Amendment Would Force Navy to Come Clean about Littoral Combat Ship

By ANDRE FRANCISCO

A House Armed Services Subcommittee has unanimously passed an amendment to require the Navy to provide a full briefing on its troubled and expensive close-to-shore combat ship program.

The amendment comes on the heels of a letter POGO sent to leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees calling for the elimination of one variant of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).

Our letter called for one LCS variant to be eliminated because photos and documents obtained by POGO show numerous cracks and evidence of corrosion in the hull of the USS Freedom, the first vessel Lockheed delivered in the LCS program.

The amendment, introduced by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) as part of the fiscal year 2013 defense budget bill, would require the Navy to give a full briefing on the LCS 30 days after the defense budget is signed into law. It was the only addition to the bill in an otherwise short hearing.

Rep. Hunter explained his amendment in an Aol Defense story:

"This simply makes the navy come to us and explain all the problems [and] all the good things about the LCS we need to know to conduct proper oversight," Rep. Hunter told the committee. "The Navy needs to be more forthcoming with us."

...

"I didn't realize the Navy had been so restrictive in its reporting even with DoD [Department of Defense]," Rep. Hunter told AOL Defense. "We just want to know what's going on."

We will be looking forward to what comes out of the briefing on the LCS.

The Lockheed LCS variant is expected to cost $357.5 million per ship.

Andre Francisco is POGO's Online Producer.

Follow @andrefrancisco

Image via SurfaceWarriors.

Comments

[Dfens]

Too bad they didn't write an amendment to put an end to these defense contractors robbing us blind on the design of these ships. Our naval might has been decimated by defense contractors. They've cut the number of ships we have to less than half of what we once had and the few we have cost more than our previous fleet ever did with less reliability. Is it not time to go back to the Navy designing its own ships yet?