LCS designations blurred in recent announcements

[unhappycamper]

Number confusion
Are next LCSs 3 and 4, or 5 and 6?


LCS designations blurred in recent announcements
By Christopher P. Cavas - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Mar 17, 2009 10:30:21 EDT

A seemingly innocuous Navy decision to reuse the hull numbers of two canceled ships violates a service General Order and may have more serious implications.

Linking a single hull number with separate piles of money could set the stage for, at best, a great deal of confusion, and, at worst, something even more insidious, sheltering costs in different accounts and perhaps hiding the true cost of a program.

“It’s going to cause endless confusion and potentially undeserved recriminations against the Navy,” said naval analyst A.D. Baker III, a retired Navy intelligence specialist and author of numerous reference books on Navy ships. “This could have been avoided by using the next numbers that haven’t been used.”

In most navies, ship numbers are interchangeable; different vessels can wear the same number at different times.

But that’s not the case in the U.S. Navy, where hull numbers are also account identifiers. Appropriations often are made for a specific ship and contracts and parts are issued using the same numbers. The numbering system has been in use since 1920, and, as a legal and accounting identifier, it is rare that a hull number ever is used twice. The Navy rule, General Order Number 541, specifies that numbers should not be reused for vessels in the same class.


Rest of article about this $600 million dollar wonder at: http://navytimes.com/news/2009/03/navy_lcs_031709w/%2e