You know, if they intend to or not - it seems with each passing month, more and more people are starting to state what we have been saying about LCS for years.
"Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., that better fuel efficiency of the General Dynamics-built LCS over the Lockheed Martin-built ship only comes into play "at the upper end" of the ships' performance, and that's not a major problem because "they would be used very infrequently at such high speeds."But no successful aircraft sacrificed its ability to carry weapons so the afterburner could work. Some aircraft have - and the results were unimpressive to say the least. LCS; the RA-5 of today.
....
“The amount of time this ship spends in this high-end regime, even though we need that speed, and we need that speed very much, as we are seeing down in the Caribbean and other places, the amount of time a ship spends in that regime is not going to be very extensive. It’s tantamount to saying, our airplanes are in afterburner all the time, and we know that’s not the case,” he said.
For review; just a few:
- Warship requirements needed for, you know, a ship going to war - were compromised to meet a fetish for speed. A fetish that, from the Battle Cruiser to the Patrol Hydrofoil, consistently proves to be a false economy.
- Once a ship displaces water and has to, you know, do things warships do - the need for speed just isn't there.
- Once that truth is demonstrated, again, people will pretend that it was the plan all along.
PS: Someone make sure Sid's blood pressure meds are handy.
