LCS: WWNRD?

I had dinner tonight with a guy whose brother was a nuke submariner and who loved to tell the story of his interview with Rickover in the early 70s.

It had me thinking of the latest on LCS today.

Is the world going Salamander, or is the CNO just thinking with his nuk'ish nogg'n? What would Naval Reactors do?

US Navy chief of naval operations Adm. John Richardson is ordering a major 60-day review of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program.

“The idea,” said a Navy official, “is that with two deployments complete or nearly complete, and with new ships coming almost every six months, it’s time to see where things stand and get a feel for what’s been working, what’s not been working, and what we might need to change.”

In a memorandum signed out on Feb. 29, Richardson directs the acting head of the Warfare Systems N9 directorate, the commander of naval surface forces, and the principal military advisor to the acquisition directorate to “lead a review of the LCS program to include crewing, operations, training and maintenance of the ship class.”

Bahwahahahahaha!

Hull-1 is already 1/3 of the way through its expected service life, and Big Navy is still trying to figure out how to flick this booger of a program.

Laz, you may want to just sit and stew for a bit, and the Old School Front Porch refresh your drink, crack open another can of Vienna Sausages, and stop me from yelling, "We told you this a decade ago!" Wait for it ...

Richardson wants the review team to look at how the 3-2-1 LCS crewing construct is working, and compare it with how a traditional, single crew for each ship approach would work.
...
The LCS maintenance strategy will also be reviewed, including the current scheme of regular maintenance periods for forward-deployed ships to a “periodic, preventive maintenance approach.”
...
The review is also tasked with looking at the mission module scheme, where separate modules optimized for anti-submarine, surface warfare, and counter-mine warfare can be loaded on and off each LCS.

The team, Richardson wrote, is to assess “a revised approach where mission modules remain with a specific LCS hull.”

I'm sorry, I have to stop because I can' stop laughing. It was at least 2005, if not earlier, that Chap first said that is where it was all going to lead. This is just beautiful.

Admiral Richardson is about to have a little shrine in the corner of the Front Porch with candle of Yak butter and incense burning 24/7/365. Close ... very close ...

The idea of the review, the official said, is that “we’ve got some run time, we know some bads, we know some goods. So are the assumptions we’ve made correct or do we need to make new changes?”

Let me translate this for you; "I know we have done all sorts of reviews before, but they are all garbage, I have little faith in them as we now have real world data. We're doing another one, so shut up and get in formation.

Go get your shinebox N9, we've got work to do."

GIF hat tip to Phil.