Good bye ships

[newdayneeded]

The Navy has decided to retire all of the V hulled LCS ships, oldest of which is 10 years old. 9 of them at about a half a billion a piece. And to think Cons think a billion for food stamps is a waste!

[Strelnikov_]

1. You think we could at least sell them on ebay

Considering all the problems, maybe foist them off on Russia, a no returns deal.

[csziggy]

2. I think the US Navy sometimes lends or sells them to other countries

I know the submarine my father served on in WWII was sold to the Chilean Navy and used by them until it had to be retired.

[brewens]

3. My dad was a crewman on a PB4Y (Navy B-24) that had been a British Lend Lease aircraft

they gave back to us. They were long range recon in the south Pacific.

[happybird]

5. I had a friend who stripped all the classified tech and such (he couldn't really say) off subs

to prepare them for resale to other countries. The job was in Alexandria Egypt, and they would work there for a few months then come back to the US for a few months. It paid really, really well, but he only did it for about two years because of on the job safety concerns.

[Dial H For Hero]

4. Those particular ships are lousy, getting rid of them makes sense.

Especially given that the Navy has approved a new frigate (the Constellation class) that will actually be effective.

[Happy Hoosier]

6. Agreed....

The design was a bit sus TBH, and the shipyards apparently built really crappy ships.

An experiment that failed pretty spectacularly. It happens.

[newdayneeded]

7. You think

they would have been able to figure that out by the 1st or 2nd ship, then hault production.

[Happy Hoosier]

9. It's not always that easy....

These projects have a very long developmental cycle and likely the Navy was trying to balance the need to have ships available in the fleet against the risk that the ships could not be improved sufficiently.

As it is, the production runs were drastically cut as it became obvious the ships were fundamentally flawed. Follow-on ship classes will be coming online soon that do not suck and can accommodate the mission. So the crappy ships can go. And expensive mistake.

So the Freedom class has had the roughest time and it's going first. The Intendance class ships will stick arounf longer, last I heard. But I think both classes are not long for the Fleet.

[Angleae]

8. Except for the reduction gear(transmission) they built exactly what the navy ordered.

The whole thing was design by committee, every admiral had to have his say. As such they built a patrol boat that could carry a mission module, carry and hangar a helicopter, and go 45 knots.