This week, the Navy retired a littoral combat ship only halfway through its lifespan.<\/p>\n
The USS Fort Worth<\/a>, a surface combatant ship which cost $400 million<\/a> to build, entered service in 2012. It was originally meant to serve until<\/a> the late 2030s, but was retired early due to<\/a> chronic repair issues and related costs, and longstanding concerns regarding its overall viability.<\/p>\n A major issue for the USS Fort Worth was its combining gear, which connects its gas turbine and engines to its water jet shafts. The combining gear took critical damage<\/a> back in 2016 when<\/a> crew members failed to follow proper procedures while testing its engines, rendering<\/a> the boat functionally unusable. <\/p>\n The Navy initially scheduled<\/a> the USS Fort Worth\u2019s retirement for 2022, after only ten years of service. However, the Navy repurposed the ship instead, using it to test<\/a> new technologies at a port in San Diego.<\/p>\n \u201cBy retiring early-hull test platforms like Fort Worth, the Navy redirects investments toward upgrading the remaining LCS inventory with enhanced capabilities,\u201d the Navy said<\/a> in a statement this week. Its retirement helps ensure \u201cthe active ships remain relevant, combat-credible, and reliable throughout their service lives.\u201d<\/p>\n But, as Dan Grazier, the director of the Stimson Center\u2019s National Security reform program, tells RS: \u201cThe whole Littoral Combat Ship concept has failed.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIt’s a poorly designed ship that [has an] excessive maintenance burden,\u201d Grazier said. To Grazier\u2019s point, a 2022 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found<\/a> the Navy \u201chasn\u2019t demonstrated that this type of ship can perform its intended missions,\u201d and that it was less likely than its counterparts to withstand combat. <\/p>\n The USS Fort Worth\u2019s untimely demise is representative of a broader procurement crisis, where the Navy has repeatedly failed<\/a> to deploy reliable ships that can perform their intended function. <\/p>\n Rather, as Grazier tells RS, the Navy has often opted to build elaborately designed ships with unproven technologies, which often do not work as planned. <\/p>\n \u201cThe Navy’s now feeling the real consequences of years of bad policy,\u201d Grazier said. \u201cThe size of the fleet is shrinking.\u201d<\/p>\n The Navy originally planned<\/a> to buy 55 littoral combat ships; it cut back<\/a> to 32 in 2014 as questions mounted about the program\u2019s viability. It now has<\/a> 27.<\/p>\n From Your Site Articles<\/p>\n Related Articles Around the Web<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week, the Navy retired a littoral combat ship only halfway through its lifespan. The USS Fort Worth,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":974343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,180501,7371,7372,81359,14944,5502,24711,146911,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-974342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-america","tag-defense-budget","tag-fort-worth","tag-fortworth","tag-littoral-combat-ship","tag-national-security","tag-navy","tag-procurement","tag-ships","tag-texas","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117022497735081359","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=974342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/974343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=974342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=974342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=974342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}