Little Crappy Ship
November 6, 2023 12:44 AM Subscribe
The saga of the LCS is a vivid illustration of how Congress, the Pentagon and defense contractors can work in concert — and often against the good of the taxpayers and America’s security — to spawn what President Dwight D. Eisenhower described in his farewell address as the “military industrial complex.” from The Inside Story of How the Navy Spent Billions on the “Little Crappy Ship” [ProPublica]
Absolutely not. Basic seaworthiness is a prerequisite to being able to do anything, it's not just a specific part or even system, it's the reliability of the ship as a whole that is in question. A ship that can't even fulfill the basic function of going out to sea is useless. The fundamental problem with the LCS is that it doesn't do anything. It's underequipped to the degree it can't really contribute to a realistic surface fight, even just as a radar picket. And the envisioned modules for missions like minesweeping or submarine hunting don't work, so it's relegated to hunting pirates or small patrol boats that are even more poorly armed than it. It can also be fiendishly difficult to replace big ticket items on a ship - maybe the new part is slightly larger so you need to move the bulkhead to make room, but it was contributing structurally so now you have to make up for it elsewhere, then that displaces other things and there's a whole cascade and soon you're essentially remodeling the ship. I exaggerate a bit... but not too much.
The hull of a ship itself is actually relatively cheap (usually around 1/3rd of the shipbuilding cost). The expensive stuff are the systems you put into it - engines, pumps, radars, launchers, pipes and cabling, etc. If we're looking at total lifetime cost, about 2/3rds of it is taken up by operations and maintenance. There are also minimum ship sizes driven by stability considerations on the high seas and fuel capacity needed to sail a certain distance, so it often makes sense to go the extra mile and make the ship larger (which also gives room for growth) and more capable than try to churn out many small ships that are less capable. And since warships are liable to take damage, it pays to have some redundancy, especially in the form of sailors. Aircraft carriers are still around because they're the best way to project power from sea, not because the Navy has a simple "bigger is better" mindset - there is a lot of operations research, wargaming, and modeling that gets thrown at the problem of "what kind of ship/fleet should we be building?"
Full disclosure: I used to work in the naval sector, even did a bit of work on the LCS.
posted by ndr at 3:57 AM on November 6, 2023 [36 favorites]
The hull of a ship itself is actually relatively cheap (usually around 1/3rd of the shipbuilding cost). The expensive stuff are the systems you put into it - engines, pumps, radars, launchers, pipes and cabling, etc. If we're looking at total lifetime cost, about 2/3rds of it is taken up by operations and maintenance. There are also minimum ship sizes driven by stability considerations on the high seas and fuel capacity needed to sail a certain distance, so it often makes sense to go the extra mile and make the ship larger (which also gives room for growth) and more capable than try to churn out many small ships that are less capable. And since warships are liable to take damage, it pays to have some redundancy, especially in the form of sailors. Aircraft carriers are still around because they're the best way to project power from sea, not because the Navy has a simple "bigger is better" mindset - there is a lot of operations research, wargaming, and modeling that gets thrown at the problem of "what kind of ship/fleet should we be building?"
Full disclosure: I used to work in the naval sector, even did a bit of work on the LCS.
posted by ndr at 3:57 AM on November 6, 2023 [36 favorites]
So you're saying it's littorally useless? I'll see myself out.
posted by justkevin at 4:07 AM on November 6, 2023 [33 favorites]
posted by justkevin at 4:07 AM on November 6, 2023 [33 favorites]
More seriously, our annual military budget is around $800 billion. Why? Republicans, who are usually the hawkish party are bawking at spending $30 billion to stop Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This is spending that would actively degrade the capabilities of the biggest military threat to NATO and give China serious pause with respect to Taiwan.
It seems like $200 billion should be more than enough and we could use the savings for things we actually could use like health care, education and shoring up social security, instead of a boat that we wouldn't have a use for even if it worked.
posted by justkevin at 4:23 AM on November 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
It seems like $200 billion should be more than enough and we could use the savings for things we actually could use like health care, education and shoring up social security, instead of a boat that we wouldn't have a use for even if it worked.
posted by justkevin at 4:23 AM on November 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
Would there be a way, even a very approximate way, of estimating the financial cost of wasted training and emotional damage from a huge tailed program?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:26 AM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:26 AM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don't know much about boats but as a biologist I have worked a bit on research in the littoral zone. And let me tell you, there is NO word a teacher pronounces more carefully in front of students than circalittoral. That's probably a better word for where this boat is supposed to operate and I bet they knew it, but they were just too scared to go with it.
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:51 AM on November 6, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:51 AM on November 6, 2023 [19 favorites]
I'm just a little skeptical of how bad the LCS ships intrinsically are.
No, it's really that bad. The demand for high speed led to terrible design compromises that were never workable. High speed meant enormous engines, which drank fuel, and also required a complicated combining gear to get them all to work together. It meant extreme light weight, which meant both vulnerability to enemy fire and large amounts of needed maintenance. They wanted to use minimal crews to be more efficient, which meant that sailors were going without sleep to try and handle everything. The combining gear turned out not to be able to handle the strain and broke repeatedly in a lot of the ships. Maintenance suffered because there weren't enough sailors on board.
The back story that the article doesn't quite get into is the Navy likes big expensive ships that can do *everything*. The reality is that they also need a lot of small inexpensive ships that can do specific missions. Not every ship has to be able to stand toe to toe with the PLN. Dealing with Somali pirates, for example, does not need an Arleigh Burke class destroyer. But the Navy doesn't want to buy things like that, so it resists. The goal, back at the turn of the century, was to create a small modular ship that could be bought in large numbers and do a range of low intensity tasks. But the Navy (and their allies in Congress) saw that as a threat to the big programs, so they resisted. Clark sold it by talking about the "Streetfighter" a low cost high speed ship bought in numbers that would be networked together and able to swarm enemy fleets. SEXY! So he gets the program, but at a fatal compromise (speed, light weight, etc). What they really should have brought was an off the shelf small frigate that could handle the basic mission profile without all the seductive littoral/networking bullshit -- which, in fact, is what they're doing now with the Constellation class frigates, two decades later.
Having said all that, there's a long history of warship programs going badly wrong, so this is not really a new thing.
posted by Galvanic at 4:57 AM on November 6, 2023 [18 favorites]
No, it's really that bad. The demand for high speed led to terrible design compromises that were never workable. High speed meant enormous engines, which drank fuel, and also required a complicated combining gear to get them all to work together. It meant extreme light weight, which meant both vulnerability to enemy fire and large amounts of needed maintenance. They wanted to use minimal crews to be more efficient, which meant that sailors were going without sleep to try and handle everything. The combining gear turned out not to be able to handle the strain and broke repeatedly in a lot of the ships. Maintenance suffered because there weren't enough sailors on board.
The back story that the article doesn't quite get into is the Navy likes big expensive ships that can do *everything*. The reality is that they also need a lot of small inexpensive ships that can do specific missions. Not every ship has to be able to stand toe to toe with the PLN. Dealing with Somali pirates, for example, does not need an Arleigh Burke class destroyer. But the Navy doesn't want to buy things like that, so it resists. The goal, back at the turn of the century, was to create a small modular ship that could be bought in large numbers and do a range of low intensity tasks. But the Navy (and their allies in Congress) saw that as a threat to the big programs, so they resisted. Clark sold it by talking about the "Streetfighter" a low cost high speed ship bought in numbers that would be networked together and able to swarm enemy fleets. SEXY! So he gets the program, but at a fatal compromise (speed, light weight, etc). What they really should have brought was an off the shelf small frigate that could handle the basic mission profile without all the seductive littoral/networking bullshit -- which, in fact, is what they're doing now with the Constellation class frigates, two decades later.
Having said all that, there's a long history of warship programs going badly wrong, so this is not really a new thing.
posted by Galvanic at 4:57 AM on November 6, 2023 [18 favorites]
The pacifist in me is quietly amused that the war machines are fundamentally broken.
The patriot in me is ashamed of how inept and clownish this makes us look.
The Coast Guard vet in me is glad I didn’t join the Navy.
The painter in me wishes the $200 billion had gone to art education instead.
posted by chronkite at 5:21 AM on November 6, 2023 [32 favorites]
The patriot in me is ashamed of how inept and clownish this makes us look.
The Coast Guard vet in me is glad I didn’t join the Navy.
The painter in me wishes the $200 billion had gone to art education instead.
posted by chronkite at 5:21 AM on November 6, 2023 [32 favorites]
The low survivability (little armor) and low lethality (light ordnance load) is part of what made the LCS program so aberrant. If there's one thing that has well-characterized major Pentagon procurement over the last 40 years is a design bias for a huge kill ratio. Every F-22 and F-35 was designed to do the damage of many of its predecessor generation aircraft at an almost zero combat loss rate. One Ford class carrier in its group is intended to be the floating expression of Yankee attitude: invincibility with impunity.
posted by MattD at 5:28 AM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by MattD at 5:28 AM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
What I find amazing is that they are still building the damn things. Every time I drive through Marionette, there are 2-4 of them in there in various stages of construction.
posted by rockindata at 5:33 AM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by rockindata at 5:33 AM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Maybe the contractors figure the most profit is in maintenance work. So when they bid for a swiss-army-knife concept ship they see a dozen broken systems to fix constantly.
posted by Brian B. at 6:23 AM on November 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Brian B. at 6:23 AM on November 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
While the political problems are difficult to solve and have been an issue with many programs, one thing struck me as particularly horrific.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:42 AM on November 6, 2023 [23 favorites]
General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin considered much of the data and equipment on the LCS proprietary — a problem that the GAO has identified throughout the military. As a result, only their employees were allowed to do certain repairs.In every other case that I'm aware of, you do work for the government, the government owns it. (Corporations pretty much require this from contractors as well.) That military contractors are allowed to get away with this is appalling.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:42 AM on November 6, 2023 [23 favorites]
They're not a total failure, they succeed at bringing cash into Congressional districts, and isn't that what it's all about?
Seriously though, the poor performance and (more importantly) the low protection they provide the sailors on them should have stopped the LCS program in the design phase.
posted by tommasz at 6:47 AM on November 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
Seriously though, the poor performance and (more importantly) the low protection they provide the sailors on them should have stopped the LCS program in the design phase.
posted by tommasz at 6:47 AM on November 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
The painter in me wishes the $200 billion had gone to art education instead.
"Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor on the Littoral Combat Ship, says the program supports 12,500 jobs across 800 companies in 42 states." (source)
We could've just given those 12,500 people $16 million each. Military spending is such an insanely inefficient jobs program.
We could've almost completely solved homelessness in the United States, with a decade-long investment of $20 billion per year.
We could've undertaken over half the cost of ending extreme poverty globally, becoming an era-defining force for good in the world.
But no, instead we have some boats that no one wants and that will probably never get used.
posted by jedicus at 6:52 AM on November 6, 2023 [38 favorites]
"Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor on the Littoral Combat Ship, says the program supports 12,500 jobs across 800 companies in 42 states." (source)
We could've just given those 12,500 people $16 million each. Military spending is such an insanely inefficient jobs program.
We could've almost completely solved homelessness in the United States, with a decade-long investment of $20 billion per year.
We could've undertaken over half the cost of ending extreme poverty globally, becoming an era-defining force for good in the world.
But no, instead we have some boats that no one wants and that will probably never get used.
posted by jedicus at 6:52 AM on November 6, 2023 [38 favorites]
NAVAIR and NAVSEA have had so many bad programs in my lifetime. But man, the LCS takes the cake. ‘Proceedings’ called out the issues with the modules, engines, and loadout a decade ago. The brass knew the issues, built them anyway, and then didn’t stop building them. I think that the entire procurement command should be cashiered at this point. Replace them; audit the replacements constantly.
posted by pdoege at 7:39 AM on November 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by pdoege at 7:39 AM on November 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
Also this is what happens when you purge all the pot smokers/psychedelic users etc from your ranks.
You’re left with nothing but beige, bland functionaries.
Rear Admiral Mitch Hedberg could have noticed and goofed on this idiocy in the planning stage and saved us billions.
posted by chronkite at 7:50 AM on November 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
You’re left with nothing but beige, bland functionaries.
Rear Admiral Mitch Hedberg could have noticed and goofed on this idiocy in the planning stage and saved us billions.
posted by chronkite at 7:50 AM on November 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
Clark sold it by talking about the "Streetfighter" a low cost high speed ship bought in numbers that would be networked together and able to swarm enemy fleets. SEXY!
This, and his quote about having a ship that could be piloted by R2-D2, gives me the sneaking and rather awful suspicion that Clark may have watched Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and been rather taken by the concept of the Defiant, although that starship is heavily armored; I wonder if the admiral also had fleeting thoughts of stealing another idea from DS9, the genetically-engineered Jem'Hadar clone troops.
With an undergraduate degree from Evangel College, a small Christian school in Missouri, and an MBA from the University of Arkansas
Just the guy for a big ship design and engineering project, huh?
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:10 AM on November 6, 2023 [14 favorites]
This, and his quote about having a ship that could be piloted by R2-D2, gives me the sneaking and rather awful suspicion that Clark may have watched Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and been rather taken by the concept of the Defiant, although that starship is heavily armored; I wonder if the admiral also had fleeting thoughts of stealing another idea from DS9, the genetically-engineered Jem'Hadar clone troops.
With an undergraduate degree from Evangel College, a small Christian school in Missouri, and an MBA from the University of Arkansas
Just the guy for a big ship design and engineering project, huh?
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:10 AM on November 6, 2023 [14 favorites]
The zooming out graphic to start the article is pretty cool.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:15 AM on November 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:15 AM on November 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
The low survivability (little armor) and low lethality (light ordnance load)
See, though, that's actually not necessarily a bad thing. Navies need lots of inexpensive ships that aren't designed for front-line combat but aimed at patrolling, fisheries protection, anti-piracy, and other things like that. Survivability and lethality cost a lot of money and having a $2 billion Burke class destroyer do anti-piracy work is massive overkill. But the Navy likes big flashy ships and won't buy the cheap ones (and gets rid of them when they do end up with such -- see the retirement of the Cyclone class patrol boats). A good example are the British "River" class offshore patrol vessels: cheap, limited armaments, but good endurance, reasonable speed, has a helicopter landing pad, and can generally do a lot of low end things effectively. And cheap -- the first batch cost about $80 million/ship. That's what the LCS should have been.
posted by Galvanic at 8:25 AM on November 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
See, though, that's actually not necessarily a bad thing. Navies need lots of inexpensive ships that aren't designed for front-line combat but aimed at patrolling, fisheries protection, anti-piracy, and other things like that. Survivability and lethality cost a lot of money and having a $2 billion Burke class destroyer do anti-piracy work is massive overkill. But the Navy likes big flashy ships and won't buy the cheap ones (and gets rid of them when they do end up with such -- see the retirement of the Cyclone class patrol boats). A good example are the British "River" class offshore patrol vessels: cheap, limited armaments, but good endurance, reasonable speed, has a helicopter landing pad, and can generally do a lot of low end things effectively. And cheap -- the first batch cost about $80 million/ship. That's what the LCS should have been.
posted by Galvanic at 8:25 AM on November 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
A high school friend of mine went to Annapolis for Naval Architecture, and when he retired from the Navy in 2010 ended up working for Rolls-Royce as a lobbyist for Congress asking them to stop requiring a third engine be built for every fighter, because they were getting hammered for doing it as it being wasteful. They were doing it because Eric Cantor, whose district the factory was in, used it for the “money coming to my district” ads.
He was also part of the LCS team for a while, and said that it was going to be “the kind of shitshow that ends careers, costs admirals stars, and kills sailors through stupid design”. And while I have no idea how many sailors died as a direct result, it sounds like he was right.
And yeah, it would be nice to use the money to fix things, but as long as politicians want to show that their desire to thump their thoraxes in a threat display is greater than their empathy, we’re going to need to accept that the assholes win. (So I guess we need to grab them and replace them with boxes of macaroni and cheese, which is somewhat more useful and, in the case of most MAGA people, not as difficult to bring to a boil.)
posted by mephron at 8:35 AM on November 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
He was also part of the LCS team for a while, and said that it was going to be “the kind of shitshow that ends careers, costs admirals stars, and kills sailors through stupid design”. And while I have no idea how many sailors died as a direct result, it sounds like he was right.
And yeah, it would be nice to use the money to fix things, but as long as politicians want to show that their desire to thump their thoraxes in a threat display is greater than their empathy, we’re going to need to accept that the assholes win. (So I guess we need to grab them and replace them with boxes of macaroni and cheese, which is somewhat more useful and, in the case of most MAGA people, not as difficult to bring to a boil.)
posted by mephron at 8:35 AM on November 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
Wikipedia claims Vern Clark is on the board of directors of
That Evangel school isn't just a random Christian school it's the primary Assemblies of God outfit. You know, dominionist acellerationists bs like NAR and Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker. No dancing, no kissing and NO GAYS.
posted by zenon at 8:48 AM on November 6, 2023 [15 favorites]
- Raytheon
- SRI International
- Rolls-Royce North America
- Horizon Lines
- Armed Forces YMCA
- USO
- Regent University in Virginia Beach
- Surface Navy Association and senior advisor at:
- Booz Allen Hamilton
- Defense Policy Board
- Fleishman-Hillard
- Computer Science Corporation
- Comptroller General's advisory board of the GAO
- Military Ministry and a professor at:
- Regent University in Virginia Beach
- Robertson School of Government and the School of Business & Leadership
That Evangel school isn't just a random Christian school it's the primary Assemblies of God outfit. You know, dominionist acellerationists bs like NAR and Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker. No dancing, no kissing and NO GAYS.
posted by zenon at 8:48 AM on November 6, 2023 [15 favorites]
pdoege: “‘Proceedings’ called out the issues with the modules, engines, and loadout a decade ago. ”I went and looked and there are 27 pages of articles tagged LCS on the USNI website.
A few highlights from the earliest couple of pages:
“Birth of the Littoral Combat Ship,” Capt. Robert Carney Powers, USN (Retired), Proceedings, September 2012
“Analysis: Navy Doesn’t Know What it Wants with LCS,” Philip Ewing, USNI News, 25 March 2013
“Perez Report: Many in LCS Program Have Forgotten Key Fundamentals,” Sam LaGrone, Id., 23 July 2013
posted by ob1quixote at 9:53 AM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
See, though, that's actually not necessarily a bad thing. Navies need lots of inexpensive ships that aren't designed for front-line combat but aimed at patrolling, fisheries protection, anti-piracy, and other things like that. Survivability and lethality cost a lot of money and having a $2 billion Burke class destroyer do anti-piracy work is massive overkill.In an US context, that's often a Coast Guard role, though (even in seas nowhere near the US). This is what the Legend- and Heritage-class cutters are for.
posted by kickingtheground at 1:06 PM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
There's a mention in there about the initial design being based on a ferry - it came from an Australian company that was building a trimaran ferries, and managed to turn that into the LCS: https://www.austal.com/ship-types/defence
posted by awfurby at 1:55 PM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by awfurby at 1:55 PM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
If anybody is interested in more reading, Congressional Research Service has a short overview of the LCS - the author, Ronald O'Rourke, knows his stuff.
The fact is that large, complex technical projects often run into speedbumps. I would argue that having Congress constantly breathe down the neck with the threat of cancelation provides the perverse incentive of hiding all those issues and offsetting the political risk by spreading out the work to multiple Congressional districts. In this case, it worked.
posted by ndr at 3:07 PM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
What they really should have brought was an off the shelf small frigate that could handle the basic mission profile without all the seductive littoral/networking bullshit -- which, in fact, is what they're doing now with the Constellation class frigates, two decades later.Networking is not bullshit and in fact, the Constellation class frigates are more networked than the LCS. In a potential fight against a peer, it's incredibly important.
In every other case that I'm aware of, you do work for the government, the government owns it. (Corporations pretty much require this from contractors as well.) That military contractors are allowed to get away with this is appalling.Intellectual property - the contractor designed and built it (and might sell it to other customers). They signed up to deliver the ships, if the military doesn't have the rights to it, it's because it wasn't written into the contract.
Also this is what happens when you purge all the pot smokers/psychedelic users etc from your ranks.To be clear, this was conceived and built during the Rumsfeld revolution in military affairs era - the whole concept of the LCS is the result of creative, visionary thinking, not stiff, hidebound bureaucrats doing their jobs the same way it's always been done. The DDG-1000 class destroyers too were a failure because they were an (too) ambitious leap in technology.
You’re left with nothing but beige, bland functionaries.
Rear Admiral Mitch Hedberg could have noticed and goofed on this idiocy in the planning stage and saved us billions.
The fact is that large, complex technical projects often run into speedbumps. I would argue that having Congress constantly breathe down the neck with the threat of cancelation provides the perverse incentive of hiding all those issues and offsetting the political risk by spreading out the work to multiple Congressional districts. In this case, it worked.
posted by ndr at 3:07 PM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Networking is not bullshit and in fact, the Constellation class frigates are more networked than the LCS
Networking is like fusion. It’s always 10 years out.
the whole concept of the LCS is the result of creative, visionary thinking, not stiff, hidebound bureaucrats doing their jobs the same way it's always been done
Hidebound bureaucrats know how to actually build ships that work* which, I’m just spitballing here, is actually kind of important.
*including avoiding speed bumps like “hey, when we try to go above 30 knots, the transmission breaks and we have to be towed back to port.”
posted by Galvanic at 3:38 PM on November 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
Networking is like fusion. It’s always 10 years out.
the whole concept of the LCS is the result of creative, visionary thinking, not stiff, hidebound bureaucrats doing their jobs the same way it's always been done
Hidebound bureaucrats know how to actually build ships that work* which, I’m just spitballing here, is actually kind of important.
*including avoiding speed bumps like “hey, when we try to go above 30 knots, the transmission breaks and we have to be towed back to port.”
posted by Galvanic at 3:38 PM on November 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
It’s frustrating that ProPublica still hasn’t internalized the fact that US federal taxes don’t actually pay for anything.
posted by davel at 7:04 PM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by davel at 7:04 PM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Meanwhile, Ukraine is winning the naval war in the Black Sea in spite of not having a navy. It seems to me we should be focusing on how to destroy PLAN as thoroughly and asymmetrically as possible.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 3:22 AM on November 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by 1970s Antihero at 3:22 AM on November 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
This video spends its first 9 minutes going over the myriad failures of the LCS program.
“Why the US Military Costs so Much”—Wendover Productions, 16 November 2023
posted by ob1quixote at 2:37 PM on November 18, 2023
“Why the US Military Costs so Much”—Wendover Productions, 16 November 2023
posted by ob1quixote at 2:37 PM on November 18, 2023
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It sounds like these are the kinds of problems: the combining gear, lack of English-language manuals, are pretty fixable. Are the Navy higher ups just using them as an excuse to get back to their comfort zone: rely on big-ass carriers and hope they're not instantly obliterated by cheap-ass drones and missiles?
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:10 AM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]