8 Things You Need to Know About the Navy’s Failed Multibillion-Dollar Littoral Combat Ship Program
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- Опубликовано: 31 июл 2024
- Little Cra##y Ships
What's Going on With Shipping?
Sept 8, 2023
In this episode, Sal Mercogliano - maritime historian at Campbell University (@campbelledu) and former merchant mariner - examines the latest article by ProPublica, "The Inside Story of How the Navy Spent Billions on the “Little Crappy Ship”".
#navy #usnavy #lcs #warship
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00:00 Background on LCS Program
05:21 ProPublica Story
07:26 Eight Takeaways
23:16 Conclusions
The Inside Story of How the Navy Spent Billions on the “Little Crappy Ship”
www.propublica.org/article/ho...
Eight Things You Need to Know About the Navy’s Failed Multibillion-Dollar Littoral Combat Ship Program
www.propublica.org/article/na...
Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans:
Background and Issues for Congress
s3.documentcloud.org/document...
Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program:
Background and Issues for Congress
crsreports.congress.gov/produ...
LITTORAL COMBAT SHIP: Actions Needed to Address Significant
Operational Challenges and Implement Planned Sustainment Approach
www.gao.gov/assets/720/719196...
The. Real nightmare is how officers were punished for truth telling. In my USMC experience I felt that as a senior officer your obligation is to tell the truth as you see it. That ended your career in the USN
Indeed...Just ask Captain Crozier.
You are the skilled men, start your own design company,
@@antoniostamndley8272It's Not design as it is lack of TESTING. rushing through simulations, is NOT reality
The design is (poor ,from the start,)navy specifications also you can get a lorry in a suitcase, nore is aluminum resistant to any gun fire, computer design has input parameters, as previous cockups can be ironed out before the start .This design is detection perfect Only, or may be we need very small sailors, , Russia , and all the others have little to fear from. American navy tech....... torpedoes was another brilliant miscarriage
Army did the same with the M2 Bradley. They made a TV movie on lt.
The LCS program pisses me off because we wasted precious years that could have been spent building actual warships.
Give it ten or twenty years and it'll come out that the people pushing hardest for them were in China's pocket all along.
You assign conspiracy to blame where there is only incompetence. We will never fix ourselves if we blame our faults on others. @@richmcgee434
"General Schwarzkopf, can your army jump over the Pentagon?"
"Caaaaaaaaan do, sir!"
You don't say no to higher's face, you try your best with what you've got and make sure the reasons for failing make it into the leasons-learned section of the debrief later. Unfortunately this comes at the expense of the people actually doing the job but it's the nature of the political beast.
We could have built a modernized, steel hull Perry-class equivalent.
Instead, we wasted time and money on an aluminum pet project.
Welcome to DoD acquisitions.
@@Strelnikov403 I always told senior officers the facts, not what they wanted to hear. Was there retaliation? Yep. Did I retire as an E-6? Yep. Do I sleep well at night, with a clear conscience? Hell, yes.
Thank you. This was hilarious. Incompetence at its best. Good to see the tradition of WW2 torpedoes has not been lost.
At least Admiral King finally got BuOrd to sort out the Mk14 torpedo. The US Navy needs a new CinC able to kick a** when required.
- a Naval History enthusiast from across the pond!
And now we can't replace top military leadership because some Senator from Alabama wants to leverage abortion care over national security.
@@lancereagan3046Don't believe the propaganda.
Nothing is stopping Schumer from having the senate vote on any officer, except his political grandstanding. Tuberville is simply blocking a senate process where all the promotions are voted on in one huge block, which requires a unanimous yes vote.
You know what they're doing with them? The important job of showing up for city fleet weeks. We had the USS Kansas City here in Portland that people could mill around outside of while they wait in line to go on the USS John McCain.
@lancereagan3046 There are literally 100 different ways to protect oneself from pregnancy, thus not having to do a abortion. There's absolutely no excuse for having to have a abortion unless it's a extreme case such as rape.
It's pretty simple to understand.
As a former enlisted person it never fails to not surprise me how there's always billions to be spent on pet projects headed by officers and retired-officers-turned-contractors while enlisted people are treated like garbage and veteran's benefits are a total joke.
It really hammers home what the actual priorities are.
I enlisted because my college GPA was very low, despite somehow graduating. After five years of service as an enlisted submariner, I commissioned via OCS. I was as frustrated as you during my two surface DIVO tours from 2010 to 2014. We were chronically undermanned. The pre-deployment vetting process was a bureaucratic joke.
The take-away from my brief nine year stint was this: "This is the top navy in the world? What do the others look like?"
I’ve seen how the officer corps in some other navies regard their enlisted crew. I once made a casual remark to an officer of a NATO destroyer about his QM’s sidearm. “No bullets,” he said. “You cannot give [them] bullets. They are hanimals. Hanimals.” And then there are the Dutch. Don’t even ask.
I was a submariner too. How was it to transition to being a SWO?
That's easily explained: companies are looking for retiring high-ranked officers to hire as their spokesmen.
The reasoning behind this is simple:
1. Those (former) officers know how things work and thus know how to get things done within the service.
2. They know the officers who make the decisions and thus know who to talk to.
3. If they were very high-ranked, most of the officers still serving have been under their command or possibly even trained and advanced by the former officers.
It makes the "advice" of these spokesmen very hard to ignore by decision making officers, because they know which buttons to push.
Enlisted, yeah, oh did Elon beat you to it. To bad, so sad.
The LCS is clearly a Corvette.
What i don't get is how little armament they put on the ships, as a Swede i always compared them to Swedish Corvettes which are much smaller and pack more firepower and sensors.
The big thing about the LCS is the helicopter hangar which is a major asset so what these ships should have been is ASW frigates with limited capabilities in all other domains.
ESSM NSM and 57mm Bofors backing up an excellent AWS suite of sensors and torpedoes would make a good ship given they where mechanically reliable. If the Stealth features where taken seriously it would complement the ASW functions nicely as they could passively search for subs.
I want them to answer how a mk 41 isn't a modular system?
The idea was a small less expensive ship to combat piracy such as what was happening along the coast of Somalia rather than using more expensive Frigates or Destroyers.
The hull and machinery are too noisy for ASW work.
Agreed, but originally they were going to have USVs leave the ship to hunt the subs. I don't understand why we can put a sonar on a USV for the MCM mission but not for ASW. Just put the MH-60 dipping sonar on them and get to work.@@josephpadula2283
@@josephpadula2283 Strange considering they are using waterjets.
What gets me most about the LCS’ is that we knew in advance they would fail but the Navy pressed forward while completely missing the point of the LCS’ intent.
the Navy never wanted them, congress wanted them because it bought votes in a lot of congressional districts.
@@zonian1966Then task them with building a useful warships. Not worthless busy work. You have to wonder how happy the people in that Alabama shipyard being associated with terrible ships.
Make them into museum ships, don't scrap them. Moor them in major harbours, in plain sight so as to never forget their huge failure. This ain't gonna happen though, they'll be disappeared so as to forget them ASAP.
Being museum ships people can visit and see interesteing tech and concepts so they'll still have value beyond merely reminders of poor procurement.
@@VanderlyndenJengold horrible idea, the current museum ships have a hard enough time getting resources to maintain the historically significant ships. Better idea, is to fire any admiral or officer that was in a position to stop this program, but instead supported it. And make it public any company that hires them for contracts with the navy wont be getting any business. Then fine both of those shipyards heavily, or assume ownership of them cause of faults and bad decisiosn their management made. Then have congress sanction any members that supported this disaster including the most recent funding that added ships, and continued building for years, only to go directly into the reserve fleet. Yes thats right, there were about 6 ships that had zero active days in service and went from construction to reserve fleet immediately.
This set of ships were known that they couldnt do anything but be a target since before 2016.... so much money and time wasted on projects that should have never happened.
As a US Citizen, what I'm most angry about is how well the LCS did its job.
"What the heck do you mean, the LCS is a horrible warship" you say. And you're right.
But that's not the job of the LCS.
The LCS is merely a token to be exchanged in return for government contract money. It doesn't have to be good. It doesn't even have to float. All it has to do is get produced and sold.
Welcome to end-stage capitalism, where corporations can do whatever the heck they want, and the government gets to play victim for trying to herd cats.
My kid alerted me to this when a bunch of classmates interned at both yards. These were 2nd and 3rd year nav arch students scratching their heads and wondering “WTF?” at the design and engineering choices that were made in both classes of vessel. I also recall there were simple metallurgy problems in the difference between hull and superstructure construction-so one of the classes was simply shaking itself apart.
If I recall, the trimaran is the one that shakes itself apart at speed. So it's a boat built to go fast that has to go slow.
My company did the survivability studies on these ships. There were times we had to step back from our analysis and ask "wait... is our methodology broken?" (Spoiler alert: no, it wasn't.)
I toured an LCS that called on Newport while I was attending one of the various SWO schools. "It was supposed to be cheap, deployable, and multi-mission. We are over-budget, undeployable, and we do not yet have a mission module. Oh for three." This is what our tour guide told us, frankly. Oof. ~2011
@@seanwoods647 Not surprised. Had an old colleague that did two enlistments as damage controlman on the Burke class destroyers. His first observation was the crew size was too small to effectively conduct damage control operations and continue to operate the ship.
If you haven't heard of it, look at what Lockheed did to the U.S. Coast Guard circa 2006.
One of the best comments about the Littoral Combat Ships was what the CNO of the Navy said years ago. He said, they are not suitable for use in the Littoral and they are not meant to be used in combat. Priceless!
But he was willing to accept that they are Ships, at least?
Yes, but barely. @@beeble2003
@2003 I dunno looks like a boat to me.
"The difference between ship and boat depends on the size, the area of operation, and the type of the vessel. A ship is a large vessel that travels in oceans and seas and has many sails or large engines. A boat is a small or mid-sized vessel that travels in rivers, lakes, coasts" It's a literal boat
For me, Dr. Sal, you summed up this whole "whiz bang" scheme: Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Congressional Pork Barrel. Thank you for highlighting the enormous pressure placed on rising mid-level Surface Warfare Commanders to make stupid designs work.
Never done so many Emergency break aways during an Underway Replenishment until you do a LCS. The boat moves lateral quick even when going into seas or with the seas
Theoretically, an LCS shouldn't even have to do Underway Replenishment, since it's supposed to work in the littorals, as far as I understood. Yet another example of a design idea shoehorned into something.
@@gunnar6674 Lack of Underway Replenishment as a core capability is a non-starter after 1939.
So now it's a lateral combat ship? Just circle strafe around the enemy. How will they know how to aim if you're pointing at them and going sideways? Checkmate Russia.
My pet peeve with these ships is how most people pronounce it like "literal combat ship". Thank you for pronouncing it correctly.
I hope to learn how to pronounce it right by the end of the Physical Year ending 30sept …..
Just call them what they are . TARGETS.
Ikr 😂, it’s very aggravating, especially when it’s a video trying to teach people about them.
Sat here in the UK my first thought was to pronounce them lavatorial
Littoral as in transition zone, as in clitoral.
The experience with the Osprey class Coastal Mine Hunter (MHC) is a preamble for what happened here. Every failure cause seen in the LCS happened on the MHCs. History repeats itself.
Props to this entire community for not saying the obvious words "Fraud, Waste, and Abuse" at any point.
I worked on a couple of these things when they were being built in Savannah Georgia. It's the Osprey and I can't remember the name of the other one but I do remember that fiberglass making me itch like a hound dog with fleas after drilling and placing inserts into the fiberglass for mounting machinery. And those crappy Italian made diesel engines they were using were problematic as well. Why they didn't use Caterpillar or Cummins diesels which are far more reliable is beyond me.
@@kennhi2008 Thank you for your work on the hulls of the MHCs. Actually, about the only good thing about those POS's was the strength of their hulls. Because they where so under powered (often because of having engines out) they often lost control while mooring and would hit the pier--hard. Unlike the wooden Avenger class minesweeps that would crumple like cardboard or other ships made of steel or aluminum which would dent, the MHCs would bounce. The truly amazing thing about the Isotta-Fraschini engines was that the Navy knew they where crap--experience from the Avenger class--and they went right along and bought them anyway.
The issue with naval ratings not being able to fix their own equipment is endemic throughout the fleet. On the one hand, everything is becoming more complex and, to some extent it needs to just be pulled and replaced with a spare that is hopefully in OBRP. You can't expect a 19 yo to fix these things at sea, even if they're a Nuke with Weaponized Autism. On the other hand, the damn toxic culture of the Navy, combined with low pay, leads to turnover that means that sailors don't stay in for the time needed to really develop the skills that would allow them to fix things in the same way that they did 30+ years ago. Until the Navy creates a culture that encourages electronic technicians with 10+ years of experience to be prevalent on every hull, we *have* to have equipment that is only repairable by contractors ashore.
Is this strictly a Navy problem? No. It's a political issue where Washington is happy to demand that the fleet respond to every call around the world at a moment's notice, but not really fund it to build enough hulls or retain enough sailors to do so. It's only a Navy problem in that nobody in a star-equipped uniform has stood up and said No.
@Zeppflyer Excellent point. Well said.
I agree with your comment
Concur.
So this is what it has come down to eh? Wow, no wonder why they got rid of my relatively new AD in the mid 90s? You are only as ready as your supply chain is now. Scary.
Forty years ago, I was able to tune up and maintain my own automobile. Not anymore. Increased capabilities and computerization has killed the shade tree mechanic. So, it has spread to other areas that were operator hand-ons in the past. Not surprising. And so it goes...
It was a huge bonus for the military-industrial complex and their lobbyists.
It’s a 😊corrupt system
I think you are 100% right Sal. Everything this country is doing for quite a while now seems like it is not thought through to the end! I just hope there is some better things ahead.
Sorry, there ain't!..
It's all about profit now, at the expense of everything else.
No. Examining the United States of America using symbolic logic analysis of comprehensive statistics shows mathematically that the U.S.A. will not exist in another ten years. That path was set in stone during the "War on Terror" by Congress and no effort has been avert from that path. Neglect of internal policy and investment in infrastructure and industry and education while maintaining completely irresponsible spending across all levels and sectors of society make this unavoidable at this point of confluence.
@@kw9849*Profit* is not the problem. Extraction of wealth and *concentration* of wealth, that is the problem.
The guy running his own hotdog stand -- Not the Problem.
@@kw9849that’s capitalism.
Your ability to reduce complex situations to easily understood principles is consistent and, I think, remarkable. As an instructional designer and technical writer, I appreciate simplicity, brevity, comprehensibility, and clarity. You are a natural, Sal. Thank you. If you are ever in Charleston, SC, let me buy you a beer!
Thank you Randall!
As a truck driver, I've delivered a few loads of robotic machines that were built in Finland to Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Marinette, WI which is where the LCS ships are built. It's a very impressive shipbuilding yard.
So they are high tech TARGETS. lol
why are we building deep ocean ships in wisconsin...
We've built inland before, but yes.@@eunjungham3192
@@eunjungham3192why not
they arent deep ocean ships they are littoral combat ships ... littoral waters is another term for coastal @@eunjungham3192
Sal, this is the best presentation I've seen concerning the LCS. The Navy types can't seem to see the forest for the trees.
If your navy is looking out at a forest, there may be a problem. 🤔
Gonna have to push back on the idea that the LCS can be salvaged and turned into something useful. The Freedom Hulls-maybe, but you’re gonna have to start by pulling the power plant and replacing it with something smaller, simpler & more compact. There’s nothing that can be done to save the Independence class. The hulls are worthless for anything save for their scrap value. (They actually do have quite a bit of scrap value, though. That’s a lot of aluminium…
Why not refit with smaller engines, automate the controls and make them into kamakazi attack ships to distract and draw enemy missles whilst your real warships sneak about unseen
I served six years on a USCG Cutter that was built in 1936 and decommissioned in 1980. We busted our butts to make sure our ship performed and looked good. The mind set and vision that won WW2 is gone. We have a bunch of overpaid , over educated bureaucrats in uniform, that are mostly interested in career advancement and cocktail party networking, all the while scolding lower ranked individuals for no agreeing with upper echelon twits !They are the problem.
A lot of truth in that! Semper Paratus..... 😎✌️
This is how all armed forces evolve in peacetime ...
Running Diversity classes is more important than warfare for them.
So we're basically back to the interwar mindset
@@TheAircool1It sure sounds like it, doesn't it?
The Oliver Hazard Perry Frigates were designed on a similar idea: small operational crew and maintenance would be done by shore side personnel. It never worked that way. These ships also had to expand crew beyond the facilities provided onboard. The Surface Navy keeps repeating the same mistakes because it looks good on a spreadsheet (save 10% here!) and the decision makers don't understand or want to understand that these are complex systems and nothing is free.
I apologize. I should have clarified my position. The problem with the Mark 14 development was that the Bur of Ordinance refusing to listen to the sub crews that pointed out the torpedo did not work. Furthermore the designer of the torpedo Adm Christie refused to listen to the criticism.
It wasn't just sub crews, it was everyone that used the Mk14 - it's just that submarines relied a whole hell of a lot more on torpedoes so the failure was a bunch more meaningful to them.
They hung the cpt. that proved the failure of the design out to dry. There were 3 fixes: 1) Use the one designed for air dropping (that is what the P.T. folks did). 2) Move the detonator to the rear-end so it could function before being crushed by the impact. 3) Have them run shallow enough to hit or at least come close enough under the target for the magnetic detonator to work (that is why the maint. workers who painted the set screw told the torpedo-men what color to use after resetting them).
@@everettputerbaugh3996 So many things failed with that torpedo it was genuinely hard to diagnose where it went *right.*
The magnetic detonator wasn't calibrated for the geomagnetic environment of the pacific theatre
The depth setting was all wrong because it was based on a test model designed to float and be retrieved
The depth *sensor* wasn't calibrated for the different oceanic conditions of the pacific. AND because it was a pressure-based sensor *placed inside the prop wash*
The contact detonator was crushed by direct impacts
The gyroscope occasionally failed, causing it to loop around in one big circle.
And that's just what I can remember off-hand.
@@watchm4kerthe stuff that kept the detonator in place also wasnt stiff enough ...it could get sheared off and only cause low order detonations of the explosive package.
@@dwwolf4636 That's a new one to me. Cripes.
Thanks for putting this out, Sal. In a former life, I was a naval architect at NAVSEA. One of my tasks was to produce a group of designs that informed the design boundaries of what became the PC-1 class. That study showed unequivocally that a John Wayne go-fast boat will always be an unbalanced design, meaning that to run that fast, that far, the ship will need an extraordinary internal volume dedicated to fuel. In the case of LCS-1, the ships were literally unbalanced in that special damage stability rules had to be invented on the fly in order for the designs to be even marginally acceptable. Speed, payload, and range are the iron triangle of ship design, and LCS tried to break the physics of that triangle. But physics and your enemies don't care about Potomac politics - they will simply kill you. BTW, my earlier study already knew about the problem of aluminum hulls cracking because we had data from a Vancouver ferry service that used Austal aluminum hulled high speed ferries. The crews of those vessels had a never-ending task of welding up an expanding web of cracks.
LCS came out of a brain fart called Street Fighter that would essentially recall the glories of the John Wayne movie "They Were Expendable" in that the "transformational" ships and their crews would be considered expendable in time of war. After saner parties pointed out that today's America may have to regretfully accept casualties in a naval war, overtly telling the crews that no one had their backs was probably a non-starter. Then there are the corrosion issues, the main propulsion plant issues, and the idiocy of believing the Navy had a large enough budget for the luxury of warehousing high tech mission modules all around the world, because the US Navy doesn't have the luxury of short distances enjoyed by the Danish navy (STANFLEX). And then, there was at least one mission module that didn't actually fit the hole it was designed for. The list goes on and on.
The reason for ignoring the "fly first, then build" contracting concept was that (a) no shipbuilder can effectively start up a production line and then fire all of the people that were were working on it while the Navy makes a decision on who will get the real production contract, and (b) the Congressional delegations of both areas kept pushing their respective shipyards as federal jobs programs. No one, but no one, had the nation's security as their first priority. "Beyond moronic" is a good expression for everything that occurred.
I do have to disagree with you about re-using the hulls for another purpose. Their aluminum hulls will not survive a 20 year life at sea. If the Navy insists on re-using the hulls, I would first court martial for gross misconduct everyone that made the "continuation" decisions" and are still on active duty and remove them from active service without a retirement check. That will be the only way to get the full and undivided attention of the program manager assigned to the correction program. The reason for my adamant position is that everyone involved in the LCS program has gotten promoted, which means the Peter Principle is not in effect in some circles.
The 2010s will, I’m sure, come to be known as the lost decade in naval shipbuilding with the failure in almost every shipbuilding program.
I think the Zumwalt was an amazing ship. Very ambitious, but I wouldn’t call them failures. Especially since they’re removing the cool guns, and making them hypersonic missile carriers.
Thanks! I accidentally found your channel and now it's one of my go to YT destinations. You are offering the best analysis on shipping etc of any I have seen. Don't stop.
Thank you so much Diane!
I worked at Austel in Mobile AL as a ship fitter during 2012-2016 and I worked on LCS 4&6 both independence class aluminum tri-hulls. Let me know if you want real first-hand information about pitiful construction and production processes. I worked on two JHSV vessels that were being built concurrently at Austel as well.
That money could have gone to modernizing the existing Perry Class FFGs, instead of decomissioning them all. Now, they're having to build an entire new class of FFGs, as well as spending yet MORE money to decomission these useless tubs.
The whole LCS program is what happens when you put planning in the hands of naval officers who have only ever helmed a desk. The decisions should be left to the Chiefs, the guys who really run the Navy, and, haven't had their common sense educated away.
I think the bigger question is why we didn't just adopt Absalon and Stanflex. Our modular system is sort of goofy in comparison. Let me put my control station in another part of the ship in a container so when it gets hit my gun doesn't work? All our decisions look like they are made by rich kids who think money grows on trees. Largely because that is where many officers come from.
Or even just build some new ones like Taiwan did with modern upgrades. proven design 4000-ton ship, there is nothing wrong with using a design that works. That is why I like the Arleigh Burks it works, may not be everything but we use a proven design. I have some hope that the Constellations work out.
@@jm2453 Why not use Stanflex? NIH - Not Invented Here.
#NavyDumb
You can't modernize forty-year-old ships.
Tell us what you really fell about the LCS, Sal.🙂
LCS seems to me an example of building something needlessly avantgarde without really considering what mission you wish it to conduct, I'm still not sure what benefit it really has over a standard FFG of which there are numerous designs around the world.
The zeitgeist was modular everything 20 years ago, the capabilities to do this was vastly overestimated.
@@mellowInventorand executed by the worst corrupt 'Merikan imbeciles in the country
Yebbut it's moooooodular, so it can conduct annnnny mission, right? :cough:
Same naming problem in telecommunications. It all started with a industry standards sub-committee called Committee for CDMA Long Term Evolution to merge the CDMA standards with European standards like UMTS and GSM. Now everyone has LTE on the top of their mobile and it effectively has no meaning.
It sucks because there are plenty of long lead time projects and ideas where they have a safer option and a more risky option and it'd be worthwhile to try both. Then when they have two kind of similar ships for a similar purpose they choose both even though neither was safe and neither were truly worthwhile. If modules are key to the design they you need to have each module pretty thoroughly designed and somewhat tested so that you can design the ship around those modules so that the modules actually work.
I can't believe have much maintenance and bookkeeping the military has offloaded to contractors. With the F-35 they can't even get a proper inventory of what parts they have. How can a military know if they're properly prepared and getting adequate supplies that way? If they request such an inventory, they have to get a new contract and pay hostage level pricing. And the military seems to be getting less and less even though it's paying more and more. The people planning and negotiating really need to make sure they're educated on all aspects of the process and what big projects need and go through as they progress. I think I heard one Captain say he wasn't really prepared or given guidance when he captained a ship that was being refitted or upgraded or something. I'm wondering if it's similar for those making these deals and plans. They have to make sure knowledge gets passed down.
How can the Navy defend the USA if it can't even defend itself against corporations and contractors bleeding every penny they can from them? Public companies are required by law to make decisions that make their investors money. Isn't the Navy required by law to get the best deal for the taxpayers?
This is on Congress, specifically the House of Representatives because it writes the budget and then the Senate approved it. Both have Armed Services committees for oversight of contracts, so what one didn't catch the other should have.
This reminds me of the failure of the Mark 14 torpedo failure disaster overseen during the 1920s 30s and WW2
Kudos for the Cerritos reference, for those unfamiliar, Lower Decks is awesome. Strange New Worlds even got live action versions of Boimler and Mariner this season. Too bad for the lack of focus that hobbled these LCS programs, but with no peer adversary it seems inevitable. Is precious time being wasted?
Wasn't sure anyone would get my Cali class reference.
As a young sailor assigned to the Battleship New Jersry (BB-62) in 1982, my first impression was, "Those 16 inch guns were designed first, then the ship was built around them". The purpose of a warship (Navy) is to take weapons of destruction out to sea and try to reach the enemy on the other side of the ocean and cause havoc. The opposing enemy navy is trying to do the same and you end up fighting it out at sea. The victor then gets to sail on and attack the enemy with Naval Air, and Marines, with support from the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Merchant Marine, and Space Force. You don't design a race car and put a lawn mower engine in it!
Don’t forget the “new” drones of the sea. Remote controlled, unmanned, small, fast and cheap boats packed with more explosives than any other destructive device. Ukraine is sinking Russian ships without a conventional navy.
Thank you for covering this, Sal! As always, top-notch
The Navy had four patrol gun/missile boats in Naples Italy during the 1970s. The boats had little less than a 40 man crew and a top speed of +40 knots . Its length: 157 feet. F4 turbine assist whenever needed
It's one thing for it to be light and fast but that the never had any punch to them was always inexcusable IMO (yeah, I think they added some Harpoon launchers to a few but still...). Glad we're finally getting back into building frigates. The Zumwalt class destroyers (even though they're the size of a cruiser) were equally a disaster but they're being retrofitted to be hypersonic missile platforms.
Depends on the mission. Think about the Norwegian Skjod-class missile boats... super fast with great punch-at-a-distance but no armor and limited seastate envelope. Perfect for Norwegian coastal defense. I think you comment is spot-on for most, but not all, of the planned LCS missions.
8:04 Now that's hardly a fair comparison at all...for the Cerritos. Those California-class ships actually perform useful missions, which is something the LCS will never accomplish.
I was sure that NO ONE would get that reference.
@@wgowshipping What are you, kidding? I don't know very many sailors who won't admit to at least a little fondness for some period of Trek or another, and Lower Decks is pretty consistently funny without tipping over into being mean-spirited. :)
I just know the commercial. Say Cerritos!@@wgowshipping
Didn’t the California class almost get replaced by the Texas class?
Bring back the PT boat. Maybe hire the Lagoon company in Indonesia to run them for us.
I'm a former Boiler Technician in the US Navy. I steamed 1200 psi boilers for 8 years on Cruisers and Knox Class Frigates and Charles F Adams class destroyers. Only one time in 8 years did a ship I steamed failed to sail because of engineering problems and it was a stuck open reverse throttle on the port engine and we had to shut down the aft plant while SIMA repaired the throttle valve. Boilers and steam turbines were reliable and lasted the life of the ship unless you had a serious engineering casually like high water carryover into the high pressure turbine or low water in the boiler causing tubes to rupture, but these were very rare.
Thanks so much for this! As I was reading through the Pro Publica material yesterday, I kept thinking, "I wish I knew what Sal made of this."
So long as defense contractors can buy legislators without fear of serious punishment, we will never get a handle on these kinds of SNAFUs.
I am glad the Navy procured both ships. If they’d only procured one class or the other some critics (from the losing defense contractor) would be saying, ‘they should have gone with the other model.’ At least now the evidence is clear it wasn’t the specific design, but the concept itself that was fatally flawed. Painful lesson for the Navy to learn at the expense of billions to taxpayers.
The problem with US Navy procuement from what I can see with US defence procurement overall is that there is at some level(s) a lot of dishonesty. If it was Russia or Ukrain we'd say corruption.
They keep saying things like these will cost $100 million per unit - if we buy 50 of them.
So $100 is used as the cost of the vessel, then they only order 5 of them. So now they become a billion dollar vessel. So you pay the same but only get very few vessels.
And they say things like these ships till be great becasue they will have this wepaon system. Then they don't get the weapon system(or mission module). I'm lookling at you LCS, DDG1000, F22 and any other number of US weapon systems.
And relying on contractors. Well if the government contract negotiartors were any good and negotiating contracts they'd be earning big money negoriating for the private enterprise guys who keep beating them.
It's never cheaper at government scale operations to user contractors. How can it be cheaper when you have the scale t get scale of econbomies and then need to payt a profit margin on top of whatever the cost is.
Outsoruceing works in some situations where organisations don't have the scale to build their own support systems.
News flash the biggest custyomers for al;most anything is DoD. That have the scale to get stuff cheap and to make it cost effective to employ their own engineers etc. What is the point of paying a compa ny to do all that and then layer on profit and penalties on everything?
It just keeps happening time and itme again.
The concept and both designs were borked as evidenced by the problems.
Used to see these beer cans doing sea trials when I would go mackerel trolling off Perdido Point in Florida. They are impressive when they spool up their engines and throw a monster rooster tail. But when I heard about the hull flexing problems and unsecured cargo in the holds because of tie-down and flex problems, I realized that these things are pretty crummy.
What they should be doing, first step is rip up all the maintenance agreements for the LCS and hold congressional hearings as to who allowed them. Absolutely criminal. Then grabbing a bunch of these and converting them into what they were meant to be, replacements for the Avenger class. As you said, a critical vulnerability of the US Navy is mine warfare, and it has just been ignored. Re-designate about 15 - 20 of them as MCM (Mine counter Measures). The 8 remaining Avenger class have been in service since the 80's. I'm not sure which class would be better suited though, MCM's don't need the speed, so maybe the Freedom class with their defective combining gear, but the Freedom class has steel hulls. Independence class may be better with their aluminium hulls, if they have fixed the issues with hull cracking. Either way, the main expense (besides building them) is the ludicrous maintenance contracts. Get rid of them and some of these ships could serve a useful purpose.
The mine hunting system is Navy vs Laws of Physics. Guess who won? The sled they designed had too much drag and weight to be safely pulled by a MH-60 with a T700 series engine. Possibly upgrading to the new T901 (with a new transmission) might work.
This is an increasingly common problem with the military. I’m 50 years old. I’m pretty sure a lot of the people working in military acquisitions grew up watching the same sci-fi movies, TV & anime I did. Problem is I always knew my favorite shows & movies were fiction. Not sure that the Army, USN, USAF & Congress does.
It’s probably only a matter of time before someone proposes trying to convert the Iowas into space battleships.
Professor Sal, Great deconstruction of Little Crappy Ships. You need to teach an open source course on Navy acquisition failure. It would make you a favorite of the Navy brass!🤔
The brass have exactly what they enabled.
Very interesting Sal. Many thanks
My rule has always been, never buy the 1st model year of a new car design. Never buy the 1st model year of a new computer design. never buy the... well, you got it, first model year of the newly designed Navy little crappy Ship.
New engineering. New hull metal. New engineering. Etc... all designed to be a jack of all trades: Turns out, it was a Master of NONE! and all combined, to not make it work.
To be fair you should take some risks if you want to have an advantage over your competitors, but in this case they kept throwing good money after bad.
there's taking risks, @@gunnar6674 and then there's basing a whole line of ships on unproven concepts.
Modular. A buzz concept I first encountered in Navy directed energy programs around 2011. A pretty boneheaded idea that all you have to have is a "log" with the proper interface that you can "plug into" a weapon director. Purely a high-level concept, the engineers and scientists knew it was bone headed, but what could you do. Any modular system will take considerably longer and more money to develop, and it will never work as well as a dedicated system in the volume/weight/power (SWAP) that is available.
It's not a stupid idea when you can genuinely reduce the interface between the module and the host to a structural connection and a common backend connection. But trying to do that with something the size of a naval gun becomes ridiculous fairly quickly.
Best show that is Long overdue . Sal, have you seen the Hull cracks???😮
Love them or hate them but the old FFG-7 Perry-Class frigate should have been a jumping off point for small hull designs. Small enough for Littoral patrol but solid enough for true Bluewater operations.
There are Petty variants (and modified Perry’s) that are still in service with various navies around the world. They’re doing pretty well, too.
I served 4 years on a Perry Class FFG in the early 1980s. That ship is still in service in the Polish Navy.
The Navy has never met a dollar it couldn't squander.
Sal is so nice and talking about their poor planning not working out, because I think we all know the system is working as intended to make the MIC more money.
Also, definitely not like the navy to use new technology that complicated, they usually try as hard as they can to make everything idiot-proof which usually involves early 1900's analog/mechanical hardware.
Now, just hold on there a minute!
The LCS is just a wow as is the way the program is managed just absolutely poor
The LCS even with towed array wouldn’t have made a good sub hunter we would have heard them coming miles off those water jets are incredibly hard to mask even when at low speed chance are we would have blown them out of the water king before they knew we were even there
As for the modular system I’ve seen it in action on the HDMS Esbern Snare it does work the absalons are great ships very capable in all roles
To be honest the navy should have looked at replacing the perry with another low cost lower end frigate rather than what they are opting for now
I think Elmo zumwalts idea of high low still has a lot of merit and use in the modern navy
Yes the LCS would not find itself in front line quite and the idea in principle is a decent one it’s just been such a s*** show that realistically there’s now no way out
Having a smaller ship like LCS really isn’t a bad idea if your doing missions like counter piracy counter narcotics or showing the flag as it frees up a more major asset such as a DDG
Problem is when working close to land as they were initially designed for you need specific systems to deal with clutter you also need a decent defence system especially against air attack as HMS Coventry found out in 1982 when the A4s jumped off the land she had no means of defending herself
Range is another major issue with these ships as you mentioned your basically hooked to a oiler to go anywhere
The low crew numbers have risk also the RN and USN are well known for over manning that’s largely due to damage control reasons as well as allowing crew rest periods seems the LCS at the start didn’t have that down well
In the RN we would do pre operational exercises called FOST (Thursday war) no ship can leave UK waters unless they pass this exercise and yes ships have failed and had delayed taskings because of it
Those LCSs that reported issues and were told go to sea anyway is just utterly disgraceful leadership whom ever sent that order needs immediate removal from command
The Danish STANFLEX modular system that impresses the navy so much really does work well. Partly it’s because they didn’t get stupidly fancy with it. It’s mostly just different sets of weapon systems. I think there’s also a mobile hospital module, too. Another thing about STANFLEX is that the modules are designed to outlive the lives of the ships they were built for if necessary. The Iver Huitfeldt-class frigate & Absalon-class frigate/support ship are both exceptionally well-designed and versatile warships that punch above their weight class.
Zumwalt’s high-low concept is absolutely solid but the problem with the US is that we just can’t stop ourselves from adding shit to the “low” part of the mix. Look at the LCS. Look at the friggin’ F-35. The -35 was supposed to be the “low” element in the Navy & Air Force’s next-gen fighter program. The only country that actually looks like it might get something out of its F-35s is Israel. And a lot of that’s because, for all intents and purposes, they’re ditching the US computing system & replacing it with one of their own.
I feel really bad that a gentlemen like Zumwalt was memorialized by the only acquisition project in recent US Navy history to out-crap the LCS.
I remember the promise of the CG(X) the replacement of the TICONDEROGA Class. Unfortunately, this was during the "Peace Dividend" of the 1990's. The TICONDEROGA's were $1B+ each. Now, we squandered $billions on the FORD Class. There will not be any more USN cruisers. So, now we need to build/modify ARLEGH BURKEs to add the capabilities of cruisers.
Now, we are building FFGs displacing 7000 tons which will have the same gun as the LCS. Nice gun, but not as your primary gun system. The current 5"/60 gun is good, but only fires 15 to 20 rounds per minute. Not good for fighting a swarm attack from 40 knot gun boats. Not good for running away from a hand full of boats. See about the Robo cruiser. Part of the problem was the aft missile launcher blocked MT 52. Gun boat bullets were striking the super structure.
The USN is NOT interested in naval guns. The evidence is the DDG 1000 class. FFG class with the cool LCS class gun. The Rail Gun is canceled.
To close with the Peace Dividend, we were well on our way to a 600 ship navy. Not any more.
I'm not convinced the "swarm boat" attack is actually a thing. First off, any boat that small can carry crew, or fuel, or ordinance, OR deliver any of the above at 40 knots. Not all four. Two at best. If the boat really is that small, a .50 cal will stop it.
@@seanwoods647 Not a problem. Just a discussion and we can disagree.
Our new $1B+ CONSTELLATION Class frigate at 7200 tons, 1 55mm gun and 26 knots are no match for 2 boats @ 1000 or so ton 36 knot boat with 75mm and 40mm guns. Saturation happens when the enemy has one more gun and a second boat on a different axis. The frigate can't run -> the gun is on the bow. I personally don't believe the published max range on the 55mm gun. So, the small boys can out run and out shoot the big frigate. Now, how about the STANDARD missiles in the VLS. I hope the have a lot of them. Shooting a small, fast boat is very difficult. The .50cal would not be engaged unless the boat gets very close. Tough situation and I want the Navy to provide better weapons, especially on such a large ship.
@@jamesmterrell I work in the field, and I am not at liberty to go into the specifics about the performance of various weapon systems, sensors, propulsions, etc.
But I can address your concerns with some basic naval architecture.
First and foremost, you have to be more specific about the threat. You are either talking about a stealthy drone that displaces 1000 tons or a fast drone that can make 36 knots.
A 1000 ton drone with a range in the thousands of kilometers range drives around at 10 knots. Much faster and you are going to drastically shorten its range. You also increase its noise signature, which makes it decidedly un-stealthy. And to get that range, most of that displacement is going to have to be fuel tank.
The 36 knot drones are converted jet skis. They displace a little more than 1 ton of water. Their range is limited (
@@seanwoods647 Life and experience.
I agree with your take on the lcs 99.99%. My only complaint is that Fort Worth isn't a smaller city. It's the 13th largest in the US.
Yep. More populous than Boston, than St. Louis.
I know...I thought the same thing. That Said, Sal is correct on most everything else.
The push for automation is the culprit. We always were short-handed aboard, not enough people aboard to do the tasks needed. And the computer control of each section was (as you said) woefully misunderstood. That created problems in the daily operation of our LCS ships. I would have rather commanded a barge.
Building the Freedom class design, I always felt that they were trying to shove ten pounds of crap into a five pound sack. And there was SO MUCH rework... like the things were being designed AS we built them.
Great coverage of topic.
This was incredible and eye-opening. I’m not a military veteran, not a person who has served with the US Navy. But I can read, and this isn’t the first time I’ve read or seen stories about the constant and complex problems that the Navy has experienced with this brand new class of ships. Brand new concept for a warship (Allegedly). Any new design, new model of just about anything- cars, commercial aircraft, warships is IMO bound to have some teething problems. But this seems absurd, because the Navy’s top brass knew the designs were problematic before the first steel plate was cut. Problems that put the lives of American sailors at risk. What is a commander of such a vessel to do when, in the middle of combat, fighting the ship and its crew fighting for their lives, the vessel breaks down or runs out of gas? I have read more than one paper in which the authors (Retired, senior Navy officers) opined that if these vessels ever entered combat with a capable, well-equipped enemy warship with a proficient crew (One article gave the Chinese, Type 55 Frigate as an example) the LCSs would likely be blown to pieces- and quickly.
The information that the technical information and know-how for much of these warships’ most advanced systems (Propulsion, Weapons, Electronic Warfare) remains PROPRIETARY with the contractor, after a contract has been completed and a new vessel delivered, probably way over budget- well that’s just CRAZY. The US taxpayer paid for these ships. From concept to initial design, testing, build, shake-out and ultimate deployment with the Fleet. Taxpayers paid for all of it. Allowing General Dynamics or whoever is the main contractor to retain proprietary possession of information about the ships’ systems is absurd. And, I believe unpatriotic. Profit at ALL costs, sailors lives be damned? I don’t know what will happen to this class of overpriced, underperforming, underwhelming ships. Will they be relegated to becoming very expensive Coast Guard Cutters, patrolling America’s vast shorelines? Admiral Nimitz would be outraged if he saw the crap that came out of this program.
For the first time in my life, I have reason (and I’m definitely not alone) to question whether the current US Navy could successfully carry out its basic mission: to fight and win wars.
For decades I've noticed and wondered, what is it that happens when highly qualified, capable, experienced people turn up one day wearing a 'Management Hat'. Is there an invisible microscopic worm hidden away in management hats that burrows into the brain ?
They become susceptible to politics.
The competent manager's incompetent manager beats the competent manager's brains in with stupidity until the soul breaks and the competent manager leaves for the private sector.
The problems with the LCS actually run deeper than the wanton mechanical problems, cost overruns, shear graft and political grandstanding. They are literally ships without a mission. The concept was cooked up in the heady post Cold War days when the Navy was desperately searching for a mission to keep the money flowing, and avoid being "Peace Dividended". The real mission was basically shallow water patrol work. Lets be honest these were largely intended for Middle East Duty. The Persian Gulf. Maybe some light duty around the Southwest Pacific and Gulf of Mexico. But really their job was intended to keep the oil flowing. Then the US found vast domestic sources of easily extractable shale oil. Suddenly the Middle East was a much less critical mission for the Navy. At the same time we saw the sudden rise of actual Peer Navy's such as China, and the need for the more traditional force projecting Blue Water Navy was back at the top of the mission list. Prepare to fight the Pacific War again! And these ships have literally no effective role in any such conflict. They lack the range and capabilities needed to fight an actual shooting war on the other side of an ocean.
When you talk about obtaining a decommissioned LCS i'm reminded of the line from Full Metal Jacket: can i interest you in some ARVN rifles? Never been fired and only dropped once. The LCS program is in the same situation. I recall reading some time back about a study done regarding future wartime operations and ship survivability. We were SORELY lacking in damage control, not to mention basic seamanship. Need to reestablish the Navy yard system and take some control back from contractors with friends in Congress.
Just had a chance to catch this one. Great show, Navy you're not never afraid to call out stupidity. I'm sure the idea of pre retirement is because the Navy's looking to save some money. At least for the short-term.
Sal, great video as usual. Has anyone been held accountable for this disaster?
Accountability REALLY 😂 this is a Corporate Welfare State, the only people in trouble are the sailors and officers.... and the tax paying public
🤣accountability
Sorry. I really did laugh. The Ship' yards and contractors have spent that money.
If they solved a problem, they might put themselves out of work.
I meant were any people in the Navy held accountable for approving, overseeing, and implementing a flawed program.
Rumsfeld is presumably burning in hell at the moment and the others that gave the official greenlights to start it are in homes/on the way to join him. Best you could get would be someone like Maebus who lied to Congress multiple times citing the survivability of the LCS types.
@@ericsilk5089 Sorry dude but you must have heard of the "revolving door" story where the Military officers are looking at their next jobs working for the defense contractors who have also paid the congressmen so harm no foul but just pure CORRUPTION, as 'MERIKAN as apple pie.
Sal; The LCS issue is but a small part of the US Navy's present view of it's mission. The lessons learned in war have been largely been forgotten,,replaced by politically correct indoctrination.
After 60 years since my Navy time,, I was privileged to go on a family day-cruise on a Navy destroyer last month, and Naval discipline as I knew it,, was absent,,, the crew behaved like they were all on a trip to Disney. Heart-breaking
for me,,God help us if we have a shooting war!!
You sound like a salty curmudgeon. a lot has changed in 60 years.
Sal: Our man with a working conscience. Bravo.
I was on the USS Rogers DD-876 in Portland OR. we had about 35 BT's , MM's each active duty. 2 fire rooms , 2 engine rooms. Don't forget the USS Zumwalt #1000
I worked on the waterfront in San Diego supporting the LCS program from beginning to end, anyone in positions of authority, both civilian and Navy, if you publicly stated anything about the absurdity of the LCS program it would be the kiss of death for your career.
Well said. Was on the deck plates for both types in SD, Port Hueneme, and I can confirm the attitude from the any of the tops was, at best, ".... Thank you for your input, please complete your contract" and it appeared it didn't matter if your idea was simple or complex, the idea was, apparently, this is all proprietary (so someone else is responsible to pay for and think out cheaper, faster, more dependable, your input is tolerated, at best, and expect no changes, etc.) and we have no voice in doing these things in any other way, no matter how minor or better - even if we were already hip deep in the engines, shaft train, main screws, common naval plumbing, or whatever.
It’s not just the LCS program, look at the DDG-1000 program, they were planning to build 30 of those.
I’m not an American so unaware of the goings on with your defence force procurement but you can rest assured that what has happened with these vessels isn’t unique to the US. Once sailors, soldiers and fliers get to the dizzy heights of driving desks all day long they forget completely that the money they are spending is TAXPAYERS money and they are frittering it away on pipe dreams, often ignoring the ideas and suggestions from the Navy/Army / Air Forces personnel actually working on them and seeing the problems. Exactly the same thing happens in Europe and I hate to say it but with 20 years in command in the merchant navy it also happens there too when Naval Architects get tunnel vision. Just look at the new class of containerships coming into service for one of the big 4 containership operators - Bridge and accommodation right up on the fo’csle in contravention of the Manila Convention and from a series of losses of barge carrying ships in the 1980’s where the accommodation right forward design led to the loss of at least one of them without trace in a storm
Reminds me of Great Lake freighters lol, they look cool and have pretty good sea keeping, but yea probably safer at the stern 😂
Okay, the Lower Decks reference has my subscription for life to this channel 😂
Good video Sal!
The hull of the Independence class is based on the Austal Australian-built ferry "Benchijigua Express", which travels between the Canary Islands for the Fred Olsen line. I have travelled on this trimaran. Very fast and stable, carrying quite a large roll-on, roll-off vehicle load plus passangers. Disappointing to hear that the LCS vessels have been poorly executed.
Bingo
I will point out: part of the poor execution was by Austal itself. They put the first trimaran in the water with absolutely nothing in the way of cathodic production. The aluminum hull basically ate itself when sea water came in contact between it and the steel engines. Yes, the Navy should have been supervising them better, but the idea was to have industry design the ships. Well... we can now see exactly what happens when you leave industry unsupervised.
Don't forget Austal was teamed with General Dynamics.@@seanwoods647
@@seanwoods647
Austal has been making aluminium multi-hulled vessels, for at least several decades.
Mainly high speed ferries, but also patrol boats & private vessels.
Fairly successfully it would seem, as they made a trimaran ferry before the navy contract,
and recently completed another one for the same operator.
Why would the navy hulls be different, did they use a different aluminium compound ?
@@stephenarbon2227 Success in one market does not equal competence in another market. Truth be told, success is more a measure of luck than competence, even within the same market. It also doesn't help that Naval Architects have shied away from aluminum structures ever since the British experience in the Falklands.
The whole LCS debacle is an absolute cluster.
I believe there is an additional word to complete that conclusion.
I like your enthusiasms about a strong subject, even if it make you blood boil over.
Educational. Thank You.
I knew some people from one of the contractors that were working on the combat systems for the LCS here in San Diego. They loved it because there was never going to be an end to their jobs (they also readily admitted that the LCSs were pieces of err...caca)
Sal, around the 24 minute mark you expressed, what I imagine, the Navy command structure expressed, "Make it work", thus, a command mindset, get those officers and swabies to work...just do it. Now, you have overworked crew.
Personally, I was shocked that certain crew needed mental health intervention.
I always enjoy a good Casablanca reference. Thanks, Sal!!
My husband worked on the Minesweepers down here at Naval Station Ingelside, TX. All of the ships had been sold off and given away not too long after the Base was built. Now the Base is sold. Crazy waist of money.
Think about how many Jet Skis we could have built for the cost of these ships.. every sailor would have one.. and there will still be plenty of money left over for frigates
Sal, I nominate you for secretary of the navy!
Insiders make lots of money off these projects...then off to the next great idea. Thanks Sal...always great information.
Great review, thanks. A boyhood friend with Mekong Riverine experience, on hearing about the program, said Big Navy will never let anything that sounds like brown water navy succeed. Too bad, the Austal variant is gorgeous up close. All the best
In case you were not aware a Chinese institute in Harbin has been working on underwater drones for ten years
just think of swarms of low detection armed drones moving as a shoal of fish over hundreds of nautical miles
If it’s based in China and headed up by Chinese it’ll never be perfected. Without a foreign entity controlling it they won’t perfect anything other than problems. Their history bears this out.
And then I think about how many civilian ships operate in those waters, and how woefully inadequate China's satellite bandwidth is presently. Hulls in the water is no good if you can't supervise them properly, and especially when most of the ships those things are going to encounter are your own fishing vessels. Fishing vessels which tend to operate without their transponders on, I might add.
PS. Sounds like the Flower class corvettes were a better design. At least those could cross the Atlantic on convoy duty and hunt/kill submarines even if the crews were half dead from seasickness by the time they reached England. But seriously, my dad was an old “destroyer navy” sailor. With a tender and an oiler, a flotilla could be kept on station almost indefinitely.
The Flower Class did what it set out to do, cheaply, and could be mass produced in civilian yards. It could keep up (barely) with the vessels it was escorting, was faster than a submerged submarine, and had just enough ordinance to make that submarine think twice before engaging. The LCS was none of those things. It was pitched as a 21st century PT boat, except when it was an amphibious landing ship, except when it was a pocket sized destroyer. I call it "space shuttle syndrome." One group of ambitious desk jockeys managed to push through their pet project by promising everything to everyone (and we'll do it cheap!). And in the process they suck all of the budget up from more focused projects, until we have a boondoggle and nothing to show for it.
How does the Space shuttle enter into this? Well think about it. We built the last one in the 80s. They were so expensive to build and operate, Nasa couldn't afford to develop another manned system until the 2010s. And even that system was stuck using leftovers technology from the shuttle program. And it STILL isn't ready. In the meantime we have to farm out basic capabilities, and at such great expense, that we can no longer seemingly afford to develop solutions in-house.
@@seanwoods647 It was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek comment. Those Flower class ships operated by the Royal Canadian Navy were one reason why I had a grandfather to grow up with. But the LCS saga is an important lesson in first answering the question “what is the problem we’re trying to solve” and focusing on that. At least when they started cranking out those Flowers, they knew what the problem was. My grandad felt sorry for those guys. Gasoline load aside, at least the T-2s he sailed on took seas a lot better. He once told me they could nearly see the keels on the escort ships they rolled so badly in a heavy sea.
Open the bomb bays . . . this video is on target. Ultimately the program has consumed over $100Billion+ when inception to present O&M budget is considered. This LCS Program has become the Case Study in how not to build a Surface Combatant. It is so anemic in capability until the ASuW weapons come on board that it can hardly be called a Surface Combatant. These LCS-2 Class will make a fair Mine Countermeasures Ship, and we need replacements anyway. Also 4th Fleet AOR has been pleased with their performance because the most dangerous thing they come up against is Drug Smugglers. The contractor logistics support turned out to be such a albatross of a concept that the Navy cannot get out of the program fast enough. Great piece and I take no pleasure in saying it either. MANY of us have been saying so for over 20 years and the Wizards of Smart [who Aren't] in NAVSEA just could not let go of this pet project, and get their follow-on jobs in the private sector chasing a dream that was never going to happen. Such is the quality, qualification, and capability of naval leadership today. We are in trouble!!!
After taking a tour on an Independence class LCS ship for the this years Rose Festival in Portland Oregon I was stunned at the condition of the ship! It was filthy! The outside of the hull had Algae on it and the inside had Aluminum foil wrapped around their duct work! But the true Irony is the ship behind it was clean and spotless! That ship was the JOHN McCain Destroyer!! What a shame, I got in the wrong line as it was shorter! LOL,.
Greed, incompetence, jobs programs, can only be repaired by the corporation, congressional oversight!! What could go wrong!
Not sure what is going on with RUclips, it will not let me see many of the replies to a great subject, paints a good picture These ships still have a function. Seem like they may be better forward deployed with a Repair Tender to keep them operational. Kinda like a large PT boat short distance missions / patrols.
The LCS also reminds me of one of the other abuses that happened at the time to the budget: using force multipliers to justify cutting budgets because our stuff is now 1.5x better than their stuff. It's simply was a poor mindset that we're still having to deal with today.
I also agree with what you said about what the LCS was meant for. It drives me bonkers when they say the ship wouldn't survive a battle with China when it never was supposed to fight that kind of fight. It's nice to see another person that follows ships that was willing to acknowledge this. Shame it's ending the way it did.
The sheer incompetence pointed out here is astounding.
We are making the mistake of focusing on the expensive shiny objects; rather than building the capacity to build.
So if there was a war, would the contractors be on the ships in the war zone under fire in case something breaks so they can fix it?
If not, doesn't that make the "warships" totally unable to fight?
That problem exists beyond just LCS. Contractors in the crypto spaces, working ISR assets, UAVs etc. It has to be insulting to the people actually in the service.
This is just sad😢. Great video, very informative.
Thanks for watching!
Thanks for a great explanation on these ships and their issues. The procurement process in the USA military is the problem because it isn't about building appropriate functional weapon systems that are combat capable; its about MIC profits and the associated benefits accrued to the politicians. No business could function on a system were the intial product cost doubles when it is finally produced and then doesn't even perform to design. There is serious conceptutal flaws in the engineering if a ship can't maneuver appropriately in canals and locks that they surely knew would be necessary. With todays mobile anti shipping missiles even the third world countries these ships were designed for they will be a target if they don't have proper defences as a first priority. In this regard I was touring a South African Strike Craft years ago with a crew member and the hull was torn open in a docking mishap. I was surprised at how thin the metal was and commented that a 303 could go right through that and wasn't that a concern on coastal missions in Mozambique? He replied that their biggest threat was actually from an RPG if they got spotted. Today a ATGM has a far greater range and is more powerful. One can't win todays war fighting yesterday's. The extreme advancement in military drone use in Ukraine has completely changed context of how a military has to function in today's areas of conflict.
The hull cracks had restricted the speeds below 20 knots, and only in calm sea states, last I heard. Did that change?
Haven't seen an update but some have reported seeing additional panels welded where the issue is known to be.
the cracks, were almost entirely in the welds and of micro size and didn’t appear to affect the structural integrity. I know because i inspected them 😊
Guess the Navy needs to support the Right to Repair.... starting with their own ships
Encourage and fund some states and Puerto Rico to form naval reserve units of their National Guard organizations. Assign these ships to those units. Have some designated and modified for disaster relief missions. From Puerto Rico, operate one as a training element to work with Caribbean countries.
Make them mother ships for drone vessels
As a retired surface warfare office with exclusive service in destroyers and frigates I can state with some experience that you are you are spot on with your analysis. In fact, you were kinder that I am about this class. When I first heard about the concept I thought it was a good idea. Then I started hearing about some of the criteria and I knew the class would fail. Why 40 knots?!? Why not include any vertical launchers? Why did you build them with no provision for adequate crew. "A warship is as full of men as an egg is full of meat." (I could explain why but lack space here.) The entire program is and was infuriating. It was political and theoretical from the beginning. The same factors are starting to work again on the Constellation class. The United States Navy has lost the abilty to make warships. So sad.
Why the heck would the Navy - or any part of the military - cede so much control to contractors, especially ones who blow through budgets like they are nothing? And why would Congress ever sign on?
Why? Because the lobbyists from the major defense industry firms happily fund congressional re-election campaigns (on both sides of the aisle) in return for political considerations. The end result being that our congressional reps serve corporations, not the people. It's not likely to change either.
This project was a child of the George W. Bush administration. Also known as the people who airdropped pallets of $100 dollar bills into a war zone. Also known as the people who operate the largest military in the world, yet still bring in mercenaries (i.e. Blackwater) at great expense and for dubious returns.
It's big defense $$$ for their district.
Who cares if high-priced junk is delivered. It, "show me the money."