Our Navy's Stupid Mistakes

Many and myself questioned the gear box issues last spring.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!
This stink should of never been launched.

First 4 made (2 of each class) removed from fleet March 2021.
About darn time.
Hoping they will stop building them.

The number of ships needed is not driven by, nor decided by the Navy. It is a function of the demand signal they get from Congress. The current number of ships is not sufficient to meet that demand. Deployments have gotten longer, turn around times shorter and maintenance intervals cut to meet the demand signal. The current situation is not sustainable. So if you don't want 355 ships then tell Congress to quit sending them all over the world so often.
As for the procurement process, you are correct. But this is not unique to the Navy. The entire Federal aquisition process is broken.

This article makes me wonder how vulnerable our sailors are in a conflict with modern weapons. Russia's flagship in the Black Sea taken out supposedly with two Ukrainian missiles. Since we have been building multi-billion dollar warships you can't help but wonder how easy it would be to destroy another countries Navy is a short period of time, and if these warships are not feasible anymore. Drones and missiles have become the new threat.
The sinking of Russia's flagship might be a bad sign for the U.S. Navy (msn.com)

I would say the entire past assessment of the battlefield and weapon systems needs to be reevaluated... Simply look at the advancements of AI, robotics, and drones... The future is here as seen limitedly in UA... The drones are game changers and even used in the attack on the Moskva.... Listen to Musk talk about the tech at Tesla and read between the lines... The pilot and the infantry are the weak link in future theaters... Mom's get vocal when their sons come back in body bags, but don't care how many people are killed in another country by a drone.... I hope we can stay fluid enough and not let the legacy bureaucracy and defense contractors bleed dry the rapid innovation that's needed... The adversaries don't have our red-tape nor cost of development / implementation ...

It's always important to continually assess the evolving threat environment. But, if you sail your guided missile cruiser in the littoral waters of an active combatant and you do it without any escort ships, you're inviting what happened. Russia very well may have engaged in a war of choice with a fleet of outdated and poorly maintained ships. But, it's their laughably poor training that explains this sinking...and largely explains their anemic, incompetent ground campaign.

Shiny capable weapons are always nice to have. But, its the competence of your officer and NCO corps that wins - or loses - wars. It's a story as old as old as time.

Navy Risks Blowback in Bid to Scrap $5 Billion of Troubled Ships
Bloomberg
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May 11, 2022
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By Tony Capaccio (Bloomberg) –The US Navy wants to scrap nine of 16 Littoral Combat Ships built by Lockheed Martin Corp. well short of their projected service lives in order to save a projected $4.3 billion in upgrades and maintenance over coming years.

That decision may get a hard look at hearings by House and Senate panels on Wednesday and Thursday.

While the ships were built to spend 25 years at sea, many of those on the water are in the infancy of their naval careers. That includes the USS St. Louis, now in its third year of service life; the USS Billings and USS Indianapolis, in their fourth years; and the USS Sioux City and USS Wichita, in their fifth, according to a Navy information paper for Congress obtained by Bloomberg News.

The Navy spent $5 billion in taxpayer money getting the ships built and outfitted. But in justifying the early retirement, the service says eight of the Lockheed-built “Freedom-class” vessels were meant to carry anti-submarine warfare equipment developed by Raytheon Technologies Corp. that failed in development. Promises to give the ships capability for anti-submarine warfare were 12 years late when the plan was abandoned this year.

The vessels are also seen as less capable than the “Independence-class” vessels built by Lockheed shipbuilding rival Austal Ltd. That’s in part because they were hobbled by a latent propulsion system gear defect caused by a subcontractor that requires removal and replacement.

One of the ships being retired, the 12-year-old USS Fort Worth, is a test vessel that is considered no longer necessary.

What Navy leaders originally touted as a 55-vessel fleet of littoral ships costing $220 million apiece has dwindled to a currently planned 35 costing on average $478 million each. The proposed retirement would reduce the overall fleet of LCS — designed to operate in shallow coastal waters — to 26.

The proposal “underscores a chasm between the Navy’s LCS aspirations and actual outcomes,” said Shelby Oakley, an acquisition program director at the Government Accountability Office, who oversees the agency’s naval reports. That gap has only grown since the GAO, beginning in 2005, began reporting on “numerous challenges” in the program and made more than 35 recommendations, she said.

The recommendations “often went unaddressed,” as “the Navy pushed forward, largely undeterred,” she added. “The US taxpayers are left holding the bag with billions of dollars spent on ships that were rarely, if ever, deployed.”

The LCS proposal will be scrutinized by lawmakers as Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro and other officials testify Wednesday and Thursday on the service’s fiscal 2023 budget, which includes $28 billion for new ship construction. The lawmakers will assess whether the Navy’s move to reduce its inventory of a vessel sometimes derided as the “Little Crappy Ship” is a wise or wasteful initiative.

The LCS retirements are among 24 vessels, including cruisers and dock landing craft, proposed for de-commissioning to help save a total of about $7 billion. That includes eight vessels already operating beyond their expected service life. The decommissioning would contribute to a reduction of the Navy’s total fleet from 298 deployable ships to 280 by 2027, even as the Biden administration is under pressure to boost shipbuilding to counter China.

While some lawmakers will back the move, others will see it as the latest symbol of wasted defense dollars in an era when the White House is seeking $773 billion for the Pentagon in fiscal 2023.

‘More Survivable’
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said he’s confident in the analysis underpinning the decision.

The early version of the LCS “did not live up to expectations,” Austin said in response to a question from Democratic Senator Jon Tester of Montana at a hearing last week. “We made the decision that it’d be better to decommission those ships and invest those resources in acquiring capabilities that are more agile and more relevant to the future fight, more survivable.”

Still, the top Republican on the House Armed Services seapower panel, Representative Rob Wittman of Virginia, said “quantity has a quality of its own, and the US Navy has global obligations, including presence, assurance and deterrence missions around the world.”

Lockheed Martin said in a statement that the Bethesda, Maryland-based company is “working closely with the US Navy on the implementation schedule” to install new gears on the remaining Freedom-class vessels. Raytheon spokesman Chris Johnson had no comment on the program.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed said in a statement that the LCS program “showed promise when it was first conceived, but the threats the Navy faces have changed.” Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, said, “Instead of fighting for years and spending tens of billions of dollars to keep the program afloat, the Navy made the difficult choice to retire some of the ships now and free up many more resources in the future.”

Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the committee, said the first in a new class of frigates to succeed the LCS won’t be finished until 2026. “With the Chinese Navy steadily climbing to 460 ships by 2030, the unforced errors in Navy shipbuilding must stop, and programs that can scale up must be the priority,” he said.

© 2022 Bloomberg L.P.

That is SOP for the Pentagon and the Military Industrial Complex. Nothing will change until the people involved in these bad deals are fired and prosecuted, including the politicians.

Well they just Splashed another on May 8/22 at Marinette Ship Yard
USS Beloit
maybe I will never see it come down the Welland Canal

Cool, my neighbors kids would like to surf that wave!

I thought the line was cancelled already. Why are they still splashing these headaches?

Digging into post #72 a bit more;

"The LCS proposal will be scrutinized by lawmakers as Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro and other officials testify Wednesday and Thursday on the service’s fiscal 2023 budget, which includes $28 billion for new ship construction. The lawmakers will assess whether the Navy’s move to reduce its inventory of a vessel sometimes derided as the “Little Crappy Ship” is a wise or wasteful initiative."

Josie and I have our own Crappy ship. So far, 44 years old and can still run circles around these newer POS's. I take that statement as a namesake insult.

That little weasel Carlos Del Toro, I blame for the loss of the USS Bonhomme Richard. He spent his money any place else but on fire training, fire equipment and ship preservation.
He lied about the readiness of the San Diego Navy fire boat. There is no SD Navy Fire Boat.
After her high tech updates and nearing completion of rework, the 5 day fire took out the ship. Bonhomme Richard was scrapped quickly thereafter.

You will cry after watching these;

WOW! The threads on fire hoses don't match the Navy ship water supply connections and no adapters! Tens of millions of dollars in equipment and trained men at the scene and nobody knows how get water to fight the fire??
A 1.5 Billion dollar Navy ship lost due to incompetence.
Thanks for posting.

The bad news keeps coming on the LCS program. Hull cracks detected in 'several' vessels due to structural defects found in half the LCS fleet. Not to worry though, the cracks will only get worse if...traveling at 15knts in 8' seas. IOW, she's fine so long as she's at anchor. We're in a period of time when US naval vessels are less seaworthy than a mid-range Beneteau.

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your...de-structural-defects-leading-to-hull-cracks/

It would be charitable to describe the DOD procurement process as 'in crisis.' It's been one disaster after another and the LCS program has been the poster child for that failure.