From StrategyPage, the USS Independence at Key West.
(Click to Embiggen)
She might not look it, but the Indy is very fast, highly agile, scary dangerous, and requires a fraction of the manpower of traditional US Navy ships.
More like this, please.
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Sorry- as sexy and admittedly fast as she is, Independence is not in the least “scary dangerous.” She’s a glorified Coast Guard cutter, with less firepower than a tank fer Pete’s sake, and is in no way an adequate replacement for the retiring Perry-class frigates.
Is it bad that my fist thought was “water logged battlestar”
I hate to say it, but my first thought on that shot was, “My goodness, she’s got a big fantail.”
Cool! It’s got a basketball court!
Fast and agile, yes. Dangerous, no. Try next to no organic weaponry, the Independence is at its most dangerous with a Helo and a Spec Ops platoon embarked.
Considering the history of the name, the current version actually has the least organic firepower (a single 57mm main gun and 2 .50 cal machine guns and a SeaRAM anti-aircraft launcher, less than the WW1 Assault Transport with its 4×3″/50 guns, 2 dual 40mm and 16 20mm guns or even the original 10 gun sloop from the Revolution) and less firepower than a single aircraft operating off the previous USS Independence, a Forrestal class CVA.
Dude! You are taking the Navy press releases WAY too seriously! Get on over to Commander Salamander’s blog (http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/) or Information Dissemination (http://www.informationdissemination.net/) for a more balanced view. Bohemond in comment #1 is only slightly overstating the case, and thanks to “optimal manning” this ship doesn’t really even have enough crew to keep up with regular maintenance, much less perform damage control in combat.
Organic guns are a wonderful thing for 20th century warfare. How many drones carrying multiple helfires (or single shipkillers) can she mount?
And if you gotta use federal money for jobs, its more bang for the buck to employ a few thousand 25 buck an hour skilled tradesman than a few hundred lawyer wanna be bureaucrats. When I built subs back in the 80′s, Electric Boat was doing a decent job of training an awful lot of wayward youth at the same time.
A less-charitable description was “glorified PT boat.”
An aluminum-hull craft with large internal spaces without bulkeads, no organic guns (ok, Adam says “next to no organic weaponry; fair enough), and a permanent crew of about four freaking dozen. Try asking the crew of the USS Stark how many damage-control people they needed.
Not to mention all that “high” speed is next to nothing compared to a Mach 1 sea-skimming anti-ship missile, or even a close-in RPG-7.
As CDR Salamander says, “buy Ford, not Ferrari.”
An egregious -nearly criminal- waste of our tax dollars…
But dang!
It sure looks COOL!!!
Stephen – Among those in the know in the USN, LCS = Little Crappy Ship.
Under-armed, under-manned, over-priced.
Kill the program NOW!
As a former Fast Attack sailor their or only two different kinds of ships, Submarines and Targets. That being said we have to look at the purpose of the ship first. What is it supposed to do? If we limit our thinking to conventional areas we would have never won WWII after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor because we lost the Battle Ships. I still like the old Battle Wagons but they are not the Capital Ships of the Navy any more.
The Modern Attack Carrier is a force projector but if we look at just the ship alone and remove the Aircraft it is just a REALLY BIG Target. It has very limited ship defenses onboard but an Attack Carrier does not operate alone or without aircraft. It is the Carrier Group that is the weapon.
What will be this ships part and what is its’ purpose? If it is to be used to insert Special Ops types then a ship of this type is probably what is needed. Fast, Shallow draft, and very manuverable. Too many defensive weapons will just weigh it down and actually make it more vunerable.
I just think back to Fast Attacks. They are very sneaky and very deadly but they really have very limited to no defensive capability. Once you know where a sub is the game is mostly up.
I do not know if this ship is really a good idea or not but what I do know is that none of the reasons stated make a case for or against it.
Way too expensive, Stephen. http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2010/03/gao-on-lcs.html
@Steven D – It’s too small and weak-looking to be a Colonial ship. One or two Mark II vipers with nuggets at the stick would smash that over-priced dinghy. Pay attention folks, that’s your tax dollars at work!