Just more than a decade after they entered naval service to great fanfare as the future face of the U.S. Navy, the first two littoral combat ships will be mothballed later this year, according to the Navy’s inactivation schedule for 2021.
The first LCS, Freedom, will head into inactive reserve status Sept. 30, less than 13 years after the ship was commissioned.
The second LCS, Independence, a separate class variant, will receive its shadow box on July 31 after just 11½ years of service.
The LCS concept has been sketchy right from the jump. It was pretty clear to a casual observer that all of those touted "mission modules" would never be built, or, if they were, they would not be built in the numbers required.
There were quite a few things that might have worked out for the LCS. But they take a shitload of contractor maintenance that, on most ships, was done by a ship's crew. The manning plan for the ships ensured that the sailors on board would treat the ships like rented mules. One could sum up the problems with the LCS by noting that it was one of the dumb ideas of Rumsfeld's DoD, right up there with the gutting of surface officer initial training that led, in part, to at least two collisions at sea.
And it didn't take a rocket scientist to foresee the problems that arose with the LCS program.
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