The US Navy draws a line under the overall rather 'frustrating' LCS experiment.
It's not official yet, but we know, because it's been an agonising process for a long time. Now the nine Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships are probably destined for disposal. The most recent was commissioned in 2020, as the US Navy was never really happy with this experiment. The ships - USS Fort Worth (LCS-3), USS Milwaukee (LCS-5), USS Detroit (LCS-7), USS Little Rock (LCS-9), USS Sioux City (LCS-11), USS Wichita (LCS-13), USS Billings (LCS-15) and USS St. Louis (LCS-19) - are among the 24 ships that the Pentagon plans to decommission in the 2023 financial year, saving USD 3.6 billion.
The Freedom-class ships were intended to perform anti-submarine warfare with the LCS ASW mission package. This included a towed, variable-depth, low-frequency active sonar that would enable the Navy to detect Russian submarines. Although the Raytheon-built AN/SQS-62 VDS showed promise in early tests, it suffered from stability problems and had trouble towing. As a result of the poor performance, the Navy announced on Monday that it has cancelled the mission module. Because of the missing mission module and the unexpected cost of repairing a complex combiner for the Freedom-class ships, well-informed sources said it was not worth keeping the ships in service.
The Pentagon's decision to withdraw the Freedom-class ships from service comes a few days after the heated debates about the 2022 budget.
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