Article

2017-11-06 -Short Attention Span Theater-

In today's global environment, the LCS's shortcomings are glaring.

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Posted by Skidmark 2017-11-06 10:08|| || Front Page|| [7 views ] Top

#1 Yeah, but it's what the defense contractors want to sell, and that's what's important.

Posted by ed in texas 2017-11-06 18:27|| 2017-11-06 18:27|| Front Page Top

#2 ...Actually, it's what the USN wants to pay for.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2017-11-06 18:29|| 2017-11-06 18:29|| Front Page Top

#3 From the author's LinkedIn entry:

I have an MA in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University, and served as university instructor for the Peace Corps in the beautiful deserts of Gansu, China

This guy obviously has no background in military procurement. Neither have I. But unlike him, I can count. His background leads him to visualize an end-point and gather data from there. Me? I just look at the data presented and think about why people who have done this their entire lives might rationally have come up with this particular end product. This fella? He probably thinks we should not have a navy, let alone build any new weaponry for it.

The LCS is expensive because so much stuff is automated. The Perry-class frigates had a crew of 215. The LCS was supposed to have a crew of 40, which expanded to 70+. At a fully-loaded cost of $150K per person (including housing benefits, PX access, back-loaded bennies like VA benefits, veteran pensions, etc) that's a payroll savings of $20m per year. My SWAG is that these ships are supposed to last a minimum of 20 years. That's $400m in savings per ship.

The reason for some of the equipment problems probably relates to new design problems. They're shoehorning large numbers of new features into a single ship. No real surprise that there would be problems along the way. Given that this is a peacetime procurement process, i.e. there is no pressing need to push cookie cutter designs into service to replace vessels destroyed by enemy action, new features stemming from new requirements are being slip streamed into each new iteration. The added complexity means even more problems. But that's the benefit of peacetime development. It's more expensive, but you get to work the kinks out, instead of having large numbers of sailors killed due to a feature that doesn't work because it wasn't properly tested. Many bugs can't be known beforehand until the equipment is tested in extended operation.

If they can really operate the ship with 1/3 the crew of a Perry-class vessel, this is a real revolution. The engines are probably brand new designs, given that the two models can operate at 45 knots, compared to the Perry's 29. These are PT boat speeds, except PT boats are 1/5 the length, and 1% the displacement.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2017-11-06 19:52|| 2017-11-06 19:52|| Front Page Top

#4 Types of Navy ships: DD - destroyer, CVN - carrier, SSN - submarine, CG - cruiser

LCS - little crappy ship

Posted by Rambler in Virginia 2017-11-06 19:59|| 2017-11-06 19:59|| Front Page Top

#5 Less crappy than FFG's.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2017-11-06 20:36|| 2017-11-06 20:36|| Front Page Top

#6 How many modules does the LCS have now? At least the FFG is a functional warship...

Posted by magpie 2017-11-06 20:49|| 2017-11-06 20:49|| Front Page Top

#7 If they can really operate the ship with 1/3 the crew of a Perry-class vessel, this is a real revolution.\

Till it comes to damage control time.

Posted by Procopius2k 2017-11-06 20:51|| 2017-11-06 20:51|| Front Page Top

23:13 Si vis pacem
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