Eight Things You Need to Know About the Navy’s Failed Multibillion-Dollar Littoral Combat Ship Program
Eight Things You Need to Know About the Navy’s Failed Multibillion-Dollar Littoral Combat Ship Program
The key takeaways from ProPublica’s investigation into the decades long project that could end up costing American taxpayers more than $100 billion.
You're viewing a single thread.
I was in the Navy when these we being announced, and since I worked in the engine room everyone had an opinion....
Officers wouldn't stop talking about how great they'd be. Because lots of stuff was automated and there wouldn't be many enlisted. They envisioned it as like a Star Trek bridge where they had a handful of people to push buttons for them.
Every enlisted knew it would go to shit, because eventually everything breaks. And if the people on it only knew how to press buttons, no one would be able to fix what broke.
I didn't know the actual plan was to rely on contractors so much for maintenance, but that's probably the stupidest part of the whole thing. It's bad enough if they're brought on for shipyard stuff where it's parked for 6-12 months, but trying to get them to do routine maintenance is insane.
Every enlisted knew it would go to shit, because eventually everything breaks. And if the people on it only knew how to press buttons, no one would be able to fix what broke.
I think you've just summed up modern civilization right there.
Not really the same thing if you're talking about cars.
But the people on this ship were literally prohibited from even touching some systems.
Auto mechanics are all over the place on land. But if something breaks out at sea with six months left on deployment...
Going back to port and scheduling contractors to come out before you even know what's wrong is fucking insane for any type of ship, and 100x as stupid for military vessels.
Sounds like The Machine Stops.