A friend worked the manpower side of LCS. He stated many times that the program was flawed by bureaucracy and pork. Constant contract mods and mission creep drove the costs up exponentially (where have we heard of that before?). He finally bailed to another program out of frustration.
We'd just completed the design, build and commissioning of the first of Norway's Skjold-class when we started supporting the emerging LCS (Street Fighter, then) program as well as the ONR "Sea Fighter" demonstrator. We were on the Raytheon total platform team but also supporting stabilization system design for what became the Freedom and Independence class LCS'. Fortunately, as it turned out, the Raytheon Surface Effect Ship LCS was not chosen. I say "fortunately", because, with the benefit of hindsight, we know now that very weight-sensitive design would have been totally compromised by subsequent Navy and build contractor incompetence.
The ONR "Sea Fighter" was a total success...and after over 20 years of operation is still in service (and achieved a top speed of 54 knots...a record for that large of a displacement naval vessel). The Freedom class LCS..a total disaster. The Independence class...hanging in there but suffering a lot of pretty serious structural cracking after very limited time underway.
Meanwhile, the 65+ knot Norwegian Skjold class is receiving a mid-life SLEP and we're supporting that. Awesome vessels.
The six SKJOLD Class FAC were built by Kvaerner/Umoe Mandal incorporating the SENIT 2000 combat management system as a joint development of DCNS (now Naval G...
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