Kind of crazy how they didnt forsee the future corrosion that will happen to these vessels while they were being designed and worked on, like how didnt they know about aluminum being this unreliable
The Navy has a directorate responsible for engineering quality - NAVSEA 05. They pointed out all the problems YEARS before delivery. When they were ignored, they refused to sign off on the designs. The ships were built despite their objections - with easily predictable results.
Yes, I'm sure there's corruption. A rational explanation could be also that they tried too many innovations at once, creating an expensive fleet of worthless ships that don't work, instead of the desired cheap and effective ships
Im pretty sure the fletchers design has enough Space for some modern weapons. Replace the Aft turréts with a helicopter hangar and pad. Replace the torpedo tu es with 8 Harpoon launchers and VLS for ESSM and Sm2. And strengthen the tower for better sensors.
As a truck driver, I pulled aluminum tub trailers of bulk ag products. Cracking was a constant problem. I don’t understand why the Navy didn’t see that coming.
Aluminum cracks like crazy. You can't just weld it back together. I dont know how to explain it exactly but the metal doesnt work like carbon or stainless steal at all
They already know about this problems, during Falkland war some British ship sunk mostly because of uncontrollable fire. Aluminium melting point are weaker than steel
Because they didn't care. The Admirals that pushed those lemons on the Navy retired and now work for defense contractors. A high paying gig when they get out is their reward. I served on an Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate. It had an aluminum cracking problem in the superstructure. The equipment room for the illumination radar was always getting new cracks. Ticonderoga class cruisers also had problems with cracks. The issues were known, they just didn't care.
@@cucuawe465 hell, during WWII some japanese cruisers had aluminium superstructure (to cut displacement and costs) and US Navy observed from front seats (and directly contributed to) how shitty this turned out
If you'll notice the trimaran design of the hull, these ships are to some extent aerodynamically supported at speed. Given those performance requirements, aluminum is attractive because its strength to weight is superior to steel. That's why aircraft (and these LCS are in some sense ships with minor aircraft-like qualities) extensively use aluminium despite the horrendous maintenance issues - because the weight savings are worth it. Except of course in this case I'm guessing that decision drove the program's development costs way above what was reasonable
I left the navy in 91 but I've been shocked by the number of expensive ship procurement gaffs since then, and this video didn't even get into the Zumwalt Destroyer fiasco!
The Zumwalt project was literally just the government wanting to keep up the image of being the best and most advanced navy in the world by just shoving as much new shit onto a ship as possible. Even though they literally didn't have to do that as the U.S Navy, even if we dont build any new ships, will still be the best Navy in the world for the next like 30 years. It's just called being out of touch.
I'd much rather wasted money than go back to the 80s when you fuckers had lost your god damn marbles and shot at everything you could, dug up museum ships for spare parts and tried to cover up your tracks when you killed people in training accidents.
The Zumwalt I always saw as too mission specific or designed only for one mission and that was North Korea. With its extremely expensive ammo it could knock out tones of artillery pieces or fixed positions but after that, then what? I was hoping for the new upcoming frigate class but I hear that’s been delayed. We need a serious audit of the naval spending and shipyards
"But what they didn't anticipate was that the Independence would corrode away, and the Freedom would break down" That's Definitely Not What You Think, isn't it?
@@Yikeo wtf, its Not JSU's fault, these incompetent losers blow our money on shit weapons system that are so short sightly designed, blow out the already rediculous budget with absolutly stupid maintanance costs.... and to lower said maintanance cost we spend even more to offset those cost, which cost even more... its like our biggest enemy is the retards withhin.....
It's like a metaphor for the United States. Once a beacon of freedom and independence. Maybe we can patch it up and keep this money pit going for another hundred years. Like the B52 fleet.
When designing a new ship you either take a small safe incremental step or a large risky leap forward. If you take a leap sometimes it doesn't pay off. Shame they made so many of these before the design weaknesses were discovered/classified as "not fixable".
How could they not know the design weaknesses of aluminum? Every instance of aluminum used in ship building has resulted in severe complications and failures for over 70 years now. Metallurgically, it is temperamental and has a limited lifespan, that is why they need to retire airliners after so many pressurization cycles.
They already knew about all the weaknesses and pushed ahead anyways. This isn't a high risk high reward situation, because they already knew there was no reward other than shit boats that wouldn't be usable.
@@Joze1090 This was a classic case of ego getting in the way of success, and too many chefs in the kitchen. Designer collaboration headaches, bureaucratic intervention headaches. Shoot, the navy/congress was only supposed to pick one of the two ships and decided to go with a dozen of both. The entire industry knew what a disaster it would be from the get go. Disappointing.
Three different dud classes within a pretty small timeframe (including the financial abyss that is the Zumwalt class) seems like a really weird misstep.
@@TheBooban Exactly. Nobody seems to be taking about how the plans for the Zumwalts have changed from being a weird stealthy rail gun platform to a huge stealthy hypersonic missile platform. And even putting their capability aside, the lessons that the USN learnt from the Zumwalt program were and are invaluable.
The navy is trying to jump feet first into electric motor driven ships also with the new Constitution Class Frigates instead of making the all diesel Fast Spearhead Class USNS into a missile pea shooter. Bio Diesel is also a initiative in the Navy.
The issues with the Zumwalts weren't fundamental to the design, they're mostly to do with heinous cost-cutting and order-cutting which meant they didn't get the radar they were supposed to have and so few were ordered that their gun rounds lost anything resembling an economy of scale. Nothing as absurd as somehow forgetting that galvanic corrosion exists and so it's not ok to attach an aluminium box to a steel box.
@@CruelestChris The gun seems like a bad idea from the outset though. Missiles are longer range, more accurate, and more powerful than the gun, the gun was designed for shore bombardment which would require getting within enemy missile range meaning you have to either take out the enemy defenses first (either with missiles yourself or with aircraft, which also means dealing with most of the enemy air defenses and all after gaining air dominance) or it means getting tons of missile defenses around the Zumwalt. Not only do you need to be producing at high volume to get the economy of scale for the gun to break even vs missiles but you also need to have that much use for them as well, which means using the ships often in place of missiles and since you can use the same missiles on a variety of platforms but only use the gun and ammo on 1 ship class that means either a fleet of these or getting tons of use out of the ones you've got. Since the US doctrine tends to favor missiles over artillery in general that makes it really difficult to get that much use out of the comparatively niche gun when compared to the more flexible missiles. Since naval combat is often about who can hit who first that means range and accuracy are king and that makes it so missiles are more useful against other ships meaning the gun is best for land targets but the shorter range vs missiles limits its use.
The worst part of this is the program was so badly mismanaged, and those in charge (typically a Rear Admiral or higher) have moved on without any repercussions. Sadly, this is typical of military procurement programs; when they go bad there's zero accountability for those managing the program.
Can confirm, being on one of these ships is one of the worst experiences a sailor can have I know plenty of sailors who were stationed on one of these and they are just as bad as the video says they are.
@@fridaycaliforniaa236 it's only a select few platforms. The majority of our ship platforms are pretty awesome, although they are a lot of work. I was on an LHD. Like I said, a lot of work, but functional when you have a good crew. Unlike the LCS where you can have a top tier crew and it will still need to be towed away because rare, and very important parts can go wrong with seemingly no reason.
@@Soniphex I was on SSN-706 in the early 90’s and my boat was in good shape. The Seawolf was badass, but too expensive. The Virginia Class seems very good quality and I have only heard good things about the program. Silent Service doing well!
@@Soniphex isn’t everything for the US navy nowadays flawed massively and vastly overpriced? Zumwalt, LCS and FORD. All with issues and a vast waste of money bar the Ford which may finally be operational. How these companies get away with providing such 💩 to the country, I will never know.
The issue that I have with this is that the politicians don't quite understand that any tech advance is going to have massive teething problems. What I dislike the most about our military's decision was to order a bunch of them before the kinks got worked out. Whatever happened to having just one of a "class" to act as a test platform?
That little song has me seriously wondering if making more Fletcher class destroyers wouldn't have been a better use of resources than the LCS program. One one hand, Fletchers are very outdated. On the other hand, they're seaworthy.
There so useless that japan,china and iran is making ships similar in role to the LCS...lets just hope that this kind of thinking on the LCS doesnt bite you back in the ass
This video was much more tongue in cheek than any other NWYT video I've ever seen. I didn't realize you had decent pipes until the musical number at the end!
One of my favorite memories as a kid was being aboard a Freedom class during a naval parade. I was on the Civil Air Patrol and our squadron was granted access along with some other civilians to be on the deck. The sailors let us young airmen handle M4s and M2s and have lunch in the mess with them.
No Modern USN major program since the 90s has gone right. Every last one of them has been screwed up one way or another and the LCS is just another shining example of what happens when a people turn away from their roots. Abandons that which granted them success. And embrace essentially their own demise.
@@TooTallTang I think the Virginia really just represents a cost saving compromise of a design. That may proof to be fatal in ww3 and much of its design dates back to the 90s
The Freedom Class was a huge missed opportunity for the US, for a long time they've lagged behind when it comes to small, low tonnage, low cost, highly versatile surface combatants, which is ideally what the Freedom Class should have been. The ability to operate in littoral waters should have simply been the icing on the cake, not a hyperfocused primary mission of the vessel. The lack of interoperability with the rest of the US Navy was it's death knell right from the get go. Lockheed offered upgrade paths for the vessels to provide more utility, but the writing was already on the wall for these little ships. The focus on keeping costs relatively low had meant that "off the shelf" vessels really had very little in the way of combat utility and the supposed "modularity" in practice wasn't as useful as it sounded on paper because fundamentally these were already underpowered vessels. The Russians have a historical pedigree in building incredibly small vessels that can cover a lot of bases, but the key design tenet of these ships, and others in Europe and Asia, is that the vessels have a relatively fixed state from construction to retirement. A lot of sacrifices have to be made to cram as much utility as possible onto a small hull, if you're trying to leave room to "upgrade" and "modularize" after the fact it's both inefficient and incredibly expensive. Which is why we haven't really seen any major upgrades to the Freedom class so far, aside from adding some Hellfire missiles and very VERY limited Sea Strike capability which as far as I'm aware has only been actively installed on the Independence LCS class and not on the Freedom class. Lockheed Martin's main upgrade path that they were trying to push in 2014 was to significantly lengthen newer vessels to accommodate larger weapons packages and increased AEGIS capabilities, but the lengthening of the vessels would have been expensive and impractical because the power plant and propulsion of the ship would have remained the same. Just goes to show that you can't easily engineer your way out of a design limitation AFTER the vessel has reached mass production. Another irony of the vessel is that they spend a relatively large amount of internal volume on hangar capacity and amphibious capabilities. Which is fine, if you're a frigate with the space to handle it. But if you're already an undergunned and cramped corvette then the volume costs become increasingly problematic. Another reason Lockheed found it difficult to fix and add to these ships after the fact. The USN has a strong focus with trying to provide at the minimum, helicopter utility and amphibious abilities to nearly every vessel. On the surface of things it makes sense, why not? But the internal volume requirements are incredibly problematic on smaller vessels, and this was just another one of the negatives that helped to kneecap what should have been an otherwise ruthlessly rugged and simple vessel. Costs were relatively low on these vessels by USN standards, so there's that I guess, but fundamentally they weren't "the little ship that could" and their upgrade paths are both costly and impractical, there's a good chance we see most of the Freedom Class retired by the early 2030s. And this was all said without addressing the myriad of problems that have plagued the class since it first launched. - A note on the video, great content as per usual, I like how you're focusing on the "after the fact" solutions and path forward rather than just ranting about the ships, was an interesting watch :)
As for russia you are right they have the know how on small ships but their bigger ones are absolutely atrocious hell just because of their corruption their smaller ships are bunked to
A lot of the discussion around the LCS is focused on the Freedom class. Does the Independence class have the same problems to the same degree? Or does it still have some utility as a platform?
@@jasemo388 Slightly more utility in its weapons package, but the modularity feature was left entirely at the wayside. In practice it occurred rarely and moving forwards all Independence class vessels essentially have fixed roles. The Independence class is much more versatile but it too has been marred by mechanical issues, and without the ability to rapidly "up arm" itself in line with the original use case, it's hard to see where it fits in, a great example of this is that the majority of the LCS class vessels are currently homeported. They rarely leave port or American waters, which on the one hand is fine to an extent, but on the other, you're burning $360M, plus operational costs on top to have a glorified coastguard cutter. I'm sure in the future they'll make fantastic replacement vessels for the Coast Guard, they have a large suite of capabilities and particularly for the Independence class, a very large internal volume for near shore and aviation operations. But fundamentally both of these vessels were born from a requirement to develop "littoral combat ships" which by definition relegated them from finding roles within the more generalized blue navy that the US operates, sure they're cheap, but they're also largely redundant and their operational costs are non trivial, which is why they're most often found berthed.
@@starwarscentral Thanks for the insight. I must admit, I am quite partial to the innovative hull design of the Independences. And while it does seem mechanical issues will be inevitable on any new design, the two unsolvable failings appear to be their role concept was an answer in search of a question as well as the obsession with "modularity". Particularly, while the swapping of mission modules does seem cool in theory, it does seem the type of solution that works if you have more roles to fill than you have ships. With a dozen ships, it does seem smarter to let each ship specialise with its own permanent package rather than constantly switching back and forth.
@@NotWhatYouThink at first I didn’t notice (just thought it was some music you found at something) then as I realized the words and stuff I noticed it was custom and was like “wait… that sounds like the guy!!!! I THINK IT IS!!!” 😂
@@royhuang9715 US shipyards have a pretty good track record with big ships, the Arleigh-Burke Class, San Antonio Class, America Class, and Gerald R. Ford Class are high quality ships. The only failed large ship project that actually got to the construction phase was the Zumwalt Class.
When you mentioned that the Spruance destroyer Paul F Foster is used as a test ship, I remember the last test ship the Navy had, the USS Norton Sound (AVM-1). I believe the last system she tested was the Mk-41 VLS. We should have built new frigates.
0:28 whenever they lay these huge ships in the water like that, I just always think its gonna sink like a rock, roll over or the hull breaks or something. If you watch the laying of some superyachts its always by like 5 different cranes and very gently etc
Launching a seagoing ship is rough like that because it can easily afford to be. The hull and major equipment is complete, but they still need massive amounts of fitting out, and nothing easy to install or delicate (weapons, sensors, accomodations, galley equipment, etc) is in place yet. For a superyacht, they're mostly complete and outfitted before being launched, they aren't designed to handle heavy seas like a seagoing ship, and the customer is not likely to appreciate that kind of treatment in the first place.
@@wyattroncin941 It depends on the superyacht. There are plenty that are designed to handle ocean crossings, in any weather bar hurricanes. Like Nordhavn 120 and 148, Bering Yacht 120, 125 and 145. And of course many many sailing yachts and superyachts.
Alright, that song at the end really got me. A Fletcher wouldn't stand a chance in modern combat, but it'd be pretty fun to see them floating around with modern armaments anyways.
I tested all the pipe on multiple lcs Independence ships. They were cool, but we all were skeptical of the structure. No part of it could even take a rifle round. But it ran like a giant jet ski with missile launchers lol it was still pretty freaking sweet lol
Well. It's really easy to show in a CGI animation a flying carrier at mach 25 shooting laser... It's quite funny how nowdays, wet dream of maniacs are shown as innovation while it doesn't work and never will because law of nature exist, even if you have trillions to fight them...
pretty much teethless yachts that are supposed to go on long distance patrols but can't carry enough supplies or carry enough equipment to do all their missions
Roughly as good as your grammar. It's "could have". These things couldn't have worked. They'd need a full redesign. They wouldn't look the same, they wouldn't function the same. They would be considerably different ships.
Oh my God that song was amazing. As someone who's been following the LCS program the entire time it breaks my heart seeing what it ended up becoming and while the thought of them becoming reefs is on the one hand heartbreaking on the other hand I feel like the ships deserve to be put down like an old dog.
In the late 1930s we designed and produced the Fletcher-class destroyers, the Essex-class carriers, the Butler-class destroyer escorts and many other successful classes using slide rules and drafting tables. What the hell happened?
These are shallow water ships being used for things they were never specified for. The closest WW2 equivalent would be the PT boats that were all scrapped after five years in service.
Corruption happened. They newer wanted to build a powerful ship. They wanted to make something as expensive as possible to steal as much tax money as possible.
Technology. You didn't need integrated electronics and all these modern systems. That isn't to say the modern military relies too much on technology. It's just that making a new ship or jet or tank back then was much simpler.
@@armorhide406 The WW2 era ships were stuffed full of the highest technology of the time. They needed to be big to hold it all. Big however does have advantages at sea. It is however worth bearing in mind that a modern 100,000ton container ship has a smaller crew than a WW2 era 1,000 ton coaster - and automation is part of that (the Titanic had ten times as many crew in just the engine room than the total crew on a modern container ship)).
The ones being decommed are the early ones, that have "unfixable" issues. The one being retained have the 'lessons learned' included to make them usable. They are basically corvettes or large patrol craft, not meant to be warfighters, like the DDGs.
The issues weren’t “un-fixable”. It just that fixing them required them to be slipped in the same building slip for rebuild. So they decided to build new ones as a priority rather than fix the first four in each class right now. Once the build program is finished the ships are supposed to be reslipped and rebuilt to the newer ships standards with the faulty transmissions being cut out of the hull and replacing and thicker hull materials where fractures occurred.
I thought that the Independence-class LCS looked like it would be awesome as a private yacht. Strip out all the military parts. Reinforce all the weak points, that may not be as weak when the ship weighs a lot less. And make it all like a comfortable mansion/resort. If I had a budget for a mega-yacht, I'd try to get one. But since I don't, it doesn't matter.
Regarding the ship can be used as other platforms. The Royal Saudi Naval Forces acquired 4-freedom class based frigates that’ll have an AEGIS combat system and 8 mk41VLS launchers along with ASW capabilities. But they’re gonna be built from scratch
Aluminum hulls will 100% of the time crack as aluminum does not have a fatigue limit. I'm not going to go into the depth of what that is, look it up. As strange as it might sound it's a bad thing. The Navy is long experienced this with the Ticonderoga, OHP, AB class ships with aluminum superstructures. The problem was that the cracked developed in places that no provisions had really been made for access to repair.
The new Freedom-class ships (I.E. USS Minneapolis-St Paul) have fixed almost all the problems of the early production ships. We're still building them and I don't think we'll stop.
Problem is almost everyone get fixated on the first lead ships of each new class. And never look of the later fixed ships of the class. Or look at history as almost just about every new class of ship for the U.S. Navy have been a shitshow to end all shitshows. Before they been fixed and the fixes incorporated into the later ships of the class.
So what? Are you going to send one of those ships close to China and hope it will survive there? Dumbass. Even LCS fixed all its mechanical problems, it’s still a piece of shit. It’s weapon system could only fight terrorists with AK-47s or Pirates with RPGs. You do not need to spend $70million per year per hull to fight AK-47s/RPGs. USCG got plenty good ship designs for this role. LCS can’t survive in littoral water of China or Russia or Iran or North Korea. And that’s the biggest problem, LCS are useless.
Freedom Class built by Fincantieri / Marionette will never be reliable with the absolutely unreliable Isotta Franchini diesel generators aboard. How the US navy allowed these well-known POS of iron onboard is worth discussion but you cant run a ship without power and that's been a major issue aboard. Keep our navies shipbuilding and prime movers all U.S. with no foreign subcontractors like Austal or Fincantieri, So stupid on so many levels.
The Austal company will happily sell you a version of the Independence class for about half the price the US Navy is paying (the extra military equipment isn’t cheap). They also build coastal fast ferries in the same configuration. The key word is “Coastal” / “Littoral”, these ships were never designed for deep water naval operations.
I was in the US Navy from September 2006 to January 2013 and I remember hearing about these ships and how they were so cool and they would be so amazing. Then silence for a long time. Interesting to find out more information.
0:51 That's so crazy they can just buggy around an entire ship like that. I mean, I know they move rockets and space shuttles at Kennedy Space Center but still; blows my mind. The amount of wheels you'd need to spread the tonnage across them is wild. Concrete is probably like 36" thick with extra reinforcement and footers.
The beautiful thing about the military industrial complex is you can spend billions on a broken product that no one asked for in the first place and still get the contract for its replacement.
Between the LCS boondoggle and the Zumwalt debacle, and being bent over by the Chair Force to accept a single engine fighter, I don’t know how the navy can look at itself in the mirror anymore.
@@theawanonymouscaller It’s not so much that single-engine is bad, but that they’ve been making and winning that argument for a long time, and now lost it.
@@죽은_시민의_사회 Right. Now, that last point was kind of tongue-in-cheek. There are a lot of good reasons for the F-35 to be single-engine and the navy is going to be better off with it than sticking to super hornets or seeking a unique aircraft. The number of F-35s being produced have brought the cost way down and will ensure maintenance costs don’t spiral out of control in the future.
I remember hearing from someone in Navy ship design at GD BIW that the LCS Independence ships were P.O.S. and they even had told the Navy this before one was built. They expected the aluminum issues as well as the Hull cracking issues.
What always baffled me about the LCSs was the fact that there are a lot of great corvette designs out there that could have been used as a template to make something useful!!! Off the top of my head you have the Israeli Saar VI and the Turkish one too (Sorry, I forgot what it's called!). Hell you could even go back to the Badr class corvettes that we (USA) built for the Saudis back in the 1980's!!! Update the electronics and some of the weapons and you'd have yourself a solid little ass-whipper for the Persian Gulf, the Caribbean, the Sea of Japan or wherever you don't need your heavy hitters!! You could even make several different types. Have some for ASW and coastal convoy escorts, some with a surface warfare or land attack bent and maybe even a few with an antiaircraft focus if you want mix it up. The military in general has a fetish for making one platform do 500 different things and they almost never work!! Not to mention if you make them well from the beginning that export market will come to you rather than you begging all of South America to take your crap like it's a crummy flea market!!!
Many thought those ships were a terrible idea when they were proposed. It was supposed to be like some multi tool only a ship. Refitting for missions sounds great except if you don't have time to do it. Like if you've just woke up in the beginning of a hot mess. They knew they wouldn't be all that even before they fell apart.
Watching this from the lunchroom of Fincantieri Marinette Marine. currently spending all day running electrical for LCS 31. They're pretty cool up close.
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I like you ending Song vibe😂❤
Kind of crazy how they didnt forsee the future corrosion that will happen to these vessels while they were being designed and worked on, like how didnt they know about aluminum being this unreliable
What the song you sang at the end of the video called?
7:23 I have an idea. We put one of those decoy ships behind every ship. Big brain.
Omg the ending was glorious haha xD i did not expect that, love it! lol
Huge amount of money going into lower quality construction. Sounds like a big corruption job with a lot of money being pocketed.
I bet like half the navy pays for is used by the companies to stuff the pockets of the politicians to keep the ships in service
Yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is all because of corruption.
Might be. However, it's not what you think 😄
The Navy has a directorate responsible for engineering quality - NAVSEA 05. They pointed out all the problems YEARS before delivery. When they were ignored, they refused to sign off on the designs. The ships were built despite their objections - with easily predictable results.
Yes, I'm sure there's corruption. A rational explanation could be also that they tried too many innovations at once, creating an expensive fleet of worthless ships that don't work, instead of the desired cheap and effective ships
"if i was richer i would bring back the fletcher" got me laughing so much more then i expected to
The fletcher :D
Im pretty sure the fletchers design has enough Space for some modern weapons. Replace the Aft turréts with a helicopter hangar and pad. Replace the torpedo tu es with 8 Harpoon launchers and VLS for ESSM and Sm2. And strengthen the tower for better sensors.
As a truck driver, I pulled aluminum tub trailers of bulk ag products. Cracking was a constant problem. I don’t understand why the Navy didn’t see that coming.
Aluminum cracks like crazy. You can't just weld it back together. I dont know how to explain it exactly but the metal doesnt work like carbon or stainless steal at all
They already know about this problems, during Falkland war some British ship sunk mostly because of uncontrollable fire. Aluminium melting point are weaker than steel
Because they didn't care. The Admirals that pushed those lemons on the Navy retired and now work for defense contractors. A high paying gig when they get out is their reward.
I served on an Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate. It had an aluminum cracking problem in the superstructure. The equipment room for the illumination radar was always getting new cracks.
Ticonderoga class cruisers also had problems with cracks. The issues were known, they just didn't care.
@@cucuawe465 hell, during WWII some japanese cruisers had aluminium superstructure (to cut displacement and costs) and US Navy observed from front seats (and directly contributed to) how shitty this turned out
If you'll notice the trimaran design of the hull, these ships are to some extent aerodynamically supported at speed. Given those performance requirements, aluminum is attractive because its strength to weight is superior to steel. That's why aircraft (and these LCS are in some sense ships with minor aircraft-like qualities) extensively use aluminium despite the horrendous maintenance issues - because the weight savings are worth it. Except of course in this case I'm guessing that decision drove the program's development costs way above what was reasonable
I left the navy in 91 but I've been shocked by the number of expensive ship procurement gaffs since then, and this video didn't even get into the Zumwalt Destroyer fiasco!
The Zumwalt project was literally just the government wanting to keep up the image of being the best and most advanced navy in the world by just shoving as much new shit onto a ship as possible. Even though they literally didn't have to do that as the U.S Navy, even if we dont build any new ships, will still be the best Navy in the world for the next like 30 years. It's just called being out of touch.
I'd much rather wasted money than go back to the 80s when you fuckers had lost your god damn marbles and shot at everything you could, dug up museum ships for spare parts and tried to cover up your tracks when you killed people in training accidents.
Army: just doing alright.
Airforce: Great as ever
Navy: Help
The Zumwalt I always saw as too mission specific or designed only for one mission and that was North Korea. With its extremely expensive ammo it could knock out tones of artillery pieces or fixed positions but after that, then what? I was hoping for the new upcoming frigate class but I hear that’s been delayed. We need a serious audit of the naval spending and shipyards
"But what they didn't anticipate was that the Independence would corrode away, and the Freedom would break down"
That's Definitely Not What You Think, isn't it?
yeah I was wondering too if the narrator was talking about the ships or the country!
@@WontSeeReplies How much do they pay you my good russian sir?
nice comment history 😂
@@Yikeo wtf, its Not JSU's fault, these incompetent losers blow our money on shit weapons system that are so short sightly designed, blow out the already rediculous budget with absolutly stupid maintanance costs.... and to lower said maintanance cost we spend even more to offset those cost, which cost even more... its like our biggest enemy is the retards withhin.....
It’s not what you think…it’s worse.
It's like a metaphor for the United States. Once a beacon of freedom and independence. Maybe we can patch it up and keep this money pit going for another hundred years. Like the B52 fleet.
Cars 2 predicted them being lemon ships, cause in the movie the LCSs are depicted working with the lemon or beater cars.
THERE is the comment!
When designing a new ship you either take a small safe incremental step or a large risky leap forward. If you take a leap sometimes it doesn't pay off. Shame they made so many of these before the design weaknesses were discovered/classified as "not fixable".
How could they not know the design weaknesses of aluminum? Every instance of aluminum used in ship building has resulted in severe complications and failures for over 70 years now. Metallurgically, it is temperamental and has a limited lifespan, that is why they need to retire airliners after so many pressurization cycles.
They already knew about all the weaknesses and pushed ahead anyways. This isn't a high risk high reward situation, because they already knew there was no reward other than shit boats that wouldn't be usable.
@@Joze1090 This was a classic case of ego getting in the way of success, and too many chefs in the kitchen. Designer collaboration headaches, bureaucratic intervention headaches. Shoot, the navy/congress was only supposed to pick one of the two ships and decided to go with a dozen of both. The entire industry knew what a disaster it would be from the get go. Disappointing.
@@Joze1090 they could have just not built any ships and saved billions of dollars.
Three different dud classes within a pretty small timeframe (including the financial abyss that is the Zumwalt class) seems like a really weird misstep.
The issues with the Zumwalt class made the LCS issues look minor
What issues with them? The Navy just changed their minds. It seems to be a pretty good ship actually.
@@TheBooban Exactly. Nobody seems to be taking about how the plans for the Zumwalts have changed from being a weird stealthy rail gun platform to a huge stealthy hypersonic missile platform. And even putting their capability aside, the lessons that the USN learnt from the Zumwalt program were and are invaluable.
The navy is trying to jump feet first into electric motor driven ships also with the new Constitution Class Frigates instead of making the all diesel Fast Spearhead Class USNS into a missile pea shooter. Bio Diesel is also a initiative in the Navy.
The issues with the Zumwalts weren't fundamental to the design, they're mostly to do with heinous cost-cutting and order-cutting which meant they didn't get the radar they were supposed to have and so few were ordered that their gun rounds lost anything resembling an economy of scale. Nothing as absurd as somehow forgetting that galvanic corrosion exists and so it's not ok to attach an aluminium box to a steel box.
@@CruelestChris The gun seems like a bad idea from the outset though. Missiles are longer range, more accurate, and more powerful than the gun, the gun was designed for shore bombardment which would require getting within enemy missile range meaning you have to either take out the enemy defenses first (either with missiles yourself or with aircraft, which also means dealing with most of the enemy air defenses and all after gaining air dominance) or it means getting tons of missile defenses around the Zumwalt. Not only do you need to be producing at high volume to get the economy of scale for the gun to break even vs missiles but you also need to have that much use for them as well, which means using the ships often in place of missiles and since you can use the same missiles on a variety of platforms but only use the gun and ammo on 1 ship class that means either a fleet of these or getting tons of use out of the ones you've got. Since the US doctrine tends to favor missiles over artillery in general that makes it really difficult to get that much use out of the comparatively niche gun when compared to the more flexible missiles. Since naval combat is often about who can hit who first that means range and accuracy are king and that makes it so missiles are more useful against other ships meaning the gun is best for land targets but the shorter range vs missiles limits its use.
I love the personality put into these videos while still managing to be heavily focused on delivering information in a mostly fair manner.
The worst part of this is the program was so badly mismanaged, and those in charge (typically a Rear Admiral or higher) have moved on without any repercussions. Sadly, this is typical of military procurement programs; when they go bad there's zero accountability for those managing the program.
The worst part of this is corporations still made billions out of providing a lemon. And got away with it. What’s to stop this happening again
Can confirm, being on one of these ships is one of the worst experiences a sailor can have I know plenty of sailors who were stationed on one of these and they are just as bad as the video says they are.
That's really sad. I'm in the French Navy. We were always impressed by the look of your ships. Sad they were flawed.
i mean they do look pretty awesome
@@fridaycaliforniaa236 it's only a select few platforms. The majority of our ship platforms are pretty awesome, although they are a lot of work.
I was on an LHD. Like I said, a lot of work, but functional when you have a good crew. Unlike the LCS where you can have a top tier crew and it will still need to be towed away because rare, and very important parts can go wrong with seemingly no reason.
@@Soniphex I was on SSN-706 in the early 90’s and my boat was in good shape. The Seawolf was badass, but too expensive. The Virginia Class seems very good quality and I have only heard good things about the program. Silent Service doing well!
@@Soniphex isn’t everything for the US navy nowadays flawed massively and vastly overpriced? Zumwalt, LCS and FORD. All with issues and a vast waste of money bar the Ford which may finally be operational. How these companies get away with providing such 💩 to the country, I will never know.
The first step in fixing the LCS project is to Stop Building them.
I cannot agree more. That money could have been spent on buying more Constellation frigates which we desperately need.
That's really sad. I'm in the French Navy. We were always impressed by the look of these ships. Sad they were flawed.
When you focus on the looks more than others.
It's why they cut the Zumwalt down too. The Zumwalt appears to be a good ship. But the Navy is not getting screwed again.
I liked the look of the Independence class. So futuristic, like they've come straight out of an episode of Gerry Anderson's 'Thunderbirds'.
You guys sure you don't want these ships? We'll sell them to you real cheap!
🤗
They are for sale 🙂
The issue that I have with this is that the politicians don't quite understand that any tech advance is going to have massive teething problems. What I dislike the most about our military's decision was to order a bunch of them before the kinks got worked out. Whatever happened to having just one of a "class" to act as a test platform?
How do you know you’ve made it in UA-cam when you have enough confidence to make a parody song about multibillion dollar ships.
He made the song? i look for it. but thats not CeeLo Green singing it.
@@mr.longtrail9960 Nothing gets past this guy.
That little song has me seriously wondering if making more Fletcher class destroyers wouldn't have been a better use of resources than the LCS program. One one hand, Fletchers are very outdated. On the other hand, they're seaworthy.
That song at the end was everything
They aren't totally useless, they could be used as target practice.
that would make them more useless
There so useless that japan,china and iran is making ships similar in role to the LCS...lets just hope that this kind of thinking on the LCS doesnt bite you back in the ass
Or artificial reefs?
Diving on shipwrecks is fun.
Or made into coke cans.
This video was much more tongue in cheek than any other NWYT video I've ever seen. I didn't realize you had decent pipes until the musical number at the end!
One of my favorite memories as a kid was being aboard a Freedom class during a naval parade. I was on the Civil Air Patrol and our squadron was granted access along with some other civilians to be on the deck. The sailors let us young airmen handle M4s and M2s and have lunch in the mess with them.
No Modern USN major program since the 90s has gone right. Every last one of them has been screwed up one way or another and the LCS is just another shining example of what happens when a people turn away from their roots. Abandons that which granted them success. And embrace essentially their own demise.
@@TheBelrick Virginia class are not bad.
@@TooTallTang They are a fraction of what a seawolf represents. But i get your point.
@@TooTallTang I think the Virginia really just represents a cost saving compromise of a design.
That may proof to be fatal in ww3
and much of its design dates back to the 90s
@@TheBelrick Seawolfs were too expensive anyway, virginas have more numbers while maintaining combat capabilities close to the seawolf.
0:57 WOW! 🤣🤣 "Oh good god, Lemon!" That looks like it has just inches of clearance!
The Freedom Class was a huge missed opportunity for the US, for a long time they've lagged behind when it comes to small, low tonnage, low cost, highly versatile surface combatants, which is ideally what the Freedom Class should have been. The ability to operate in littoral waters should have simply been the icing on the cake, not a hyperfocused primary mission of the vessel.
The lack of interoperability with the rest of the US Navy was it's death knell right from the get go. Lockheed offered upgrade paths for the vessels to provide more utility, but the writing was already on the wall for these little ships. The focus on keeping costs relatively low had meant that "off the shelf" vessels really had very little in the way of combat utility and the supposed "modularity" in practice wasn't as useful as it sounded on paper because fundamentally these were already underpowered vessels.
The Russians have a historical pedigree in building incredibly small vessels that can cover a lot of bases, but the key design tenet of these ships, and others in Europe and Asia, is that the vessels have a relatively fixed state from construction to retirement. A lot of sacrifices have to be made to cram as much utility as possible onto a small hull, if you're trying to leave room to "upgrade" and "modularize" after the fact it's both inefficient and incredibly expensive. Which is why we haven't really seen any major upgrades to the Freedom class so far, aside from adding some Hellfire missiles and very VERY limited Sea Strike capability which as far as I'm aware has only been actively installed on the Independence LCS class and not on the Freedom class.
Lockheed Martin's main upgrade path that they were trying to push in 2014 was to significantly lengthen newer vessels to accommodate larger weapons packages and increased AEGIS capabilities, but the lengthening of the vessels would have been expensive and impractical because the power plant and propulsion of the ship would have remained the same. Just goes to show that you can't easily engineer your way out of a design limitation AFTER the vessel has reached mass production.
Another irony of the vessel is that they spend a relatively large amount of internal volume on hangar capacity and amphibious capabilities. Which is fine, if you're a frigate with the space to handle it. But if you're already an undergunned and cramped corvette then the volume costs become increasingly problematic. Another reason Lockheed found it difficult to fix and add to these ships after the fact.
The USN has a strong focus with trying to provide at the minimum, helicopter utility and amphibious abilities to nearly every vessel. On the surface of things it makes sense, why not? But the internal volume requirements are incredibly problematic on smaller vessels, and this was just another one of the negatives that helped to kneecap what should have been an otherwise ruthlessly rugged and simple vessel.
Costs were relatively low on these vessels by USN standards, so there's that I guess, but fundamentally they weren't "the little ship that could" and their upgrade paths are both costly and impractical, there's a good chance we see most of the Freedom Class retired by the early 2030s.
And this was all said without addressing the myriad of problems that have plagued the class since it first launched.
- A note on the video, great content as per usual, I like how you're focusing on the "after the fact" solutions and path forward rather than just ranting about the ships, was an interesting watch :)
The US military especially navy is gripped by hitleritis super weapons galore
As for russia you are right they have the know how on small ships but their bigger ones are absolutely atrocious hell just because of their corruption their smaller ships are bunked to
A lot of the discussion around the LCS is focused on the Freedom class. Does the Independence class have the same problems to the same degree? Or does it still have some utility as a platform?
@@jasemo388 Slightly more utility in its weapons package, but the modularity feature was left entirely at the wayside. In practice it occurred rarely and moving forwards all Independence class vessels essentially have fixed roles.
The Independence class is much more versatile but it too has been marred by mechanical issues, and without the ability to rapidly "up arm" itself in line with the original use case, it's hard to see where it fits in, a great example of this is that the majority of the LCS class vessels are currently homeported. They rarely leave port or American waters, which on the one hand is fine to an extent, but on the other, you're burning $360M, plus operational costs on top to have a glorified coastguard cutter.
I'm sure in the future they'll make fantastic replacement vessels for the Coast Guard, they have a large suite of capabilities and particularly for the Independence class, a very large internal volume for near shore and aviation operations.
But fundamentally both of these vessels were born from a requirement to develop "littoral combat ships" which by definition relegated them from finding roles within the more generalized blue navy that the US operates, sure they're cheap, but they're also largely redundant and their operational costs are non trivial, which is why they're most often found berthed.
@@starwarscentral Thanks for the insight. I must admit, I am quite partial to the innovative hull design of the Independences. And while it does seem mechanical issues will be inevitable on any new design, the two unsolvable failings appear to be their role concept was an answer in search of a question as well as the obsession with "modularity". Particularly, while the swapping of mission modules does seem cool in theory, it does seem the type of solution that works if you have more roles to fill than you have ships. With a dozen ships, it does seem smarter to let each ship specialise with its own permanent package rather than constantly switching back and forth.
Interesting fact: If you ever watched Cars 2 movie, Tony Trihull, the ships as part of "Lemons" are also Independence class LCS
The navy may want to forget this ship but I surely won't forget the song at the end!
Whoever were singing from 10:26 to the end (of the video) have great voices
Take a guess who it was …
‘cause it’s Not What You Think!
@@NotWhatYouThink "The all too handsome Narrator, mayhaps?" is what I'd say but, the answer is probably Not What I Think it is 🤔
It's exactly what you think!
... especially the handsome part 😅
@@NotWhatYouThink 😂😂😁
@@NotWhatYouThink at first I didn’t notice (just thought it was some music you found at something) then as I realized the words and stuff I noticed it was custom and was like “wait… that sounds like the guy!!!! I THINK IT IS!!!” 😂
US Navy was so into bigger ships they forgot how to make smaller ships.
Seems the big ones also have big problems.
Navy’s big ship also have big problems.
@@royhuang9715 US shipyards have a pretty good track record with big ships, the Arleigh-Burke Class, San Antonio Class, America Class, and Gerald R. Ford Class are high quality ships. The only failed large ship project that actually got to the construction phase was the Zumwalt Class.
"When life gives you Lemons, build a fleet" And then don't.
It’s a shame they so poorly made because they look really nice, especially the Independance Class
Nice meal for Chinese ASM 🙂
@@CyberSystemOverload They'll be retired so more Destroyers that have much more advanced technology than their chinese counterparts can be built
You got my sub with that ending song. Perfect.
That song at the end …..was marvellous
I love the Seinfeld references to explain the ship's "problem" 🤣🤣🤣
this content just gets better and better
Loved the ending song, very eloquent and on point. Subbed
Seeing a Greek frigate in this video made me afraid of Greece buying these lemons
This channel never ceases to amaze me
I'm going to need a full version of that song in the end.
At least the ships are there. In Malaysia, our LCSs are so stealthy litterally no one could see it, not even the Navy. 😏
If it were not for the structural issues and I was rich I’d probably have bought one as a yacht because they look great
In what way?! Ships should have curves, not facets.
@@Hammerandhearth maybe your the only one here that doesn't like this cool Sexy ships
@@Hammerandhearth I am a person that strongly prefers ships with harsh edges over curves.
The structural problems are just with the Independence class.
@@paulschab8152 well great, now I just need to be unfathomably wealthy
When you mentioned that the Spruance destroyer Paul F Foster is used as a test ship, I remember the last test ship the Navy had, the USS Norton Sound (AVM-1). I believe the last system she tested was the Mk-41 VLS. We should have built new frigates.
Scrapping cost a lot of money . That's why the navy sold the Kitty Hawk for one dollar .
She should have been a museum ship
When life gives you Lemons you make a fleet out of them.
Gotta love the humor on this channel 😂
that song was incredible, thank you for that
0:28 whenever they lay these huge ships in the water like that, I just always think its gonna sink like a rock, roll over or the hull breaks or something. If you watch the laying of some superyachts its always by like 5 different cranes and very gently etc
They have to withstand extremes so it's better to test it on its first contact with water than to ignore it
Maybe this is why they have cracks, actually 😂
Launching a seagoing ship is rough like that because it can easily afford to be. The hull and major equipment is complete, but they still need massive amounts of fitting out, and nothing easy to install or delicate (weapons, sensors, accomodations, galley equipment, etc) is in place yet.
For a superyacht, they're mostly complete and outfitted before being launched, they aren't designed to handle heavy seas like a seagoing ship, and the customer is not likely to appreciate that kind of treatment in the first place.
@@wyattroncin941 It depends on the superyacht. There are plenty that are designed to handle ocean crossings, in any weather bar hurricanes. Like Nordhavn 120 and 148, Bering Yacht 120, 125 and 145. And of course many many sailing yachts and superyachts.
@@fridaycaliforniaa236
No, that's because of corrosion.
The most surprising thing in this video for me was learning that Narrator can sing and actually quite well.
That song at the end was magnificent. And I too, would bring back the Fletcher
Alright, that song at the end really got me. A Fletcher wouldn't stand a chance in modern combat, but it'd be pretty fun to see them floating around with modern armaments anyways.
I tested all the pipe on multiple lcs Independence ships. They were cool, but we all were skeptical of the structure. No part of it could even take a rifle round.
But it ran like a giant jet ski with missile launchers lol it was still pretty freaking sweet lol
I love the song at the end, absolutely gold
The ending song was just perfection
The Literal Corruption Ship... Nice quote there: "(...) that the independence would corrode away and the Freedom would break down".
How good these ships could of been if they actually worked
Well. It's really easy to show in a CGI animation a flying carrier at mach 25 shooting laser... It's quite funny how nowdays, wet dream of maniacs are shown as innovation while it doesn't work and never will because law of nature exist, even if you have trillions to fight them...
I wouldn't doubt that they would be pretty good but definitely not the best
pretty much teethless yachts that are supposed to go on long distance patrols but can't carry enough supplies or carry enough equipment to do all their missions
Roughly as good as your grammar. It's "could have".
These things couldn't have worked. They'd need a full redesign. They wouldn't look the same, they wouldn't function the same. They would be considerably different ships.
@@milanmaletic3997 he speaks gooderer grammar than you
Oh my God that song was amazing. As someone who's been following the LCS program the entire time it breaks my heart seeing what it ended up becoming and while the thought of them becoming reefs is on the one hand heartbreaking on the other hand I feel like the ships deserve to be put down like an old dog.
In the late 1930s we designed and produced the Fletcher-class destroyers, the Essex-class carriers, the Butler-class destroyer escorts and many other successful classes using slide rules and drafting tables. What the hell happened?
Those ships were steel, this is a pop can
These are shallow water ships being used for things they were never specified for.
The closest WW2 equivalent would be the PT boats that were all scrapped after five years in service.
Corruption happened. They newer wanted to build a powerful ship. They wanted to make something as expensive as possible to steal as much tax money as possible.
Technology. You didn't need integrated electronics and all these modern systems. That isn't to say the modern military relies too much on technology. It's just that making a new ship or jet or tank back then was much simpler.
@@armorhide406 The WW2 era ships were stuffed full of the highest technology of the time. They needed to be big to hold it all.
Big however does have advantages at sea.
It is however worth bearing in mind that a modern 100,000ton container ship has a smaller crew than a WW2 era 1,000 ton coaster - and automation is part of that (the Titanic had ten times as many crew in just the engine room than the total crew on a modern container ship)).
I've never seen a clitoral combat ship in action - but I'd definitely be interested in watching.
it is full of seamen...
Loved the song at the end! you have a great singing voice!
The ending is a great touch 😂
The ones being decommed are the early ones, that have "unfixable" issues. The one being retained have the 'lessons learned' included to make them usable. They are basically corvettes or large patrol craft, not meant to be warfighters, like the DDGs.
The issues weren’t “un-fixable”.
It just that fixing them required them to be slipped in the same building slip for rebuild. So they decided to build new ones as a priority rather than fix the first four in each class right now.
Once the build program is finished the ships are supposed to be reslipped and rebuilt to the newer ships standards with the faulty transmissions being cut out of the hull and replacing and thicker hull materials where fractures occurred.
Fun fact: I made the last Naval takeoff and landing on the IX-514 before it was stricken from the US Naval registry in 2011.
I thought that the Independence-class LCS looked like it would be awesome as a private yacht. Strip out all the military parts. Reinforce all the weak points, that may not be as weak when the ship weighs a lot less. And make it all like a comfortable mansion/resort. If I had a budget for a mega-yacht, I'd try to get one. But since I don't, it doesn't matter.
ABSOLUTLY loved the ending song! great job!
Regarding the ship can be used as other platforms. The Royal Saudi Naval Forces acquired 4-freedom class based frigates that’ll have an AEGIS combat system and 8 mk41VLS launchers along with ASW capabilities. But they’re gonna be built from scratch
They are too expensive to run to be used for mundane purposes.
The Song was pure Comedy-gold 😂😂👍🏼
Did you know that it's possible to renew the extended warranty on your Aluminum Littoral Navy Ship?
"Mom, I want a destroyer"
"We already have a destroyer"
*The destroyer at home* 10:27
I love the song at the end!
The singing was exactly what these were missing. More please!
Aluminum hulls will 100% of the time crack as aluminum does not have a fatigue limit. I'm not going to go into the depth of what that is, look it up. As strange as it might sound it's a bad thing. The Navy is long experienced this with the Ticonderoga, OHP, AB class ships with aluminum superstructures. The problem was that the cracked developed in places that no provisions had really been made for access to repair.
Aluminum is a problem when ever it gets welded. There's always risk that the weld will be weaker and cracks produced.
ROFL epic song - most unexpected. I too would bring back the Fletcher.
For the F1 fans out there; your ending made you seem like the military world's version of Sim Dane! Great video, as always, mate.
The production quality of that song at the end was surprisingly good-
The new Freedom-class ships (I.E. USS Minneapolis-St Paul) have fixed almost all the problems of the early production ships. We're still building them and I don't think we'll stop.
Problem is almost everyone get fixated on the first lead ships of each new class. And never look of the later fixed ships of the class. Or look at history as almost just about every new class of ship for the U.S. Navy have been a shitshow to end all shitshows. Before they been fixed and the fixes incorporated into the later ships of the class.
So what? Are you going to send one of those ships close to China and hope it will survive there?
Dumbass. Even LCS fixed all its mechanical problems, it’s still a piece of shit. It’s weapon system could only fight terrorists with AK-47s or Pirates with RPGs. You do not need to spend $70million per year per hull to fight AK-47s/RPGs. USCG got plenty good ship designs for this role.
LCS can’t survive in littoral water of China or Russia or Iran or North Korea. And that’s the biggest problem, LCS are useless.
Freedom Class built by Fincantieri / Marionette will never be reliable with the absolutely unreliable Isotta Franchini diesel generators aboard. How the US navy allowed these well-known POS of iron onboard is worth discussion but you cant run a ship without power and that's been a major issue aboard. Keep our navies shipbuilding and prime movers all U.S. with no foreign subcontractors like Austal or Fincantieri, So stupid on so many levels.
I loved your singing at the end. Lovely touch.
would they release the ships as a civilian ship? and I like the song at the end of the video it have some groove to it
For a ship that large? Its a possibility, except they said it's high maintenance. Which in some cases probably not.
The Austal company will happily sell you a version of the Independence class for about half the price the US Navy is paying (the extra military equipment isn’t cheap). They also build coastal fast ferries in the same configuration.
The key word is “Coastal” / “Littoral”, these ships were never designed for deep water naval operations.
Imagine having a dedicated testbed ship, then making your untested production ship your testbed.
I was in the US Navy from September 2006 to January 2013 and I remember hearing about these ships and how they were so cool and they would be so amazing. Then silence for a long time. Interesting to find out more information.
I love your content man! So informative on topics I dont even think about,.
0:51 That's so crazy they can just buggy around an entire ship like that. I mean, I know they move rockets and space shuttles at Kennedy Space Center but still; blows my mind. The amount of wheels you'd need to spread the tonnage across them is wild. Concrete is probably like 36" thick with extra reinforcement and footers.
The beautiful thing about the military industrial complex is you can spend billions on a broken product that no one asked for in the first place and still get the contract for its replacement.
Between the LCS boondoggle and the Zumwalt debacle, and being bent over by the Chair Force to accept a single engine fighter, I don’t know how the navy can look at itself in the mirror anymore.
Ford class has not been stellar either. Project just too big to fail. So throw money at it to fix it.
By single engine fighter, do you mean the F35?
The Navy used to operate the F-8 Crusader, a single-engined fighter, just fine.
@@theawanonymouscaller It’s not so much that single-engine is bad, but that they’ve been making and winning that argument for a long time, and now lost it.
@@죽은_시민의_사회 Right. Now, that last point was kind of tongue-in-cheek. There are a lot of good reasons for the F-35 to be single-engine and the navy is going to be better off with it than sticking to super hornets or seeking a unique aircraft.
The number of F-35s being produced have brought the cost way down and will ensure maintenance costs don’t spiral out of control in the future.
I remember hearing from someone in Navy ship design at GD BIW that the LCS Independence ships were P.O.S. and they even had told the Navy this before one was built. They expected the aluminum issues as well as the Hull cracking issues.
I'm pleasantly surprised by your singing voice.
"If I was richer, I'd bring back the fletcher" is probably the best lyrics ever written
Love the song at the end, genuinely great singing. It really wasn't what you think
I was absolutely not expecting the song at the end but it was glorious
What always baffled me about the LCSs was the fact that there are a lot of great corvette designs out there that could have been used as a template to make something useful!!! Off the top of my head you have the Israeli Saar VI and the Turkish one too (Sorry, I forgot what it's called!). Hell you could even go back to the Badr class corvettes that we (USA) built for the Saudis back in the 1980's!!! Update the electronics and some of the weapons and you'd have yourself a solid little ass-whipper for the Persian Gulf, the Caribbean, the Sea of Japan or wherever you don't need your heavy hitters!! You could even make several different types. Have some for ASW and coastal convoy escorts, some with a surface warfare or land attack bent and maybe even a few with an antiaircraft focus if you want mix it up. The military in general has a fetish for making one platform do 500 different things and they almost never work!! Not to mention if you make them well from the beginning that export market will come to you rather than you begging all of South America to take your crap like it's a crummy flea market!!!
the Turkish one called MİLGEM Ada (Island) Class
@@CidavuKK ,thank you very much!! It seems like a pretty solid design!
Informative and even hilarious, especially at the end! Well done!😂😂😂
"Freedom break down... A lot" somehow this phrase is poetic.... this describes the democracy situation
Love this channel ❤ keep it up 😊
Just rename them to Clitoral combat ships. It will be 100 percent effective
Will this improve their stealth?
BREAKING: USN CONFIRMS IT CANNOT FIND ITS FLEET OF CLITORAL COMBAT SHIPS
dude😅😅😅😅😅
That parody in the end 😂👌
Many thought those ships were a terrible idea when they were proposed. It was supposed to be like some multi tool only a ship. Refitting for missions sounds great except if you don't have time to do it. Like if you've just woke up in the beginning of a hot mess. They knew they wouldn't be all that even before they fell apart.
Had this video in the background while i work and had to stop and pay attention because of all the puns! Good job!
10:27 Best part.
I can hear a shipbuilder with a lot of money going "whoopsie our bad"🤑😂
"So that is how Freedom dies - due to budget reassignment."
*Those ships were a littoral waste.*
That ending song tho...
If only we have an independent music vid lol
According to the Navy website, only a fifth of the fleet is out of port at any one time anyhow.
Watching this from the lunchroom of Fincantieri Marinette Marine. currently spending all day running electrical for LCS 31. They're pretty cool up close.