Finally!!!
The question is, will it even make it through acceptance trials???
Shipbuilder Austal USA delivered the final Independence-class littoral combat ship to the U.S. Navy on Friday, marking the end of a construction phase that’s lasted 15 years.
The Alabama-based Austal has built a total of 19 Independence-class littoral combat ships for the service. The first, the Independence, was commissioned in 2010. The final ship will be christened as the Pierre, named after the capital of South Dakota.
Full article, HERE from Navy Times.
Good riddance! The Little Crappy Ships never lived up to their 'billing'... They were supposedly for littoral work, and replacement for the PC and Hydrofoil boats, both of which actually worked!!! Sigh...
The 'modules' we were supposed to build for them didn't work, were manpower intensive, took more people than allowed, and didn't FIT on the ship.
Which, OBTW, had NO self defense capability. And when running at speed, went through fuel faster than anything else in the Fleet. And when they did get sent out 'with the Fleet', a tanker had to be attached to keep fueling them.
And don't get me started on maintenance! The crews were so small they could NOT do their own maintenance, so the contractors had to fly civilian maintenance personnel all over the world to fix them. At one point, the Navy was switching out crews every six weeks, due to 'burnout' of personnel. VERY costly to fly folks from San Diego to...Singapore!
And the fixes weren't cheap or easy. Oh, and they had a tendency to get the 'blue screen of death' on their fancy computer systems, leaving them dead in the water (DIW) where ever they happened to be, including one case in the middle of the Pacific! And the small crews couldn't do damage control, much less routine maintenance since they were basically watch and watch on duty.
Those things also cost some good officers their careers, as they tried to fix the problems... but couldn't!
So yes, good riddance! And hand salute to the crews that did their best with what they had. I'm sure THEY will be glad to get back to the REAL Navy.
I did a 4 year tour on a minimum manned OHP FFG. It was a happy ship, a good ship, great crew, good times. The final year we were made a Fleet Reserve Ship with augmented SELRES from a local Reserve Center and TAR sailors striped from their permanent shore duty admin billets and force converted to tech and mech ratings. We lost 30% of our Regulars. The SELRES were consumate professionals, good men. They augmented us once a month on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday for underway local ops and for two weeks once a year for underway ops. We never saw the first converted TAR arrive aboard the ship before I transferred. The explanation was that they were either attriting from conversion training or being re-treaded to get through the training. Was there an impact on that minimum manned Frigate with a 30% reduction in crew? Oh yeah. Equal parts of burn out and people rising to the occasion. Minimum manning has never, IMO, been a well-thought-out concept.
USS Pierre? Tie it up pierside in Guantanamo and use it for overflow berthing.
It seems there's always a joker or a committee of jokers who want to make good enough perfect and in trying, poop the bed. The littoral ship is the Navy's brown sheet story. Loss of combined arms capability in favor of missiles is the Marine Corps' very own poop where you sleep story. Every branch of the military has one or more. Maybe senior leadership should have to take a common sense test before being promoted to flag rank...