
The Navy's ‘fast, agile’ warship has been stuck in ice since Christmas Eve - smacktoward
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2018/01/22/the-navy-built-a-fast-agile-warship-for-440m-its-been-stuck-in-ice-since-christmas-eve/
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Someone1234
It is outside the mission scope of the littoral class of ship. They're not ice
breakers, and frankly would be terrible ice breakers due to their tonnage.

They're designed to sit close off of someone's coastline and "discourage"
small boats (e.g. piracy, terrorism), detect submarines, and destroy mines.
And definitely fits a niche some of the US's larger ships struggle to fulfil.

They're who you'd send in to deal with Somali Pirates for one example. Just
have it patrol up and down the coast.

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dtparr
Yeah, I'm not sure why this is big news. The headline reads to me like "Man
buys McLaren P1 for $1M. Doesn't take it out of garage after winter storm
covers roads in sheets of ice".

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dsfyu404ed
"Navy is not exited to be hard on it's $440m taxpayer funded new toy by using
it as an icebreaker. Millions of taxpayers are outraged."

(sarcasm should be obvious)

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jfoutz
Taxpayers wonder why the initial voyage went somewhere where the ship could be
stuck for 3 months. Sure, they can train in port and that's probably a good
move for an all new ship and crew, but losing even the option to go out to sea
seems, well, odd.

i'm not a sailor, maybe this is the best way to go.

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biggc
The ship was built in Buffalo. There's only one way out and Montreal had an
unusually long cold snap for that time of year.

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jfoutz
Curse my poor geography recollection! Thanks.

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ChuckMcM
So clearly this is the build up for the dystopian post apocalyptic novel where
our protagonist finds a completely functional and "brand new" warship frozen
solid in the ice. They use primitive tools to defrost it and using it in a
daring and surprising raid, defeat the evil warlord who has enslaved the
former population of New York :-)

Of course it isn't really all the much different than people in Boston who
leave the 'good car' in the garage all winter because of the risk of damage
associated with operating it in icy conditions.

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bargl
I just re-evaluated some of the times I've read a book and thought "No way
would there be a _________ lying around and abandoned by the government. I bet
they're too cheap to do that."

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dogma1138
Warships don’t operate in frozen water regardless of how much they cost you
have ice breakers for that and even those can only break fairly thin and
cracked ice. it’s not worth the risk of getting the ship into the high seas
and it’s not like the US is short on combat vessels.

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650REDHAIR
Not short on combat vessels and it's not ready anyway. The crew isn't up to
speed or certified yet.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to rag on the USN right now. This isn't
really newsworthy at all.

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dogma1138
Has any LCS completed it’s shakedown and is in full service? I though even the
first (freedom and independence?) 2 were still in trials.

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Aloha
This would be news if the headline read "Icebreaker stuck in Ice since
Christmas Eve"

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dogma1138
Ice breakers often get stuck in ice more so than any other ship they can clear
only very thin surface ice basically they are used to clear the ice which is
too thin for supply ships to offload onto so they clear a path towards the
thicker ice shelf or land.

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vidanay
If by "very thin" you mean up to 2.5 meters thick, then yeah.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-
powered_icebreaker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker)

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dogma1138
That’s thin, ice shelfs are 100m to over 1KM in thickness, sea ice can be over
3m thick, or at less used to be more than 3.5m thick on average these days
it’s below 1.5m.

Ice breakers used to be limited to periods where the sea ice would be thin
enough to break these days they pretty much go all year around but they still
break only relatively thin sea ice and can’t do shit to an ice shelf.

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megaman22
Whose bright idea was it to sail it down the St. Lawrence Seaway in December?

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pivo
Maybe someone who'd rather enjoy the excellent Montreal cuisine instead of
what can be had in Buffalo?

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freehunter
Poutine and wings are both pure magic. I'd buy a $440m boat just to make sure
I could get between Buffalo and Montreal to have the best of both worlds.

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TeMPOraL
Given the name (Little Rock), it smells of nominative determinism :).

