>Make first of it's kind stealth ship >Turns out it isn't soo great >Rather than parade it around claiming how big of a success it was they learn from their mistakes for the next version
>things that never happened for 500, Alex
it's more like "OH FRICK Congress is cutting all our budgets for no reason and we can't afford a modern ship program, what do we do? Oh, make it smaller."
Anyway, completely gut the useless helipad on every boat not specifically tooled for ASW and add in a cannon and five rows of VLS.
Problem fricking solved.
Which absolutely fricked the Pivot to Asia. Basically, the % share of resources allocation for the Pacific grew, but actual resources barely budged due to the sequester.
It happened before like after the civil war and the US Navy had to use funds for "repairs" that actually went into new ship construction instead; Congress was annoyed to say the least.
>man overboard >speedboat interdiction >at sea replenishment >crew rotation >[redacted] doing spooky shit >vip embarkation >captain likes to look at his ship from the sky
You're not entirely wrong, but naval helicopters are supremely useful workhorses for a variety of tasks (those tasks mostly involving moving around); granted: all of the above would be expected of a ship capable of ASW as well, so this is largely a moot point, but I felt like posting. Hello!
I'm glad you posted! I'd like to make it clear that I am not anti-helicopter as a rule, but rather against the idea of trying to cram the "multi mission packages" into a tiny, tiny area while most of the boat is a big empty helipad that literally never gets used in both LCS designs. It's pretty clearly a consequence of terrible acquisitions requirements rather than any kind of military strategy.
Having LCS be capable of fitting a helipad? fantastic, but why not make that a bonus instead of the actual default - it would be perfect to shove in a dozen or so VLS units, helping accommodate the fleet as it moves aggressively towards missile boats as a rule
It happened before like after the Civil War and the US Navy had to use funds for "repairs" that actually went into new ship construction instead; Congress was annoyed to say the least.
?t=673
Hell it gotten so bad after the Civil War that South American and Spanish fleets were stronger than the US at the time.
don't forget Korea too which suffered from terrible materiel readiness despite downright heroic US soldiery
Vietnam was the first engagement where struggles were primarily a political & strategic failure and not a logistic one, making the US a truly "world power," and Grenada helped refine naval tactics, culminating in the Gulf War as the first war where everything ticked together all at the same time - new shit, good doctrine, good soldiers, good generals, and good tactics.
The US today may have some struggles with materiel and soldiers due to suffering from success, as everything else in the country makes more money due to a mix of remarkable market strength & inflation, you can't get the best of the best or provide top-notch training on an increasingly shoestring budget, no matter how many infographics anti-military morons make with raw dollar numbers instead of percent or inflation-adjusted dollars.
If you're going to delete something then delete the hanger rather than the helipad. That way you free up a fair bit of space and weight but can still use helicopters for taxi duties etc.
I know this is just a shitty bait thread, but I actually find the LCS program fascinating. The concept of a relatively cheap ship with hot-swappable modules to allow it to perform different functions is actually pretty cool. The problem is that in the context of GWOT the Navy was scrambling to remain relevant (Which is why everything the navy did in the early/mid 2000s had the term LITTORAL attached to it) so instead of developing a couple of operational prototypes of this ship and it's modules and working from there, they instead decided to jump head-first into the deep end and start churning these things out so they could get rid of the Perry class frigates they didn't want to pay to modernize. After all that it turns out the LCS had a number of issues, and there was no money for the multi-mission modules so those ended up scrapped, and now we have a really expensive and essentially useless gunboat.
The fundamental issue regarding modular layout is that it's completely non-functional in the case of a global deployment navy. The Danes make it work by only operating out of a couple bases, which are linked via rail lines and highways (so you can move the modules from one base to another via train or even semi). If you operate from bases 5000 miles apart, you need to load the modules on a cargo ship, meaning they will arrive long after the frigates have reached the patrol area. Rapid redeployment goes down the shitter. It's just not workable from a logistical standpoint.
I always figured the best way to do it would be to stage them reforger style where the modules are pre-positioned at various naval bases. You leave homeport with what you think you'll need and if things change somewhere along the way you cruise by the nearest port along the way to swap out.
You'd need to have a shitton of them everywhere you'd potentially need them, in order to ensure a proper mix of all types, which kinda negates several theoretical savings from the modular principle. Especially if only a couple of classes in your entire navy can operate them. As opposed to the Danish Navy, where literally every surface ship class has been designed to use them.
And it doesn't really fix the underlying issue, namely the lack of actual hulls.
Modular operations are a cost-cutting workaround for greenwater navies.
The modular layout also apparently took ages to refit at the best of times which made the "swap modules in and out" idea kind of worthless, so they just scrapped the other modules and gave them all ASuW modules.
The LCS also have the most fricked drive systems ever made by trying to combine a gas turbine and diesel engine through a "combining gear" to drive water jet propulsion. It's a whole bunch of firsts that have never been tried before at this scale and so when they put it all together and put it out to sea it shit the bed.
The absurd tri-hulled Independence class somehow manages to be even more fricked because they built it out of Aluminium which has led to the first hulls suffering "aggressive disintegration due to galvanic corrosion" and hull cracks along the stress points the outriggers attach to the main hull. >and people still whinge about the USAF's pet projects having cost overruns.
CODAG is *not* a new thing. The Freedom class's transmission was just a nightmare.
The problem with LCS was that Big Navy took a concept (Streetfighter) for smaller combatants (~500-ton corvettes operating in squadrons from a tender) and tried to make it do everything. It needs to go 40-50kts (or more) and have a shallow draft in order to chase down speedboats! It needs to be large enough to self-deploy across the Pacific (Big Navy hates tenders)! It needs to be cheap to buy and operate! It needs to have a tiny crew (because sailors are a ship's most expensive component over its lifetime)!
Half of these are contradictory goals. The result was a set of compromises and poor designs. The speed and draft requirements were perhaps the worst part of the mess; they forced the vendors to commit to risky designs in order to make a ship that large go that fast. I still don't know why the USN didn't try to make SES work; I'm guessing it would have been too expensive when they were trying to make things cheaper.
Note that LCS comes from the same era that gave us FCS and the F-35's early teething problems (which were mostly caused by poor management). This is all a consequence of Clinton (and to some extent, GHWB) firing most of DoD's civilian procurement experts as part of the "Peace Dividend". Decades of experience in designing things and managing programs vanished almost overnight, with the services and vendors left to pick up the slack (poorly).
>tried to make it do everything
You could have just stopped at that.
The problem with LCS is that it tried to be, in one single fricking hull, >a Perry frigate replacement >a cheap FAC(M) >an anti-swarm OPV >a minehunter >a special ops mothership
And was to be >forward deployed with rotated crews
All of which had differing requirements with different tradeoffs making it simultaneously dogshit and overspecced at every single one of those roles, even if its equipment had been properly developed
https://i.imgur.com/fiGz3CP.jpg
>a literal combat ship >can’t do combat
I know this is just a shitty bait thread, but I actually find the LCS program fascinating. The concept of a relatively cheap ship with hot-swappable modules to allow it to perform different functions is actually pretty cool. The problem is that in the context of GWOT the Navy was scrambling to remain relevant (Which is why everything the navy did in the early/mid 2000s had the term LITTORAL attached to it) so instead of developing a couple of operational prototypes of this ship and it's modules and working from there, they instead decided to jump head-first into the deep end and start churning these things out so they could get rid of the Perry class frigates they didn't want to pay to modernize. After all that it turns out the LCS had a number of issues, and there was no money for the multi-mission modules so those ended up scrapped, and now we have a really expensive and essentially useless gunboat.
LCS in reality had nothing to do with modularity. The so-called modules was just a way to streamline procurement, installation and logistics, but it never worked out because the modules themselves couldn't be made to function. Why, we don't know, but given that the US has working non-modular examples and its allies have working non-modular examples of the same fricking equipment, I will venture to guess it's due to inability to meet the physical constraints imposed by (sigh) the modules.
The fundamental issue regarding modular layout is that it's completely non-functional in the case of a global deployment navy. The Danes make it work by only operating out of a couple bases, which are linked via rail lines and highways (so you can move the modules from one base to another via train or even semi). If you operate from bases 5000 miles apart, you need to load the modules on a cargo ship, meaning they will arrive long after the frigates have reached the patrol area. Rapid redeployment goes down the shitter. It's just not workable from a logistical standpoint.
The modular layout also apparently took ages to refit at the best of times which made the "swap modules in and out" idea kind of worthless, so they just scrapped the other modules and gave them all ASuW modules.
The LCS also have the most fricked drive systems ever made by trying to combine a gas turbine and diesel engine through a "combining gear" to drive water jet propulsion. It's a whole bunch of firsts that have never been tried before at this scale and so when they put it all together and put it out to sea it shit the bed.
The absurd tri-hulled Independence class somehow manages to be even more fricked because they built it out of Aluminium which has led to the first hulls suffering "aggressive disintegration due to galvanic corrosion" and hull cracks along the stress points the outriggers attach to the main hull. >and people still whinge about the USAF's pet projects having cost overruns.
The biggest issue the LCS failed to do is solve the MCM question for the US Navy. We scrapped the MHCs with the expectation that the LCS would pick up the slack, and then the MIW package didn't pan out, so the fleet is left with eight MCMs to fulfill the entirety of its minesweeping/minehunting capabilities. Fleet actions in WW1, WW2, and the Korean War prove that >Minesweepers have extremely high attrition rates >You need a metric shit-ton to see results in a usable amount of time.
Right now the US Navy is just relying on using three-decade old MCMs which are rapidly outdating and aging when they should have spent the money on the LCS on new frigates and a new batch of MCMs.
The issue seems to come because they wanted the LCS to be a "do everything" ship, hence the modularity idea. So when that concept fell apart they were left with ships where the main draw didn't work on top of the other problems the ships had with their drives, hulls, etc.
Sometimes Navy procurement just has to make you despair because instead of actually filling the role they need filled they have to try and over complicate the whole thing. >I cannot wait to see what horrors the Navy inflict on us all with the DDG(X) program
In reality the Navy quite likes these boats, niggling issues aside. There’s many missions they’re well-suited for, have modern accommodations and features, fast, more maintainable, etc. The Navy does a lot more than carrier defense as it turns out. Once they had their initial problems fixed (and addressed that weird structural issue) they are very good boats.
They are scrapping 9 of them already, that's 1/3 of the 27 total LCS fleet that's at sea right now.
My wheelhouse/hobby horse/area of knowledge in regards to this is around the MIW package which has >Never worked >Doesn't work >Will never work
And the Navy, after ten+ years, is now starting to realize that. I don't really give a shit about the other surface combatants because I don't really know too much about their requirements, but I know that whoever pitched the idea of a modular MCM and whoever nodded and said that was a good idea are two of the biggest morons in the Naval Service.
The LCS could've been great as a fast-running corvette used for interdiction in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea and as some kind of light escort, but not as everything they lumped on it (FFG duties, ASW duties, MIW duties) and ended up just being a complete waste of time and more importantly waste of billets for sailors in a Navy that is increasingly facing the crunch of undermanned stations.
Not him, but are you claiming that the MIW module is in proper working order?
11 months ago
Anonymous
If that is the only reading of that you are able to conceive of than you are just as mushbrained "not him."
Actually, it happens fairly often in naval design threads (the serious ones, at least). /k/ has always had a few grognards around, and floaty things require less specialized (read: classified) knowledge than, say, stealth aircraft, so it's easier for the layman to learn.
I just almost never see it and usually its me arguing against a dozen dipshits that can only pigeon hole equipment as wonderwaffles or scrapheaps.
>recursively self-replying >no specifics, just vague "ur dumb" made verbose to look like actual thought
whoever you are, you didn't send your best.
11 months ago
Anonymous
You'll have to forgive me if my patience to thoroughly critique anons who make grand sweeping generalizations with seemingly no basis in reality has worn thin from abuse...or not, I really don't care.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>grand sweeping generalizations
you mean like
You are an out and out idiot claiming knowledge on things which you self-evidently have no business ever opening your mouth on. Just stop.
? >You'll have to forgive me
no, i won't.
11 months ago
Anonymous
No, that would be a specific, pointed critique. Please return to you ESL Course instructor for a refund. >no, i won't. >...or not, I really don't care.
Maybe its not the class but just that you need to see an optometrist to get your eyes checked out?
Ok, I know people will think up excuses for why this is a bad idea, but why not give a few of these to Ukraine with some choppers, keeping the training secret.
Then, with these and some commercial vessels and some landing craft, have them sneak up on Kamchatka?
Russia absolutely does not have the forces there to repel something like 3-4 brigades. Give them mostly lighter vehicles, let them grab diesel as they go, and in a lightening run they could be halfway down the Siberian rail way, where they sit with AA cutting off Russia's access to gas and empower locals to say "frick off Putin, you obviously can't keep us safe anyhow."
I mean, it would take months for them to be ready to dislodge them, more than enough time for a massive political crises, especially if you let the Belarusian forces cross back home to start shit at the same time.
This is you memeing, right? Save face anon, claim it was a gag while you still can.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>that would be a specific, pointed
"ur dumb" is neither pointed nor specific. it is vague and useless, and your defense for being vague and useless was "i'm too impatient to contribute meaningfully" > "I really don't care." >spams the thread with replies referencing his own whining
i wonder if you'll contradict yourself again
11 months ago
Anonymous
>"ur dumb" is neither pointed nor specific
Good thing that's not what I said >idiot claiming knowledge on things which you self-evidently have no business ever opening your mouth on
however clearly identifies that the subject is perceived by the actor to be speaking on matters that they by virtue of their own claims are unqualified to be credible on. That clearly identifies both a indiviudal and an issue, ie "specific, pointed" Additionally, I also implied more detailed (which I think is what you actually desire but lack the vocabulary or mental aptitude to request) responses if more effort was put into the originating claims...whcih has yet to happen. >i wonder if you'll contradict yourself again
Despite the attempt to reframe me even participating in the thread as a "losing" condition, I was exceedingly clear that my lack of care relates to being granted forgiveness in regards to my wornthin patience, not for suffering idiots mouthing off with inflated senses of importance.
>waaaaaaaa mommy mommy someone called me a mean name on a zimbabwean banana cultivation chatroom
10 months ago
Anonymous
i no longer wonder. i suppose i shouldn't have in the first place.
for future reference, next time actually have some points to make instead of whining from the meta and projecting your uncontrollable butthurt onto the thread.
you wouldn't look like such a fricking idiot if you had something substantive to say
>clearly identifies that the subject is perceived by the actor to be speaking on matters
didn't identify the "matters" ergo, not specific. for frick's sake, you could have solved this by saying "i meant this matter specifically", but instead you went full sperg mode. further, failure to specify the "matters" in question results in a boilerplate response applicable to all possible "matters", the resulting generalization being functionally indistinguishable from an accusation of "ignorance of all matters", which itself is synonymous with "ur dumb"
so yeah, that's exactly what you said - and no, "i was only responding to one person" doesn't make your meaningless drivel specific, it makes the AUDIENCE specific. a sweeping generalization made at one person is still a sweeping generalization (sweeping in the sense that it applies to all "matters", generalization in the sense that it applies the same "uninformed" accusation to all of them)
>wornthin
based projecting ESL moron
you know what - i DO forgive you
someone so prone to doubling down on such a trivially easy mistake to correct is pretty much always going to be tired out by conversation.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>based projecting ESL moron
nta are you actually pretending like missing a space makes him esl? dont have a horse but thats just weak af
>Honest question, why do allies want this? Do they mean Taiwan, in which case based.
Some allies are cucked in terms of navy. Look at Belgium, Croatia, Slovenia, Estonia etc.
Slovenia - Have you seen how much coastline do they have?
Croatia - Serbs/Yugos stole their navy before the war kicked off. Yugos lost a naval battle for Dalmatian canal against the country with no navy - Croatia. And Croatia has like 1200 islands and islets and rocks which can't be sunk, just plop radars and missles on them.
Against whom would these two countries defend at sea? Italy which is in NATO? Italy has 2 aircraft carriers, f35 and 12 or 24 times the people Croatia and Slovenia have. They would get their Italian ass kicked if they invaded but Italian navy and airforce could do whatever they want.
They would just say Slovenia and Croatia needs to go to North African coast and bring nigs over or something because the boat is fancy
In reality the Navy quite likes these boats, niggling issues aside. There’s many missions they’re well-suited for, have modern accommodations and features, fast, more maintainable, etc. The Navy does a lot more than carrier defense as it turns out. Once they had their initial problems fixed (and addressed that weird structural issue) they are very good boats.
This. I asked a friend who serves on one his thoughts about them getting scrapped and he immediately got really defensive of them and tried to clarify to me it was just the first ones that were really fricked.
And the L85A2 and A3 are pretty functional rifles. It hasn't stopped the whole line from getting a bad reputation from terrible initial models. If the Navy have managed to unfrick the ships though, good job, that must have been a bastard of a job.
>that must have been a bastard of a job.
It was mostly fixed by moving away from the modular idea, unfricking the vendor servicing contracts ("[blank] as a service" we have learned is a literal blight on every industry it seems), and half giving up on the Freedom class (I wish they would just rip the band-aid off and uncouple the LCS program).
>There’s many missions they’re well-suited for
Not really. They're too uneconomical to be used as oceanic patrol vessels (plus the Freedom-class has poor range), their weapons package is too underpowered to be used as actual combat vessels (no medium-range SAM), they lack the originally-intended modules for stuff like minehunting etc.
Sure, they make great glowie chariots, the Independence-class in particular, with its massive flight deck, but do you seriously need 20+ dedicated ships for glowie work?
See
You are an out and out idiot claiming knowledge on things which you self-evidently have no business ever opening your mouth on. Just stop.
>There’s many missions they’re well-suited for
Not really. They're too uneconomical to be used as oceanic patrol vessels (plus the Freedom-class has poor range), their weapons package is too underpowered to be used as actual combat vessels (no medium-range SAM), they lack the originally-intended modules for stuff like minehunting etc.
Sure, they make great glowie chariots, the Independence-class in particular, with its massive flight deck, but do you seriously need 20+ dedicated ships for glowie work?
>a wild LCS thread appeared!
I have been summ- wait, what?!
They’re scrapping the early boats, the ones with all the problems.
CODAG is *not* a new thing. The Freedom class's transmission was just a nightmare.
The problem with LCS was that Big Navy took a concept (Streetfighter) for smaller combatants (~500-ton corvettes operating in squadrons from a tender) and tried to make it do everything. It needs to go 40-50kts (or more) and have a shallow draft in order to chase down speedboats! It needs to be large enough to self-deploy across the Pacific (Big Navy hates tenders)! It needs to be cheap to buy and operate! It needs to have a tiny crew (because sailors are a ship's most expensive component over its lifetime)!
Half of these are contradictory goals. The result was a set of compromises and poor designs. The speed and draft requirements were perhaps the worst part of the mess; they forced the vendors to commit to risky designs in order to make a ship that large go that fast. I still don't know why the USN didn't try to make SES work; I'm guessing it would have been too expensive when they were trying to make things cheaper.
Note that LCS comes from the same era that gave us FCS and the F-35's early teething problems (which were mostly caused by poor management). This is all a consequence of Clinton (and to some extent, GHWB) firing most of DoD's civilian procurement experts as part of the "Peace Dividend". Decades of experience in designing things and managing programs vanished almost overnight, with the services and vendors left to pick up the slack (poorly).
>tried to make it do everything
You could have just stopped at that.
The problem with LCS is that it tried to be, in one single fricking hull, >a Perry frigate replacement >a cheap FAC(M) >an anti-swarm OPV >a minehunter >a special ops mothership
And was to be >forward deployed with rotated crews
All of which had differing requirements with different tradeoffs making it simultaneously dogshit and overspecced at every single one of those roles, even if its equipment had been properly developed
[...]
[...]
LCS in reality had nothing to do with modularity. The so-called modules was just a way to streamline procurement, installation and logistics, but it never worked out because the modules themselves couldn't be made to function. Why, we don't know, but given that the US has working non-modular examples and its allies have working non-modular examples of the same fricking equipment, I will venture to guess it's due to inability to meet the physical constraints imposed by (sigh) the modules.
Why are there knowledgable anons in here making reasonable points about the LCS? This never happens. This scares and frightens me! Where the frick are you guys usually?
Actually, it happens fairly often in naval design threads (the serious ones, at least). /k/ has always had a few grognards around, and floaty things require less specialized (read: classified) knowledge than, say, stealth aircraft, so it's easier for the layman to learn.
A big drive for these, besides the shallow ops meme bullshit (Navy tested this a few times and were fired at from the shore with fricking RPGs and other small missiles). Was reduced manning. The Navy decided to just upgrade conventional DDG control systems etc... to allow reduced staff. It has been an epic fricking train wreck. I was a DDG sailor (GSE) and we were understaffed even when they were at normal levels. Port and starboard watches for months will kill a motherfricker.
I was down in Mobile earlier this year and saw 2 of these being built at the Austal shipyard since they had the doors open and all I could think was "what a shitheap".
>needs 10x the manpower just to stay afloat because exactly 0% of your systems are autonomous
I despise reformists so much it's unreal.
>33 year service life >Guns are vastly cheaper then missiles and still capable of sinking whatever shitty cartel shift you're chasing >You can even tear half of them out for a helipad to remove the LCS's main advantage and still have enough left over to do things littoral ships are expected to do
Swedes had the better idea
The LCS doesn't have the payload capacity to mount anything, which is another issue with the ship
11 months ago
Anonymous
No, the Navy gave up on the other modules (anti submarine, minesweeper, etc) but just gave all the LCS the already designed and working anti surface warfare modules. That's where it mounts the NSMs.
11 months ago
Anonymous
They can carry 8 NSMs. According to genius here
>that must have been a bastard of a job.
It was mostly fixed by moving away from the modular idea, unfricking the vendor servicing contracts ("[blank] as a service" we have learned is a literal blight on every industry it seems), and half giving up on the Freedom class (I wish they would just rip the band-aid off and uncouple the LCS program).
[...]
See [...]
that's enough to make them functional surface combatants. Even though they have no defensive systems outside of RIM-116 CIWS and a 57 mm gun that is still manually-controlled on some ships.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Are 8 NSMs enough to kill a Chinese destroyer?
11 months ago
Anonymous
It could, if it had focused on that mission instead of wanting to do five other things as well, which prevent it from mounting that weaponry
They can carry 8 NSMs. According to genius here [...] that's enough to make them functional surface combatants. Even though they have no defensive systems outside of RIM-116 CIWS and a 57 mm gun that is still manually-controlled on some ships.
They would indeed be adequate FACMs then. However it comes at the cost of being 7 times heavier than a Skjold class, and much MUCH more costly.
[...]
And much cheaper.
That's the problem with the LCS. Even if it can do something, it does it hilariously inefficiently because it was supposed to do five other things as well.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>And much cheaper.
For sure, its a trade-off as I said. Its also much faster on glass seas as another example. I'm not saying one is better than the other, I'm saying they meet different needs >The Skjold is cool but serves an entirely differently role
>unrelated
What is FACM? >Fast attack craft ____
Maybe?
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Fast attack craft
Missile >its a trade-off
It's a frick of a tradeoff...
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Missile
D'oh, its so obvious. >It's a frick of a tradeoff...
Perhaps. I think many (especially non-Americans) undervalue range/endurance and maybe seaworthiness.
11 months ago
Anonymous
You can have a perfectly seaworthy ocean-going vessel in about 2,000 short tons - that's like, a WW2 Fletcher, or modern OPV. Whack four or five missile boxes on that, done. You don't need a ship nearly twice that weight because of "seaworthiness".
And the LCS doesn't even carry that many missiles.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Cool, we're just going to ignore the things I say so we can attack individual elements removed from context in the pursuit of a "win."
Not interested, have a nice day.
11 months ago
Anonymous
What the frick are you on about?
You raised 1 point, and I discussed it.
This 1 point contributes to the whole problem surrounding the LCS.
WTF? Why are you sperging?
Ok, I know people will think up excuses for why this is a bad idea, but why not give a few of these to Ukraine with some choppers, keeping the training secret.
Then, with these and some commercial vessels and some landing craft, have them sneak up on Kamchatka?
Russia absolutely does not have the forces there to repel something like 3-4 brigades. Give them mostly lighter vehicles, let them grab diesel as they go, and in a lightening run they could be halfway down the Siberian rail way, where they sit with AA cutting off Russia's access to gas and empower locals to say "frick off Putin, you obviously can't keep us safe anyhow."
I mean, it would take months for them to be ready to dislodge them, more than enough time for a massive political crises, especially if you let the Belarusian forces cross back home to start shit at the same time.
Between the Zumwalts axing the guns, the early LCS being terrible, and messing around with other stuff like railguns, the USN at the onset of the current century was making some poor choices. Though ones with little risk since there was plenty of money and little urgency. Fortunately, they're turning things around and even those poor choices didn't cripple everything since there were reliable classes in service. Some lessons learned were good ones and will carry over into the future.
old news boring!!! do better senpai
>Ural Railway Wagon Factory
>makes tanks
New bomb target
are they equipping t-62 with kontakt-5?
that happens during total wars right? I find it impressive how they quickly converted it to produce war machines
the hard part is output, hence they worked insane shifts. like roman silver mines-tier shit
>Make first of it's kind stealth ship
>Turns out it isn't soo great
>Rather than parade it around claiming how big of a success it was they learn from their mistakes for the next version
>things that never happened for 500, Alex
it's more like "OH FRICK Congress is cutting all our budgets for no reason and we can't afford a modern ship program, what do we do? Oh, make it smaller."
Anyway, completely gut the useless helipad on every boat not specifically tooled for ASW and add in a cannon and five rows of VLS.
Problem fricking solved.
>Congress cutting defense spending
Lol
all of this is entirely coincidental, I suppose?
>one shot at life
>your parents named you Peter Peterson
He seems to have done well enough at least
better than being a Richard Richardson
could be worse
"Peter son of Peter"
"Richard son of Richard"
I kind of like it; Pic related.
Yeah, what do you think sequestration was?
Which absolutely fricked the Pivot to Asia. Basically, the % share of resources allocation for the Pacific grew, but actual resources barely budged due to the sequester.
It happened before like after the civil war and the US Navy had to use funds for "repairs" that actually went into new ship construction instead; Congress was annoyed to say the least.
?t=673
Hell it gotten so bad after the Civil War that South American and Spanish fleets were stronger than the US at the time.
>man overboard
>speedboat interdiction
>at sea replenishment
>crew rotation
>[redacted] doing spooky shit
>vip embarkation
>captain likes to look at his ship from the sky
You're not entirely wrong, but naval helicopters are supremely useful workhorses for a variety of tasks (those tasks mostly involving moving around); granted: all of the above would be expected of a ship capable of ASW as well, so this is largely a moot point, but I felt like posting. Hello!
I'm glad you posted! I'd like to make it clear that I am not anti-helicopter as a rule, but rather against the idea of trying to cram the "multi mission packages" into a tiny, tiny area while most of the boat is a big empty helipad that literally never gets used in both LCS designs. It's pretty clearly a consequence of terrible acquisitions requirements rather than any kind of military strategy.
Having LCS be capable of fitting a helipad? fantastic, but why not make that a bonus instead of the actual default - it would be perfect to shove in a dozen or so VLS units, helping accommodate the fleet as it moves aggressively towards missile boats as a rule
don't forget Korea too which suffered from terrible materiel readiness despite downright heroic US soldiery
Vietnam was the first engagement where struggles were primarily a political & strategic failure and not a logistic one, making the US a truly "world power," and Grenada helped refine naval tactics, culminating in the Gulf War as the first war where everything ticked together all at the same time - new shit, good doctrine, good soldiers, good generals, and good tactics.
The US today may have some struggles with materiel and soldiers due to suffering from success, as everything else in the country makes more money due to a mix of remarkable market strength & inflation, you can't get the best of the best or provide top-notch training on an increasingly shoestring budget, no matter how many infographics anti-military morons make with raw dollar numbers instead of percent or inflation-adjusted dollars.
lmao, how does that fix the combing gear issue between the diesel and turbine engines? the LCS program is shit.
That got fixed in the latest new-build Freedom-class units, but the older ones need to be brought in for overhaul.
If you're going to delete something then delete the hanger rather than the helipad. That way you free up a fair bit of space and weight but can still use helicopters for taxi duties etc.
>they learn from their mistakes for the next version
lol
I've never seen this thing in my life.
We have these? Why does it look like that?
Get rid of it.
I know this is just a shitty bait thread, but I actually find the LCS program fascinating. The concept of a relatively cheap ship with hot-swappable modules to allow it to perform different functions is actually pretty cool. The problem is that in the context of GWOT the Navy was scrambling to remain relevant (Which is why everything the navy did in the early/mid 2000s had the term LITTORAL attached to it) so instead of developing a couple of operational prototypes of this ship and it's modules and working from there, they instead decided to jump head-first into the deep end and start churning these things out so they could get rid of the Perry class frigates they didn't want to pay to modernize. After all that it turns out the LCS had a number of issues, and there was no money for the multi-mission modules so those ended up scrapped, and now we have a really expensive and essentially useless gunboat.
The fundamental issue regarding modular layout is that it's completely non-functional in the case of a global deployment navy. The Danes make it work by only operating out of a couple bases, which are linked via rail lines and highways (so you can move the modules from one base to another via train or even semi). If you operate from bases 5000 miles apart, you need to load the modules on a cargo ship, meaning they will arrive long after the frigates have reached the patrol area. Rapid redeployment goes down the shitter. It's just not workable from a logistical standpoint.
I always figured the best way to do it would be to stage them reforger style where the modules are pre-positioned at various naval bases. You leave homeport with what you think you'll need and if things change somewhere along the way you cruise by the nearest port along the way to swap out.
You'd need to have a shitton of them everywhere you'd potentially need them, in order to ensure a proper mix of all types, which kinda negates several theoretical savings from the modular principle. Especially if only a couple of classes in your entire navy can operate them. As opposed to the Danish Navy, where literally every surface ship class has been designed to use them.
And it doesn't really fix the underlying issue, namely the lack of actual hulls.
Modular operations are a cost-cutting workaround for greenwater navies.
The modular layout also apparently took ages to refit at the best of times which made the "swap modules in and out" idea kind of worthless, so they just scrapped the other modules and gave them all ASuW modules.
The LCS also have the most fricked drive systems ever made by trying to combine a gas turbine and diesel engine through a "combining gear" to drive water jet propulsion. It's a whole bunch of firsts that have never been tried before at this scale and so when they put it all together and put it out to sea it shit the bed.
The absurd tri-hulled Independence class somehow manages to be even more fricked because they built it out of Aluminium which has led to the first hulls suffering "aggressive disintegration due to galvanic corrosion" and hull cracks along the stress points the outriggers attach to the main hull.
>and people still whinge about the USAF's pet projects having cost overruns.
CODAG is *not* a new thing. The Freedom class's transmission was just a nightmare.
The problem with LCS was that Big Navy took a concept (Streetfighter) for smaller combatants (~500-ton corvettes operating in squadrons from a tender) and tried to make it do everything. It needs to go 40-50kts (or more) and have a shallow draft in order to chase down speedboats! It needs to be large enough to self-deploy across the Pacific (Big Navy hates tenders)! It needs to be cheap to buy and operate! It needs to have a tiny crew (because sailors are a ship's most expensive component over its lifetime)!
Half of these are contradictory goals. The result was a set of compromises and poor designs. The speed and draft requirements were perhaps the worst part of the mess; they forced the vendors to commit to risky designs in order to make a ship that large go that fast. I still don't know why the USN didn't try to make SES work; I'm guessing it would have been too expensive when they were trying to make things cheaper.
Note that LCS comes from the same era that gave us FCS and the F-35's early teething problems (which were mostly caused by poor management). This is all a consequence of Clinton (and to some extent, GHWB) firing most of DoD's civilian procurement experts as part of the "Peace Dividend". Decades of experience in designing things and managing programs vanished almost overnight, with the services and vendors left to pick up the slack (poorly).
>tried to make it do everything
You could have just stopped at that.
The problem with LCS is that it tried to be, in one single fricking hull,
>a Perry frigate replacement
>a cheap FAC(M)
>an anti-swarm OPV
>a minehunter
>a special ops mothership
And was to be
>forward deployed with rotated crews
All of which had differing requirements with different tradeoffs making it simultaneously dogshit and overspecced at every single one of those roles, even if its equipment had been properly developed
LCS in reality had nothing to do with modularity. The so-called modules was just a way to streamline procurement, installation and logistics, but it never worked out because the modules themselves couldn't be made to function. Why, we don't know, but given that the US has working non-modular examples and its allies have working non-modular examples of the same fricking equipment, I will venture to guess it's due to inability to meet the physical constraints imposed by (sigh) the modules.
The biggest issue the LCS failed to do is solve the MCM question for the US Navy. We scrapped the MHCs with the expectation that the LCS would pick up the slack, and then the MIW package didn't pan out, so the fleet is left with eight MCMs to fulfill the entirety of its minesweeping/minehunting capabilities. Fleet actions in WW1, WW2, and the Korean War prove that
>Minesweepers have extremely high attrition rates
>You need a metric shit-ton to see results in a usable amount of time.
Right now the US Navy is just relying on using three-decade old MCMs which are rapidly outdating and aging when they should have spent the money on the LCS on new frigates and a new batch of MCMs.
The issue seems to come because they wanted the LCS to be a "do everything" ship, hence the modularity idea. So when that concept fell apart they were left with ships where the main draw didn't work on top of the other problems the ships had with their drives, hulls, etc.
Sometimes Navy procurement just has to make you despair because instead of actually filling the role they need filled they have to try and over complicate the whole thing.
>I cannot wait to see what horrors the Navy inflict on us all with the DDG(X) program
They are scrapping 9 of them already, that's 1/3 of the 27 total LCS fleet that's at sea right now.
They’re scrapping the early boats, the ones with all the problems.
My wheelhouse/hobby horse/area of knowledge in regards to this is around the MIW package which has
>Never worked
>Doesn't work
>Will never work
And the Navy, after ten+ years, is now starting to realize that. I don't really give a shit about the other surface combatants because I don't really know too much about their requirements, but I know that whoever pitched the idea of a modular MCM and whoever nodded and said that was a good idea are two of the biggest morons in the Naval Service.
The LCS could've been great as a fast-running corvette used for interdiction in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea and as some kind of light escort, but not as everything they lumped on it (FFG duties, ASW duties, MIW duties) and ended up just being a complete waste of time and more importantly waste of billets for sailors in a Navy that is increasingly facing the crunch of undermanned stations.
You are an out and out idiot claiming knowledge on things which you self-evidently have no business ever opening your mouth on. Just stop.
Not him, but are you claiming that the MIW module is in proper working order?
If that is the only reading of that you are able to conceive of than you are just as mushbrained "not him."
I just almost never see it and usually its me arguing against a dozen dipshits that can only pigeon hole equipment as wonderwaffles or scrapheaps.
>recursively self-replying
>no specifics, just vague "ur dumb" made verbose to look like actual thought
whoever you are, you didn't send your best.
You'll have to forgive me if my patience to thoroughly critique anons who make grand sweeping generalizations with seemingly no basis in reality has worn thin from abuse...or not, I really don't care.
>grand sweeping generalizations
you mean like
?
>You'll have to forgive me
no, i won't.
No, that would be a specific, pointed critique. Please return to you ESL Course instructor for a refund.
>no, i won't.
>...or not, I really don't care.
Maybe its not the class but just that you need to see an optometrist to get your eyes checked out?
This is you memeing, right? Save face anon, claim it was a gag while you still can.
>that would be a specific, pointed
"ur dumb" is neither pointed nor specific. it is vague and useless, and your defense for being vague and useless was "i'm too impatient to contribute meaningfully"
> "I really don't care."
>spams the thread with replies referencing his own whining
i wonder if you'll contradict yourself again
>"ur dumb" is neither pointed nor specific
Good thing that's not what I said
>idiot claiming knowledge on things which you self-evidently have no business ever opening your mouth on
however clearly identifies that the subject is perceived by the actor to be speaking on matters that they by virtue of their own claims are unqualified to be credible on. That clearly identifies both a indiviudal and an issue, ie "specific, pointed" Additionally, I also implied more detailed (which I think is what you actually desire but lack the vocabulary or mental aptitude to request) responses if more effort was put into the originating claims...whcih has yet to happen.
>i wonder if you'll contradict yourself again
Despite the attempt to reframe me even participating in the thread as a "losing" condition, I was exceedingly clear that my lack of care relates to being granted forgiveness in regards to my wornthin patience, not for suffering idiots mouthing off with inflated senses of importance.
>waaaaaaaa mommy mommy someone called me a mean name on a zimbabwean banana cultivation chatroom
i no longer wonder. i suppose i shouldn't have in the first place.
for future reference, next time actually have some points to make instead of whining from the meta and projecting your uncontrollable butthurt onto the thread.
you wouldn't look like such a fricking idiot if you had something substantive to say
>clearly identifies that the subject is perceived by the actor to be speaking on matters
didn't identify the "matters" ergo, not specific. for frick's sake, you could have solved this by saying "i meant this matter specifically", but instead you went full sperg mode. further, failure to specify the "matters" in question results in a boilerplate response applicable to all possible "matters", the resulting generalization being functionally indistinguishable from an accusation of "ignorance of all matters", which itself is synonymous with "ur dumb"
so yeah, that's exactly what you said - and no, "i was only responding to one person" doesn't make your meaningless drivel specific, it makes the AUDIENCE specific. a sweeping generalization made at one person is still a sweeping generalization (sweeping in the sense that it applies to all "matters", generalization in the sense that it applies the same "uninformed" accusation to all of them)
>wornthin
based projecting ESL moron
you know what - i DO forgive you
someone so prone to doubling down on such a trivially easy mistake to correct is pretty much always going to be tired out by conversation.
>based projecting ESL moron
nta are you actually pretending like missing a space makes him esl? dont have a horse but thats just weak af
That is banner worth.
Cool cozy looking ship
>national interest
>the drive
>1945
>or some other shitty milblog full of out of context quotes and click bait
Honest question, why do allies want this? Do they mean Taiwan, in which case based.
>Honest question, why do allies want this? Do they mean Taiwan, in which case based.
Some allies are cucked in terms of navy. Look at Belgium, Croatia, Slovenia, Estonia etc.
Slovenia - Have you seen how much coastline do they have?
Croatia - Serbs/Yugos stole their navy before the war kicked off. Yugos lost a naval battle for Dalmatian canal against the country with no navy - Croatia. And Croatia has like 1200 islands and islets and rocks which can't be sunk, just plop radars and missles on them.
Against whom would these two countries defend at sea? Italy which is in NATO? Italy has 2 aircraft carriers, f35 and 12 or 24 times the people Croatia and Slovenia have. They would get their Italian ass kicked if they invaded but Italian navy and airforce could do whatever they want.
They would just say Slovenia and Croatia needs to go to North African coast and bring nigs over or something because the boat is fancy
Flips have been buying up some old US vessels, like the Hamilton class cutters for use as patrol vessels. LCS might not be a bad aquisition for them.
Shut up vatnick
No thanks
>t.allies
In reality the Navy quite likes these boats, niggling issues aside. There’s many missions they’re well-suited for, have modern accommodations and features, fast, more maintainable, etc. The Navy does a lot more than carrier defense as it turns out. Once they had their initial problems fixed (and addressed that weird structural issue) they are very good boats.
This. I asked a friend who serves on one his thoughts about them getting scrapped and he immediately got really defensive of them and tried to clarify to me it was just the first ones that were really fricked.
And the L85A2 and A3 are pretty functional rifles. It hasn't stopped the whole line from getting a bad reputation from terrible initial models. If the Navy have managed to unfrick the ships though, good job, that must have been a bastard of a job.
>that must have been a bastard of a job.
It was mostly fixed by moving away from the modular idea, unfricking the vendor servicing contracts ("[blank] as a service" we have learned is a literal blight on every industry it seems), and half giving up on the Freedom class (I wish they would just rip the band-aid off and uncouple the LCS program).
See
>There’s many missions they’re well-suited for
Not really. They're too uneconomical to be used as oceanic patrol vessels (plus the Freedom-class has poor range), their weapons package is too underpowered to be used as actual combat vessels (no medium-range SAM), they lack the originally-intended modules for stuff like minehunting etc.
Sure, they make great glowie chariots, the Independence-class in particular, with its massive flight deck, but do you seriously need 20+ dedicated ships for glowie work?
>a wild LCS thread appeared!
I have been summ- wait, what?!
Why are there knowledgable anons in here making reasonable points about the LCS? This never happens. This scares and frightens me! Where the frick are you guys usually?
Actually, it happens fairly often in naval design threads (the serious ones, at least). /k/ has always had a few grognards around, and floaty things require less specialized (read: classified) knowledge than, say, stealth aircraft, so it's easier for the layman to learn.
There's not much left to say about the LCS so I usually avoid them.
Age of sail and battleship threads are a tad more fun.
Eh, to each their own I suppose
A big drive for these, besides the shallow ops meme bullshit (Navy tested this a few times and were fired at from the shore with fricking RPGs and other small missiles). Was reduced manning. The Navy decided to just upgrade conventional DDG control systems etc... to allow reduced staff. It has been an epic fricking train wreck. I was a DDG sailor (GSE) and we were understaffed even when they were at normal levels. Port and starboard watches for months will kill a motherfricker.
>reduced staff
Yeah I heard the crew is so minimal that the ship becomes unoperational if it should get hit and take casualties.
>becomes unoperational if it should get hit and take casualties.
Hasn't this been the Army's argument against autoloaders in tanks for decades now?
*Littoral
That was the joke.
No one is afraid of this.
A Somali pirate would see this and say
>woah, weird Halo ship
and be gunned down with a smile on his face.
I was down in Mobile earlier this year and saw 2 of these being built at the Austal shipyard since they had the doors open and all I could think was "what a shitheap".
Unironically a WWI battleship would be a better littoral combat ship then these tin cans.
see
>33 year service life
>Guns are vastly cheaper then missiles and still capable of sinking whatever shitty cartel shift you're chasing
>You can even tear half of them out for a helipad to remove the LCS's main advantage and still have enough left over to do things littoral ships are expected to do
Swedes had the better idea
Who would win in a fight?
LCS can still mount a handful of NSMs so it could still sink all-gun warships up to a certain size, and mission kill just about anything.
That said it's nothing to boast about. Just about any thirty knotter that can carry a TEU worth of missiles can do the same, theoretically.
The Norwegian Skjold-class corvettes have 8 NSMs mounted internally, and they're pretty damn small.
The LCS doesn't have the payload capacity to mount anything, which is another issue with the ship
No, the Navy gave up on the other modules (anti submarine, minesweeper, etc) but just gave all the LCS the already designed and working anti surface warfare modules. That's where it mounts the NSMs.
They can carry 8 NSMs. According to genius here
that's enough to make them functional surface combatants. Even though they have no defensive systems outside of RIM-116 CIWS and a 57 mm gun that is still manually-controlled on some ships.
Are 8 NSMs enough to kill a Chinese destroyer?
It could, if it had focused on that mission instead of wanting to do five other things as well, which prevent it from mounting that weaponry
They would indeed be adequate FACMs then. However it comes at the cost of being 7 times heavier than a Skjold class, and much MUCH more costly.
And much cheaper.
That's the problem with the LCS. Even if it can do something, it does it hilariously inefficiently because it was supposed to do five other things as well.
>And much cheaper.
For sure, its a trade-off as I said. Its also much faster on glass seas as another example. I'm not saying one is better than the other, I'm saying they meet different needs
>The Skjold is cool but serves an entirely differently role
>unrelated
What is FACM?
>Fast attack craft ____
Maybe?
>Fast attack craft
Missile
>its a trade-off
It's a frick of a tradeoff...
>Missile
D'oh, its so obvious.
>It's a frick of a tradeoff...
Perhaps. I think many (especially non-Americans) undervalue range/endurance and maybe seaworthiness.
You can have a perfectly seaworthy ocean-going vessel in about 2,000 short tons - that's like, a WW2 Fletcher, or modern OPV. Whack four or five missile boxes on that, done. You don't need a ship nearly twice that weight because of "seaworthiness".
And the LCS doesn't even carry that many missiles.
Cool, we're just going to ignore the things I say so we can attack individual elements removed from context in the pursuit of a "win."
Not interested, have a nice day.
What the frick are you on about?
You raised 1 point, and I discussed it.
This 1 point contributes to the whole problem surrounding the LCS.
WTF? Why are you sperging?
>a design from before the use of even rudimentary radar will surely still work just as well today!
>better range and targetting of munitions
>radar
>higher speed
>larger range of ship
Oh gee, that's a hard one
>needs 10x the manpower just to stay afloat because exactly 0% of your systems are autonomous
I despise reformists so much it's unreal.
Thank FRICK we didn't buy this garbage
Anon, I...
Probably a Greek. These were shilled hard to Greece, but the deal was rejected and they went for the FDI instead.
Ok, I know people will think up excuses for why this is a bad idea, but why not give a few of these to Ukraine with some choppers, keeping the training secret.
Then, with these and some commercial vessels and some landing craft, have them sneak up on Kamchatka?
Russia absolutely does not have the forces there to repel something like 3-4 brigades. Give them mostly lighter vehicles, let them grab diesel as they go, and in a lightening run they could be halfway down the Siberian rail way, where they sit with AA cutting off Russia's access to gas and empower locals to say "frick off Putin, you obviously can't keep us safe anyhow."
I mean, it would take months for them to be ready to dislodge them, more than enough time for a massive political crises, especially if you let the Belarusian forces cross back home to start shit at the same time.
Ukraine can't execute an overland offensive and you want them to pull off an amphibious one?!?!
There are no defenders in the Far East though.
You want to refight the Russian Civil war's far Eastern front, in 2023?
Absolute madman
how much are they selling them for?
Between the Zumwalts axing the guns, the early LCS being terrible, and messing around with other stuff like railguns, the USN at the onset of the current century was making some poor choices. Though ones with little risk since there was plenty of money and little urgency. Fortunately, they're turning things around and even those poor choices didn't cripple everything since there were reliable classes in service. Some lessons learned were good ones and will carry over into the future.
Add in the early teething problems (and blown budgets) for the San Antonio and Ford classes.
Who the hell would even buy that thing??
If a country really wanted carry helicopters at sea, they could get a real LHD with a proper runway.
I hate them little homies like you wouldn't believe. should have just built frigates from the get go instead of a jack of all trades LCS
lmao /k/ was blowing its load to these ships back in the day, now suddenly they don't care
>our moronic batmobile looking piece of shit is useless garbage
Oh no! Who could have predicted this?
>littorally who?
They should transfer them to Ukraine and let them take possession in the Baltic just to see what Russia does
Its clitoral ship to you!