Just weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the Navy announced a new class of warship. The littoral combat ship or LCS was hailed as a transformational, 21st century platform to meet future defense challenges. But recently, the Navy began mothballing the ships. Navy insiders refer to LCS as the ‘little crappy ship’ that will cost taxpayers $100 billion.
“It's shocking that they would continue to build these." Sioux City Mayor Bob ScottSioux City, Iowa mayor Bob Scott said, “It's shocking that they would continue to build these and we're decommissioning, but we're still commissioning. We just don't understand how that can be going on.”
Scott's community was thrilled when the 11th littoral combat ship or LCS was named after their city. But now he doesn’t understand why the Navy is building new ships at the same time it’s decommissioning ones that still have that new ship smell.
“We thought we had a 30-year relationship with those crews,” Scott told us.
The LCS was promised to last a generation. The western Iowa community endowed scholarships for USS Sioux City crewmembers and their families. So it was shock when the Navy decommissioned the ship after just 4 years of service.
“The Littoral Combat Ship ... was doomed from the beginning." Dan Grazier, Project on Government Oversight“The Littoral Combat Ship is, it was doomed from the beginning. It's because it was a flawed concept,” Dan Grazier told Inside Your World.
A Marine Corps veteran, Grazier is the senior defense policy fellow at the Project on Government Oversight. He’s been following the LCS program. And he was not alone in having doubts about the ship.
Several government agencies raised red flags before the first ship was even built. In 2004, the Congressional Research Service warned the Navy did “not demonstrate that the LCS is the best or most promising approach for performing the missions.”
“[T]he Navy’s ability to deliver a capable, affordable LCS remains unproven.” Government Accountability OfficeThe House Armed Services Committee expressed “concerns about the lack of a rigorous analysis of alternative concepts for performance of the LCS mission.”
The following year, the Congressional Budget Office suggested Congress cancel the program and spend dollars elsewhere.
The Pentagon’s test and evaluation agency gave the LCS poor grades in a 2009 report.
And the Government Accountability Office issued a 2010 paper stating “[T]he Navy’s ability to deliver a capable, affordable LCS remains unproven.”
Despite these warnings, the Navy launched an aggressive plan to acquire more than 50 of them.
"It's going to work because we say it's going to work.” Correspondent Mark Hyman describing the Navy's attitudeCorrespondent Mark Hyman observed, “So the Navy, up until that point, had rested on this concept of analysis by assertion. It's going to work because we say it's going to work.” “Exactly,” replied Grazier. He continued, “Well, unfortunately, far too often you see Pentagon leaders making decisions based on talking points rather than actual hard concrete evidence.”
During our months-long investigation spoke with several Navy and Defense Department insiders who have detailed insight of the LCS program. They would only speak off-camera due to their current positions. Most applauded the Navy’s effort to be forward-thinking and pursue cutting-edge technology. But the failure to consider competing concepts, conduct a detailed independent cost estimate, and skip operational testing that is critical in new ship construction has proved catastrophic.
Rather than pick a single winner among three competing designs as is the common practice, the Navy awarded contracts for two different ships in 2004. This made Congressional delegations happy in Wisconsin and Alabama, locations of the winning shipyards. Then it went downhill from there.
Each LCS costs about two-and-a-half times ($584 million) the original estimate of $220 million per ship. Operating expenses skyrocketed. A novel concept to combine diesel and gas turbine propulsion systems to reach a high speed of 45 knots failed. In 2016, 6 of the first 7 ships built were out-of-commission due to mechanical failures (here, here, here, here, here, here, here).
The decision to assign skeletal manning left the ships short-staffed to perform basic duties, over-working the crews. Warships are not made of aluminum because it doesn’t withstand attacks. Yet, the Navy used aluminum in the LCS to lower its weight sacrificing survivability of the ship and crew.
Several of the ships have developed structural cracks, reducing their seaworthiness. And a plan to rapidly swap weapons systems modules in a Legos-like concept so the ships could change war-fighting tasks never reliably materialized.
Grazier warned, “The big lesson that needs to be learned is you have to follow best acquisition practices.”
“[T]hey just don’t support the high-end fight that we’re getting ready for right now.” Vice Admiral Bill GalinisIn 2012 as failures mounted, Rear Admiral John Kirby responded to critics stating, “[The] LCS is built to fight. It’s built for combat.” When problems became insurmountable, the Navy flipped. Last year, Vice Admiral Bill Galinis said, “[T]hey just don’t support the high-end fight that we’re getting ready for right now.”
Instead of a small, Jack-of-all-trades warship, the LCS is combatant that punches well below its weight. Pentagon insiders have told Inside Your World the LCS is a colossal boondoggle.
A review of Navy documents reveals the lifetime cost to American taxpayers will be about $108 billion. The Navy declined to elaborate on cost totals nor answer any other questions. Instead, it issued a statement that read, in part:
“In April 2020, the Navy established Task Force LCS with a mission to enhance the sustainability, reliability, and employability of Littoral Combat Ships. ... These efforts have improved the operational availability of the LCS,” according to a Navy spokesperson.
The questions we submitted to the Navy are below followed by the Navy’s complete statement.
1. What is the current status of the LCS class?
2. The Navy and Coast Guard reportedly held discussions about possible joint acquisition of a transformational platform that would achieve commonality between the two services’ surface assets. The LCS program appeared to be a likely candidate to achieve this commonality. Why didn’t this occur?
3. Critics, including several government accountability and oversight entities, were sounding the alarm in the early 2000s that the LCS was a deeply-flawed concept with unrealistic promises of performance and cost. Why didn’t the Navy pause acquisition of the LCS program until identified deficiencies were addressed?
4. In January 2005, CNO ADM Vern Clark stated the Navy was not “collectively balanced and optimized for the world of the future.” Is it now? If so, what platforms have been acquired since Clark’s statement that makes the Navy “balanced and optimized for the world of the future.” If not, then what platforms must be acquired to achieve these goals?
5. At one point in 2016, six of the first seven LCS ships commissioned were out-of-service. Why didn’t the Navy pause LCS acquisition at that point?
In 2012, RDML John Kirby (CHINFO) stated, “LCS is built to fight. It’s built for combat.”
In 2023, VADM Bill Galinis (NAVSEA) said the following, “Again, some of the things that we learned on the early ships of the two classes – both the Freedom and the Independence class – and then you look at the armament and the weapons, the combat capability on those ships, they just don’t support the high-end fight that we’re getting ready for right now.”
6. These two statements are in direct contradiction. Why was the LCS considered “built to fight built for combat” in 2012, but is not today?
7. What is the total amount of money spent on the LCS program, including weapons system modules, from concept through FY-2023? This includes shipyard repairs and unscheduled repair facility maintenance.
8. One estimate is the lifetime cost of the LCS will reach $100 billion. Is this estimate correct? If not, then what is the estimated lifetime cost?
9. How many ships would the US Navy like to have?
Here is the Navy’s entire statement attributed to a spokesperson in lieu of answering the above questions:
"In April 2020, the Navy established Task Force LCS with a mission to enhance the sustainability, reliability, and employability of Littoral Combat Ships. The Task Force has been successful in minimizing logistical barriers, improving access to spare parts, enhancing technical expertise and lessons learned, and increasing the self-sufficiency of the crews by transferring much of the ship maintenance from a contractor-based model to a Sailor-enabled construct. These efforts have improved the sustainability and operational availability of the LCS.
"As a result of these efforts, the Navy is putting LCS in the hands of Fleet Commanders and they are finding tremendous value from their versatility. LCS performs a full spectrum of maritime operations from patrols in waters around the world, HADR missions, mine warfare operations, to experimentation with unmanned and weapons systems integration. For example, there are currently five LCS operating in the Indo-Pacific, one LCS operating in the Persian Gulf, and LCS routinely deploy to the waters of the Caribbean and South America. Recent examples of these operations include USS SAVANNAH (LCS-26) firing a containerized SM-6 missile system, USS INDIANAPOLIS (LCS 17) and USS OAKLAND (LCS 24) operating with unmanned platforms, USS JACKSON (LCS 6) conducting Pacific Partnership, and USS GABRIELLE GIFFORDS (LCS 10) conducting patrols in the South China Sea. This diversity of missions is becoming routine for the LCS and is freeing up other fleet platforms such as Navy Cruisers and Destroyers to focus on more high-end operational missions such as ballistic missile defense and freedom of navigation operations."
In 2015, the Defense Secretary reduced the acquisition to just 40 ships. The total was further cut to 35. 30 have been commissioned, and 5 more are still under-construction (here, here, here, here, here).
Four years ago, the Navy announced it would start retiring the LCS, long before their 25-year lifespan. The 4-year old USS Sioux City was among the first to be mothballed. About one-and-a-half million dollars was raised for the ship and crew by Sioux Cityans.
“It's disappointing that no one has come forward and said, ‘We're sorry.'" Mayor Scott commenting on the Navy“It's disappointing that no one has come forward and said, ‘We're sorry that we did what we did,’ because I don't think they are,” Bob Scott shared with us. He continued, “Quite frankly, I'd like to not feel that way, but I don't think it matters to them.”
Aside from the Navy’s official statements, we could not find anyone who spoke favorably of the LCS. Defense consultant Bryan McGrath observed, “Decommissioning them is a terrible decision. But the only decision worse than that would be keeping them.”
"[W]hy did the US Navy go down this road?” Dan GrazierGrazier speculated, “Future historians are going to look back on it and they're probably going to shake their head like, why did the US Navy go down this road?”
The Houthi attacks on maritime shipping in the Red Sea that are occurring at this moment are the exact mission the littoral (meaning close to shore) class of warships was designed to face. Thirty percent of all global container shipping passes through the Red Sea and Suez Canal. But the US Navy is not sending LCS ships to the region because they are deemed ineffective and possibly not survivable from an attack.
While the Navy is wrestling with the failed LCS program, another concern has arisen. According to a leaked Office of Naval Intelligence briefing slide, the Chinese navy has a shipbuilding capacity that is 200 times larger than that of the US Navy. That’s something that will likely keep the Pentagon awake at night.
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