A Ship With No Ammunition

Regular readers know that ComNavOps is highly critical of Navy leadership and their decision making.  I’d like to give them credit from time to time but, good grief, it’s very difficult to do so.  Every time I think they’ve hit rock bottom, they surprise me with yet another stunningly incompetent effort.  Honestly, if I was writing a fictional book and included all the things that Navy leadership has done wrong before they did them, no one would believe me and the book would be ridiculed as utterly unrealistic.  In other words, you can’t make this stuff up!

• Would anyone have believed that a professional, competent Navy would build a class of small warship before the vessel’s modular equipment, its main armament, was ready – resulting in a third or more of the ships sailing with no functional capability?

• Would anyone have believed that a Navy would build a bigger aircraft carrier while the air wing it would carry was shrinking to half the design size?

• Would anyone have believed that a Navy would commission an aircraft carrier with damaged main turbines and non-functional arresting gear?

• Would anyone have believed that a Navy would literally sink an entire class of the best ASW destroyer ever made?

• Would anyone have believed that a Navy would early retire the most powerful AAW ship class ever built?

The list is endless and I won’t bother continuing to list examples.  Suffice it to say that if you made this stuff up before it happened, no one would believe it.

Well, here’s the latest.  Would you believe that a professional, competent Navy would build a class (albeit a small, 3-ship class) of ship that was totally conceptualized and designed around the ship’s gun system, commission the ship, and then announce that they had no ammunition for the gun and were canceling acquisition of the ammunition?  That’s exactly what the Navy has just done! 

The Zumwalt’s AGS (Advanced Gun System) exclusively uses the LRLAP (Long Range Land Attack Projectile).  This is the only ammunition that can be fired from the gun.  The Navy has just announced that it is canceling procurement of the LRLAP due to escalating costs (1).

“Barely two weeks after the US Navy commissioned its newest and most futuristic warship, armed with two huge guns that can hit targets 80 miles away, the service is moving to cancel the projectiles for the guns, citing excessive costs that run up to $800,000 per round or more. “

“Even at $800,000 a copy, the LRLAP’s price could go higher. “That’s probably low,” the Navy official said. “That’s what the acquisition community wanted to get it down to.” The official added that there was no sense the contractor was “overcharging or anything.” 

The decision to accept the LRLAP cancellation is part of the Program Objective Memorandum 2018 (POM18) effort, the Pentagon’s annual budget process. “

So, we’re looking at a round that would likely cost around $1M each if the program were continued.

Because the acquisition program is going to be cancelled, we’ve got a commissioned ship, supposedly ready for war, that has no ammunition it can shoot.

The Navy is now scrambling to find some other munition to use.  The problem is that there is no other existing munition that can fit the gun, as is.  Whatever option is chosen, a new developmental effort will have to be initiated to fit the round to a system that was not designed to handle it.

One also has to wonder what this will do to the range of the system.  Recall that the LRLAP is not actually a traditional shell.  It is a rocket propelled warhead.  Where are we going to find another rocket propelled warhead that can fit in the AGS?  We’re not – not without a massive development effort – and what’s that going to do to the cost of whatever we opt for?

We can always take a smaller shell and fire it with a sabot but the range will be nothing more than a standard gun, presumably, in which case, what is the benefit of the Zumwalt?

“…the Navy is evaluating industry projectile solutions (including conventional and hyper-velocity projectiles) that can also meet the DDG 1000 deployment schedule and could potentially be used as an alternative to LRLAP for DDG 1000.” 

“We are looking at multiple different rounds for that gun,” the Navy official said, adding that “three or four different rounds” have been looked at, including the Army’s Excalibur munition from Raytheon, and the Hyper Velocity Projectile (HVP), a project under development by the Office of Naval Research and BAE Systems. 

“There are multiple companies that have looked at alternatives to get the cost down and use that delivery system,” the Navy official said.”

You’ll note that the mentioned alternatives are, themselves, developmental efforts and are not ready for their own use let alone having to undergo further development to be used in the AGS.

There is one more aspect to this story that is interesting.  ComNavOps is on record as stating that the entire Zumwalt gun support concept is flawed and that the gun cannot provide effective gunfire support.  The LRLAP is a guided round and without active guidance is useless.  The likelihood of being able to provide active guidance deep inland is poor.  Unfortunately, the fallback position of blind area bombardment defeats the stated intent of precision fire and is prohibitively costly at $1M per round.  Add to that the small caliber of the round, the limited explosive power, the limitation of only two guns per ship (compared to 9 guns per ship on a WWII cruiser or battleship) and the entire concept is questionable, at best.

With all that in mind, the article offers this tantalizing tidbit.

“While the Navy is stressing that high costs are directly behind the decision to eliminate LRLAP, it is not clear if there are deeper issues at play. The AGS/LRLAP combination was originally developed to provide Marines with a “persistent, precision fire support” capability, able to strike targets far inland with a high degree of accuracy. 

But as the Zumwalt moved from shipyard to sea and to the fleet, the Navy has notably downplayed that attribute, and while the technical achievement of the cutting-edge DDG 1000 has been widely trumpeted this year, its ability to directly support Marines ashore has not.”

What does that mean?  The article offers nothing to substantiate their suspicion but it is exactly in line with ComNavOps thoughts.  Could the Navy be realizing that the entire concept was flawed?

Finally, the article notes the other inherent bit of stupidity about the AGS – it can’t shoot at another ship.  That’s right, the Navy built a ship with a gun that can’t shoot enemy ships!  The LRLAP is a guided round and there is no guidance mechanism for designating enemy ships and linking that guidance to the munition.  The firing software could be modified, as stated, to allow ballistic firing at a ship but that’s a return to WWII salvo accuracy and we can’t afford to be salvo firing $1M projectiles and hoping for a hit.

As I said, if I were to have written this yesterday as fiction, you’d have scoffed at me and, yet, here it is today, as reality.  Navy leadership has added yet another massive screw up to their collective resume.

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(1)Defense News website, “New Warship’s Big Guns Have No Bullets”, Christopher P. Cavas, 6-Nov-2016,

http://www.defensenews.com/articles/new-warships-big-guns-have-no-bullets

Damaged LCS, Damaged Again, Damaged Yet Again !!!

You recall the recent post about the damaged LCS (two engineering failures within 24 hours), USS Montgomery, LCS-8, being damaged again (hull crack from banging into a tug - see, "Damaged LCS Damaged Again")?  Well, astoundingly, it’s been damaged yet again.  The ship ran into a wall in the Panama Canal and suffered a foot and half long hull crack.

My concern with these events is the flimsy strength of the hull being exhibited by the LCS-2 variant.  The ship bumps into a tug (isn’t that what tugs do?) and suffers a hull crack.  The ship bumps into a lock wall (not the first ship to do that!) and suffers a hull crack.  What does this say about the class’ ability to absorb battle damage?  I could understand dented hull plating but actual hull cracks from nothing more than “routine” bumps?  What’s going to happen when the ship bumps into an anti-ship missile?

How's that aluminum construction working out?

If the Montgomery doesn't stop bumping into things it's going to fall apart from all the cracks.

I’ve received consistent, though officially unverifiable, reports of the lightness of construction of these ships and every incident like this just serves to confirm those reports.

This is what we consider a "warship"?

This does not bode well.

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“USNI News website, “Littoral Combat Ship USS Montgomery Damaged Transiting Panama Canal”, Sam LaGrone, 31-Oct-2016,

https://news.usni.org/2016/10/31/uss-montgomery-damaged-transiting

ATACMS and Geo-Strategic Reality

Once upon a time, the US military engaged in geo-strategic military planning.  This meant that we identified our potential enemies, studied the geography of the expected battlefield, identified weaknesses of our own associated with the geography, sought advantages we could gain from the geography, and planned and equipped for that geo-specific battle.  Thus, our forces and capabilities were closely aligned with the anticipated battle and battlefield location.  Simple and wise.

The classic example of this type of strategy was the Air-Land Battle strategy designed to counter a Russian invasion of Europe.  We understood the geography.  We understood how the geography would dictate the operational planning of both sides, how it would impact operational execution, and we developed plans and equipment designed specifically to take advantage of, and work within, that geography.

Now, however, the US military has abandoned geo-strategic planning in favor of techno-strategic planning.  Rather than develop strategies to counter specific enemies (heck, we won’t even name our enemies!), we now develop strategies to counter generic technologies – technologies that any given enemy might or might not have.  We have abandoned planning for the geographic realities associated with any specific enemy and, instead, are planning generically for opposing technologies.  Thus, our planning overlooks or ignores geographic considerations and cedes geographic advantages to the enemy.

For example, a fight with Russia will occur in a completely different geographical setting than a fight with China and yet we’re treating both the same from a strategic perspective.  We’re attempting to counter their technologies rather than the geo-military realities. 

Let’s look at a specific example.

The Army has announced that it is adding a seeker to its land based ATACMS (MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System) missile in order to be able to hit moving ships at sea at a range of 100 miles or so (1).  The Army is reviving its coastal artillery concept in order to remain a relevant player in the Pacific Pivot.

Two obvious, related points jump out.

• This is clearly an attempt to remain budget-relevant in a Pacific theater that allows for little use of Army ground forces.  Is a ship-attack ATACMS really useful or even viable?  It doesn’t matter.  What matters is that it can be used to strengthen the Army’s budget position.

• This is clearly a niche capability that has little usefulness in any geo-specific battlefield that we are likely to find ourselves fighting on.

An anti-ship ATACMS suffers from the same challenge that every long range missile system does which is the difficulty in targeting at long range.  The 100+ mile ATACMS needs a target and the land based Army has no ready means of providing that targeting.  UAVs could be used although they suffer from the same susceptibility to destruction and susceptibility to communications disruption that all UAVs do.  Land based radar, unless sited on a significant elevation, can’t detect surface targets at that range due to the limited radar horizon.  Targeting data can be provided by Navy or Air Force patrol assets but that not only requires dependence on networking, which we’ve already noted is likely to be degraded and only sporadically available, but it requires dependence on cross-service networking.  Intra-service networking (within a single service) is unreliable.  Inter-service networking (across services) is a fantasy.  We’re still working to get all the services to use the same communications protocols – we’re not going to get cross-service networking to function!

Army ATACMS - Impressive But Useless

So, we’re left with a theoretical capability that sounds good on paper but has little likelihood of usage or success.

Now, let’s look at the geo-specific considerations which the military has chosen to ignore, as we’ve noted.

The Pacific-Chinese theater has very little land accessible by the US military within a 100-200 mile range of any likely battlespace.  China already controls the first island chain and is beginning to eye the second.  Japan is a possibility for siting ATACMS units but 100-200 miles from mainland Japan is not where the main battles are going to occur. 

Well, can’t we seize the first chain islands and then place ATACMS on them?  Sure, but if we have the power to seize the islands then the likelihood that we can’t totally control a 100 mile range around the islands is miniscule.  Look at a map.  The first chain islands are generally not within a hundred miles of likely battles.  If we’ve seized the islands, there won’t be any Chinese ships remaining within range.  They’ll have been destroyed or pulled back to defend the mainland.  Thus, there won’t be any use for anti-ship ATACMS.

Now consider a war with Russia.  It will be a European land war.  Russia simply doesn’t have a significant Navy that is going to operate near land.  Their few ships will be destroyed at the outset by airpower.  There will be no use for an anti-ship ATACMS in a war with Russia.

Similarly, Iran and NKorea possess no relevant navies for an anti-ship ATACMS to defend against.

This is nothing more than recognizing the geo-strategic realities and the enemy order of battle.  When we consider the potential for use of an anti-ship ATACMS, it quickly becomes obvious that there is no practical use.  If there is no practical use then that only leaves its use as a budget leverage gimmick.

Well, why would supposedly intelligent Army leaders want to pursue this if it’s nothing more than a budget leverage gimmick?  They pursue it because it does provide budget leverage.  Remember, the goal of current military leaders is not the defense of our country; their goal is enhancement of their service’s budget slice.  Additionally, this is another symptom of a military that is techno-strategic rather than geo-strategic.  The few military leaders that are not blatantly political and bureaucratic have forgotten what geo-military analysis is and know only how to match technologies.  An anti-ship ATACMS is cool technology, when considered in isolation from any geo-military reality.  The fact that it has no practical use is lost on leaders who have never known any other way to analyze a military problem than by focusing on technology match ups.

Our military leaders have been educated in business management, systems analysis, politics, budgets, accounting, and civilian business practices.  They no longer know how to formulate a coherent military strategy.  Consider the hundreds of poor military management decisions we’ve highlighted on this blog.  They were poor decisions because they were based on factors other than a guiding military strategy.  This anti-ship ATACMS is a symptom of a military that has forgotten how to formulate a strategy.

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(1)Breaking Defense website, “Carter, Roper Unveil Army’s New Ship-Killer Missile: ATACMS Upgrade”, Sydney J. Freedburg Jr., 28-Oct-2016,

http://breakingdefense.com/2016/10/army-atacms-missile-will-kill-ships-secdef-carter/

You'll Do It Because We Said So

Well, this is just fascinating.  We’ve seen how many different types of procurement contracts there are (it’s mind boggling) and that none of them really mean what they seem to say but here’s yet another new one I had no idea existed – a unilateral contract whereby the government simply dictates the price. Yeah, we’re talking about the F-35 program.  The government apparently got tired of negotiating with Lockheed and has simply issued a contract with the price they want (1).

“In an extraordinary action, the F-35 Joint Program Office decided 14 or 18 months of negotiations was enough and has issued a “unilateral contract” for the latest Low Rate Initial Production contract to defense giant Lockheed Martin.

In simple terms, the Pentagon got sick and tired of talking with Lockheed and told them, here’s how much we’re willing to pay you. Take it or leave it. All terms had been agreed to by both sides except one — the price.”

So what does Lockheed think of the imposed contract?

“The definitized contract for LRIP 9 announced today was not a mutually agreed upon contract, it was a unilateral contract action, which obligates us to perform under standard terms and conditions, and previously agreed-to items,” Lockheed’s F-35 spokesman Mike Rein said in an emailed statement. “We are disappointed with the decision by the Government to issue a unilateral contract action on the F-35 LRIP 9 contract.”

Does Lockheed have any recourse?  Apparently, little.

“…Lockheed either accepts the government contract for 57 F-35s for roughly $6.1 billion or it goes to court to protest the government’s action.”

I am not a lawyer but how on Earth is this legal?  An imposed contract?  Wow. 

We all scoffed at the government’s claim that the price of the F-35 would be $80M but I guess if you can just dictate the price then $80M is perfectly doable.  Why not $70M or $10M or simply force the manufacturer to build them for free?  Wait, I know – charge the manufacturer for the privilege of building them and the F-35 program can be a profit maker for the government!

If Lockheed is forced to accept this, it can’t bode well for their quality control enthusiasm!  I wouldn’t want to be a pilot in one of these disgruntled builds.

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(1)Breaking Defense website, “JPO To Lockheed: No More Talkie, Here’s LRIP 9 Deal”, Colin Clark, 2-Nov-2016,

http://breakingdefense.com/2016/11/jpo-to-lockheed-no-more-talkie-heres-lrip-9-deal/

Drug Users Welcome

Secretary of Defense Carter is a joke and here’s his latest folly.  He wants to lower the standards for recruitment into the military (1).  What a great idea because that’s what we need – less qualified soldiers.  Specifically, Carter wants to relax standards on physical fitness and pot use.  Here it is,

“Among the benchmarks that will get new scrutiny: fitness standards, marijuana use, tattoo regulations and the military’s longtime reluctance to allow single parents to start military careers.”

“As thousands of prospective recruits are now living in states where medical and recreational marijuana is now legal, Carter is instructing top personnel officials to consider pilot programs to “assess the feasibility and impact of updated standards” on the issue of “past marijuana use,”

“Defense Secretary Ash Carter has launched a sweeping review of the military's recruiting standards, saying current rules for screening new entrants may be “overly restrictive” and preventing America's most talented young people from joining the ranks.”

So, according to Carter, our most talented young people are overweight, pot users?  Wow!  An Army of overweight, pot users should scare the Russians and Chinese into submission.

What’s Carter’s fear?  What’s prompting his idiotic decision?

“Carter’s announcement Tuesday marked the latest round of his “Force of the Future” personnel reforms, which are driven by his concerns that the military today is ill-equipped to recruit and retain the top talent needed for future missions.”

So, Carter’s solution to being unable to attract top talent into the military is to lower the standards?  Now there’s some top notch logic.  Carter’s an idiot.  No wonder our military is in the shape it’s in.  I can’t wait until those overweight, pot users move up the ranks and become the generals of tomorrow.  That should be interesting.

Alright let me try to turn from mocking to a slightly serious tone.

Does anyone seriously believe that drug users are going to join the military and stop using drugs?  Of course not.  Drug users will continue to use drugs and drug use will become rampant.  How do military leaders say no to it after allowing acknowledged drug users to join in the first place?  This is going to be the 1960’s and ‘70’s all over again.

Just a reminder, pot is still a federal crime despite the unconstitutional laws passed at some state and local levels.  Marijuana is a Schedule 1 controlled substance under the Federal Controlled Substances Act.  Thus, accepting a recruit who acknowledges using pot is accepting a criminal who has violated a Federal statute.

Is lowering standards the way to attract top talent?  No, that’s idiotic.  The Marine Corps had this figured out long ago.  Their means of recruiting top talent was to market themselves as too good for you to join.  Their ads basically said that they didn’t think you had what it takes and they didn’t want you.  That approach ensured that only the best sought to join.  Of course, the Marines are no longer elite and now will accept anyone but once upon a time they knew better.

Every time I think the military has hit bottom, they literally lower the bar.  I weep for my country.

Now, having said all that, I’ll offer a partial solution.  I’m utterly against women and unqualified men in combat.  However, not all jobs in the military are combat.  In modern times there are many jobs that do not require any great degree of physical fitness at all.  I’m talking mainly about administrative and computing jobs.  I would have no problem with creating a separate branch or sub-section of the military that had no physical fitness standards.  Computer geeks and women can work these jobs to their heart’s content.  Of course, they would not be considered “soldiers” – that would be an insult to real soldiers.  They would be part of a support corps.  They would be valuable, often extremely so, but would not be entitled to be called soldiers.

America was built with the sweat and blood of tough men.  Lowering our standards is not the way to ensure that America remains great.

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(1)Military Times website, “The military may relax recruiting standards for fitness and pot use“, Andrew Tilghman, 1-Nov-2016,

http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/recruiting-standards-may-change-secdef-says

Up Close

ComNavOps has long stated that the US military has forgotten what war is.  Instead, in a frenzy of technological fantasy, we have embarked on a path of precise, guided, long range weapons intended to produce a “clean” war, conducted from afar, and harming no one but the enemy and even then the emphasis is on the enemy’s equipment rather than killing individual soldiers.  For example, the notion that the Zumwalt will stand off an enemy’s shore and pick off individual pieces of equipment with a precision and efficiency previously unheard of is pure cow droppings.  In a real war, we’re not going to even be able to see most of an enemy’s assets and personnel, let alone target them with that kind of precision.  There’s no getting around the need for massive, area explosives.  We’ll rediscover this when a war starts.

In a similar vein, ComNavOps has stated that the naval surface force battles will all too often come down to gun duels, just like WWII.  Our fantasy of stand off missile attacks will be found to be just that – fantasy.  We will rue the absence of large caliber naval guns.

The Army, though, light years ahead of the other services in beginning to prepare for actual war, has confirmed what ComNavOps has been saying.  War will be up close, personal, and violent.

“Our enemies are moving into complex terrain and they are evading our long-range detection capabilities,” McMaster [Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster] said. “The combination of those two things, the difficulty [of] targeting the enemy with long-range precision fires and the enemy’s elusiveness means we are going to fight in close combat.” (1)

There you have it.  The Army is beginning to recognize what ComNavOps and every combat veteran knows – war is not a dainty, precise, stand off affair.  It’s a down and dirty, close combat, fight for survival.  McMaster correctly identified the wishful thinking inherent in our fantasy of omniscient battlefield awareness and precision targeting.  When real war comes and we begin shipping bodies home by the hundreds and thousands, we’ll quickly come to appreciate the value of area effect high explosives.  You don’t deal with a sniper by carefully conducting a search of the building he’s hiding in, you vaporize the building with high explosives and move on without risking your own people.  We’ll relearn that lesson but not without a blood bill for the learning.

Kudos to the Army for at least beginning to remember what war is and starting to prepare for it.  The Navy and Marines need to heed the Army’s example.

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(1)Defense News website, “McMaster:  Army Must Prioritize Close-Combat Capability”, Jen Judson, 28-Sep-2016,

http://www.defensenews.com/articles/mcmaster-army-must-prioritize-close-combat-capability

LCS vs. Burke Construction Times

Here’s an interesting little tidbit.  What is the average construction time of an LCS (time from the date laid to date commissioned)?  Here’s the data.  I’m omitting the first two ships because they were the first of class and one would expect some longer construction times as the construction process was worked out.  Beside each ship is listed the date laid down, the date commissioned, and the number of months in between.

          Laid Down    Commissioned     Months

LCS-3     Jul 2009       Sep 2012         38

LCS-4     Dec 2009       Apr 2014         52

LCS-5     Oct 2011       Nov 2015         49

LCS-6     Oct 2012       Dec 2015         38

LCS-7     Nov 2012       Oct 2016         47

LCS-8     Jun 2013       Sep 2016         39

                                    Avg = 44 

 We see, then, that the average construction time for an LCS is 44 months with a record speed of 38 months.

Just for fun, let’s compare that to the construction time for a much larger and much more complex ship, the Burke class.  Here’s the same data for the six most recent Burkes.

          Laid Down    Commissioned     Months

DDG-107    Nov 2007      Nov 2010         36

DDG-108    May 2007      Oct 2009         29

DDG-109    Apr 2008      Nov 2010         31

DDG-110    Sep 2008      Jun 2011         33

DDG-111    May 2009      Oct 2011         29

DDG-112    Jun 2010      Oct 2012         28

                                    Avg = 31 

The average time to build a Burke is 31 months with a record speed of 28 months.  Interesting, isn’t it, that we can build a Burke in 28 months but it takes us 44 months to build the smaller, simpler LCS?  Worse, the longest Burke, 36 months, was two months faster than the fastest LCS!

Well, wait, you say, the Burkes have been in production for many years and the process has been optimized so, of course, it’s faster (setting aside the fact that the Burke is much larger and much more complex and ought to take longer, not shorter).  Fair enough.  Let’s look at Burkes 3-8 (we’ll set aside the first two just as we did for the LCS) when the production process was at the exact same stage as the LCS currently is.  Here’s the data.

          Laid Down   Commissioned      Months

DDG-53     Aug 1990      Dec 1993         40

DDG-54     Mar 1991      Mar 1994         36

DDG-55     Aug 1991      Aug 1994         36

DDG-56     Sep 1991      Jul 1994         34

DDG-57     Feb 1992      Dec 1994         34

DDG-58     Mar 1992      Mar 1995         36

                                    Avg = 36 

The average construction time for those early Burkes was 36 months.  Compare that to the 44 month LCS construction time.  We were building much larger, much more complex ships a lot faster and that was back in the 1990’s when didn’t have the benefit of the advanced computers and software to aid us in construction!

We can build Burkes faster than LCS’s!!!!

Okay, well that’s surprising and disappointing but it doesn’t really have any impact on anything.  It doesn’t really mean anything.  We’re not at war so what does it matter if a ship takes a little longer to build, right?  Wrong!

Simplistically, the cost of building a ship is the cost of the materials that go into it, the cost of the labor to build it (man-hours), and the overhead cost of the facility it’s being built in for the duration of the build.

Consider a simple example of a shipyard building one ship.  The materials are a known and constant cost for every ship of the type.  The man-hours are constant for every ship of the type.  However, the shipyard is charging us all their overhead costs for every day the ship is being built.  Overhead costs are utilities, the facility’s tax bill, salaries for everyone the shipyard employs but is not directly accounted for in man-hour labor charges (accountants, salesmen, lawyers, CEOs, secretaries, etc.), insurance, and so forth.  The longer it takes to build the ship, the greater the overhead charges and those overhead charges are significant.

Now, in practice, the overhead charges are not normally charged separately but are rolled into the man-hour charge figure.  Before starting construction (in fact, during the contract process) the construction time is known and the overhead charges for that time period are rolled into the man-hour charge.  Thus, just as we described in the simplistic description, the longer the construction, the greater the overhead charge which is reflected in higher man-hour charges.

So, to answer our earlier question, what does it matter if a ship takes longer to build?  The longer a ship takes to build, the greater the cost.  This is intuitively obvious and now you see why.  So, by having the LCS take 44 months to build, compared to 31 or 36 months for a Burke, we’re spending more than we should.  If a Burke can be built in 31/36 months, we should be able to build an LCS in around 18-24 months.  That would be a significant cost savings and might be enough to make us view the LCS in a somewhat different light.  Let’s be honest, much of the controversy over the LCS revolves around its “value” – the capability delivered relative to the cost.  Right now, the capability is little and the cost is a lot.  If the capability were a little and the cost were also a little, we’d view it differently or, at least, somewhat differently.

Why is the Navy accepting this kind of construction performance?  Anyone else see a problem here?  Maybe neither of these manufacturers should have been awarded contracts.