The question is, will it even make it through acceptance trials???
Shipbuilder Austal USA delivered the final Independence-class littoral combat ship to the U.S. Navy on Friday, marking the end of a construction phase that’s lasted 15 years.
The Alabama-based Austal has built a total of 19 Independence-class littoral combat ships for the service. The first, the Independence, was commissioned in 2010. The final ship will be christened as the Pierre, named after the capital of South Dakota.
Full article, HERE from Navy Times.
Good riddance! The Little Crappy Ships never lived up to their ‘billing’… They were supposedly for littoral work, and replacement for the PC and Hydrofoil boats, both of which actually worked!!! Sigh…
The ‘modules’ we were supposed to build for them didn’t work, were manpower intensive, took more people than allowed, and didn’t FIT on the ship.
Which, OBTW, had NO self defense capability. And when running at speed, went through fuel faster than anything else in the Fleet. And when they did get sent out ‘with the Fleet’, a tanker had to be attached to keep fueling them.
And don’t get me started on maintenance! The crews were so small they could NOT do their own maintenance, so the contractors had to fly civilian maintenance personnel all over the world to fix them. At one point, the Navy was switching out crews every six weeks, due to ‘burnout’ of personnel. VERY costly to fly folks from San Diego to…Singapore!
And the fixes weren’t cheap or easy. Oh, and they had a tendency to get the ‘blue screen of death’ on their fancy computer systems, leaving them dead in the water (DIW) where ever they happened to be, including one case in the middle of the Pacific! And the small crews couldn’t do damage control, much less routine maintenance since they were basically watch and watch on duty.
Those things also cost some good officers their careers, as they tried to fix the problems… but couldn’t!
So yes, good riddance! And hand salute to the crews that did their best with what they had. I’m sure THEY will be glad to get back to the REAL Navy.
The good idea fairy on steroids. The original mission was vague, and could have been cheaper and easier accomplished with different assets. Then, rampant mission expansion into doing everything everywhere with less, coupled with Congress Critters pushing pork barrel projects for their districts all covered with the veil of “saving money.”
The thing that scares me is I see no solution towhees problems for weapons procurement in the future. Perhaps something akin to the WWII War Production Board, but I doubt Congress will agree to that in “peacetime.”
twohees=to these Arrgh.
There was never anything wrong with the FFG7 class, it would have been more cost effective to make them 2nd flight, in a manner of speaking, than this boondoggle. A parallel failure was the USCG engineering debacle with the Island class cutters, welding an additional 13 feet onto the stern, which over time caused hull failure of all the cutters involved. And what NRW said, pork barrel. Gah.
I’ve watched this debacle from outside the Navy since discussions about littoral combat and the need (?) for something New and Different first appeared in *Proceedings.*
Fiasco, a six-letter-word for LCS.
When I see these types of problems, I wonder what was going through the minds of those involved with finalizing, and managing, the contract. The shipbuilding process should have been halted long before the constant problems were found in ships still being built. If I had to guess, there are Congress critters involved, and someone’s palm is well greased.
Completely unimportant OT sea story:
Onboard the Constellation CV-64 doing 17 knots with lotsa blue water around us. I “stepped outside” for some fresh air and spotted “something” on the surface moving fast. WTH? It was a hydrofoil! They closed on us like we were dead in the water and proceeded to literally run a couple of circles around us before screaming away. Ended up berthed next to us so I got a good look. Tiny and FAST!
Nobody shot it out of the water?
Well, no.
Two reasons: 1) They were our Good Guys. 2) We didn’t have any guns.
This landlubber must ask, are these ships good for anything at all? Any mission?
WSF:
Yes. Artificial reefs.
Independence class was limited to 15 knots do to hull cracking issues. That means you could out run it in a Grady White or maybe an old Osprey class mine sweeper/hunter.
There’s a lot of bureaucracy in play here. Once a project is approved and actually funded, they’re absolutely going to spend the money to do what was paid for, plus they’re probably going to go over and ask for more money.
Rarely is there any sort of sanity check part-way along in the construction and release to ask, “Okay, is this actually giving us the value we expect?”
Nope, they’ll chase that sunk cost fallacy all the way to the bottom of the money pit. *sighs*
And I strongly suspect that Jess is correct about greased palms, only it isn’t just “someone”, it’s a whole lot of someones.
I know a lot more than I’m saying about this ‘fiasco’, but yes, a large measure of blame lies with Vern Clark when he was CNO, and his ‘vision’ for the future… that nobody else shared… And y’all are right, too. Inertia gets the initial tranch spent and then it’s “we gotta improve it” comes from congresscritters
I would say that the problem really started with the EFV, the landing craft that was supposed to be the heart of this littoral strategy and replace the AAAV. After years of constantly changing requirements, the Marines finally killed that program.
The Navy ignored that boondoggle and applied the same philosophy to the LCS. The Osprey class ship were not much better, and were their fiberglass hulls able to withstand long service could have had their technology updated as new minehunting technologies evolved. Of course their horrible Italian engines were also fatally flawed. In fact they were doing that until the LCS came on the scene. Then they were sold to the Egyptians and / or the Italians. Now the navy has what for systematic minehunting? Nothing I can think of, but admittedly I have not paid attention for the past few years.
I worked on both of the above (EFV and Osprey class minehunters). Fun fact, the LCS was not entirely defenseless. For close quarters engagement, the Navy adapted the Mk 44 Bushmaster II turret from the EFV for user on the LCS as mission package option, so waste not want not. It is an awesome turret!
About the only good thing to come out of the LCS program was to be the inspiration for the Fayette County class trimarans in D A Brock’s Republic of Texas Navy books.