Fundamentally the LCS would have been vastly better had they gone with 32 knots as the speed requirement and let the damm things be at least 500 tons heavier if not 1000. And not shrunk the crew down so much as to cause problems
RamscoopRaider
Donor
Given the program trajectory to that point, that probably would have happened if they hadn't cut a year or two off the analysis phase of the program
LCS started as a ~600 ton 60 knot FAC with a <20 man crew and a laundry list of flaws, including but not limited to limitation to Sea State 5 before the engine intakes get swamped, endurance of under 100 hours and range of under 1000 nautical miles, an ended up as something merely overoptimistic
Honestly I'm half astonished post the prototypes having issues the USN didn't scrap the program then and there and go with a frigate program instead.
Or at the very least alter the production designs a lot.
Or at the very least alter the production designs a lot.
It is a bit weird they even made prototypes given how the USN usually does stuff.
And probably was a sign of potential problems from the word go
And probably was a sign of potential problems from the word go
The thing is the USN has largely worked out the kinks with the LCS now and has the modules available for them that they were meant to have when introduced. But they were hugely over budget and the whole process of designing these things has been pretty much your classic example of the IMC at work and with political support to get these things built.
The USN should have just gone for a replacement for the OHP class which they are doing now, although its going to be a FAR more advanced ship, without going into Sea Pyramid levels of tech. The Greeks have bought 4 of the LCS in a new arms deal with the US recently which is quite an arms deal by the looks of it.
They're buying 40 F-35A, two batallions of Bradleys, four old USCG cutters of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island-class_patrol_boat class and four Freedom-class LCS's
The LCS suffered from kitchen sink syndrome/project bloat and tried to do too much on too small a platform, but with monied interests behind it, and jobs on the line, it was basically too big to fail, so they had to pour money into it.
The USN should have just gone for a replacement for the OHP class which they are doing now, although its going to be a FAR more advanced ship, without going into Sea Pyramid levels of tech. The Greeks have bought 4 of the LCS in a new arms deal with the US recently which is quite an arms deal by the looks of it.
They're buying 40 F-35A, two batallions of Bradleys, four old USCG cutters of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island-class_patrol_boat class and four Freedom-class LCS's
The LCS suffered from kitchen sink syndrome/project bloat and tried to do too much on too small a platform, but with monied interests behind it, and jobs on the line, it was basically too big to fail, so they had to pour money into it.
Ah, the Greeks aren't buying LCSs, they were put forward in the bids for the new warships but the Greeks went with the French Frigate instead.
As of today 4 are supposed to be transferred to Greece for free as Excess Defence Articles if the deals will pass congress which may very well do. Talk has aired for Greece building up to 5 FFG-62 or a modified FREMM-IT with American subsystems if joining Constellation program outright is not possible. But this is a long term prospect and in the meantime the 9 Kortenaers in Greece service are running to 45+ years of age. Three will be replaced by FDI. Leaves 6 more and the 4 Meko 200s will be coming behind the oldest is already 32 years old.
So the LCS offered as EDA today likely are going to replace the new corvettes program that was underway since 2020 and right away will be replacing older Kortenaers till proper ships come along (Constellation and EPC? We'll see). Now not certain I'm really happy with this given all the development problems of the program and the generally anemic weaponry. Will likely need 100-200 million per ship at a guess to re-equip even if they come for free.
I didn't realise that we had got to the "give them away" stage (now praying some idiot in the Irish DOD doesn't get any "cunning plans") , fair enough, my apologies. But yeah I could see them needing a fair bit of extra money to be improved, though they aren't going to be cheap to run.
An LCS or two would take up most of the Irish defense budget to run I would think. Surely the give would put a stop to it.
Edit: looked it up and if USN estimates are to be believed Ireland could run ten of the things if the entire defense budget went towards them.
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I'm not surprised about the give away part. But as said I'm not really happy to see them in Greek colors. OTOH it's not as the world is awash in used ships for a long due last minute replacement of the Kortenaers. Oh well. Actions consequences.
When you look at the history of choices the DOD have made over the last hundred years, put nothing past them and always assume the worst.
Speaking of current events and how they relate to Naval designs. I wonder if the current situation in the red sea area have made the USN start to regret only having 32 VLS cells on at least the batch 1 constellations due to said real world experience
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Well at 300t and 24 million tops increase in cost switching to 48 seems to me a bargain...
Likely would cause some delay as the stability calculations are redone though.
I'm almost certain the batch 2 and likely beyond (because if the USN actually just buys 20 instead of a lot more than that I'll eat my metaphorical hat) constellations will have those extra cells. Why they didn't have it as part of the design requirement from the word go beats me. Same with having that small of a main gun. 57mm is way way too small for a ship of that size.
Because by the time you've put a bigger gun, more cells, more sensors your cheap frigate balloons in cost and size and you have to start cutting order numbers. The Constellation's are not meant to be independent surface combatants, that's the Burke's, they meant to be ASW frigates with limited other capabilities which are cheap and quick to get into the fleet to fill the gap created by the failure of the LCS program and to bulk out strike groups.
Requirement creep has destroyed so many defence programs in the last few decades and until now the Constellation's class has been impressively disciplined, here's hoping they ignore any desires to tinker and instead churn them out it large numbers as is.