Zumwalt and LCS - Main Batteries
What do the Zumwalt and LCS programs have in common? Well, lots of things – all bad! However, for the purpose of this post, the thing they have in common is that despite having commissioned ships in the class, neither has their main batteries installed and functioning yet.
Zumwalt
- 1 built and commissioned Oct 2016
- 1 built (tentative commissioning date Jan 2019)
- 1 building
As you know, the Zumwalt was literally designed around the Advanced Gun System (AGS) that was intended to rain precision firepower at ranges of 70+ miles. As you also know, the Navy has cancelled the only munition the AGS was capable of firing, the Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP), due to runaway costs and failure to meet range requirements.
A functional AGS does not exist. The Zumwalt have no functional main battery despite being a commissioned warship. We spent $24B to build a class with no main battery. That’s some major league incompetence!
LCS
- 5 Freedom class commissioned
- 9 Freedom class built or building
- 7
- 8
As you know, the LCS’ main battery is the modules – those swappable permanent modules that contain one of the LCS’ three main functions: Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), Anti-Surface Warfare (ASuW), or Mine Countermeasures (MCM). Without one of the main battery modules, the LCS is just a patrol boat and not a very good one at that.
- There is no functional MCM module.
- There is no functional ASW module.
- There is no useful ASuW module - it has been scaled back to the point of uselessness.
The first LCS, USS Freedom, was commissioned in 2008. It is now ten years later with 29 LCS commissioned, built, or building and still no useful, functional, main battery. A decade after commissioning and still no modules. Wow, that’s some major league incompetence!
That is two major classes of surface warfare vessels and the two most recent classes to be built that have now been commissioned with no main battery.
That bears repeating.
The Navy’s two newest classes of surface vessel have been commissioned with no main battery.
How does this happen? How does the Navy accept and commission a ship that has no main battery? How has no one been fired? How has no one been charged with fraud? Has anyone’s promotion at least been delayed by a couple of months?
Okay, aside from simple complaining, what can we learn from this?
Well, the Zumwalt and LCS have another point in common regarding their main batteries – neither battery actually existed in a functional form when the Navy committed to building the ships. The Navy assumed they could develop the batteries while the ships were building. This is the concurrency that we’ve railed against and has been proven, repeatedly, to be a failure as a procurement method. Concurrency has failed every time it’s been attempted and yet the Navy is still married to the concept.
It’s one thing to begin construction of a ship when the deck buffing machine is still under development but it’s insanity to begin construction of a ship when its main battery doesn’t exist. Even the “fitted for but not with” philosophy, as bad as it is, is better than building with concurrency in the main battery.
I don’t know what it takes for the Navy to learn lessons. Apparently, it takes more than the utter failure of two major ship classes (and the F-35, EMALS, AAG, Advanced Weapons Elevators, etc.)!
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