{"id":187350,"date":"2013-03-30T21:52:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-31T02:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/03\/30\/another-triumph-of-defense-procurement\/"},"modified":"2013-03-30T21:52:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-31T02:52:00","slug":"another-triumph-of-defense-procurement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/03\/30\/another-triumph-of-defense-procurement\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Triumph of Defense Procurement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Litoral Combat Ship may <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2013-03-28\/ships-costing-u-s-37-billion-lack-firepower-navy-told.html\">lack sufficient firepower to do its job<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The U.S. Navy\u2019s troubled Littoral Combat Ship, a vessel intended to be small and speedy for use in shallow waters close to shore, lacks the firepower it needs, a top U.S. navy commander said in a classified memo.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Vice Admiral Tom Copeman, the commander of naval surface forces, called on the Navy to consider a ship with more offensive capability after the first 24 vessels are built, according to a Navy official who asked not to be identified discussing the confidential document. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Producing a ship that can accommodate larger guns or Harpoon anti-ship missiles \u201cwould be a major redesign,\u201d Polmar said in an interview. \u201cIt will be real work to put major weapons on the ship.\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Replacing the 57mm popgun with something larger might not even possible for the Independence class trimaran, because of the extremely narrow forward central hull.<\/p>\n<p>The ship is a failure.<\/p>\n<p>The modular nature of the ship does not work, because you have to return the ship to a US base, or you need to fly a&nbsp; team out to a foreign port in order to swap out the modules, and the modular nature of the ship results in a hull that is much larger for a set of capabilities.<\/p>\n<p>The savings in crewing has proved to be illusory, the current crew levels result in an overworked and ineffective crew, so they are adding berths.<\/p>\n<p>The primary offensive system, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/NLOS-LS\">NLOS-LS<\/a>, was canceled, and replaced with a system which has about 80% less range and a smaller warhead.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s ignoring the (probably fixable) facts that there are issues with hull cracks, corrosion, and leaking.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s dead, Jim.<\/p>\n<p>The entire concept was flawed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Litoral Combat Ship may lack sufficient firepower to do its job: The U.S. Navy\u2019s troubled Littoral Combat Ship, a vessel intended to be small and speedy for use in shallow waters close to shore, lacks the firepower it needs, a top U.S. navy commander said in a classified memo.Vice Admiral Tom Copeman, the commander &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1008,1161,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense-procurement","category-naval","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187350"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}