The Navy almost has the opposite problem and I'm not sure why that is. A lot of their new cutting edge equipment is dogshit and plagued by lifetime reliability issues due to jumping too deep into untested waters (though I guess calling a 30 year old airframe "cutting edge" is wrong now, but it was right when they were introduced). The Osprey, the Littoral Combat Ship, even Rebreathers (these things are great when they work, but they have to be stored really well or the chemicals decompose and you can't tell they don't work).
Yeah, I agree. For the actual procurement guys for the Surface Navy, it's been a shitshow since the Clinton Era. The Little Crappy Ships, the Ford Class, and the unholy abomination that was the Zumwalt class. I guess I am going to rant a bit, sorry.
The Littoral Combat Ships were wildly over designed for one of the tasks that they were supposed to perform, which was largely anti-piracy and smuggling duties. A task already handled quite well, and much more efficiently by the Corvettes which usually performed such tasks (such as the Cyclone-class).
Yet, it was radically incapable of handling its other main mission: being a flexible ship capable of anti-mine, anti-submarine, light amphibious operations, and limited surface warfare capabilities. The largest problem was that it could conduct only one of those missions at a time, and had to go to dock to change that mission. It also had a rather poor sensor package, incapable of beyond line of sight engagement until the Fire Scout drones came a decade later. In the end they decided to dedicate groups of these vessels to a single specific mission each. The amphibious warfare idea was dropped altogether.
So yes, the LCS was a ship that was supposed to operate in enemy coastal waters, without the ability to defend itself from more than one pre-determined threat profile at a time.
This is to say nothing of the fact that this isn't a single ship class, its two ship classes. Because why would we want parts, crew, and servicing commonalities? Maintenance issues were horrendous on both classes, repeated engine failures on the Freedom-class and systemic galvanic corrosion on the Independence class among the many notable issues.
We have built, building, or ordered 38 of these damn cursed ships. And what are they useful for? Being a glorified and many times more expensive Sentinel class, sitting out there in the gulf doing anti-smuggler work.
At least the FREMM based Constellation-class frigate looks to be a decent design that can actually defend itself and others in an actual
warship capacity.
_
Well, shit... this post is getting kinda long and I haven't even touched on the Zumwalt and Ford. I'll come back and hit those later.
