Here's the latest criticism:
Of course, if its primary mission is in littoral waters, then it obviously needs to either have capabilities to not activate mines in the first place or the capability to detect and avoid/destroy them. To me, it sounds like a vessel designed by committee with a weakness for mission creep, and it its hull is composed of aluminum not steel. Having seen the results of a fire and an aluminum superstructure (USS Belknap meet USS John F. Kennedy) I am having visions of modern ships burning to the waterline as a wooden ship of the line might do.
To be fair, though, I would take with a grain of salt any defense related article from a publication such as "Wired", written by a guy who uses this as a tagline: "...Spencer Ackerman is Danger Room's senior reporter, based out of Washington, D.C., covering weapons of doom and the strategies they're used to implement..."
I read one of the linked articles about corrosion on this vessel titled "Builder blames Navy as US Warship Disintigrates", and read this passage:
"...There are technical terms for this kind of disintegration. Austal USA, Independence‘s Alabama-based builder, calls it “galvanic corrosion.” Civilian scientists know it as “electrolysis.” It’s what occurs when “two dissimilar metals, after being in electrical contact with one another, corrode at different rates,” Austal explained in a statement. “That suggests to me the metal is completely gone, not rusted,” naval analyst Raymond Pritchett wrote of Independence‘s problem..."
When I read this, I thought...Okay, someone took an explanation of galvanic corrosion and made that conclusion...