Our Navy's Stupid Mistakes

No cracks in my hull.
Maybe these fancy designers need to get back to basics and what works.
SFBs

Sounds like some serious warranty claims......

It's sad how the Navy / DOD is dripping info on these two classes of vessels once they want to file 13 them. For the last ten years the critical failures in print were limited to the Renke combing gears for CODAG and the hilarious choice of Isotta Frachini generators aboard. Now we're told they're not mission capable with the Raytheon defense packages meant to be quickly swapped out and to add insult to injury the high stress points in the hull are cracking so they'll be limited to displacement speeds in lieu of the designed 45 - 50 knots. How the Navy didn't take serious notice of the HMS Shefield being obliterated by one French Exocet missile in the Falkland's in 1984 and still pursue a large surface fleet is beyond my pay grade. Current events in the Black Sea would lead me to believe the next big naval conflicts will be survived in submarines. Surface fleets are sitting ducks it seems.

Heads should roll for allowing Italy's Fincantieri to partner in our defense force ship building industries and being the lead contractor procurement wise for the Freedom class LCS and to allow a foreign country ownership in our defense shipyards (Fincantieri Marinette). Fincantieri builds a fine cruise ship and a few sleek naval corvettes for themselves and has a 200 year history as a ship builder but come on now! The Isotta Frachini prime movers for Generators should have raised all kinds of red flags in the design/procurement stages as this engine manufacturer has been well known for unreliability for decades.

2 LCS's (Littoral Combat Ship) or LCM/LCU's??

I have often complained about mixing foreign equipment in our DOD equipment.
All was sure glad when France bailed out of our Abrams tank project years ago.

Wow, Farm out!!

The only logical reasons for allowing Fincantieri and Austal to set up shop in our military shipbuilding contracts would be their past experience building high speed multi hull aluminum ferries but the realities of civilian maritime builds vs exacting military builds are worlds apart.

Which is actually 100% true of Fincantieri US, with the only formal exception of belonging to an international group whose HQs happen to be in Italy - and which probably isn't even aware of what their US operations are doing.
OTOH, my understanding is that several "US owned" companies (even defense contractors, let alone the rest!) are known to have sourced components from the People's Republic, in order to save some pennies even on contracts with outrageous margins.
Mind, I understand the attraction of fingerpointing at anything because "not invented here".
But beware of the risk to miss the forest for the trees, if you see what I mean...

My point is that if there's one thing that doesn't make sense when talking of Fincantieri US, it's calling them an overseas supplier.
Mind, I have no clue about the extent of their faults in this story - if any.
But what I'm willing to bet on is that all folks involved in any relevant decisions in Marinette would struggle to order a pizza, if they should ask the waiter in Italian.

Name a politician involved who has not made a profit on a Navy production contract.
Everybody gets something when a boat is built..