New ship designs are highly complex and often take years to debug. The US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program surprised most observers by settling on two different designs and splitting the intended order quantity between the two design firms. One of each design is in service now, the more traditional USS Freedom (LCS-1), and the trimaran-hull USS Independence (LCS-2). Each has had its own set of teething problems:
The LCS has long been a good source of bad news and potentially explosive revelations. In the last year the LCS design has been found to have structural and other flaws. The first LCS, the monohull USS Freedom, has suffered four major problems since it entered service four years ago. The latest one is a leak in a propeller shaft seal, which caused some minor flooding. Despite this Freedom was able to get back to port under its own power. Last year cracks in the hull as long as 17 cm (6.5 inches) were discovered, and the water-jet propulsion system broke down as well. Two years ago one of the gas turbine engines broke down.
The most serious problem is in the USS Independence, a radical trimaran design. It seems that a “dissimilar metals” situation arose when salt water, the aluminum hull, and some other metals got into close proximity with each other and extensive corrosion resulted. Aluminum hulls tend to corrode more than steel, but the problem became so bad with the USS Independence that, 18 months after entering service, it was sent into dry dock for corrosion repairs and design changes to eliminate the problem.
Cracks, corrosion, and equipment breakdowns are common in new warship designs especially designs that are radically different (like the broad trimaran shape of the USS Independence). Usually, these problems can be fixed but there’s always the risk that the new design will be seriously flawed, requiring extensive rework and a halt in building more ships of that class. So far, the U.S. Navy has not wavered in the face of potential design and construction flaws.
This is all part of the expected years of uncertainty and experimentation as this radical new combat ship design seeks to find out what works, to what degree, and what doesn’t. There is some nervousness about all this. The U.S. Navy has not introduced a radical new design for nearly a century. The last such new design was the aircraft carrier, which required two decades of experimentation and a major war to nail down what worked. Even the nuclear submarines of the late 1950s and early 60s were evolutionary compared to what the LCS is trying to do.
USS Freedom at sea. Click for full-sized image at Wikipedia
USS Independence at pier side. Click for full-sized image at Wikipedia.
