I may be out on a limb but I'd venture a guess that there is some solid connection between LCS/lack of performance/promises never kept/lightly gunned/over-worked crew/lack of morale and the current recruiting crisis. Hard to take pride in a losing, badly mismanaged program. Especially one with bad optics. At least the Zumwalt class started out looking like a warship.
That whole decade was full of people being visited by the good idea fairy. The Army's FCS (Future Combat System) was a disaster that was eventually canceled after $32 billion were spent. It turns out that land mines don't care if your basically unarmored light vehicles have accomplished information dominance or not. On the bright side, the Army didn't spend more tens of billions over the next decade and half producing death trap combat vehicles. It did produce BFT, which is very cool as long as you can count on ViaSat not being blown up or people using your satcom traffic to RDF units.
I’m was an Army military tourist, so pardon my ignorance. Wasn’t there a movie set during WWII that touched on similar littoral themes? It was called something like “They Were Expendable”.
I recall those long-ago 1990s. I was "there" -- as much as any one person can be anywhere in our Big Navy. I recall discussing this newfangled LCS thingy w NAVSEA reps. Two of the major, driving ideas (from the Top!, no less, betraying the ignorant strategic culture of the era) -- were... USA "won the Cold War" and nobody anywhere could/would ever mess with us again, so we could afford to think small and even minimal. Meanwhile, people are expensive, so eliminate as many warm bodies as possible, down to the mess cranks cuz everybody can boil a bag of nutritious gruel, yes?
.
All this while USNavy was BRAC-ing away 200 yrs of institutional knowledge of how to design and build ships. Willy-nilly, govt closed facilities and laid off countless skillsets necessary to think-design-engineer-oversee difficult naval tasks. Oh, and what remained of the contractor base, post-Last-Supper, assured its govt "partners" that absolutely, no-kidding, private industry could pick up every bit of slack and deliver the goods.
The Navy is not a business, nor should we try to run it like a business. It does not make a profit, there are no dividends to be paid to shareholders. There is no business plan for war at sea.
The privatization mania resulted in our offloading warship design and production to corporations who are not necessarily loyal to the United States. We should never have divested the Navy of the tasks of shipbuilding; and the LCS is a product of that bad, policy decision.
If we had Naval Shipyards, folks could play with the ideas the LCS was trying to implement, and could call "bullshit," when presented with vaporware. But, we don't and we can't. Unlike decades past, when folks who designed and built actual warships had a seat at the table, nobody in the USN has the necessary experience. Our Navy will not improve until we return to building warships ourselves.
LCS was a bean counter’s dream. When the bean counter became the boss it became his own personal nightmare. So the President with zero military knowledge or experience promoted him to oversee a land war in Asia. Guess how that turned out? You can’t make this stuff up.
I think we see that this ships natural place is on patrol and the fact that the anti surface and mcm gear is on seperate modules is pretty dumb. We know the Iranians toss mines out of the small boats they are shooting from.
We can hide in Army cammo, spout corporate platitudes, congratulate each other for being Really Smart Guys"...
While hiding from the press which wants to probe our repeated failures, get webcams removed to hide our lack of seamanship skills, tell Congress to f*k off, choose which Commander in Chief we will be loyal to....
All because, since we are so smart, we are secure in our superior knowledge that the NatSec system is the most perfect it can be and beyond rebuke.
Corporate America can be just as dishonest as government. However, there is only so long you can keep a failing business propped up. Government by virtue of its ability to tax, borrow and print money can go on for decades. Anyone who challenges the official narrative is dismissed as a conspiracy theorist or audited by the IRS or gets a visit from the FBI. Magic bullet? WMD in Iraq? Etc.
I wish I could say you were wrong.
"which gives me an idea for another post..."
i.e. give them to Ukraine like we gave Omaha's to the Soviet Union?
I may be out on a limb but I'd venture a guess that there is some solid connection between LCS/lack of performance/promises never kept/lightly gunned/over-worked crew/lack of morale and the current recruiting crisis. Hard to take pride in a losing, badly mismanaged program. Especially one with bad optics. At least the Zumwalt class started out looking like a warship.
That whole decade was full of people being visited by the good idea fairy. The Army's FCS (Future Combat System) was a disaster that was eventually canceled after $32 billion were spent. It turns out that land mines don't care if your basically unarmored light vehicles have accomplished information dominance or not. On the bright side, the Army didn't spend more tens of billions over the next decade and half producing death trap combat vehicles. It did produce BFT, which is very cool as long as you can count on ViaSat not being blown up or people using your satcom traffic to RDF units.
I’m was an Army military tourist, so pardon my ignorance. Wasn’t there a movie set during WWII that touched on similar littoral themes? It was called something like “They Were Expendable”.
I recall those long-ago 1990s. I was "there" -- as much as any one person can be anywhere in our Big Navy. I recall discussing this newfangled LCS thingy w NAVSEA reps. Two of the major, driving ideas (from the Top!, no less, betraying the ignorant strategic culture of the era) -- were... USA "won the Cold War" and nobody anywhere could/would ever mess with us again, so we could afford to think small and even minimal. Meanwhile, people are expensive, so eliminate as many warm bodies as possible, down to the mess cranks cuz everybody can boil a bag of nutritious gruel, yes?
.
All this while USNavy was BRAC-ing away 200 yrs of institutional knowledge of how to design and build ships. Willy-nilly, govt closed facilities and laid off countless skillsets necessary to think-design-engineer-oversee difficult naval tasks. Oh, and what remained of the contractor base, post-Last-Supper, assured its govt "partners" that absolutely, no-kidding, private industry could pick up every bit of slack and deliver the goods.
The Navy is not a business, nor should we try to run it like a business. It does not make a profit, there are no dividends to be paid to shareholders. There is no business plan for war at sea.
The privatization mania resulted in our offloading warship design and production to corporations who are not necessarily loyal to the United States. We should never have divested the Navy of the tasks of shipbuilding; and the LCS is a product of that bad, policy decision.
If we had Naval Shipyards, folks could play with the ideas the LCS was trying to implement, and could call "bullshit," when presented with vaporware. But, we don't and we can't. Unlike decades past, when folks who designed and built actual warships had a seat at the table, nobody in the USN has the necessary experience. Our Navy will not improve until we return to building warships ourselves.
Omaha class were fine when they were built, though pretty much 4th rate by WW II. LCS is 4th rate now.
I was part of a SCN briefing in 1993 that accurately forecast the current ship building fandango.
Oh my. That wake… I didn't see it at first, but once you mentioned it… I'm still aghast at the LCS story. "ASW: none"?!?!
LCS was a bean counter’s dream. When the bean counter became the boss it became his own personal nightmare. So the President with zero military knowledge or experience promoted him to oversee a land war in Asia. Guess how that turned out? You can’t make this stuff up.
I think we see that this ships natural place is on patrol and the fact that the anti surface and mcm gear is on seperate modules is pretty dumb. We know the Iranians toss mines out of the small boats they are shooting from.
"Let’s be honest with each other."
Or...
We can hide in Army cammo, spout corporate platitudes, congratulate each other for being Really Smart Guys"...
While hiding from the press which wants to probe our repeated failures, get webcams removed to hide our lack of seamanship skills, tell Congress to f*k off, choose which Commander in Chief we will be loyal to....
All because, since we are so smart, we are secure in our superior knowledge that the NatSec system is the most perfect it can be and beyond rebuke.
Friends don’t let friends LCS.
We are now in danger of losing the Frigates to the good idea fairies.
Corporate America can be just as dishonest as government. However, there is only so long you can keep a failing business propped up. Government by virtue of its ability to tax, borrow and print money can go on for decades. Anyone who challenges the official narrative is dismissed as a conspiracy theorist or audited by the IRS or gets a visit from the FBI. Magic bullet? WMD in Iraq? Etc.