Alternative Title: Navy Grants Salamander Lifetime Beer Tab at Army-Navy Club’s Daiquiri Lounge.

From the start, and we are talking about over a decade ago, surface, aviation, and submarine offices with operational Fleet experience, not theory or PPT hype, warned that both crew manning and mission module concepts as proposed for LCS were problematic at best, and non-executable at worst. They were silenced at best, career adjusted at worst.

It took a decade, billions of dollars of opportunity cost, and untold numbers of careers and reputations to get here, but it looks like our Navy is going to take the right steps to salvaging as much utility as possible from this – how can I put it in a polite non-homebloggy way – “white elephant” of a program.

Let’s take some time to review our friend David Larter’s latest;

The review ordered by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson will likely include recommendations to shift to a Blue and Gold crew structure, a set-up used on ballistic missile and guided missile submarines where two crews swap custody of a single hull to maximize deployed time. The Navy has been moving away from rotational crew models other than the Blue and Gold out of concern that maintenance issues may slip through the cracks for crews serving only temporarily aboard any ship.

The review will also recommend changing some of the signature modularity of the program — the concept that ships at sea could readily swap out sensors and weapons packages to meet emergent missions.

Instead of three mission modules being available to switch out on deployment, the Navy is looking at moving to a “one ship, one mission” approach, where each LCS will be designated as surface, anti-submarine or mine countermeasures ships with the ability to switch out if needed.

As warned, and it will do neither well, but it will do better than nothing – which by design, is the only other option previous decisions have left us with.

“The goal of the review and specifically the crew proposals made by SURFOR is increased stability, simplicity, and ownership,” the official said. “An updated crewing plan, as well as adding more sailors to the core crew is the first step.”

Admiral Vince Lombardi approves. When nothing is going right, focus on the fundamentals first. This isn’t rocket science. Well, close to rocket science – but nonetheless, not rocket science.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus testified in 2015 that he opposed all cuts to shipbuilding because it is harder to build a ship that any other thing the Navy could cut to save money.

“Because cuts to our shipbuilding programs are the least reversible in their impact on our fundamental mission of providing presence and in their consequences to the industrial base and to our economy, I am committed, to the maximum extent possible, to preserve ship construction and to seek reductions in every other area first, should further budget reductions such as sequestration become reality,” Mabus said in written testimony.

As in all things related to shipbuilding, there is the political and economic to consider. Though in the case of LCS the end result displacing water is sub-optimal, SECNAV is exactly correct on this aspect of it all. The money must flow, good or bad, it must flow.

The next step remains clear; we need a replacement for LCS at least on paper, using the better EuroFrigates in production as the benchmark for the right ship between 3,500 and 5,500 tons displacement. We need it now more than later so we can have them in the Fleet FMC in their PMAs as LCS-1 is ready for the breakers at the end of the Terrible 20s.

This time, no pinkie promises, no Flash Gordon, no Tiffany, no transformationalism. That mindset failed us so far this century. As we Southerners are like to say; let’s not get stuck on stupid.

If we learn our lessons well, there is great opportunity here. With the process and mindset as outlined in Larter’s article holds, indications look solid going forward.