Cruiser upgrades… oops.

Gotta say, we seem to have a severe problem with our floating (sometimes) service’s building and acquisitions group. The Littoral Combat ship cluster, the extended refurbs in port – if you could ever find a legit headline about the Navy getting something done ahead of time and under budget in the last (what, GENERATION  or two?) you could shock all of us. Am I here to tell you of such a case? Well, regrettably….no.

After Congress rejected the Navy’s 2012 proposal to retire its Ticonderoga-class cruisers, it provided funding for a 15-year ship modernization program. Since 2015, the Navy has spent roughly $3.7 billion of those funds trying to modernize seven cruisers.

Doesn’t sound too bad – except after spending almost $2 billion of that on four ships that never made it back into the fleet.

The Navy’s Ticonderoga-class cruisers were the first warships to be equipped with the Aegis Combat System, an automated weapon control system designed to detect, track, and engage aerial, surface, and subsurface threats.

These warships were equipped with 122 vertical missile launchers capable of launching Tomahawk missiles, among other weapons, forward and aft deck guns, and two close-in weapons systems.

Sounds relatively capable…it ain’t an Iowa-class battleship but ought to be able to inflict the hurt, right?

In 2001, the Navy started work on a new cruiser as it prepared to phase out the Ticonderoga fleet. Nine years later, it abandoned the next-generation program and instead procured upgraded versions of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to fill the gap before the arrival of future destroyers.

Singled out in the article were four ships: The Hue City, the Anzio, the Cowpens, and the Vicksburg.

Despite allocating $161.15 million to upgrade the cruiser after entering the modernization program in 2018, the Navy decided to decommission the Hué City in 2022, before work even started.

The service spent $250.54 million to upgrade the Anzio but later discontinued work on the ship due to cost overruns.

The Navy invested $678.56 million to upgrade the Cowpens, but service officials inadequately managed the ship’s maintenance and upgrades. Properly repairing and modernizing the vessel would have cost another $88 million. The Cowpens was decommissioned in August after 33 years of service.

The Navy decommissioned USS Vicksburg at the end of June after 32 years in the fleet. It was the first ship to undergo modernization in 2016. The Navy spent $745.05 million to upgrade the ship, but after the cruiser spent four years in the shipyard, the Navy found that the work was only 85% complete. Contractors dropped the ball on quality control while the Navy let maintenance slip to the point that key systems on the ship were simply not salvageable.

I keep seeing a common theme… billions wasted,  years to get work done, half-assed work when it is done, and general incompetent program management.  You would almost think there was a group of military and contractors bent on solely making profits regardless of the detriment to our country…hmm, wonder what we would call them?

Well, Mr. Trump – you want a target worthy of action? A bunch of prosecutions and courts-martials might do wonders.

Category: Navy