By DANA LIEBELSON
POGO sent a letter today to the Senate and House Armed Services Committees recommending that an expensive and severely flawed variant of the Littoral Combat Ship program be eliminated. The letter comes on the heels of POGO's release of Navy documents revealing serious cracking and corrosion problems with the ship--along with evidence of dangerous equipment failures.
The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is a surface vessel commissioned to operate close to shore. It’s supposed to be the cheetah of Navy ships: fast and agile, with the flexibility to both engage in surface combat with modern-day pirates, and also take down submarines and mines. There are two variants of the LCS: one built by a team led by General Dynamics, which will cost $345.8 million per ship; and the other built by a team led by Lockheed Martin, which will cost $357.5 million per ship.
As we’ve reported, The General Dynamics LCS has some problems with corrosion. But the Lockheed Martin version can hardly even make it out of the harbor. As we wrote in our letter, POGO has obtained a number of documents showing that Lockheed Martin’s USS Freedom has been “plagued by flawed designs and failed equipment since being commissioned, has at least 17 known cracks, and has repeatedly been beset by engine-related failures.”
These are serious problems. "What the documents show is grounds for questioning this LCS variant's viability," says POGO National Security Investigator Ben Freeman. A source close to the program, who blamed the Navy’s Quality Assurance for accepting such a flawed ship, told POGO that this ship is “not fit for combat and should only be used for training [at most].”
In the letter, POGO pointed out that “from the time the Navy accepted LCS from Lockheed Martin on September 18, 2008, until the ship went into dry dock in the summer of 2011—not even 1,000 days later—there were 640 chargeable equipment failures on the ship. On average then, something on the ship failed on two out of every three days.”
According to the documents POGO obtained, in one particularly dangerous example, the ship was involved in counter-drug trafficking operations—which included detaining suspected drug smugglers—when the electricity on the entire ship went out, leaving it temporarily adrift. If this had occurred during combat, this mishap could very well have been fatal.
Imagine if you had to fly on a commercial jet that had equipment failures (like power outages!) most of the time. Not only would you be rightfully concerned for your safety—but how on earth would you get anywhere on time?
Well, the reality is that USS Freedom doesn’t—after more than six months in port, the ship has only been out to sea twice this year, and during both trips the engines and other key equipment failed. This is a far cry from what the Navy has been telling taxpayers: it’s claimed to Congress that both variants of the LCS are performing well.
It’s time for the Navy to fess up that this ship is nothing but a busted, leaky boat with a history of design and equipment failures. With the LCS program expected to cost taxpayers $120 billion, it simply doesn’t make sense to keep this unnecessary vessel.
Dana Liebelson is POGO’s Beth Daley Impact Fellow.
As a former sailor I find this.. well I am at a loss for words. Polite words anyway.
Posted by: em3ledoux | Apr 28, 2012 at 10:48 AM
When I worked at House Appropriations Committee in 2006-7, I examined the Navy RDTP&E budget. At the time, the Navy planned to have a sail-off and choose the better of the two proototypes. (That did not happen as the Navy continues to build both ships despite the enormous logistics tail that is applied by not narrowing down to a single production model.) Furthermore, the requirements for the Littoral Combat Ship was that it was to have three very different capabilities. However, as built, it only carries two capabilities, but must go into port to offload one capability and install the one it was not carrying. Why are we continuing to pour money down this rathole?
Posted by: David | Apr 28, 2012 at 10:37 AM
It is hard to believe the General Dynamics ship is being hailed as the good version of the Little Crappy Ship. It's design is fundamentally flawed by its unstable design. At least the problems with the Lockheed ship can be fixed, at a great profit to Lockheed, naturally.
Really though, isn't this program just one more example of why our Navy ships should be designed by the US Navy as they once were and not by defense contractors who are not only robbing us of money, but also of the capacity to defend our shores and routes of commerce? POGO has repeatedly called for the insourcing of once outsourced government jobs. Can there be any better case against outsourcing than the decimation of our Naval forces by defense contractors?
Posted by: Dfens | Apr 24, 2012 at 08:53 AM