
The Navy basically admitted that the littoral combat ship is a failure - georgecmu
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-navy-littoral-combat-ship-problems-2018-4
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jellicle
These are supposed to be small, cheap ships. Now they're being criticized for
not doing everything. That's... odd.

US military in general goes through cycles where one vehicle is supposed to do
everything (that way we can save money, just build one type of vehicle that
can go anywhere, survive anything, do anything!) and then when that results in
an ungainly, extremely expensive vehicle, they switch to multiple specialized
vehicles (that way we can save money, just make each vehicle only do what is
needed for a specific role and cut out the unnecessary bits!). Then when that
results in vehicles specialized for role A that fail in role B, they switch
back to the one-vehicle-does-everything plan.

Apparently we're on a "one vehicle do everything" upswing right now.

The parallels to software development are left as an exercise to the reader.

~~~
maxerickson
It wouldn't be all that surprising if they managed to make them just the wrong
size.

(too big to really be cheap and too small to really do anything)

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Gravityloss
These business articles are always so vague. I learned very little. Why is it
bad? It has bad radar? Why is a new ship going to be better? Can't you just
install a better radar on these ships?

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DoofusOfDeath
I got a tour on one of the first two LCS ships a while back. It was pretty
apparent that it wasn't fit for purpose.

One glaring example was that its hull could be Swiss-cheesed by a mere 50
caliber machine gun.

Another bad sign was that their proposed solution for dealing with small
incoming boats was to drive the ship in a manner that swamped the enemy with
wakes.

I understand the need to let R&D take risks, but I think LCS made it too far
off the drawing board.

~~~
jellicle
When was the last time a hostile .50 cal round struck a US Navy ship (any)?

Vietnam? _shrug_

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
The Narco Cartels will surely be terrified of any ship they can sink with an
M2.

~~~
18pfsmt
Narcos will not attack the US Navy because it is not about a single battle.
They would not risk retaliation from the US military.

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mikhailfranco
Compare with this new Russian patrol vessel:

[http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19796/russias-new-
littl...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19796/russias-new-little-
missile-packing-patrol-ship-is-a-pretty-genius-design)

 _...packed into a vessel displacing roughly 1,700 tons. In comparison, the
Freedom class of Littoral Combat Ships, although faster, don 't pack anywhere
near this must punch and they have over double the displacement. They likely
cost far more per hull too—basically half a billion dollars each._

