Why Isn't LCS Fighting the Red Sea Proxy War?
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- Опубліковано 18 чер 2024
- Retired Navy Commander and former surface warfare officer Bryan McGrath joins Ward to discuss why the Littoral Combat Ship isn't part of the U.S. Navy fleet engaged in the conflict around the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in spite of the fact that $100 billion program was theoretically designed for that sort of mission.
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Watching this brought to mind a saying that was bandied about back in the 1970s and 1980s when I worked for an aerospace firm that built Navy aircraft. - "For some reason there is never enough time nor money to do it right, but there is always enough time and money to do it over". The times they ain't changing.
You can probably blame Congress for part of this, due to pork barrel spending, ear marks, and fear-mongering that requires the military to plan for phantom menaces.
😂 spot on! I was stationed on the USS McKee (AS-41). She was commissioned in 1981 and decommissioned in '98 or '99. She was a product of Lockheed. Sad
My dad was in the army in WW-II and had the same quote.
Doing it over and over again keeps the money flowing in to the crooked politicians who fund these programs....the kickbacks from defense contractors must continue to enrichen them on a continuous basis.
When you don't know what is "right the first time" you do "experiments" and correct "not right the first time". Obvious in hindsight is often not "obvious in foresight". Not hiding deficiencies is very important to make such a system "work".
Former nuke submariner. During my follow-on reserve service, I spent 3 weeks in Marinette, WI, working on LCS-1 USS Freedom prior to commissioning.
I walked away with two thoughts: I was more claustrophobic in the Freedom engine room than I ever was on my sub. And, the idea of going to sea without spare parts, nor the crew to maintain the vessel because 'if it breaks down, we'll just tow it or fly out the parts and techs' was so foreign to me.
When I questioned the logic, it was pointed out that it works well in the commercial shipping world, but who's going to go tow a vessel of war from a conflict zone?
But what did I know? I was just an E6.
As always, Ward, I appreciate your content!
Yeah, what DO enlisted personnel know about running things compared to flag officers or politicians who sit on committees. (Answer: a hell of a LOT!!!!!)
Ironic and sad answer: Who needs spare parts for a warship when a politician can get people killed to farm votes?
It's hard to not be a cynic about this stuff sometimes, I admire your resilience.
Especially when resources and money are so finite.
Yeah I mean we only spend trillions on this stuff. (Roll eyes.) Leadership is our main problem. Politicians care more about jobs for their district than what soldiers actually need. If the political class had their way the military budget would just go straight to paying off voters and we'd avoid the wars. Might even be a better plan come to think of it.
The only jobs the politicians in DC are concerned about is their own.
@@Dawg85 And that's the real rub. What else could we have done with that money which would have been more productive? How could they miss that bad? A shame.
Time very finite to bring a ship and ship systems online. 19-29years?
The LCS is basically just a big patrol boat and has these problems:
1. It has limited endurance and was designed for coastal, shallow water defensive operations.
2. It is very vulnerable to attack with limited defensive systems and a thin hull.
3. I has limited capability in detecting and defending against ASMs
4. I carries only limited ordnance and must be replenished frequently.
They could have made a 21st century PT boat that would have been more useful.
8 harpoon launchers and a 50mm dual purpose chain gun.
Punchy and cheap.
@@jack99889988 that honestly makes it sound even more stupid. The idea that China wouldn't develop a blue water navy by the time the LCS was commissioned is ridiculous. Furthermore the Chinese coastal force would have torn them to shreds.
Ya...but it not High Tech...PT Boats...that would make too sense to be simple again.@@CS-zn6pp
Again it isn't capable of being a warship. It can't defend itself nor accomplish a meaningful role in any navy.
I remember watching 2 sea trial documentaries for the LCS vessels. We sure showed our adversaries in the world what not to do. Gunnery exercise: two rounds fired and a malfunction. Towed sonar array: difficult to deploy and almost impossible to recover. A ruptured hose in the engine room. It appeared you had a crew on board to operate the systems but no one was capable of making repairs. Lots of civilian contractors around.
All I could think was a WWII German sub with a deck gun could ruin their day or night.
Yes, I was a surface sailor in the 70s, DLG/CLG-17.
Wasn't the major problems to super structure itself?
@@mandarinandthetenrings2201 , That was one of the problems. The joint between the superstructure and the hull began cracking. On one of the variants, they had issues with the combining gears breaking and, of course, the failure of the mission modules. A mess all around.
@@mandarinandthetenrings2201 It was criminal to use aluminum, it stress fractures in high seas and it burns like a beer can tossed in a bonfire when hit as was demonstrated in the Falklands War.
@socnights Rog-oh me, DLG-16 70-71 Med Cruise. Then SSBN-620 boat, Gold crew, three SSBN deterrent patrols. These high-tech money pits are nothing more than expensive "revenue cutters" at best. The crews are so small, like who's gonna' do the grunt work normally assigned to the non-rates, 🤔🤔🤔🤔??
@@mikebaggott7802yeah, they also weren't often allowed to fix, or no how to fix problems that arise on ship. It had to be handled by a contractor. I didn't realize it, but we're all the engineers and maintenance on ship mercenaries and there for combat too?
(Note I edited my comment to finish an incomplete sentences and add context and hopefully my terrible spelling)
Commander Carroll, I’m just an old enlisted sailor. I’ve worked hard to get an education and after leaving the Navy, I became an Airline pilot, GI Bill paid for most of my flight training in 1995. Retired as a check airman and gold seal FAA instructor. My naval years were on the Eisenhower (V-2 for a year then OI after striking in).
I’ve stayed informed on the littoral combat ships and in the early years was not sure exactly what I thought about them. The argument for a littoral combat ship with all the promised capabilities and flexibility made a lot of sense when the price was 1/4 of what it turned out to be AND I hoped these ships would have a strong anti-mine and anti-submarine capability, something we need at least in the reserve fleet.
But as early as 2005, we knew the program was in severe trouble and so over budget that in a civil court of justice it would become clear either severe mismanagement or some crime had been committed….. again looking from the outside in. By 2010 it was fully known this program was in big trouble and still nothing happened to correct or end the bleeding financial assets. I believe we could prove corruption and collusion among contractors, congress, and even Naval officers who saw this as their legacy.
Why is it the Navy cannot seem to develop new classes of ships without tremendous problems and massive cost overruns?
If those responsible for these boondoggles are not held personally accountable, if corporations simply fire leadership, pay them a golden parachute and tax payers and the Navy get screwed…. What’s to encourage it not to happen again?
Nothing, I'm afraid.
To be fair it is not just the navy. The industrial-military complex has been a problem for a long time.
@@ChrisNystrom Presidents have warned us
Simple.....it's easy to spend other peoples' money or money conjured up out of thin air. Accountability? C'mon, man.
Resurrect the extensive logistics and procurement systems that were gutted in the 1990s to enable more fraud waste and abuse at the highest levels with the excuse of “cutting costs” for the government. The result was vastly greater waste and corruption that slipped through with little friction or pushback.
When the U.S. Navy announced “Littoral Warfare”, everyone knew this was a response to Congress to keep the budget at least the same if not increased, because when the USSR fell we had no use for a deep water navy (false premise).
So from 1983 -1994, I was involved in using a frigate U.S.S. Thach FFG-43 to insert SEALS, and using small helos (HD-6) along with our H-60 to direct them as an anti small craft deterrent. During Westpac we actually had an engagement while providing overwatch for the Barge Hercules, toasting 3 swift boats from Iran. So even as early as 1987 we had already shown that a frigate was fully capable of performing all these functions in “Littoral Warfare”, but nobody wants their program cancelled.
Ed I know that’s you! Drop me a line.
Now, ironically, these ships are being replaced with Italian designed frigates
@@Elthenarthe replacement is a good option and is as close as possible to an "off the shelf" design. We will still find a way to mess them up but we need ships fast and it's a ready design.
You skipped over the fact your Perry requires nearly 200 crew to operate, while an LCS, even after all the crew size inflation, takes about 100 - and that after you left, the Perrys were stripped of their missiles and sonars anyways, so they were little better-armed than LCS ended up being. Even though the new Constellation-class is very capable, they also require around 200 crew, and the fact is not every mission requires such a capable ship. Are you going to use a $1.4 billion frigate to do a $275 million minesweeper's job?
@@GintaPPE1000 Don't forget about the crew of the tugboat hauling that LCS back to port?
I remember when I first saw this concept as an active duty SWO. I said we're going to run out of money before they get the mission packages out and we'll end up with some really expensive and fast pickup trucks for ships. That came to pass but I didn't realize they would be as unreliable as they turned out to be.
LCS = Little Crappy Ship
So a pickup truck built by Fiat?
close... Fincantieri
Pork barrel procurement...
The thing about "deterrance" is it has to be credible. Credibility is something we seem to be lacking much of these days.
They can't admit they destroyed Ukraine, credibility is long gone...
Ward your fast becoming my go-to for news on the US Military, incredible work!
Thanks for watching, Andrew!
The original plan to buy two of each class and test them, made sense. The testing would almost certainly have revealed the defective combining gear of the Freedom class, and the hull fatigue cracking of the Independence class. It probably would have revealed the needs for better seaworthiness, and larger crews to maintain mission tempo. It might even have revealed that the crews needed to be able to maintain the ships themselves, rather than relying on vendors in distant home ports.
Minor design changes could've fixed the Freedom class, and a decision could have been made on whether the Independence was fixable or if an Aluminum hull was just a bad idea for a warship. Purchases of the modified class(es) could have had contracts that allowed the Navy to do it's own maintainence. The result would've been one or two classes of useful warships, even if they were expensive due to a dubiously useful modular design and being faster than necessary, they still would've been useful.
Buying large numbers of both before testing was complete, was a horrendous waste of money.
The Perry class frigates were supposedly going to be 'minimum manned' too with the maintenance activites working on them in port. Didn't work then either.
They didn't need to build either of them because it was obvious to everyone who was paying attention that neither was fit for service.
This is 100% pork barrel procurement.
As for sending them to the Baltic, I had to laugh. They get some nasty weather in the Baltic, not the place for fragile hulls and unreliable propulsion systems...
The combining gear on the two prototype ships was built by a different supplier than on the production ships. The Navy was slow to catch it specifically because they didn't think it was the cause.
Damn right,if they thought it could be a blue water replacement for a FFG,they were high,it should have been bigger and better armed for that role,on the other hand patrol boat Nam style mission it'd be better than those boats were for that and now I say paint it in Coast Guard colors and turn it over to them, w/their speed they'd be good in the drug interdiction game.Against any near peer in blue water scenarios,ASW/Strike Group escort it's junk.
@@CCGNZ65 I can't see the coast guard wanting a ship that is expensive to run and only good for one of their many missions. Sure, it'd be great for chasing drug dealers in the Caribbean and gulf. In good weather. But not well suited to the rougher seas of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, useless for search and rescue in heavy seas, too big and expensive for the Great Lakes (and sea worthiness might be an issue on lakes Superior and Michigan).
I think they were trying to make it both a coastal patrol boat and a blue water frigate, but it ended up too big and expensive for the first, and too small and insufficiently sea worthy for the latter. The end result were expensive ships with limited capabilities that would be fine in the Persian Gulf, but it's a real challenge to figure out how to use them anywhere else.
The LCS reminds me of when the Navy decided to build the Pegasus-class PHMs. The idea sounded good, on paper, but once put into service it was realized that there were more issues than were worth fixing.
Insider information, from truly reliable sources. What a novelty! Thank you again, sirs.
I come to this channel to hear the sweet truth. Thank you, Ward.
Thanks for all the news updates!!!! Please keep the updates coming!!
🤭.. it just posted. You haven't watched it yet.
@@JSFGuy Don't be a hater! lol.
@@LordHolley really? Where is this detected? I'm unaware of it. Simple observation is hate?
Ward, great closing comments. "we continue to give the benefit of doubt". Very professional, thank you.
Huge mistake that cost the fleet combat warships needed now, great channel that brings in real world experts
The concept wasn't a mistake, but the choice of builder was. There was no oversight it seems and now there are screams of fraud. I'd say 80% of the ocean has green (humanitarian) and yellow (pirates and smuggler) level threats. The cost to operate one aircraft carrier for a year can buy three LCS.
This channel wants me want to in list in the Navy! At 65 yrs old.
These briefings are enlightening. Thanks for all this background.
Ward, We salute you for your service. Thank you.
Thank you for the amazing insight sir I learned a lot from this as a former army guy never really paid to much attention to the navy it’s really interesting to learn about though now. Love hearing from the surface warfare side of things
You have a great friend in the commander, there Ward. It makes me feel pretty good that I had family that were in the Navy. I'm quite proud of them, most of all my Dad. Without guys like him, you wouldn't have been able to fly. Keep the podcasts coming, Ward.
this channel is legit great info, doing a great job keeping all us informed!!!!!
THE EXACT QUESTION, that I have been wonderinf since the beginning!
Thanks for the episode. 👍
I’ll be subscribing Brian!
Thank you both for your service!
I absolutely love this channel. This was a great topic. Thank you.
Worthwhile taking a hard look at NAVSEA and program management. How these platforms get through despite experts knowing beforehand the problems with the concept.
Corruption.
Sales pitch. Graphics and pie charts can make just about anything look cool.
The problem with the LCS, like a lot of other programs from around the same time, was concurrency. The idea was that things like the F-22, F-35, the LCS, the Fords all would be built using lots of brand new tech, tech that only existed on paper but was promised that they'd ready by the time production go to the point that they were ready to install that tech into the platform. For the LCS that meant that its proposed missile module never got built because it was a joint program with the Army who ended up cancelling the program because of issues with the missile. The proposed ASW module has been canceled because the towed array ended up with issues. I'm not sure just how many, if any, of the proposed modules for the LCS ended up getting made. And it didn't help that it turned out that the turn around time for module installment would be a good bit longer than originally promised.
@@Riceball01 Even the design basics were suspect. It was designed to operate in the littorals yet it didn't have the fuel and stores to sustain itself for very long. MSC doesn't operate in the littorals. So how to you resupply these ships without giving away their presence? They could technically UNREP but the facilities for doing so are really sketchy.
@@theodoreolson8529 LCS has a requirement for 21 days of endurance and 4000nmi of unrefueled range (the Independence class is up to 6000). Yes, UNREP capability, especially for stores, isn’t great, but they have a huge helipad for VERTREP, and when you only have 100 crew tops as opposed to a DDG’s 300 or carrier’s 6000, you don’t need to ferry over as much supplies in the first place.
Welcome back Commander McGrath, Honor and Glory, Sir!!!
Ward, you and your guests are a wonder to me. Your hearts and minds are in the right place. My best respects from Newfoundland, Canada.
Thanks for the support, Roderick!
I love this navy captain! He made me rethink my opinion of navy guys
Excellent segment.... a complicated subject I need all the help with I can get.
It was obvious that the concept designers of the LCS system never interacted with senior enlisted personnel before deciding on a small crew-size. Most people have no idea how much time the crew spends cleaning and maintaining the ship and there's no way a crew of 40 could keep those ships clean and in good working order without a shipboard Roomba running 24/7.
@@willemsma Neither LCS variant has been tested for damage RESILIENCE. It's actually suspected that there wouldn't be any damage control happening if hit by anything larger than a 127mm gun.
@@andrewsuryali8540yes, I got the feeling that active damage control was never something they planned for with these ships...
In that case they might as well have bought 21st century PT boats.
I'm thinking the ongoing push by the Navy to build ships that require less and less personnel is possibly a reflection of the difficulties, now and future, of recruiting, training and retaining sufficient numbers of qualified crew. I imagine that somewhere in the Pentagon there's a cost benefit analysis study saying that instead of having technological and mechanical trained crew aboard EVERY ship to conduct servicing and repairs, it's cheaper to crew ships with basically skilled "worker drones", and centralize the more expensively trained people in one Naval yard to service multiple ships.
Seems like a more useful solution would be to spend some fraction of the untold billions being poured into building questionable ships, and dedicate it to training and quality of life issues that would enhance recruitment and retention.
@@andrewsuryali8540 Both LCS classes passed the standard Navy shock trial. They have Tier 2 shock hardening like a frigate, but Tier 1 subdivision like auxiliaries, hence why the Navy calls them Tier 1+.
As a civilian who has worked on commissioning three LCS's over the last eight years, I can tell you that after a rough start, they are starting to find a place and an important role in today's Navy. I have met some amazing men and women who are demonstrating what these ships can do. I wish all the men and women of the LCS squadrons the best, and look forward to continued successes in the future.
I appreciate the perspective on the LCS, and that they are useful in some scenarios.
I feel like if you wanted a real modular system, the way to go was a helicopter frigate that looks like the the austral trimaran LCS ship since it has a huge flight deck and a lot of internal volume for a relatively small ship and you can fit some VLS in the ammas.
The modular part is that it can take the same ASW helicopters as a burke, all the way up to a CH-53 for airborne mine clearing, or lilypad for a V-22 or V-280 for special forces. You could even push it into the land attack role by stuffing some HIMARS in the hangar since you can use those from the deck of a ship.
The modular works, but the US Navy went with a white paper design, why didn't they license or buy STANFLEX which the Danish Navy uses in ships up to frigate size.
@@ThumperE23 Well, two reasons I can think of, which both boil down to "it's the US Navy", are that the Navy always insists on designing its own toys and has trouble deciding what it wants, and the USN wants something a bit bigger with more endurance and deeper magazines.
I think relying on aircraft (and HIMARS) in the hanger for most of the mission switching covers most of it for something with the size and endurance of the LCS and it's using stuff the USN is already purchasing for other stuff, so upgrades wouldn't require designing capability specifically for the frigate to use them. Helicopter reliance also would let it cover a larger area in a low-intensity conflict and be more useful for special forces, which seems important when their bigger than a typical firgate.
They tried to do to much with this ship.
Modularity doesn't quite work with a expeditionary style force. If you're always going to be deployed to the same area, you can keep all your extra modules at a single port & everything is fine.
But if you're going to be opperating out of random ports all around the world, with a couple ships here and a couple there you have to either a) make a huge number of modules or b) design them so that they can fit in an aircraft then fly them to where they need to go. Neither option works all that well.
Could have built some Visby class corvettes or similar. Less than $200 million USD each. Enough firepower for supporting the coast guard in counter smuggling operations or patrolling the coasts or even some littoral combat missions.
Supplementing the destroyers with many frigates and corvettes would be a sensible and conservative approach that many other countries have taken.
Good show Ward! Thanks
Interesting analysis as always.
Ward, Great video. Thanks.
Another great piece Team Mooch! Superbly produced.
A few years back I ran into a high school buddy who spent his professional career as a DoN civilian doing sustainment and logistics planning for the surface Navy. He told me the decision to put the Freedom variant on the east coast was because it is much less reliable than the Independence variant. In the end, Navy leaders violated the "KISS" principle in fielding two completely different ship variants. LCS is, arguably, in the top ten of all DoD acquisition failures.
Yeah but everyone got bonuses.
At least one CEO got fired along the way.
Thanks for the insight.
Thanks Ward & Commander Brian McGrath...
Shoe🇺🇸
Amazing content!
Thanks! Great non bias info channel. Well done.
Thanks for your support, Larry!
Great video and thank you for service 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Another great episode!
The little crappy ship
thank you Commander Carroll and Commander McGrath for the insightful information.....
Cheers from Florida, Paul
Thanks for watching, Paul!
Good info!
Thank you for this video. You are the go-to source.
Looking at the image of the "up-armed" vessel, I can see only two cannons.
Ty you guys for for your service great reporting 🇺🇸
Thanks to all for your service stay safe
Thank you, Gentlemen. Much appreciated.
Excellent and Outstanding!!!!
Great video. Love the SG also.
So Wise , Thank You. Thomas Cattus Baddus
Nice interview
More great work.
Ward...I have never served but this man is Fantastic....!!!
Great video.
As a person not “In the know” I am extremely grateful to hear how the LCS fit into the larger system of fighting vessels. You only hear the negatives not the compromises that get us to today. Even though short, very insightful episode!!! Thank you both.
He asserted it did. He didn't provide much evidence.
Thank you sirs.....
Thank you. Writing can't carry the weight of how much I mean those two words for the work you do. This old vet with 13 years Army appreciates all that you do. I tried to go to your Patreon channel and select a level but it only offered me one level with no description of what a person gets. I'm on a very fixed income so I have to be careful. But I still very much appreciate what you're doing.
Thank you. Basically as a Patron you get direct messages from me and access to our weekly Zoom Happy Hour on Fridays. Any amount is appreciated and helps keep the channel growing.
Thanks!
How did we screw up the C-17? I’d love to find a detailed video or book on the topic.
There isn't any because frankly a fat cargo plane isn't a sexy procurement item. However, in short, the C-17 was developed from the 20% smaller YC-15, and the process of upscaling the plane went through the usual development hell, starting from the fact that the YC-15's wings were simply not strong enough to carry a C-17 body. The usual development hell then smacked right into Dick "cut everything" Cheney and the numbers to be purchased were halved, increasing per-unit cost. That's the gist of it.
Hello Bryan McGrath, When were you at UVa? I was in UVa's NROTC Unit from August 1983 - May 1985. I was a member of the Honor Guard and Rifle team.
Not a frigate. These boats were a terrible waste of money.
LCS was never intended to be a frigate. It was intended to replace minesweepers and patrol boats with a design that did the same mission but didn’t need to be carried into theater by a heavy lift ship.
The idea they are frigates is a misconception resulting from the fact that we stripped down the Perrys into patrol boats in the 2000s without changing their designation, and LCS replaced them in this role.
@@GintaPPE1000 >> I never thought they were frigates. I’m looking forward to the Constellation class though. Thanks for explaining something of the idea behind them.
@@jaybee9269They sure as heck aren’t minesweepers either
Great channel
An observation from an outsider from a sister service: The USN historically has had a difficulty in integrating smaller warships into the fleet. Not a criticism, just a observation
True... Very True
Top video!
Thanks for all the info of what is an what isn’t guys an ❤the channel ward
Commander, that is Science. Practice is expensive. Mistakes are guide posts. Thank you for your time letting us know. And you too Mooch :)
Brian sporting UVA Navy and You - Wave Riding Vehicles. History connects all!
Thank you gentlemen for being so objective and strategic in your analysis - these videos are honestly a valuable public service given how political topics related to the military become when presented by the mainstream news.
And thank you both for your service, and protecting my freedoms.
Ward, your animosity towards this class is apparent and I think blinding you to what the problem is. I was part of a team brought in to help fix these ships when the Navy realized it couldn't get rid of them. Even the legacy guys knew the platforms had promise, the problem was never that, it was the Navy, it was the admirals and it was their OWN GREED. You see, you work on enough of these projects and you realize that many in the fed know that it's easier to buy something they don't need or want but keeps their budget high then to ask for that money back. LCS was that for the Navy. As a result, none of the sustainment efforts, the over sight, the design reviews, none of that was in place for LCS. What was worse, they left everything up to the contractor with no guidance with the intent of pulling the parts from the commercial space and no one bothered to pull any of that together. So that was my team's job, first one with the Navy. The problem was, Navy wanted Zummwalt or something like it, and they figured it would be easy to dump LCS when Congress realized it was a failure and transfer the budget then to ask for more money. That was there plan. So they set the ship up to fail. Problem was, Zummwalt was a failure (actually its a pretty cool ship, but that's something else) Ford had issues, and then China started becoming a threat.
So as for why the ship isn't in the Red Sea or the Gulf, well that's common since. They are using drone and missiles, and while I wouldn't doubt the ship could gain equipment to handle that, it's more about surface warfare and clearing obstacles at sea level and dealing with small boats than dealing with airborne threats.
But at the end of the day, the problem with the ship was, they didn't bother trying to only build a couple of ships, testing them thoroughly before building a fleet of them. That's the problem, and that's not the ship's fault, it's not the designs fault, it's not it's missions fault, that is commands fault.
I worked on the LCS program from the very beginning. First problem was the technologies they wanted to use had to be invented. Mission modules as first conceived are mostly not developed. The mine warfare piece was finally approved.
I knew from the very beginning that both variants would be built because they are so different. So much for performance based specs. But I saw them a operating in tandem in a hot fire environment. We did the advanced planning studies for all of SC21. DDX was first but for some reason LCS was fast tracked with impossible goals. Design and build a ship from blank paper to delivery in 2 years for $220m a copy.
The failing industrial base was another factor as major component suppliers went out of business before the first ships were completed.
A lot of really good people worked on this program. There were a lot of other issues. Industry failed. They never admitted they couldn't deliver on their promises even though the data was clear they couldn't. The Navy was complicit and careers were destroyed.
But it was not nearly as bad as MHC51 class.
Navy ships are over stuffed as it is. Scope creep and poorly thought out objectives and a shift in the global threat environment is another issue. LCS was a ship for asymmetrical warfare in the war on terror. That kind of warfare has changed. The addition of missles to the seaframe will make it much more useful.
Interesting…spending summers in Upper Michigan we’ve seen some of the Littoral ships in Escanaba and across the river in Wisc. IT’s keeping folks working when there’s not much else thriving there.
I toured one at FleetWeek Port of Los Angeles San Pedro. Cool ship.
This is wild!
I wondered this myself. It will be nice to get an answer!
That's a fascinating backstory! Greece will allegedly be given four Freedom-class ships as military aid from the US and the local blogosphere is teeming with people complaining about how they're worse than useless; even though they're objectively better than the obsolete frigates they'll be replacing, at least as an interim solution.
Hungary and Romania could also benefit from some LCS to replace some of their old Soviet era vessels. Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea states tend to be mild. That puts less stress on the vessels patrolling there.
@@stupidburp Romania maybe. Hungary? I don't think so. ;)
Hopefully, the computerized design used on the NGAD and B21 to miraculous effect can work as well on the next ship the Navy wants. Maybe we can get one on time and on budget for once.
I'd love to see a ghosted trigger, put the gun on a scale with the scope, supressor and loaded/unloaded mag, extensive accuracy with match and range ammo, use decible meter to show us how loud it is, and if you dare, torture test it on camera. Do the gauntlet!
Awesome videos. Always happy to see you posted, keep it up!
It's good to try new things! But I have to think the Navy would have been better off with a modified Spruance or similar.
I understand why the Navy wants to replace the L.C.S., but the thing that confuses me about the Constitution class frigate is that it is roughly the same size as the Arleigh Burke class destroyer, but it has only about a 1/3 the firepower. Why not continue to build Burkes along with the DDG-X?
Because the constellation is half the cost of the Burke flight 3 and the navy needs more ships to be more distributed
They _are_ continuing to build Burkes, but the Navy also needs something smaller & less expensive. The LCS was supposed to fill this role, but didn't.
The Burkes are pretty much maxed out (no more spare tonnage / space,, etc.) now as far as adding additional equipment. The Burkes are good ships, but - see my first sentenance....
@@CaseytifyLCS was not supposed to fill this role. It was meant to be a common replacement for minesweepers, patrol boats, and hydrofoils. The US Navy has steadfastly ignored the need for a proper frigate since the Reagan era - thinking at the time was that a single, large and more capable combatant could do the job of multiple smaller ones.
"If you don't have the time to do it right, when are you going to have the time to do it over?" From my school days at Defense Acquisition University [ca1995]
Thank You! Gentlemen!
Sailing close to the wind Ward.
Nice WRV, Wave Riding Vehicles hoodie. 🌊 🏄♂️
LCS Independence Class = 15 in active service/2 being built. LCS Freedom Class = 8 in active service/3 being fitted out.
Come on guys. Literal (lit-er-al) - Conforming or restricted to the exact stated meaning.
Littoral (lit-tor-al) - Of or pertaining to a shore or coastal region.
Yogi Berra and Mark Twain referenced in the same sentence, and I just happened to be there. Thanks Ward. Some days it pays to get out of bed.
If they can just figure out how to build a destroyer/cruiser hybrid on time and near budget like the current B-21 Raider program. If the Air Force can do it, than surely the Navy can as well.
The ongoing success of the B-21 did take a lot of trial and error and new technologies on Northrop's end. Compare it to the B-2. While it was a good platform, it's cost was a severe issue and we could only get a few over 20 airframes over the original plan of 100.
Switched to the Mesa MkV for today, nice.
Really timely interview, thank you. For some reason I thought the main role of LCS was to do shallow water patrol, not open ocean work. E.G. support shipping off the coast of Samalia. Guess I was mistaken. And what happened to FFX program?
FFX delayed as usual. Can't decide on final design. Expect mission creep to proceed as per tradition.
Perhaps I am confused as to the stated purpose of the LCS but I was under the impression that it was never designed to be defending against repeat barrages of cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and drones. Is that not a task better suited to an AEGIS destroyer with numerous SAMs? I was under the impression that the LCS was designed more for antipiracy, or minesweeping, or ASW operations. More suited to a "coast of Somalia" type operation than this. Or if the Houthis were primarily laying naval mines or using fast attack boats, the LCS might be of use.
I guess I am just confused as to the source of your prompt here. Where does it stem from?
It wasn't. This was to be used for humanitarian missions, missions against pirates and smugglers, anti sub warfare and to picks up and deliver special operation forces. Admirals and congressmembers just got in the way.
Unfortunately, the LCS couldn't deliver. We can hope the Constellation class frigate will not be messed with.
Notifications are rolling in.
Nice red Gibson SG in the background
Was on the the staff at ASN RDA when these were being briefed. Sounded like a sweetheart deal for the Aussies....not logical but helped ally shipbuilding.
What a shame, when the concept first went public I was willing to rejoin the Armed Forces as a sailor this time as the LCS boats had the cool factor of rhe old PT boats of WW 2 fame.