As the Navy focuses on building Ford super carriers and bemoans the fact that they'll only get 3 DD-1000 stealth ships when they need many more, with a big (expensive) ship bias, the Navy can't even afford to build all the low-end Littoral Combat Ships they once wanted. Heck of a job, Navy:
The Pentagon has given the Navy preliminary instructions to reduce plans for the Littoral Combat Ship to 32 vessels from 52, according to two defense officials.
So the LCS will be more expensive.
And with fewer LCS class vessels (in two designs by different builders!), the mission modules that are supposed to be inserted into the hulls to make them capable of doing more than handling pirates--and more flexible with multiple module types--will be more expensive and so fewer in number and type.
And of course, the ships are still described as "designed for shallow waters close to shore."
Which is already insane.
I'm just a history and political science major. What's the next step up in self-destructive mental illness?
Surely, you say, as the LCS gets more expensive we wouldn't think they are cheap enough to risk in coastal waters?
Well, just how expensive would they have to get when we still think the mission of the stealthy DD-1000 is to sneak up on an enemy coast and bombard them? And those are so expensive that we'll just have three!
And stop calling me Shirley, of course.
I used to think that Modularized Auxiliary Cruisers would be an option for getting numbers for secondary peacetime missions and to supplement the fleet in wartime.
Now such ships might have to be our low-end ships because that's all we'll be able to afford to support the rest of the shooting fleet of 5 Fords, 3 DD-1000s, and 32 LCS.
