If I had to hazard a guess, this is an offering on the altar of the DDG-1000 program. Canceling the LCS after two ships it's going to be hard to cancel the remaining program, even though the destroyers will each wind up costing within pennies of a CVN. Quite a poor bargain considering what they offer in offensive power.
The LCS had severe shortcomings in range and other performance factors. Considering the operators were at a loss for it's employment, canceling is merciful.
The USN is very short of low-end ships like frigates. As a consequence,
Burkes are out hunting pirates instead of escorting carriers.
As I said before, it seems the USN cannot buy a whaleboat for under a billion dollars. The LCS' budget was $460,000,000 per vessel for the fifth and sixth in production orders. That's about 1/2 to 2/3 of a
Burke class destroyer for a ship with one 5.7cm gun, point defense missiles and a 900 nautical mile range. In comparison, the USN could buy European frigates for about US$ 90 million in a quantity buy.
US shipbuilding is broken. Best to let it die a merciful death and start a new, modern one based on the principles used in foreign practice.
FREMM
I wonder what the problem is with LCS-2. It has been on the ways for two years now. There must be engineering problems.
If I had to hazard a guess, this is an offering on the altar of the DDG-1000 program. Canceling the LCS after two ships it's going to be hard to cancel the remaining program, even though the destroyers will each wind up costing within pennies of a CVN. Quite a poor bargain considering what they offer in offensive power.
The LCS had severe shortcomings in range and other performance factors. Considering the operators were at a loss for it's employment, canceling is merciful.
The USN is very short of low-end ships like frigates. As a consequence, [i]Burke[/i]s are out hunting pirates instead of escorting carriers.
As I said before, it seems the USN cannot buy a whaleboat for under a billion dollars. The LCS' budget was $460,000,000 per vessel for the fifth and sixth in production orders. That's about 1/2 to 2/3 of a [i]Burke[/i] class destroyer for a ship with one 5.7cm gun, point defense missiles and a 900 nautical mile range. In comparison, the USN could buy European frigates for about US$ 90 million in a quantity buy.
US shipbuilding is broken. Best to let it die a merciful death and start a new, modern one based on the principles used in foreign practice.
FREMM
[img]http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/images/bam-line.gif[/img]
I wonder what the problem is with LCS-2. It has been on the ways for two years now. There must be engineering problems.