Australia to sell arms...

I guess the USN forgot to tell the Australians what LCS really stands for...Little Crappy Ship.

The USN is still handing out contracts for these little crappy ships to keep the shipyards, and trained personnel, in Alabama and Wisconsin busy, while the USN hurries it's search for, hopefully, a real warship, the FFG(X).

 

How hard is it to design a good warship? It’s not rocket science...

 

This is the Austal design LCS, the Independence class:



The Navy ordered two prototypes, this one and the Freedom, with the intention of selecting one for series production, but in the interest of spreading taxpayer dollars to as many congressional districts as possible, they're building equal numbers of both. The Freedom class have odd hull numbers, the Independence even. And as has been noted, the whole program is now being cut well short of planned total of 52 ships.

The trimaran is an intriguing concept, but it was unrealistic to even think that the entire program might have been committed to a basically experimental design. A better scheme might have been to buy a couple of hulls, give them the same weapons and electronic outfit* as the Freedom, run them hard and see how they work out in service.

* needless to say, the most expensive items are different in the two classes, even though they are intended to perform the same missions

 

Agreed! It makes one want to grab these people by the throat and say "Just.....build.....a ship!"