Final LCS Commissioned. At Last
Freedom Class LCS
According to the Navy, The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is a fast, agile, mission-focused warship designed to operate in near-shore environments to counter 21st-century threats.
The core idea was each LCS would carry a modular mission package – Mine Warfare, Antisubmarine Warfare, or Surface Warfare – that could be swapped out as needed in port.
For reasons not completely explained the class was divided into two hull types- the Freedom variant with a standard steel monohull and the Independence type sporting an aluminum tri-hull. Both were floating disasters.
US Navy commissions commissions final littoral combat ship after years of issues
By Riley Ceder
The U.S. Navy welcomed its last littoral combat ship to active service Saturday, marking an end of a program beset by mechanical issues, ballooning costs and early retirements.
The service commissioned the USS Cleveland during a ceremony in Cleveland, Ohio, the last of an LCS era that began on Nov. 8, 2008, with the introduction of the USS Freedom.
“Today we celebrate the sailors who breathe life into this ship,” said acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, who spoke at the ceremony. “To the officers and crew of USS Cleveland, today is your day.”
The Cleveland, which is the 16th and final Freedom-class littoral combat ship to join the fleet, is the fourth Navy vessel to be named after the Ohio city.
Welcome to the Fleet.
The LCS program- 22 billion dollars gone and an embarrassing failure. What happened? Top Navy leaders repeatedly dismissed or ignored warnings about the ships’ flaws. One Navy secretary and his allies in Congress fought to build the ships even as they broke down at sea and their weapons systems failed. The LCS Program Executive Office (PEO) relaxed requirements meant to ensure ships costing billions can do what they are contracted to do. Contractors spent millions lobbying Congress members, who then fought to build more ships in their home districts than the Navy wanted.
In 2015 the GAO reported that LCS lethality and survivability were still largely unproven six years after delivery of the lead ships. Also, the Navy had lowered survivability and lethality requirements and even removed several design features to justify those lower requirements.
And then there were the mechanical issues. The Freedom-type suffered a class-wide defect in its combining gear– a complex transmission that connects its gas turbines and diesel engines to the propulsion shafts. The fix cost 8-10 million dollars per ship. The Independence variant’s aluminum hull suffered from cracking in high-stress areas and there’s a design fault causing structural defects in several hull frames.
The fixes cost more than the value they would add, and upgrading the LCS to meet modern anti-ship missile and submarine threats would also require new sensors, weapons, and reliability overhauls that Navy leaders argue are fiscally unjustifiable.
It’s not hard to see why the Navy is retiring the ships.
The saga of the LCS is a vivid illustration of how Congress, the Pentagon and Defense Contractors can work in concert to spawn what President Dwight D. Eisenhower described in his farewell address as the “military industrial complex.”
Category: Big Navy
I think this whole thing started as a Cold War type espionage plan to get the Chinese and Russians to copy it and build these worthless ships. They just took it way, way too far.