LCS Fixes Discussed in the Press

Interesting article on fixes and updates to the Littoral Combat Ships by Chris Cavas at Defense News. A few comments.

First, not specifically mentioned in the article, the Fort Worth had the same crack issue in the hull that Freedom did - in the same place. The presence of a similar crack on the Fort Worth likely contributed to them identifying the problem as a workmanship issue rather than a design issue.

Second, and also not specifically mentioned in the article, when discussing extra space in the stern of future Lockheed Martin versions of LCS, the reason why the ship is expected to have more space is because the ships have had their length extended by something like 4m as part of the redesign addressing the ballast tanks issue.

One thing that is interesting about Fort Smith... if they are expecting builders trials in September and acceptance trials in November, that doesn't leave much time to get the ship out of the Welland Canal before it closes for the winter in late December.

I'm not sure what to make of the lack of information from GD or Austal on the fixes for Independence. My sense is they are not as far along identifying issues on that version, thus aren't ready to talk solutions. In the larger scope of things, the Austal version has had more issues that have resulted in less time at sea so far, and that ship hasn't been at sea as long as Freedom.

Even with what we are learning about the feedback loop, it is still too early to tell if the R&D funding model for the Littoral Combat Ships is a successful model for rapidly incorporating changes into a shipbuilding program. Obviously there appears to be a working lessons learned model in operation, but I think one should wait to see if the solutions built from those lessons learned into later classes actually correct problems identified before praising this rapid development model for new ship classes.