The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is the unlikeliest of cautionary tales in the Navy’s recent past—a tale of vision, runaway costs, and the cold, hard, cruel hand of untested hyperbole. It was called a sea-changing breakthrough: small, very fast, and versatile enough to perform a wide range of missions, from clearing mines to hunting subs to battling pirates. It was a classic case of what happens when defense contractors, political momentum, and grand ideas collide.
The notion started taking shape in the early 2000s when Admiral Vernon Clark visited a Danish warship and observed its crew replace a deck gun within an hour. For him, it was a preview of things to come: fast-switchable ships to accomplish any mission. The LCS was born of that idea—what Clark had in mind as a naval “Swiss army knife,” with an infinitely tiny crew, podded guns, and the speed to outrun anything on the water.
The pitch was irresistible. The Navy needed old ships in the Cold War fleet; it needed a new workhorse on an expedited timetable. The LCS was a cutting-edge capability at a tenth of the cost of traditional warships. Congress fell for it easily, although internal memoranda warned that the technical advance was no sure thing. Covering their own turf, the Navy subcontracted to two rival shipbuilders—Wisconsin’s Lockheed Martin team and Alabama’s General Dynamics/Austal—building two vastly different versions of the boat. Both were commercial ferry designs, with speed and maneuverability the concern, but at the expense of toughness.
Anecdotes came out sooner or later. The initial estimate of $220 million per ship nearly doubled to a projected $500 million each. Worse, the two designs had no parts in common that were interchangeable, crews, or training systems, and this led to logistics hell. Legislators sounded the alarm because the ships were so thin and light that crewmen were at risk. And the crowning achievement—the modular mission packages—turn out to be much more complicated than touted. Instead of quick switches, weeks were required to reconfigure the ships.
Despite increasing concern, the program continued, under the impetus of politics and heavy contractor pressure. As the naval commentator stated, “There’s a lot of money in the system, and the only consensus seems to be: build more.” Politically, with workers and shipyards deeply invested in the program, cancellation was unthinkable.
The technical mistakes mounted. Engines broke down. Gears spliced together cracked. The ships remained in dry dock longer than they were at sea. The lean crew concept did not work—sailors were so lean on the deck that commanding officers would do routine maintenance personally. The training was insufficient, with sailors spending many hours in the simulator but getting very little practical sea time. Internal testing later concluded that the ships could be effective against lightly armed opponents but far from the flexible warfighters they were intended to be.
The failures were not conceptual—those manifested in a spectacular failure. The USS Freedom came home with a seized engine and sat idle for years. The USS Milwaukee had engine failure on its first cruise and was towed back in. The USS Fort Worth suffered significant engine damage as a result of a crew error. Every failure contributed to growing skepticism that the LCS was anything other than an expensive experiment that had failed.
Still, the political machine kept going. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus was the program’s biggest champion, insisting the ships were needed even as Navy commanders expressed doubts. Congress kept okaying more hulls, fueled in part by a no small number of lawmakers determined to preserve district jobs. The Navy went ahead and commissioned more than 30 ships—although in its own judgment, they “do not provide the lethality or survivability needed in a high-end fight.”.
The last price tag is astronomical. Throughout the program’s lifespan, they have exceeded at more than $100 billion. The majority of the vessels are retiring after less than a decade of service, a far cry from their planned 25-year lifespan. Freedom-class ships are already in early retirement, plagued by reliability problems and scrubbed missions.
For the sailors who crewed them, the story was close to home. It was an infuriating, demoralizing experience for many: highly trained professionals manning ships that spent more time sitting idle on the pier waiting to be fixed than they spent at sea. Careers were in neutral, skills were sitting on the shelf, and morale was low. The LCS eventually became known as a dead-end ship in the fleet.
Finally, the Littoral Combat Ship is a cautionary example of how great concepts can get sidetracked into costly catastrophes. It serves to highlight the danger of letting hype, politics, and optimism get out in front of realistic testing and honest criticism. The Navy has since returned to more successful frigates, hoping not to repeat the same mistakes. But the LCS story is indelible—a billion-dollar lesson branded into the steel of a shipbuilding program that never became its promise.