[HN Gopher] U.S. Navy wants to sell off its troubled littoral co...
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U.S. Navy wants to sell off its troubled littoral combat ships to
allies
Author : ilamont
Score : 21 points
Date : 2023-04-26 20:06 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (taskandpurpose.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (taskandpurpose.com)
| somethoughts wrote:
| Reading this
|
| "We weren't sure LCS was executing the missions it was designed
| for," Commander of Naval Surface Forces Vice Adm. Roy Kitchener
| said in January 2022. "And so we ... went out to the number of
| fleet commanders and said, 'Alright, what do you want it to do?
| And what missions do you want it to execute based on the
| environment we're in now?'"
|
| reminds me of this excerpt from a movie:
|
| Pentagon Wars - Bradley Fighting Vehicle Evolution
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA
|
| From the movie "Pentagon Wars". Bradley Fighting Vehicle design
| and development. Any design engineer will love this scene.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That gets some key details wrong; even though designed to
| supersede the M113, the MICV was _always_ about a combat
| vehicle, not a personnel carrier.
|
| The original concept was that fighting in a post-NBC world
| meant infantry would have to fight from inside a sealed area.
| This means the firing ports were part of the earliest designs,
| not added as a suggestion during the Nixon administration.
|
| I should also note that several the very early prototypes were
| amphibious; I think this was mostly scratched (timeline wise)
| by the point where it is joked about being added in the film.
|
| The added scout role is true, and coincides with cancellation
| of the ARSV, and did follow somewhat along the logic of the
| movie (roughly we need a fast, armored vehicle, this is a fast,
| armored vehicle).
|
| Though it predates the unveiling of it, the MICV only got
| serious funding because of the Soviet BMP-1. The BMP-1 was used
| in combat before the Bradley was out of prototype stage, and
| had enough deficiencies that the BMP-2 was made, and the
| designers of the Bradley prototypes also reacted to it.
|
| A lot of the changes were made because the development of it
| was slow enough (partly due to it often not being a priority)
| that the vision of what battlefield it would appear on changed.
| riku_iki wrote:
| what would be better approach?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Find out what the commanders actually need it to do _before_
| you spend years and billions of dollars building it.
| riku_iki wrote:
| Warfare changes very fast lately, and it was one of the
| main pitches of those littoral ships: make them modular, so
| they can be easily modified for current and future
| missions.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| not sure that precludes figuring out what customers want
| before building the whole thing
|
| TFA says the motivator is lack of capabilities against
| China. If the LCSs can be easily retrofitted to add
| capabilities, why not do so?
| riku_iki wrote:
| > TFA says the motivator is lack of capabilities against
| China. If the LCSs can be easily retrofitted to add
| capabilities, why not do so?
|
| I don't think that's the issue. LCSs are small ships
| which goal to do small missions which would be much more
| expensive to do on large ships, cruisers for example. I
| don't think confronting China was their goal ever.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Conceptual design started around 2001. Well, in 2001,
| China didn't have the navy it did today. If they didn't
| "skate to where the puck is going", they could easily
| have built a ship for countering what China was in 1995.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Note that modularity is one of the things they abandoned
| to try and get something working.
| riku_iki wrote:
| where did you get this?
| iudqnolq wrote:
| When I went looking for my source I realized it was older
| than I remembered. It's certainly possible things have
| gotten better since 2021.
|
| > Despite that positive spin, the utility of the LCS
| remains hampered by its controversial mission modules,
| which were originally designed to be switched in and out
| of the hulls rapidly while in port, before the idea was
| abandoned, leaving each ship with a single module to be
| installed. As it stands, only the anti-surface warfare
| version of these modules is fitted on some of the hulls,
| with the anti-submarine warfare and mine countermeasures
| modules not yet available.
|
| https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42582/the-first-
| littor...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| They did; the anticipated needs in the environment when it
| was designed were not the actual needs when it waa
| delivered.
|
| This is a perennial big-project problem (one of the core
| things addressed, originally, by Agile in software), but
| you can't easily quickly turn out an MVP of a warship and
| rapidly iterate on it.
|
| A lot of time it doesn't get noticed because needs move
| further _toward_ the strengths of the project, or because
| there is a good opportunity for adaptation. But sometimes,
| you just get burned.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Funnily enough they did try to do agile design with these
| warships. They started building the first one before they
| figured out the whole design, with the idea they could
| update as they went. It was an absolute disaster. They
| had to redo a bunch of work to fit in changes they didn't
| anticipate. Now all the early ships are unique, making
| maintenance worse.
|
| Turns out Agile depends on a low cost to refactor. It's
| easy to make a function body bigger. It's very painful to
| make an engine room bigger.
| somethoughts wrote:
| The jaded cynic in me says - you have achieved true
| enlightenment when you realize that what the clip is
| describing just is - it can not be changed or improved upon.
|
| There is no better approach when it comes to large human
| organization behavior that can be implemented.
|
| You just come to peace with that is how the world works when
| the population reaches a certain size.
|
| Some over-expensive, over-engineered, over-xyz
| projects/trials are needed for humans to progress. Even if
| the specific project is eventually deemed a colossal failure,
| it can be pointed to as a future reference point of what not
| to do/waste time on.
| [deleted]
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| The Manhattan project was completed in a bit over 3 years.
|
| The big barriers are getting a truly blank cheque and
| sufficient authority to bypass, or bulldoze, through all
| possible obstacles.
|
| Which is more a question of priorities.
| dmreedy wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand the comparison.
|
| The Manhattan project was an exploration into a
| fundamental (and, without trying to sound ungenerous, a
| relatively simple) property of physics, put towards a
| relatively simple task. The laws of nature defined the
| constraints, and requirement was singular.
|
| It was not an attempt to solve the constraint
| satisfaction problem of X stakeholders and Y requirements
| and Z logistical boundaries, where X, Y and Z are all in
| constant flux thanks to being attached to human beings
| who bullshit, lie, and change their minds frequently.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| > The Manhattan project was an exploration into a
| fundamental (and, without trying to sound ungenerous, a
| relatively simple) property of physics, put towards a
| relatively simple task. The laws of nature defined the
| constraints, and requirement was singular.
|
| Your points here don't square with what I know. Have you
| read the Wiki page on it and found something incorrect?
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Can you link exactly what you think contradicts what they
| are saying?
| Armisael16 wrote:
| For what it's worth the Bradley has performed quite well, and
| the flaws that have shown up weren't noted in the movie (some
| discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/e
| rpmjm/having_j...)
|
| The scene is very funny, and it's an excellent story - it just
| happens to not be particularly accurate.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| It was probably pork right from the start: built in Wisconsin and
| Alabama.
|
| https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/littoral-com...
|
| I guess the Coast Guard didn't even want them?
|
| https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/op-ed-a-derated-li...
| rgmerk wrote:
| My 2c: if there is ever a shooting war between two modern navies
| (eg US and China) surface combatants are all going to end up
| under water very very quickly, or too far from the action to
| offer anything useful.
|
| We haven't had a real naval battle in 40 years, arguably 80.
| Since that time, sensors of all types have become vastly more
| numerous and capable, as have missiles. I don't see how a surface
| ship survives in that environment.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| No one knows but I'm mostly on your side on this. Ships defence
| systems have been lagging behind offensive capabilities for a
| long time and that's not even talking about the threat posed by
| submarines.
| cwillu wrote:
| It carries a hundred or so missiles to shoot down other
| missiles.
| Stevvo wrote:
| Missiles can shoot down other missiles. So, if you have enough
| radar coverage, then I guess you're good as long as you can
| keep resupplied.
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(page generated 2023-04-26 23:02 UTC)