The Navy Just Sank Its High-Speed Future
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/09/did-the-navy-just-give-up-its-speedy-future.html
The ship was supposed to zoom over the ocean top, 50 percent faster than its competitors. Then things changed.
The Navy Just Sank Its High-Speed Future
Bill Sweetman
02.09.15
The future of the Navy was supposed to be speedy, thanks to its new Littoral Combat Ships. The Navy has built two versions of the LCS, a conventional-looking single-hull ship from Lockheed Martin and a trimarana ship with a slender hull and two outriggersdeveloped by General Dynamics. Tiny by U.S. warship standards, at 3,000-plus tons, the LCS is distinguished by its 45-knot-plus top speed50 percent faster than most warships. But now the Navy wants to rebrand the LCS as a frigatethat is to say, a real warship, capable of fighting in any circumstances alongside the rest of the fleet or performing long oceanic patrols, with revamped armament and mission equipment. The future version may sacrifice the original ships speed, according to Vice Admiral Thomas Rowden, commander of naval surface forces.
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A few pioneers invented a fast, austere warship called Streetfighter, to protect larger ships in the littorals. But the Pentagon views fast, austere, lean concepts the way that certain French farmers view ducklings, so the Navy stuffed a funnel and tube down the Streetfighters throat and fattened it up into a multi-role oceanic combatant. Why? The Navy wanted to sustain a force of around 300 warships, but wanted to replace its Ticonderoga cruisers with the expensive DDG-1000, later the Zumwalt class. It therefore needed a relatively cheap ship to make up numbers.
The Navy has now decided that the LCSs speed is unnecessaryprobably because a new generation of very accurate, automated, stabilized medium-caliber gun mounts now provide an effective counter-swarm defense. Is it a good idea to saddle the fleet, to 2050 and beyond, with the burden of the original speed requirement?
There are few things more wasteful than the lifetime cost of meeting a requirement that no longer matters. Consider the space shuttle, its wing and payload bay sized to retrieve from orbit a huge spy satellite that was never built. The Joint Strike Fighters overall length had to fit the elevators on Britains now-retired Invincible-class carriers.
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Another little known fact about this POS: It uses around $71 million dollars a year in gas.