| Submit your comments on this article |
| Science & Technology |
| Reporter's Notebook: Navy, Congress continue to wrangle over fate of San Diego-based warships |
| 2023-07-25 |
| [SD UT] Boy, those LCSs are sure popular The Navy wants to decommission some ships early and some that are near or have reached retirement age. Congress is balking. San Diego Bay is awash in warships the Navy no longer wants but may have to keep, at least for the short term. Congress continues to push back on efforts by the Navy to decommission some ships early, as well ships that are near or have reached their retirement age. Many lawmakers say the vessels are still needed, especially Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers. The Navy disagrees, insisting that the ships should be scrapped to free up money to build new, more advanced platforms. The matter wasn’t clearly resolved when the U.S. House of Representatives recently approved a defense authorization bill for fiscal 2024. The matter has been passed onto the Senate. That leaves a question mark over the fate of three San Diego-based cruisers, each of which were designed to last at least 35 years. The Navy wants to get rid of the USS Cowpens (age 32), USS Mobile Bay (36) and the USS Bunker Hill (37). A fourth locally-based cruiser, USS Lake Champlain (36), recently returned from its last mission. But a formal decommissioning date hasn’t been announced. It’s also unclear when the cruiser USS Princeton (36), which has operated out of San Diego for years, will be taken out of service. The Navy has indicated it would like to take the ship out of service in 2026, but that’s not a formal commitment. The Navy also has expressed a desire to decommission two comparatively new, San Diego-based littoral combat ships, the USS Montgomery, which is 7, and the USS Jackson, which is 8. They were designed to last at least 25 years. Broadly speaking, littoral combat ships haven’t met the Navy’s performance expectations and they’re proving to be far more expensive to upgrade and operate than once thought. |
| Posted by:Frank G |
| #14 And say what you like about the Bradley, at least they've hauled folks around and shot stuff and taken a certain amount of fire in return. The LCS will've gone from its weight in gold to Chinese drink cans in what, a decade? |
| Posted by: Chuckles Bonaparte6432 2023-07-25 20:35 |
| #13 An LCS. Super Bowl Sunday: A Day in the Navy's a Fun Day! "New modules are cool," Shriek the crewmen, and drool At the queens who sashay down the runway. |
| Posted by: Chuckles Bonaparte6432 2023-07-25 19:21 |
| #12 exceeds even my gas-fed F-150 with the tow package ;-) |
| Posted by: Frank G 2023-07-25 18:46 |
| #11 As for LCS (the boat only a defense contractor could love), it's program that will be used for years to show how to screw up a design. Maybe the LCS will get its own movie like the Bradley did (The Pentagon Wars) For some reason, my brain is imagining a long, gray boat stored on a trailer in Frank's driveway. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2023-07-25 18:27 |
| #10 The Arliegh Burke destroyers thet are coming out of the yards are as capable as these cruisers (they very nearly are cruisers). Have you ever seen the Janes Fighting Ships 1942ed.? Very educational book. The US ships class by class are generally bigger than their Japanese or European counterparts because of the needs of the US Pacific Fleet -- the US ships needed longer endurance to fight from the US coast to the Philippines -- more fuel tanks, more food and more crew space. Things a coastal defense navy don't want to 'waste' money building into a design. The LCS is the bastard child of the 'bean counters' and the 'Revolution not Evolution' theorists. They got the whole program 'bass-ackwards' from the beginning ...develop the Modules first, maybe testing on something like small commercial freighter hulls, and then start cranking out military hulls if the concepts work. |
| Posted by: magpie 2023-07-25 18:18 |
| #9 Drone mother ships might make some sense as a use for the LCS. They're going to be meat for drones themselves if they try their original mission of close-in support, so turn about is... |
| Posted by: Nero 2023-07-25 13:04 |
| #8 I thought the PHM class was better for littoral work. They are gas guzzlers, though. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2023-07-25 12:35 |
| #7 The LCS's all have flight decks and hangars, so a simple up-gunning with a couple of Bradley FV turrets, put a couple of Attack-Helo's and/or drones, and assign then to convoy duty and pirate suppression off Somalia and the Persian Gulf. Free up the actual combatants stuck doing that now to thicken the fleet for the upcoming South China Sea dust-up. |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2023-07-25 12:00 |
| #6 The driving philosophy behind LCS seems to have been: "These yards aren't up to snuff on producing mil components. Well what can they make? Stuff we don't need that breaks easily. Lets make that!" |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2023-07-25 11:26 |
| #5 Boy, those LCSs are sure popular Popular as hell with the congresscreatures who were "We're short on shipyard capacity. I know what. Lets build ships that are useless!" |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2023-07-25 10:10 |
| #4 Generally, we don’t resell or donate anything with long range missiles to “allies” that are only marginally stable and committed to our interests. We gifted the Knox class frigates out and about when the Perry class replaced them. All the DDGs when to the knackers. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2023-07-25 09:57 |
| #3 free up money to buy more politicians in the Biden Crime Family. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2023-07-25 09:34 |
| #2 The cruisers are old, and while not completely unuseable, aren't capable of upgrades that would make a refit practical. The Arliegh Burke destroyers thet are coming out of the yards are as capable as these cruisers (they very nearly are cruisers). As for LCS (the boat only a defense contractor could love), it's program that will be used for years to show how to screw up a design. |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2023-07-25 08:46 |
| #1 Give them to Marcos. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2023-07-25 08:16 |