The Navy’s chief of operations, in San Diego last week, defended the service’s embattled new vessel class, the littoral combat ship. “LCS is going to continue as a program,” said Adm. Gary Roughead, the Navy’s top officer. “I think we’ve got a good ship on our hands.”

The Senate Armed Services Committee had harsh words for the program recently. “I’m sure you share my frustration that following an $8 billion taxpayer investment in the (littoral) program, the Navy continues to lack a single ship that is operationally effective or reliable,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said at a committee hearing last month.

The littoral will have removable “modules” that allow it to do anti-submarine, mine countermeasure or anti-ship missions, based on which is installed at the time.

The new ship class is supposed to replace three long-serving vessels: the frigate, coastal patrol ship and the mine countermeasures ship. Roughead talked about where the littoral fits into overall U.S. ship strategy. At what he described as a still-low price, the Navy can buy enough ships to cover more ocean.

the full, traditional rigor of Navy-mandated ship shock trials is not achievable,

The LCS is not expected to be survivable in a hostile combat environment as evidenced by the limited shock hardened design and results of full scale testing of representative hull structures

So, we have a warship design that is not expected to fight and survive in the very environment in which it was produced to do so. Poorly-armed, poorly-protected, with an over-abundance of speed that will eat through a fuel supply in half a day.

No way do I want my grandkids caught in that deathtrap. Or anybody else’s. Not in a fight, not in a storm, not in a fire. No way.

Not designed to fight – and not crewed sufficiently to contain and repair damage when it happens and still be able to operate. This disgrace of a ship not only can’t fight hurt – it can’t float hurt. It was designed this way. Why? Because someone had a speed fetish

These LCS “Bait” boats are no “steet-fighters”. They are an accident/incident waiting to happen. May God bless all who sail upon them…because they’re going to be a casualty or a hostage in some third world prison.

Survivability was sacrificed at the altar of speed.