Lawmakers have come out swinging against a controversial combat ship program.
Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain criticized the Navy’s troubled Littoral Combat Ship on the Senate floor on Tuesday, arguing that a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) requires Congress to thoroughly review the program before granting funding for four new ships.
“In terms of actual cost and cost to our national security, we simply cannot afford to continue committing our limited resources to an unproven program that may eventually account for more than a third of the surface-combatant fleet,” McCain said.
“The American people are — quite rightly — tired of seeing their tax dollars wasted on disastrous defense programs,” he continued.
His comments echo those made at a House Armed Services seapower subcommittee last week, where some representatives voiced concern over the program. (McCain: American military leadership ‘worst I’ve ever seen’)
“I am troubled by the fact that we are purchasing first and testing second,” said California Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier. “I feel that there’s this rush to construction and we’ll worry about the details later.”
The Littoral Combat Ship, or LCS, is a new weapons system designed to perform missions in shallow waters against asymmetric threats. Two prototypes have already been completed and are currently undergoing testing.
Total estimated acquisition costs are expected at around $40 billion, although average construction costs per ship have doubled since the start of the program.
The GAO report indicates that the Navy is moving forward with plans to purchase over half of the planned LCS fleet before operational testing of mission-critical systems has been completed.
Many of these seem to “lack defined requirements,” and other systems further along in testing have shown performance problems and a lack of overall effectiveness.
“Right now, it seems like whatever combat-capability LCS can muster is driving its mission, not the the other way around,” McCain said. “In other words, LCS appears to be a ship looking for a mission.”
Testing of essential systems, such as mine countermeasures and surface warfare packages, are not expected to be completed until 2019 — years after many of the ships will have already been built.
Michael O’Hanlon, a defense scholar at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, told The Daily Caller News Foundation that the Navy feels an urgent need to pursue development and production simultaneously.
“There is often tension between wanting to push a program forward, with confidence that the inevitable kinks can be ironed out, and being careful,” he said. “The Navy worries that it is now too small and as such feels it must be in a bit of a hurry.”
“However, the Navy is not really at war and I am not persuaded that haste is essential here,” he continued. “Also, the LCS has experienced substantial cost growth — and yet it was supposed to be a less risky kind of new platform.”
O’Hanlon believes that a delay in procurement funding may be wise given the risks of concurrent research and production.
But he also said that he is “inclined to reassess the basic program,” feeling the Navy might do better canceling it altogether and instead use the Coast Guard’s National Security Cutter for coastal operations.
“That’s an alternative that’s been put forward for a few years, that the National Security Cutter’s hull maybe would’ve been better suited to filling this requirement,” said Brian Flattery, a defense fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “It has a longer range, for example. It has larger capacity in certain technical areas.”
“But as far as the notions that [the LCS] is not fulfilling the mission it’s expected to, that remains to be seen,” he continued. “I agree that there should be restraint in overlooking the development of the program, and that we make sure we’re not committing too much before we get some answers to some of the questions that the GAO has.”
Flattery pointed to reports that LCS crew sizes will need to be larger than originally conceived. One of the selling points of the program was that the ships would require less manpower to operate than other coastal combat vessels.
If the reports prove true, “that’s a pretty big cost increase in the overall program,” he said.
Other scholars worry about the ship’s effectiveness even after its weapon systems come fully online. Writing in National Review earlier this year, the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Auslin highlighted the Department of Defense’s admission that the LCS is “not expected to be survivable” in combat.
“The LCS will be heading into trouble spots where a variety of actors will have the ability to use precision weapons against it — and the Pentagon knows the ship can’t survive such attacks,” he wrote.
At the House hearing last week, the Navy’s assistant secretary for research, development and acquisition rejected the GAO’s recommendation that construction be halted until sufficient testing can be done to prove the ship’s effectiveness.
“Now is not the time to slow the program,” he said.
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