LCS not ready for prime-time?

[Cybrludite]

Linkage

These words have haunted the Navy ever since Gilmore’s office uttered them in December 2011: “LCS is not expected to be survivable in a hostile combat environment.” At a Navy expo in April 2012, Secretary Ray Mabus insisted that LCS is “a warship and it is fully capable of going into combat situations,” while heralding the LCS’ 2013 deployment to Singapore.

I'm certain that Ted Briggs, Robert Tilburn, and William John Dundas might have had some choice words for Secretary Mabus, had they not rejoined their shipmates by this point.

[Netpackrat]

Um... That thing looks like either a big tour boat, or a small cruise ship with some extra crap stuck on it.

[AlaskaTRX]

Which one? There are two different designs being manufactured... single-hull and tri-hull. IIRC, I don't think either is particularly stellar.

[Steamforger]

ZOMG. A Navy ship is not expected to be survivable? Someone better go tell the Oiler Navy.

Let's see. 7,000,000 gallons of Jet and DFM. 600 tons of munitions. 600lb steam plant = slower than Christmas. If you can kill it first, the picket ships with teh Aegis and the aircraft from the carrier all go away, even if just long enough to refuel.

Unsurvivable is nothing new.

[Jered]

Looks like it's going to be a jack of all trades and suck at all trades.

WTF is with the military and making all purpose crap that doesn't work?

See Also: F-35

[Yogimus]

America's modern military is running off of gear older than I am. The only real advancements have been in munitions.

See: C130, A10, B52, F15/16...

Everything else that gets bought basically does the workload of these systems, but at a higher price, with more problems.

[randy]

To some extent, it depends on how you define

hostile combat environment

Anti-Piracy operations off Somalia?

NEO Operations?

Mixing it up with the Republican Guards in the Persian Gulf?

An 80's style Soviet Surface Action Group?

Is it intended to act alone or as part of a task force with supporting destroyers/aircraft/Amphib assault ships?

Every time I hear a statement like that I think of how some congresscritters were screaming in the 80's about how the Bradley was worthless because it could not survive a direct hit from a tank's main gun. The fact that it was not designed to, and was not employed that way, and that something with treads and a turret is not necessarily a tank, was lost on them, or ignored in their rush for camera time and political points.

Maybe the LCS is a piece of crap. But I need more than what's in that story and the word of a pentagon numbers cruncher to take that as a fact.

[Rod]

Randy, I also remember that crap. I think it was Playboy (and I did read the articles) that had a list of military screwups. One was that the M1 Abrams, a multi million dollar tank, could be taken out by a missile costing a few hundred thousand dollars. What the story neglected to mention was that the Devil was in the details. You had to get close enough, and at the right angle, for that missile to work effectively; in the meantime, the tank and it's brothers and the infantry with them were doing their best to kill the missileman.

[SoupOrMan]

So... the Littoral Combat Ship, which is apparently designed for specific operations like pirate-removal and COIN-like missions, can't go toe-to-toe with Kirov-class cruisers? Scrap the damn thing! It can't take a dozen Silkworm missiles and sail away with only a few smudges! Cats and dogs living together! Mass hysteria!

Good Lord, have these people never heard of destroyer escorts like the one my grandfather served on (the USS Levy)? They've probably never heard of tank destroyers, either.

[Mike OTDP]

LCS is a piece of crap. It's a classic case of someone having a defensible idea - a small, shallow-draft combatant for fighting in the littorals - and everybody and his kid brother slathering on requirements. Until you got a ship the size and cost of an FFG, but with far less fighting power.