XPost: alt.politics.obama, alt.politics.miserable-failure, talk.politics.guns   
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   From: yourdime@outlook.com   
      
   Littoral combat ships were supposed to launch the Navy into the future.   
   Instead they broke down across the globe and many of their weapons never   
   worked. Now the Navy is getting rid of them. One is less than five years   
   old.   
      
   In July 2016, warships from more than two dozen nations gathered off the   
   coasts of Hawaii and Southern California to join the United States in the   
   world’s largest naval exercise. The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia,   
   Japan, South Korea and others sent hundreds of destroyers, aircraft   
   carriers and warplanes. They streamed in long lines across the ocean,   
   symbols of power and prestige.   
      
   The USS Freedom had its own special place within the armada. It was one of   
   a new class of vessels known as littoral combat ships. The U.S. Navy had   
   billed them as technical marvels — small, fast and light, able to combat   
   enemies at sea, hunt mines and sink submarines.   
      
   In reality, the LCS was well on the way to becoming one of the worst   
   boondoggles in the military’s long history of buying overpriced and   
   underperforming weapons systems. Two of the $500 million ships had   
   suffered embarrassing breakdowns in previous months. The Freedom’s   
   performance during the exercise, showing off its ability to destroy   
   underwater mines, was meant to rejuvenate the ships’ record on the world   
   stage. The ship was historically important too; it was the first LCS   
   built, the first in the water, commissioned just eight years prior.   
      
   But like the LCS program’s reputation, the Freedom was in bad shape.   
   Dozens of pieces of equipment on board were undergoing repairs. Training   
   crews for the new class of ships had proven more difficult than   
   anticipated. The sailors aboard the Freedom had not passed an exam   
   demonstrating their ability to operate some of the ship’s most important   
   systems.   
      
   As the day to launch approached, the pressure mounted. Top officers   
   visited the ship repeatedly. The Freedom’s sailors understood that theirs   
   was a “no fail mission” with “‘no appetite’ to remain in port,” according   
   to Navy documents obtained by ProPublica.   
      
   The Freedom’s Capt. Michael Wohnhaas consulted with his officers. Despite   
   crippling problems that had left one of the ship’s engines inoperable, he   
   and his superiors decided the vessel could rely on its three others for   
   the exercise.   
      
   The Freedom completed its mission, but the accomplishment proved hollow.   
   Five days after the ship returned to port, a maintenance check revealed   
   that the faltering engine had suffered “galloping corrosion” from   
   saltwater during the exercise. A sailor described the engine room as “a   
   horror show” with rust eating away at the machinery. One of the Navy’s   
   newest ships would spend the next two years undergoing repairs at a cost   
   of millions.   
      
   It took investigators months to unravel the mystery of the engine’s   
   breakdown. But this much was clear at the outset: The Freedom’s collapse   
   was another unmistakable sign that the Navy had spent billions of dollars   
   and more than a decade on warships with rampant and crippling flaws.   
      
   The ongoing problems with the LCS have been well documented for years, in   
   news articles, government reports and congressional hearings. Each ship   
   ultimately cost more than twice the original estimate. Worse, they were   
   hobbled by an array of mechanical failures and were never able to carry   
   out the missions envisaged by their champions.   
      
   ProPublica set out to trace how ships with such obvious shortcomings   
   received support from Navy leadership for nearly two decades. We reviewed   
   thousands of pages of public records and tracked down naval and   
   shipbuilding insiders involved at every stage of construction.   
      
   Our examination revealed new details on why the LCS never delivered on its   
   promises. Top Navy leaders repeatedly dismissed or ignored warnings about   
   the ships’ flaws. One Navy secretary and his allies in Congress fought to   
   build more of the ships even as they broke down at sea and their weapons   
   systems failed. Staunch advocates in the Navy circumvented checks meant to   
   ensure that ships that cost billions can do what they are supposed to do.   
      
   Contractors who stood to profit spent millions lobbying Congress, whose   
   members, in turn, fought to build more ships in their home districts than   
   the Navy wanted. Scores of frustrated sailors recall spending more time   
   fixing the ships than sailing them.   
      
   Our findings echo the conclusions of a half-century of internal and   
   external critiques of America’s process for building new weapons systems.   
   The saga of the LCS is a vivid illustration of how Congress, the Pentagon   
   and defense contractors can work in concert — and often against the good   
   of the taxpayers and America’s security — to spawn what President Dwight   
   D. Eisenhower described in his farewell address as the “military   
   industrial complex.”   
      
   “There is a lot of money flowing through this vast ecosystem, and somehow   
   the only thing all these people can agree on is more, more, more,” said   
   Lyle Goldstein, a former professor at the U.S. Naval War College who is   
   now investigating the costs of war at Brown University. “Unfortunately, I   
   just think it might be in the nature of our system.”   
      
   This year, the Defense Department asked Congress to approve a staggering   
   $842 billion — nearly half of the federal government’s discretionary   
   spending — to keep America safe in what the Pentagon says is an ever more   
   perilous world. As House and Senate leaders negotiate the final number, it   
   is unlikely they will spend much time discussing ways to prevent future   
   debacles like the LCS.   
      
   Such a conversation would cover hundreds of billions of misspent taxpayer   
   money on projects from nearly every branch of the military: The F-35   
   fighter jet, deployed by the Navy, Marines and Air Force, is more than a   
   decade late and $183 billion over budget. The Navy’s newest aircraft   
   carrier, the Gerald R. Ford, cost $13 billion and has yet to prove it can   
   reliably launch planes. And the Army’s Future Combat System was largely   
   abandoned in 2009 after the military had dedicated more than $200 billion   
   on a battlefield intelligence network meant to link troops, tanks and   
   robots.   
      
   The LCS program offers another clear lesson, one seen in almost every   
   infamous procurement disaster. Once a massive project gains momentum and   
   defense contractors begin hiring, it is politically easier to throw good   
   money after bad.   
      
   Stopping a weapons program in its tracks means people losing work and   
   admitting publicly that enormous sums of taxpayer money have been wasted.   
   In the case of the LCS, it took an array of naval leaders and two   
   consecutive defense secretaries to finally stop the program. Yet even   
      
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