For $704 million, wouldn't you expect your thingie to work?

[unhappycamper]

I sure would.




The littoral combat ship Independence (LCS 2) is shown July 12 underway during builder's trials.


LCS trials may resume next week, sources say
By Christopher P. Cavas - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Oct 7, 2009 19:35:48 EDT

Sea trials of the first Littoral Combat Ship from General Dynamics could resume as early as next week, sources said, giving shipbuilders and their Navy customers a chance to see if numerous engineering fixes implemented since the summer have taken hold.

The ship, named Independence, went out for an initial series of builder’s trials in early July, but except for a handful of day trips, it has been pierside since then at Austal USA’s shipyard in Mobile, Ala. A series of problems, many of them associated with the propulsion plant, cropped up during the trials, and officials decided to take the ship out of trials mode and work on getting things finished.

“Every time you go to sea, it’s a disruption to your production,” Rear Adm. Bill Landay, the Navy’s program executive officer for ships, explained Oct. 7 to reporters.

“We were going to sea, we were coming back, we were working on issues a couple days, we were going to sea, we were working on issues. We were making progress, but we also were, quite frankly, impacting our production, because there were a lot of other things we still needed to do,” Landay said. “So we made a conscious decision at one point that said we know enough, and there are some things we need to go work, let’s go put the ship back into production for two, three, four weeks to make progress on all the production stuff that we want to do before we go back to sea again.”

While Landay acknowledged the three-month delay in continuing trials has been frustrating, he observed that “you go on builder’s trials because you’ve got to exercise the ship, and you’re going to find stuff.”


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/10/navy_lcs_trials_resume_100709w/



unhappycamper comment: The original estimated cost for the LCS was $220 million.

[hobbit709]

1. NO defense contract has ever been on time or on budget.

There's never any incentive for the contractor to do so.

[Ikonoklast]

2. That's the big problem with prototypes that are pushing new design and technologies.

It will most likely not work correctly straight out of the box, need a lot of tweaking, and cost waaaay more than first estimated.

Looks like you could water ski behind this thing, though. It must really scoot.