The Navy’s New Class of Warships: Big Bucks, Little Bang

[jsr]

http://nation.time.com/2012/10/05/the-navys-new-class-of-warships-big-bucks-little-bang/

The Navy’s New Class of Warships: Big Bucks, Little Bang
By John Sayen

The Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is not only staggeringly overpriced and chronically unreliable but — even if it were to work perfectly — cannot match the combat power of similar sized foreign warships costing only a fraction as much. Let’s take a deep dive and try to figure out why. ...


The first two Littoral Combat Ships: the USS Freedom, rear, and the USS Independence, off the California coast. The ships primarily are designed to engage in combat close to shore.

[marasinghe]

1. named after their spiritual forebears no doubt ....

Repuke Presidents from Nixon on down.

[msongs]

2. because the makers are thieves who are allowed to get away it by congress? nt

[NBachers]

3. From the article, these cLittoral Combat Ships are a bump ugly mess- the taxpayers get hosed again

[julian09]

4. Whose district is it built in?

I think we should outsource it to China and save a lot of money. It will probably end up bottom of China sea, anyway.

[Savannahmann]

5. I had read an article this last month in Popular Science on these ships.

It was astounding how much money was spent on them. Tens of billions of dollars for a small ship that won't do much of anything, except one narrowly defined mission. Oh, it can go into an enemy harbor, and appear much smaller on radar, but still appear. Because you know nobody has night vision goggles or drones except the United States. We won't take one of those ships into an enemy harbor, because we can't afford to lose the bloody thing. It cost as much as a helicopter assault ship, and can't do anything that the assault ship does.

What will the Military Industrial complex decide needs to be stealth next? How much money will Washington fork over just because the word Stealth is in the title? A billion for a Stealth Bicycle? I say it as a joke, but you know there is some dolt at DARPA who is even now trying to convince his bosses that it would work. "This thing is great, it won't show up on radar."

[leveymg]

6. These things are floating death traps. "First to sink" in any engagement with a serious foe.

Just an awful lot of money wasted.