The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog

Don't Let Your Tax Dollars Sink With This Ship

Click to see our graphic

By ANDRE FRANCISCO

The Pentagon once again wants to spend billions of your taxpayer funds on a new ship that is plagued with problems. We think it’s time to say "no."

The Navy testing office recently said the littoral combat ship is not meant for combat, even though combat is literally its middle name! The Navy plans to spend $2.2 billion next year on this program, but the Project On Government Oversight revealed that there have been numerous problems during testing and early deployment (including cracks in the hull and loss of power throughout the entire ship). POGO also revealed that Navy officials hid poor testing results while it was trying to convince Congress to buy more ships. The Navy ultimately envisions buying 55 of these sub-par ships.

Check out our graphic then share it with your friends so we can spread the word about this ship.

Andre Francisco is an online producer for the Project On Government Oversight.

Follow @andrefrancisco

Navy's Littoral Combat Ship: "Big Bucks, Little Bang"

By BEN FREEMAN

The Navy’s newest ship, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), is woefully inferior to comparable ships, according to an article written by John Sayen for Time magazine’s Battleland blog.

Sayen, a Marine Corps veteran who has written extensively on the military, says that the LCS “cannot match the combat power of similar sized foreign warships costing only a fraction as much.” Even with its mission modules, which won’t be fully finished or tested for years, it compares poorly with similar ships in foreign navies. Sayen provides several examples (excerpted below with permission of Time):

The new Russian Steregushchy-class frigate, for example, is (at 2,200 tons) about 30% smaller than an LCS and cost only 20-25% as much. Yet, it carries a 100mm automatic gun, 14.5-mm machineguns, close-in defense “Gatling gun” systems (AK-630), medium range surface to air missiles (S400 series), SS-N-25 anti-ship missiles (sub-sonic and shorter ranged than the US Harpoon but far more capable than the Griffin), 533-mm (21”) torpedoes, 324mm anti-submarine torpedoes and a helicopter. The ship is not only in production for the Russian Navy but also for the navies of Algeria and Indonesia. A version is also being built for China.

The Swedish Visby-class corvette was one of the models on which LCS was based. It carries the same 57mm gun plus antisubmarine rockets and torpedoes, anti-ship missiles, a radar-deflecting hull, and a helicopter pad (but no hangar, apparently). It can also reach 35 knots but it is only a fifth as large.

The Chinese have more than 80 Houbei-class fast-attack boats in service. Each costs only $40 million to build and displaces only 220 tons (one-fifteenth as much as an LCS). Yet they carry C-801 series anti-ship missiles that greatly outrange any weapon the LCS has.

About the only threat the LCS might handle is the “swarms” of Iranian machinegun and RPG-carrying speedboats in the Persian Gulf. Apart from the fact that the Iranian crisis will have been resolved for better or worse before most of the LCS fleet can be built, these Iranian small craft lack weapons big enough to menace any serious warship.

Navy Appoints Panel to Address Warship's Problems

By BEN FREEMAN, Ph.D.

The U.S. Navy has convened a panel of high-ranking officers to study problems with the long-troubled “littoral combat ship,” an unconventional type of warship that the Navy has been counting on to perform an array of missions.

In a memo dated Aug. 22, the Navy’s top admiral ordered the new panel to address “challenges identified” in a series of recent wargames and other reviews.

“All Navy combat ships, even test and evaluation platforms, must be ready to meet assigned capability and missions starting the first day of active service,” Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan W. Greenert wrote in a memo posted by Defense News. “The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is no exception,” he wrote.

The Project On Government Oversight has documented extensive problems with the U.S.S. Freedom, the first of the vessels. In April, POGO reported that the Freedom had suffered engine failures, cracks, flooding and corrosion. 

Last week, POGO reported that, according to internal Navy documents, the Freedom had suffered from directional instability – difficulty maintaining a straight course. According to the documents, Navy personnel had urged that the information be closely held at a time when Congress was weighing the future of the vessel.

Off Course: Did Navy Underplay Steering Problem Before Awarding Ship Contract?

The USS Freedom at dry dock.

By BEN FREEMAN, Ph.D.

In late 2010, the future of one of the U.S. Navy’s prized new weapons systems hung in the balance. 

Instead of choosing between competing versions of a warship designed to operate in shallow coastal waters, the Navy wanted Congress’s blessing to buy both of them – one by Lockheed Martin and another by General Dynamics.

Internal Navy records obtained by the Project On Government Oversight and Aviation Week show that, before Congress granted the Navy’s request, tests of the version developed by Lockheed Martin had identified a problem.

“Ship is inherently directionally unstable,” one Navy document said.

The vessel, known as a “littoral combat ship,” was difficult to steer and “requires many… adjustments to maintain a straight course,” the document said.

That information does not seem to have been shared widely at the time.

In response to questions from POGO, a Navy spokeswoman said Navy personnel “limited discussion” of test results, partly because they doubted the findings and partly because the assessments could have influenced the competition.

The spokeswoman, Lieutenant Courtney Hillson, said the directional instability was normal.

“Although seemingly counter-intuitive, all ships actually need some amount of directional instability inherent to the hull in order to maneuver tactically through the water,” Hillson said in a written statement.

However, a source close to the LCS program told POGO that the directional instability affected the crew’s ability to operate the Lockheed ship.

The documents obtained by POGO and Aviation Week show that Navy officials urged personnel involved in the littoral combat ship program to contain or reword the results of the so-called calm water trials conducted in October and November of 2010.

The Battle over the Navy's "Swiss Army Knife" Ship

By CAROLINE CHEVAT

"The Littoral Combat Ship is like a Swiss Army knife--it does a lot of things, it just doesn't do any of them well," said POGO National Security Investigator Ben Freeman yesterday at a Cato Institute forum on the future of the U.S. Navy surface fleet.

Freeman was joined by Under Secretary of the Navy Robert Work, as well as the Congressional Budget Office's Eric J. Labs and Cato's Christopher Preble and Benjamin Friedman.

Work took a liking to Ben’s Swiss Army knife analogy, but insisted that “this ship does it a lot better” than other alternatives.

This wasn’t the first point of contention about the troubled program, which POGO recently wrote to Congress about, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Littoral Combat Ship Gets Speiered

By BEN FREEMAN, Ph.D.

The Navy's close-to-shore combat ship just hit some rougher seas.

An amendment requiring the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a review of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program passed during the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) markup of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) yesterday. The amendment, introduced by Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA), requires the GAO to investigate cracks, equipment failures, engine breakdowns, weld quality, and other matters related to the ships performance and cost.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because, as Rep. Speier indicated during the markup, the LCS letter we sent to Congress last month was Rep. Speier’s impetus for submitting the LCS amendment.

Speier was also aware of additional troubling news about the LCS program brought to light by an Aviation Week investigation published yesterday. The author of the investigation, Mike Fabey, was given a guided tour of the first LCS, Lockheed Martin’s USS Freedom. He discovered that the ship was, “plagued by extensive corrosion and manufacturing issues more recent and serious than anything the Pentagon or prime contractor Lockheed Martin have publicly acknowledged thus far.” Fabey goes on to state:

Spending Even Less, Spending Even Smarter: Updated Recommendations for Nearly $700 Billion in National Security Savings

By SUZANNE DERSHOWITZ

Today the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) and Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) released updated recommendations for reducing wasteful national security spending. After analyzing the proposed national security budget, we crunched the latest numbers and this time our recs would reduce the deficit by nearly $700 billion from fiscal year (FY) 2013 to 2022—even more savings than before.

The House Armed Services Committee will mark up the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year (FY) 2013 tomorrow, and the Senate markup is scheduled for the week of May 21.

Now that U.S. military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is drawing down, it is clear that any serious proposal to diminish the U.S. deficit must include cuts to the national security budget.  According to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), current national security spending is higher than at any point during the Cold War and accounts for more than half of all discretionary spending. Military spending at the Department of Defense (DoD) has nearly doubled since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began.

Our recommendations for smarter spending center on cutting flawed, costly weapons systems, canceling or delaying nuclear programs we don’t need, and limiting out-of-control contract spending. We found cheaper yet equally effective alternatives that won’t risk U.S. security. Read on for a rundown of the highlights.

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.

Failed Equipment, Flawed Designs Plague Lockheed Littoral Combat Ship

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.”

The Pentagon's Weapon Programs: Delivering Less, Later, for More Money

By BEN FREEMAN, Ph.D.

The cost of the Department of Defense's (DoD) major acquisition programs grew by $74.4 billion in the past year and now totals more than $1.58 trillion, according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. And, this $74.4 billion is just a fraction of the overall cost growth in a DoD weapons acquisition portfolio that, on balance, is delivering fewer weapons for more money.

The defense acquisitions portfolio has been plagued by reductions in the number of weapons delivered, delayed delivery times, and enormous cost overruns. In fact, the total acquisition cost of this portfolio has grown by $447 billion, 40 percent above initial cost estimates.

More Bucks, Less Bang

Despite the cost growth, many of these programs, will deliver fewer quantities of weapons (e.g. fewer numbers of planes). Because the total cost of these programs is divided over fewer quantities of weapons, there has been an average 46 percent increase in the per unit cost of the 38 major weapons programs for which the GAO provided baseline and currents estimates of cost and quantity, according to a POGO analysis.  

With increasing costs, even if the quantity of purchases don’t decline, the military is getting far less bang for each buck it spends. For example, the cost of each Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) on average has increased by more than $257 million. With 55 of these ships set to be procured, this increase will cost taxpayers more than $14 billion. Similarly, the cost of each of the six satellites in the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) has more than tripled – increasing by more than $2 billion each.

This was a major problem during the past year, as the GAO report noted, “Over 60 percent of programs have lost buying power in the last year—as measured by an increase in program acquisition unit cost—depriving DOD of funding that could have been used for additional quantities or other priorities.”

The F-35 is perhaps the highest profile program where U.S. taxpayers are seeing a price tag spiraling out of control. According to the most recent DoD figures, the costs of acquiring the F-35 are now $395 billion - nearly double the baseline estimate. But wait until you hear about the unit cost increase. Several years ago, earlier in the JSF program, the military reduced its planned buy of JSF planes by 409 aircraft from 2,866 planes to 2,457. Accordingly, the unit cost has more than doubled from $74.5 million to just over $160 million.

Budget Breakdown: Rolling Analysis of Obama's FY 2013 Budget

POGO BUDGET COVERAGE Nuclear security:  Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility Uranium Processing Facility B61 Life Extension Program Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility Weapons programs: V-22 Osprey Joint Strike Fighter Littoral Combat Ship M1 Abrams Aircraft carriers Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System Space Based Infrared Systems Other national security matters: Troops in Europe Service contractors Investing in oversight: Government Accountability Office (GAO) Office of Special Counsel Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commodity Futures Trading Commission

By POGO STAFF

Update (Tuesday, Feb. 14): POGO will continue to publish budget analysis on this post today.

Today, POGO will be offering rolling analysis of President Obama's Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 budget, which is available here. The budget is a blueprint for the initiatives the President would fund if he was unconstrained by Congress. Congress may use the budget as a starting point for appropriations, but also has the capacity to ignore Obama's suggestions and will likely change some of the levels of funding if it passes appropriations bills for FY 2013 (Congress has had trouble doing so on time in some years).

To kick things off, POGO has obtained an early copy of the Pentagon's FY2013 "Program Acquisition Costs by Weapon System" document.

POGO has extensively outlined areas for defense spending cuts in our Spending Less, Spending Smarter recommendations, jointly prepared with Taxpayers for Common Sense. A summary of the most important items we are looking for can be found here. We also have giant bull’s eyes on several nuclear weapons-related programs such as a massive new Energy Department project at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and some troubled weapons programs such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Littoral Combat Ship.

We’ll also be looking for signs of a reduction in spending on service contractors. In our Bad Business report released last fall, we estimated that for 35 comparable job occupations examined, service contractors cost taxpayers on average nearly twice as much as in-house government workers (for a discussion of data and analytical limitations in our report, go here).

Finally, we think it’s vital that President Obama invest federal spending transparency and in the nation’s watchdogs: the Office of Special Counsel, the Government Accountability Office, and the Offices of Inspectors General—an analysis of these budget requests on these watchdogs will come later this week.

Check back for more on this page throughout the day!

 

POGO Sends Obama a "Budget Valentine"

By DANA LIEBELSON

On Monday, the day before Valentine's Day, President Obama will deliver his 2013 budget proposal to Congress. Some of his recommendations have already been hinted at in the State of the Union address and in the quasi-unveiling of the Pentagon’s budget.  However, we’re still anxiously waiting for the budget line items to be finalized. Instead of simply twiddling our thumbs, POGO staffers have made Obama this “Budget Valentine”—outlining some of the our wishes we’d love to see made reality.

Maybe you have a fancy dinner, chocolate or roses planned for your Valentine’s Day date. Or maybe, like the government, you’re strapped for cash. In that case, we recommend you give him or her POGO’s “Budget Valentine” too—and keep reading for more information on these important recommendations.