The U.S. Navy intends to “retire” the Jackson and the Montgomery, littoral combat ships that are less than a decade old.
Sigh.
Well, reading the news made me think about the first column I published at NDAI. Six months ago, when the website debuted, I explained the disaster that is the Pentagon’s “Little Crappy Ships” to my early adopters. But a lot of folks have subscribed since then, so I thought a rerun was in order. Enjoy!
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For some of us, mustering up sympathy for a federal bureaucrat is difficult. Very, very difficult.
But consider the feelings of Paul Francis, when he learned that the Coronado “was decommissioned in San Diego” earlier this month, “less than nine years after the pricey ship entered active service.”
Nearly six years ago, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) auditor told Congress that the littoral combat ship (LCS) program was in big trouble. Francis, in testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, said that the Navy had “deviated from traditional shipbuilding acquisition in hopes of rapidly delivering ships to the fleet,” but the “consequences of this approach” were abysmal — “costs to construct the ships have more than doubled from initial expectations, with promised levels of capability unfulfilled and deliveries significantly delayed.”
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