‘We need a Battle Force 2025 before we can talk about Battle Force 2045’
WASHINGTON, D.C.— Today, House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Vice Chair Elaine Luria pressed members of the Naval Sea Systems Command on the maintenance delays that are significantly impacting operational availability. Her questions came during a (HASC) Readiness Subcommittee hearing on Ship and Submarine Maintenance where she stressed that investments in public and private shipyards, and that workforce, will increase the effective size of the fleet.
Vice Chair Luria also questioned the rationale for decommissioning ships that are less than ten years old, like the Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) or older platforms with service life remaining such as the Ticonderoga class cruisers, drawing on her own experience as Executive Officer of USS ANZIO (CG 68). She asked Vice Admiral William J. Galinas to provide the Readiness Subcommittee with the amount of funds required to retain the 11 cruisers and the first four LCS that the Navy proposes to decommission in its recent “Battle Force 2045” plan.
Paul Plante says
Those so-called “littoral combat ships” are and were nothing more than a stupid idea and a waste of taxpayer money, and Congresswoman Luria sounds quite out of touch with the reality the rest of us reside in if she doesn’t know that.
Another gummint BOONDOGGLE as we see by going to the website of the U.S. Naval Institute, an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write in order to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security, titled “Navy Calls Freedom LCS Propulsion Problem Class-Wide Defect, Won’t Take New Ships Until Fixed” by Sam LaGrone on January 19, 2021, to wit:
The Navy has determined a flaw in the Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ship’s combining gear, a complicated gearing mechanism that links the engines of the ship, is an engineering defect that shipbuilder Lockheed Martin now has to fix, USNI News has learned.
Over the last year, the Navy has linked propulsion failures in USS Detroit (LCS-7) and USS Little Rock (LCS-9) to a latent engineering defect in the bearings system that links the ship’s Rolls Royce MT30 gas turbines and the ship’s Colt-Pielstick diesel engines, which power the main drive shaft to achieve the ship’s 40-knot top speed.
“We had in March of last year a combining gear failure on Little Rock LCS-9.”
“That combining gear failure started with the high-speed clutch,” a senior Navy official told USNI News.
Over a period of time, the bearings wear faster than anticipated and result in a failure of the combining gear.
The problem was independent of the software glitch that resulted in the damage of the propulsion plant of USS Milwaukee (LCS-5) in 2015 or operator error that led to the damage of a different combing in gear on LCS USS Fort Worth (LCS-3).
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And the the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), a nonpartisan independent watchdog that investigates and exposes waste, corruption, abuse of power, and when the government fails to serve the public or silences those who report wrongdoing had a similar story entitled “The Littoral Combat Ship and the Folly of Concurrency” by Dan Grazier on July 17, 2020, where we learned as follows:
Navy leaders announced in February 2020 that they want to retire the first four Littoral Combat Ships, which aren’t even teenagers, a move that signals an admission of the failure of the program and the waste of billions of taxpayer dollars.
Much has been written (including by us) about the overall folly of the Littoral Combat Ship program; the cancellation of the program proves the larger folly of concurrency, showing why the Pentagon should not purchase large numbers of weapons before the design is complete or its effectiveness is proven through testing.
While the Navy leaders are right in their decision to decommission the four ships and to cancel the program, the taxpayers will be left with $2.4 billion worth of Littoral Combat Ship concurrency orphans.
At the program’s inception, Navy leaders projected each ship would cost $220 million.
To no one’s surprise, the costs more than doubled so that each of these ships cost taxpayers approximately $600 million to build.
Under the Navy’s current plans, the four Littoral Combat Ships will take their place in the mothball fleet on March 31, 2021.
The Navy’s budgeteers decided the costs to retrofit these ships into something resembling a combat-ready configuration were too high.
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday said the upgrades would cost $2 billion over five years.
The Littoral Combat Ship program’s demise should be a surprise to no one, because of the numerous conceptual flaws.
Navy leaders and their industry partners intended for the ships to be modular with the ability to be configured in different ways.
This would have made them a versatile class of ships capable of performing several critical combat and maritime support roles.
Its most important planned role was to hunt enemy mines.
The Navy’s minesweeping capability has eroded significantly in recent years, despite the fact that sea mines remain one of the most serious threats the surface fleet faces.
The Navy currently has only 11 Avenger-class minesweeping ships and 29 MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopters to protect a fleet of 300 commissioned warships and more than 250 support vessels.
The failure of the Littoral Combat Ship program means that these already limited and aging assets will have to be stretched even further to protect the growing fleet.
Navy leaders failed to select a single design despite the original plan to do so, and instead purchased two largely incompatible variants.
The Navy abandoned the concept of making the ships reconfigurable when it couldn’t get the mission modules to work properly despite sinking $7.6 billion into the project.
The Littoral Combat Ship program serves as a cautionary tale for the insidious Pentagon practice of concurrency: the overlap between weapon development and production.
Just as consumers should test drive a car before buying it, the Pentagon should sail a fully developed ship before buying a bunch of them.
Concurrency poses significant risks to the taxpayers.
Weapons purchased before the development process is completed often require extensive modifications at great expense to incorporate design changes devised after testing.
It remains to be seen if the Navy will actually be allowed to carry out its plans to mothball the ships in question.
House appropriators have questioned the Navy’s rationale for the retirements, calling the plan “shortsighted.”
Lawmakers take issue with the Navy’s penchant for buying new ships rather than taking care of and upgrading those already in the fleet.
As a general rule, it is right to ask such questions.
In the case of the failed Littoral Combat Ship program, however, the more prudent course of action would be to scrap the ineffective ships in favor of simpler designs based on realistic operating principles and proven technology.
Phil B says
One way to “increase” efficiency is to perhaps stop using the “green” fuel that was mandated by the Obama admin. As far as the cost involved, Have Pelosi give up her fully stocked full sized Govt. jet!