With the passage of enough time and the peace that comes from surrender and resignation, most critics of the LCS program have accepted our collective fate and are focused on what class of ship we can replace her with.
The 2014 selection of LCS to be the FF(G) was a baked-in-the-cake sham that we all just accepted as a predictable next chapter to the Ford Edsel of post-WWII American ship program management.
Once things get settled, the duct tape and bailing wire that is holding together the credibility of LCS gives away and we have another moment to bask in our collective shame.
If you have not already, please read in full Megan Eckstein’s update on the latest in the LCS to FF soap opera;
The Navy has slowed its frigate procurement timeline, looking at awarding a detail design and construction contract in Fiscal Year 2020 to allow more time to understand what it needs the ship to do and how it might affordably meet those requirements.
Yes, in 2/3 the time it took to fight WWII, we still are playing programmatic MacBeth.
…the surface warfare community is looking at what it needs, and will then engage industry to see what they can provide, and only then will they look at cost.
Second, the mission set as somewhat changed since 2014. Whereas the LCS and the frigate had been envisioned for primarily independent operations near the shore, the Navy now believes the LCS and frigate could be used by fleet commanders to support the carrier strike group out at sea.
‘Ya think? Only something we’ve known for, what is it, a decade? No, longer than a decade. It is something LCS critics have argued since the first illogical, personality driven CONOPS was put out there.
Boxall said in 2014 the Navy discounted foreign frigate designs due to none of them exactly meeting its requirements, and the need to quickly begin work on a frigate that would quell LCS detractors. Today, Boxall said there still doesn’t appear to be any other small surface combatant design, foreign or domestic, that exactly meets its needs, but the Navy is willing to hear more about these designs and understand how expensive it would be to modify them for frigate requirements.
“We have less data on the foreign designs than we do on most of the other designs in the U.S., but having said that, what we learned from the Small Surface Combatant Task Force was that we made some assumptions then that weren’t exactly right,” he said.
AKA Plan SALAMANDER circa last decade. Feel free to leave me an open tab for me at Kelly’s Irish Times.
I also feel the need to say this; “requirements” are not Revealed Truths that sprout from the head of Neptune or are delivered on the wings of cherubs. We own them. We make them. We can change them. We can have them wrong. We can refine them and make them “good” as opposed to dithering about hoping someone will tell us we’re perfect.
During the lost LCS wars of last decade, one thing the anti-transformationalists warned us about was that there is a requirement for a multi-purpose frigate between 4,000 and 7,000 tons. It doesn’t matter if we make it an official “requirement” or not. The tactical and operational needs are clear and we just can’t assume our allies will spit one out whenever we ask for one. Without frigates with a USS in their name, we will force DDG-51s to perform their duties, or we will shoe-horn LCS in to doing it.
Well;
Boxall said the frigate is meant to take some strain off the destroyer force, which will be shrinking in the coming years. The longer it takes to field a frigate, he said, the more strain will remain on the destroyers and the LCSs as they begin deploying around the world.
So. Another month, another opportunity to look at the mess we put ourselves in with LCS.
Yes, it must be brought out on a regular basis. No, we cannot stop beating it as it is not dead. The ideas and institutional habits that spawned it are still with is.
LCS must be regularly gibbetted in order to remind future leaders how not to do things.
One final note, we need to start speaking clearly with each other. If you don’t have a thick skin, then get in a different line of work. If you want a friend, then get a dog.
We need to get to the point where we will criticize poorly done work, and do so in clear language. This is no way a military should work;
First, though he said he did not sit on the 2014 SSC TF and therefore didn’t want to criticize its work, he told lawmakers “the Small Surface Combatant Task Force, the environment when they created that task force was, I’ll call it reactive in nature. We were responding to criticisms and to get to a more capable, survivable ship as quickly as possible. And there was also fiscal guidance that was given to them at the time.”
