By Micaela Burrow
The Navy expected the cost of a ship program — considered a waste of taxpayer money — to far exceed the Navy’s own initial estimate, a deputy defense secretary who was instrumental in promoting the program told ProPublica.
Initial Navy proposals said the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program would cost no more than $220 to $250 million per ship while providing the U.S. Navy with a do-it-all vessel that could operate closer to shore than other ships, according to a 2004 Congressional Research Report. However, the Navy muscled through development even after major design flaws emerged, and now the ships cost $500 million each, ProPublica found.
“The Navy never believed it, at least the people who had to build the ship,” former deputy defense secretary Robert Work, who advocated for the LCS program, told ProPublica.
Over the total lifetime of the LCS class, program costs could top $100 billion, a retired military analyst at the Government Accountability Office who has studied the LCS deeply told ProPublica.
“In the end, the taxpayers get fewer than 30 limited-survivability, single-mission ships,” he said, out of a planned 50.
Each LCS was designed to last 25 years, according to ProPublica. The Navy requested to retire the Freedom-class LCSs in March 2022 ahead of plans, while Congress allowed the Navy to scrap four.
One, the USS Sioux City, retired on Aug. 14 after only five years of service, Business Insider reported.
Three other LCSs have already been decommissioned, according to ProPublica, including the USS Coronado and USS Independence.
The Navy redrew blueprints for the LCS in 2005 after concerns emerged about the original designs — two different versions submitted by Lockheed Martin and a General Dynamics / Austal USA partnership — ability to withstand damage and protect sailors, according to ProPublica.
In less than a year after December 2015, five of the vessels broke down, each time revealing new built-in problems, according to ProPublica. Ship engines failed, leaks sprung, and the mine-hunting system proved too difficult to operate, among others. The Navy canceled the remote minesweeping add-on in 2016.
The LCS “does not provide the lethality or survivability needed in a high-end fight,” the Navy told ProPublica in a statement. “The Navy needs a more ready, capable, and lethal fleet more than a bigger fleet that’s less ready, less capable and less lethal.”
In recent shipbuilding plans submitted to Congress, the Navy has proposed reducing the number of ships, but now Congress adds requirements to the final budget each year, ProPublica found.
