Sure, he was talking about fuel consumption – but I found this nugget coming out of NAVSEA’s senior leadership refreshing.
… I don’t think that there was a fully informed decision process arrived at in the development of LCS …
You should read the whole thing for the correct context of the quote above by Rear Admiral Eccles, Deputy Commander for ship design, integration and engineering at NAVSEA. It is a good start. Perhaps we can discuss survivability in the littoral next. Maybe.
Also, as for Galrahn’s question from yesterday,
So why is it the US Navy surface strike group lacks the capability to establish forward deployed sea surface capabilities to dominate the sea against the 21st century fishing profession of Somalia?
Part of the answer lies with the fact that numbers matter. When you have a limited budget, you can only have a certain number of hulls. If you make the decision to create a Tiffany Navy, then you have to accept the second and third order effects from that decision. If you also follow the mirage of the Cooperative Maritime Partnership (nee 1,000 Ship Navy) as well – then do not be shocked when the National Command Authority wants something done by the Navy we have to hobble together an inadequate excuse …. err …. answer.