[bell-cot]

Guess: Most folks on HN realize that "the military", in the sense of "the current general and admirals", have damn little influence over these outsourcing, single-sourcing, etc. decisions. That is mostly controlled by Congress, via the budget purse-strings. And Congress in term is mostly controlled by...

[dsfyu404ed]

>Most folks on HN realize that "the military", in the sense of "the current general and admirals", have damn little influence over these outsourcing, single-sourcing, etc. decisions. That is mostly controlled by Congress,

I think your claim is way to optimistic in light of the fact there are other people claiming that the LCS boondoggle is the fault of faulty procurement and not Congress.

[zmgsabst]

And yet, you don’t have the stomach to reply to me about it — or to discuss the procurement failure regarding munitions outlined by CSIS.

The LCS is the fault of the Navy in at least three ways:

- they didn’t bother to make sure the gearbox worked

- they didn’t bother to make sure the structural framing was sufficient, leading to shoulder cracks

- they didn’t design it to have sufficient arms or ability to perform ASW roles

None of which has to do with Congress, and every bit of which has to do with military design, procurement, and contract management.

Congress doesn’t design ships for the fleet: the Navy proposes what they want and Congress funds (or doesn’t) the project. The only role Congress played was forcing the Navy to keep them after it became clear they were such a total failure, the Navy scrapped the class while still in production.

But keep making excuses for abject failure — that’s sure to fix the problem.

[Chrontius]

What's really irritating about the LCS is that the Danish StanFlex system is exactly the capability the LCS was supposed to offer, and StanFlex works. Pure NIH syndrome. In addition, someone has already done the legwork to make sure that a half-dozen different hulls compatible with StanFlex modules are proven technology…

[dsfyu404ed]

I'm rate limited for not towing the line so I wasn't gonna burn a reply on it. The LCS is basically the Navy's Orion but worse. Like Orion it's congressionally mandated garbage. Unlike Orion the Navy DGAF about it, put no effort into making it workable. So of course it's spec'd out poorly (no ASW) and has a ton of teething problems (gearbox, hull structure). It was a B rate project nobody really cared about from the get go. No wonder it flopped. Nobody cared to make sure it didn't.

[zmgsabst]

> Nobody cared to make sure it didn't.

That’s my point:

The Navy didn’t perform at the level of making the gearbox work, because despite getting their admirals’ request for a modular super ship, they’re not ninja problem fixers but in on the MIC grift.