| Tango01 | 10 Jan 2020 12:12 p.m. PST |
"The U.S. Navy is close to receiving its 21st Littoral Combat Ship. Now the sailing branch needs to figure out exactly what to do with the long-delayed, much-maligned warships. The Navy has ordered 35 LCSs of both variants. Lockheed Martin builds the monohull Freedom variant. Austal makes the trimaran Independence variant. The roughly 3,000-ton vessels were supposed to help the Navy quickly to grow its front-line fleet. But costs rose until each ship set back taxpayers more than $500 USD million. Their engines and other systems proved to be unreliable, forcing the Navy to suspend LCS deployments for 18 months ending in early 2019…"
Main page link
Amicalement
Armand
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| 14th NJ Vol | 10 Jan 2020 2:29 p.m. PST |
Not a well thought out program. The value for the money will never be realized. |
| epturner | 10 Jan 2020 5:38 p.m. PST |
LCS = Little Crappy Ship Eric |
| Bigby Wolf | 10 Jan 2020 6:16 p.m. PST |
I've never really understood the US hate for the LCS? At least, they would be great for USCG duties, surely? At worst, they would be great for USCG duties, surely? |
| Thresher01 | 10 Jan 2020 9:46 p.m. PST |
That is because it is very weakly armed, poorly designed, and outrageously expensive. They should have quit at just the two experimental vessels, instead of buying more, since they had "failure" written ALL over them years ago. Things haven't improved since then. |
| Bigby Wolf | 10 Jan 2020 9:59 p.m. PST |
But they didn't stop, did they?
And now you have them!
So why not use them and quit moaning? |
| Ghostrunner | 10 Jan 2020 10:09 p.m. PST |
Because every hours of use equates to 50 gagillion dollars in maintenance and repairs? |
| Tango01 | 11 Jan 2020 12:17 p.m. PST |
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| Max Schnell | 12 Jan 2020 7:16 a.m. PST |
They are good for port visits! |
| StarCruiser | 12 Jan 2020 9:09 a.m. PST |
They were a bad concept, badly executed… Doomed from the start. |
| Tango01 | 12 Jan 2020 3:18 p.m. PST |
Super Glup!!….. Amicalement
Armand |
| Thresher01 | 13 Jan 2020 1:07 a.m. PST |
They're under-armed, perform poorly, and are a danger to their crews, which can't be protected safely from many threats, since their self-defense systems are inadequate. Too expensive for the USCG. They'd make great yachts for the wealthy, or high-ranking USN officials. |
| Lion in the Stars | 13 Jan 2020 4:11 p.m. PST |
Pretty much already covered. They have a 57mm and a RAM missile launcher as standard equipment, and their assigned mission is to go into someone else's waters and take those waters from them. They have to deal with shore-based missiles and artillery, air attacks, helicopter attacks, and small-boat suicide attacks. Though I gotta admit that the Independence-class makes a decent gator-freighter with that big helo deck and roll-on/roll-off ramp. Can carry at least a company of Marines, including vehicles! |
| arealdeadone | 13 Jan 2020 5:57 p.m. PST |
So why not use them and quit moaning?
Because the purpose of acquisition and maintenance of weapon systems is primarily political and economic in western countries. Actual defence capability is a distant 3rd. Those Little Crappy Ships keep shipyards and thus jobs and profits and thus votes chugging through. It's the same reason Australia is spending between $50 USD and $80 USD billion on 12 new submarines to built in Australia instead of just buying them from Japan for half the price (and probably more capability). |
paints his favorite from 
