Senators Are Forcing the U.S. Navy to Buy Crappy Ships It Doesn’t Want

It is an outrageous pork barrel boondoggle. As you pointed out, several of our allies have frigates that cost less and are far more effective. The LCS continues being built because of 2 senators whose states benefit economically from their construction, not because they are needed, effective relatively small warships. They are not, unless we are fighting Somalia. Note, Somalia doesn't have a navy worth mentioning.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iver_Huitfeldt-class_frigate

$325 million, perhaps 450m with a belly full of SM2 blk III. It's a baby Burke. Far, far more useful to the navy than either LCS.

 

Is that the Danish frigate? It's nice. They designed it to be added to as finances allowed and technology improved. Of course, buying the design from them would mean "admitting" that the LCS's design (both of them) was a big mistake. Can't have that! As for coming up with a better design in the first place by purchasing the rights to build an ally's warship here in the States? Not a chance! It might be viewed as admitting that we weren't the "best" at something. The horror!

Meanwhile, the Chinese are building huge numbers of warships as fast as they can, using stolen American technology and reverse engineered Soviet/Russian stuff originally purchased from them. They have huge financial resources, unlike the Russians, and are in the midst of a huge building spree on military hardware, particularly warships, and advanced offensive and defensive missile systems. They want us out of the Western Pacific and they intend to dominate the region, in my humble opinion. Excellent post, lpbman.

 

The Freedom class has 2/3 the draft and half again the speed of the Iver Huitfeldt, so it isn't exactly an apples to apples comparison. When a military branch says they don't want to build an expensive new weapon though, it is worth paying attention.