LCS Lives! Mabus, Hamre Argue Littoral Combat Ship Will Survive Cuts

[unhappycamper]

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/02/lcs-lives-mabus-hamre-argue-littoral-combat-ship-will-survive-cuts/



[i[]The $584 million dollar USS Freedom

LCS Lives! Mabus, Hamre Argue Littoral Combat Ship Will Survive Cuts
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on February 28, 2014 at 2:50 PM

WASHINGTON: The LCS is dead, long live the LCS? The Navy’s controversial Littoral Combat Ship program is in good shape despite a 38 percent cut in the number of vessels the Pentagon plans to buy, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus insisted this morning at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And he may be right.

While Mabus may be biased, the details of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel‘s decision, the limits of sequestration-era budgets, and the realities of warship design mean that the “new” ship that succeeds the LCS may well be…an upgraded LCS.

“I don’t think it’s a death knell for the LCS,” CSIS president John Hamre told me after Mabus’s public remarks. “I believe it is a wake-up call.”

But, Hamre added, “if you start looking at how do you get affordable platforms at sea” — without waiting a decade to develop a new design — “LCS is going to be as competitive as anything.”