LCS: honesty creeps in at last

Let us all take a moment to praise Rear Admiral Thomas Eccles, the deputy commander for ship design, integration and engineering at Naval Sea Systems command.

He has spoken truth. Note the bold.

He cited the littoral combat ship, which was designed with a top speed of more than 40 knots, but which also uses a lot of fuel. Navy planners should have asked whether the ship needs to be so fast, he said, given the quantity of fuel that the planned fleet of 55 LCSs will consume.

“The value of the speed is high, because I need it to go places we couldn’t normally go as rapidly and flexibly, and there’s really some value in that, and maybe that’s the price we want to pay. But I don’t think that there was a fully informed decision process arrived at in the development of LCS, in which somebody answered the question the way we might go after it today,” Eccles said.

You don't say?

It does need to be said however that there were many people who were bringing up lots of questions about LCS, its design, its program, and its priorities. However, we as a Navy silenced those individuals, threatened them professionally if they spoke out, and bullied many solid officers into being yes men spouting happy talk for the better part of this decade.

Chickens roost'n....but it is good that at the higher levels at NAVSEA, honest discussion is starting to take place. Now let's move on to survivability .....