Posts tagged as:

LCS

Back in early 2013, the Washington Post reported that China had acquired data and plans for several programs, including plans for the Littoral Combat Ships. If that is the case, what is a Navy to do when the “opposition” has all the blueprints? With cyber espionage becoming an increasingly appreciated risk, then there must be […]

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The current global crop of “conventional” frigates (which I loosely define as a multi-purpose combatant of somewhere in the vicinity of 2,000-4,500 tons), has reached something of a developmental dead end. These ships cannot be improved–or, in the case of foreign models, brought into compliance with U.S. Navy standards and then improved–without a huge investment–An […]

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So, last week the Small Surface Combatant Task Force announced a call for ideas on a small future surface combatant, complete with substantial pricing and production information and–if a boat-load of pricing and production data wasn’t enough–operational concepts as to how the ship will fit and fight with the fleet. Goodness. Where does one sign […]

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If the Navy is going to spend time thinking about new frigates or pondering “up-gunning” the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), then America should also be thinking about developing a low-mix, austere DDG-51. Look, if the U.S. Navy is looking for a low-end Destroyer, then why not use the excellent high-end DDG-51 as a starting point? […]

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We can all hope CNO Greenert’s sequestered LCS(NEXT) Requirements Team is hard at work, leveraging all the LCS lessons-learned to date, plugging the info into a fancy matrix and boiling their findings into something that will, in time, provide the Nation with an ideal “Small-Ship-Of-The-Future”. It’s just not bloody likely. Sure, the CNO’s “Deep Thinkers” […]

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Over the years, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program has overcome all kinds of threats. But now, with the Department of Defense (DOD) folding under the pressure of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation’s (DOT&E’s) constant anti-LCS hand-wringing, LCS haters may have finally seized upon a weapon capable of sinking the LCS Program–a test […]

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When former TOPGUN trainer and emergent LCS-killer Christine Fox, the Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense, demanded a “more capable [small] surface combatant“–namely one with innate air-defense capability–she did more than merely lay out a plan to kill a wayward surface-ship program. She offered a glimpse of what the Department of Defense (DOD) envisions as the […]

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In an elegant bit of Washington subterfuge, news “leaked” this week that the Littoral Combat Ship program is to shrink from 52 to 32 ships. This is a fascinating example of underhanded Washington drama, and it deserves added scrutiny. BACKGROUND So here’s the deal. Sometime in the past ten days, somebody in the Pentagon leaked […]

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Every QDR season, Wayne Hughes rousts himself from his Naval Postgraduate School hideout and mounts a push for his beloved teeny-tiny combatant–the “Seafighter”.  His latest, “Sustaining American Maritime Influence,” published in the September 2013 USNI Proceedings, is his usual salesman-like effort (in which he is joined by retired Admiral John Harvey, NPS Operations Research heavy-hitter, […]

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Remembering a Legend: Congressman Bill Young

by admin on October 21, 2013

America lost a legend last week. Congressman Bill Young, a towering personality trapped in an increasingly frail body, has died.  He was a living legacy, the longest-serving Republican in Congress, and one of the few remaining links to the go-go days of the Reagan era build-up–and one of the last of the “old school” pols […]

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