal conditions nothing broke down requiring extra time working. It was more likely you'd get at most 6 hours sleep in 24 at sea.

The snipes in The Hole {Boiler Rooms} did 6 on and 6 off. Only 6 hours in 24 was sleep the another 18 was work and watch or you did 4&4 of same.

Ship readiness evaluations on some days off of GITMO you got an hour of sleep. That was 30 days of whatever the inspectors wanted to do like General Quarters at 2:00am till noon the next day.

Due to Murphy's law I believe an undermanned ship is begging for trouble and an automated combat shipis just that. Undermanned except in ideal conditions.

There are other serious considerations besides just the work. Breakdowns requiring extended at sea repair times, Fire, mass causalities, illness, God forbid taking a hit requiring Repair Teams {Damage Control Teams}. The numbers mentioned in the article seem too low. Several losses of critical skill persons could put the ship in trouble. Cross training does not replace experience.

[Organic Panic]

It sounds poorly thought out by brass that wanted all thing to other brass. A ship requiring that much maintenance with no crew at sea is not reliable in combat. It isn’t a plane that can be easily replaced when it is down. It is a warship.

With the crews forced inside they have no access to sun and fresh air. It is vital to moral on a ship. Submariners are trained and rewarded for months of underwater duty. Sailors on this ship are not.

You won’t find too many complaints about six hours of a hot rack. Any good sailor can grab a nap on light duty but it sounds like this ship is so undermanned sailors are pushed to exhaustion. Exhausted humans make mistakes. If this story is true that is....

[X Fretensis]

LCS stands for Little Crappy Ships.

[Diogenesis]

Little crappy ship is FLAMMABLE and built to kill Americans.

No surprise actually since the Pentagon
now works for, and reports to, and protects,
al Qaeda OVER THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

[MasterGunner01]

Actually, LCS stands for Little Crappy Ship. At $400 million it is oversold, overpriced, underarmed, undermanned, and not survivable in a fight. USS Freedom (LCS-1) is the closest to a full armament package but still lacks its surface-to-surface missiles. USS Independence (LCS-2) lacks its Mk 46 Mod 1 30mm guns (2x) or their SSM battery. Conversion modules are still being procured and neither ship has an air group of Fire Scout UAVs yet.

The overweight problem for LCS-1 remains unsolved and LCS-2 still has corrosion control problems. Both ships were designed to do 45+ knots, but someone at NavSea forgot that anti-ship cruise missiles got a minimum of Mach 0.8 or faster. Good luck outrunning one of them and surviving. LCS crewing is so small they do not have damage control ability. As far as I can see, the LCS is a $400 million target.

[NonValueAdded]

Looks like the Disco Volante. Where’s Largo?

[LonePalm]

As a former ship driver I am concerned about the number of people available to stand watch while underway with only 8 officers and 32 enlisted for a crew.

Since the CO and XO aren't going to be standing watch, that leaves 2 officers per watch. Are they both on the bridge? I hope so. If they are, who is in CIC (Combat Information Center) and Engineering? No officers available if they are both on the bridge.

Now we get to the enlisted watch standers. You need at least one each for Quartermaster, Helmsman, and Boatswains-mate. You also need 2 lookouts (fore and aft), two in Combat Information Center, and two in engineering. Times 3 watch sections gets you to 27 enlisted. That leaves only 5 non-watch standers such as TWO Culinary Specialists (cooks), ONE Corpsman, ONE Logistics Specialist (storekeeper), and ONE other.

Now try keeping this up with half on and half off watch just for wartime steaming. If the ship takes damage and/or casualties you can forget about fighting it. There will barely be enough manpower to get it back to port.

In that case, you are worse off than if you had NEVER BUILT IT because it has sucked up other scarce resources that could have been better used elsewhere.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[Lurker]

“Mechanical problems were so common that the Freedom lost 55 days at sea, which in turn limited the amount of useful data that the Navy could collect about how reliable the LCS is in the first place.”

I’d say they got their data.

[AFreeBird]

Humans need sleep?

Huh!

[GATOR NAVY]

Kill it dead. Kill the whole project, walk away, take the loss and hopefully learn some valuable lessons in how NOT to design a combat vessel. The Little Crappy Ship has been a failure but too many egos in Big Navy are involved to admit it.