Among the examples of more expensive hardware providing less capability is the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). Retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. John Sayen addresses the matter with specifics in a new piece at Time's Batteland blog. John is a friend, colleague and a co-author in the anthology America's Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress.
John's LCS piece is below:
The Navy's New Class of Warships: Big Bucks, Little Bang
EXTRACTS:
The Navy's new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is not only staggeringly overpriced and chronically unreliable but – even if it were to work perfectly – cannot match the combat power of similar sized foreign warships costing only a fraction as much. Let's take a deep dive and try to figure out why.
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However the LCS itself may be more vulnerable to these speedboats than the ships it is protecting from them. This is because the ballooning LCS construction costs caused the Navy to try to save money by ordering that future ships be built to commercial standards.
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The surface-warfare chief went on to say that the Navy had yet to settle key LCS issues regarding missions, tactics and the design features to support them. In a sane world, such issues would have been ironed out before any ships were built.
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Taxpayers – and Navy personnel, past and present – may better appreciate the scope of the LCS disaster when reminded that current plans call for these pseudo-warships to comprise more than a third of the Navy's surface combatants by 2020.
See Also:
2013 Robert Steele: Reflections on Inspectors General
2011 Peace from Above: Future of Intelligence & Air Power
2009 Perhaps We Should Have Shouted: A Twenty-Year Retrospective
2008 U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century
2001 Threats, Strategy, and Force Structure: An Alternative Paradigm for National Security
1991 MCG Intelligence Support for Expeditionary Planners
1990 Expeditionary Environment Analytic Model
1989 Expeditionary Environment Briefing
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