Birthing Ships is Never Easy; Give LCS A Break

[unhappycamper]

http://breakingdefense.com/2013/06/07/birthing-ships-is-never-easy-give-lcs-a-break/



The $584 million dollar USS Freedom

Birthing Ships is Never Easy; Give LCS A Break
By Robert D. Holzer on June 07, 2013 at 1:21 PM

The chorus of criticism facing the first ships of the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) class calls for a little historical context to be brought to this debate. Almost all new ship classes experienced considerable “birthing pains in their early days.

This is not new. Indeed, the first six frigates acquired by the American Navy in 1797 all came in late and over budget.

The most strident criticisms about LCS focus on the USS Freedom (LCS-1, built by Lockheed Martin) and Independence (LCS-2, built by General Dynamics and Austal), which in addition to being the firsts of their respective ship design types, are essentially research and development firsts-of-class ships –– virtual prototypes. This means that these ships are experimental with characteristics, issues and challenges that will be corrected in follow-on ships. The Navy contributed to this situation, describing the lead units of both variants as “Sea Frame 0” platforms, begging the question: “what’s a ‘Sea Frame,’ anyway?

All the first-of-class surface warships in recent Navy history have experienced significant problems to one degree or another, all of which generated considerable criticism at the time of their construction and initial deployment.



unhappycamper comment: The original Deepwater Plan had these bad boys costing around $200 million dollars each. USS Freedom came in at $584 million dollars delivered; the USS Independence came in at $704 million dollars, delivered.

I have a few issues with these Little Crappy Ships:

1. Why did the single hull cost $584 million?
2. Why did the trimaran hull cost $704 million dollars?
3. Why did Congress order 15 more of them?
4. Is anybody besides the MIC in charge?

[Cooley Hurd]

1. The Arleigh Burke-class destroyers rendered these obsolete before they were laid down...

This is a fine example of MIC pork.

[unhappycamper]

2. Even at the porked out price of an LCS, they are still cheaper

than and $1.8 billion dollar Arleigh Burke. Hell, the Queen Mary II cost only a billion dollars.

[Sherman A1]

3. Didn't we used to have littoral combat ships

Called PT boats?