Why Retire a 2-Year Old Warship?

The US Navy has slated a 2-year old ship to be decommissioned. In fact, a completed class of active Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) are being decommissioned, all 9 of them! The issues with LCS have been know for some time. But why would the navy continue building them? It's #NotWhatYouThink #NWYT #longs

Music:
U Gotta Admit - Got Happy
Misguided Path - Bonnie Grace
Sweet Talk (Instrumental Version) - Tyra Chantey
Antidote X - Van Sandano
Impulse - Hampus Naeselius
The Quest - Philip Ayers
Aurora Borealis - Chill Cole
Hemisphere - Ooyy

Footage:
US Department of Defense

Note: "The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement."

0:00 Intro
0:37 The Inception of LCS
1:46 Propulsion System
3:02 Modular Design
3:59 Surface Warfare Mission Package
4:30 Mine Countermeasure Package
5:41 Anti-Submarine Package
6:28 What Went Wrong?
7:30 Two Important Questions

[bruced]

I wrote a research paper on the military's cost overruns. The causes included "padding the budget", designing unrealistic equipment and systems, whining to congress that modifications had to be made for extra $, little (if any) oversight or accountability, and the hiring of former government officials and congressmen by almost all the defense contractors. Looks like things haven't wrote this paper while I was in college, almost 50 years ago.

[WTH]

Military Procurement Policy 101:
- Promise the moon
- Budget a blimp
- Add another moon
- Add another moon
- Budget a gold plated blimp
- Build several units
- See what doesn't work
- Fund for a small planet
- Subtract a moon
- Revise a moon
- Fund for a large planet
- See what still doesn't work
- Scrap project
- Promise a moon...

[ethrilpalpatine]

The costs were far greater to repair those already in service. What you may not have heard is that the ships of both classes are seeing stress cracks in addition to the engine issues. I believe the new hulls were strengthened and the engines replaced.

[Mark-lvub]

The Freedom class littoral combat ships are the most survivable ships in the world...they never leave the shipyard.

[theexam]

I say that attempting innovation at this level is not so much a bad thing. However, it seems laughable and questionable how several LCSs were built first instead of building only 1 or 2 then conduct extensive sea trials and drills using those 2 ships to get a glimpse of the ship class's problems and possible improvements.

[brianjordan-]

One problem is the lack of competition in the US defense industry. There are too few defense companies, and there is no real reason for them to innovate, or produce quality systems because the government has nowhere else to buy defense systems.

[theaverageamerican]

As kinda mentioned by others, the aluminum hulls on these ships are a major issue as well. Aluminum is far less forgiving than steel and they've had a lot of embrittlement and cracking issues.

[paulnormandin]

As a Coast Guard veteran and and a former 378 sailor (USCG Secretary Class) I am astounded to hear the information in this video regarding the propulsion issues. The Secretary Class pioneered this type of propulsion in the US military and they were laid down starting in the sixties (the British built the first CODOG - Combined Diesel or Gas - powered ships a few years before this). My ship had two diesel and two gas turbines coupled together just as explained in this video... and the last of them were just recently decommissioned and sold to foreign allies. So, we built something 50 plus years ago, which the Navy adopted and successfully built for decades after that, but in the 2000s we can't reproduce? Somebodies ass needs to get fired at Lockheed. Apart from the jet final drive replacing shaft drive the concepts were almost the same.

[jihadpromax]

>build expensive warship
>decommission it in 2 years
>refuse to elaborate
>leave

[NortheastSurvival]

My grandfather God rest his soul he was a sailor on the USS Missouri in world war ii. He would talk a lot of the stories of things that he and some of his sailor friends would do on the ship and import he didn't talk much about combat and when he did he would always get that look in his eye like he's looking through you and his voice would get soft and kind of distant he did not like discussing combat at all and I never asked him a single thing about it. He was terrified of thunderstorms that he didn't know were approaching. I've seen that man hit the floor more than once. One time in particular though we did not know that there was a thunderstorm there it was barely raining outside and right outside the kitchen window which was only maybe seven or eight feet away from the kitchen table was a Maple tree. Pretty big one. Lightning hit it and when lightning hit that tree two of the three lights in the kitchen got knocked right out the bulbs blue or something happened but it got a little darker in there instantly and the sound of the report from the lightning was deafening and the house shook violently. And this all happened in like just a second or two. His reaction though.. even as a little kid it broke my heart to see what that did to him. He Dove on the floor slid a few feet hit the wall in the fetal position screaming. And then a few seconds later he was just crying his eyes out shaking. It was fucking awful to see.

Now this was a man that was on a vessel that would have been damn hard to think. You know how much armor there was on those ships? Quite a bit. They could take multiple hits I mean they could take a fucking pounding and of course men would die that's what happens when shit explodes on ships obviously but the ship itself would float for a while most of those older world war II era ships it took a lot to render them combat ineffective or to sink them.
Now granted technology changes and back then you had to actually see the enemy before you could take your shot. Obviously now that's not the case. You can be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles away fire rocket off fire missile and that's that you never see the result or the explosion. The defensive systems on modern day ships are phenomenal. But still no ship is untouchable. And when you take this much aluminum and you start manufacturing the entire damn vessel out of it.. the structure compared to steel is not nearly as strong. You've got corrosion you've got cracking just under its own goddamn load. And God have mercy if a cruise missile hits a superstructure that's made of aluminum on a vessel or the hull made of aluminum. One hit will probably render it combat ineffective or sink it.

My grandfather would talk about what he thought the future of naval vessels would be like. And for the most part he was correct. Overpriced ships that were not thought out well enough before they were actually constructed. Shit looks great on paper shit looks great in computer programs. But in the real world it doesn't always work out so good. And I believe some of these vessels are a prime example of that. And our tax dollars you know even though our military has the absolute highest budget globally.. well over a trillion dollars a year I think.. the money still is not.. it's not a bottomless money pit.
I don't really get why the hell they would have to go with a completely new design a completely new weapon system completely different weapons they're never really taking anything from the past that worked and incorporating it with modern technology and I don't fucking understand why that is. Maybe the ships they're too big they're too heavy they're too slow.. well engineer some solutions then dammit! If you can engineer billions and billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars of pissed away money you could do that.

[LeonAust]

Those Oliver Hazard Perry class ships in their day, were very basic but well designed ships for their price.👍

[chillwill]

If the American public knew the true extent of waste in the Department of Defense, it's likely they would rise up in the streets for sure. It is beyond absurd.

[adamjabs]

From a Perry class frigate veteran of Desert Storm, I have always felt that they should have just modernized and upgraded the Perry class, as at the time, they were really good at ASW, all they really needed was a better surface warfare capability and they would have been fine. Now, it looks like the Navy figured out that what they had was still the way to go, so they are going to build new frigates of the Constellation class to do what they could have done 20 years ago with ships they already

[christopherg]

Not a american taxpayer, but:
A apollogy and explanation why it took them _9 ships_ and _12 years_ to realize the unrepairable design flaws would propably be appreciated.
At least with the Zumwalt, they figured the issues in 2-3 ships.

[kc]

Innovation will always come with mistakes and failures. That's how we learn and improve. Maybe, however, commission 1-3 ships as fully functional prototypes and run them through their paces. Learn and modify the ships until we feel they satisfy expectations. Then commission a fleet. We could even use the prototypes to play a devious "enemy" in war training exercises after the testing program has finished.

[ieuanhunt]

Innovative ship designs have the lifespan of a mayfly. HMS Dreadnought was obsolete almost as soon as she left dry dock.

[khoipham]

4:25 I really like the idea of a "Ludicrous Speed" button ngl. I hope they keep it in the 6 new ships and also upcoming ships that use the same propulsion system.

[defenstrator]

As a Canadian I can only shake my head that even this level of inefficiency is vastly superior to our own naval procurement process.

[darylcheshire]

I suppose that the physical ship might be the cheapest component compared to recurrant ongoing costs and design and logistics. So it might be cheaper to scrap a problematic ship.
To be optimistic, newer ships have better tech and valuable knowledge of ship and weapons deployment is gained.

[MrGoMC]

I find this to be a heart-warming story. Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon were paid regardless of this tremendous failure. And they feed so many families in the US...