US Navy Procurement Disasters - The Littoral Combat Ship and Zumwalt Class Destroyer

For decades, the US Navy has been the world's most powerful ocean going force. It operates some of the most successful warship designs in recent history.
It also operates some with more...complex...stories.
In this episode we look at US efforts to develop a new generation of surface warships, including the LCS and Zumwalt Destroyers, and ask both what went wrong with these incredibly expensive projects and what we might be able to learn from them.
Patreon:
/ perunau
Caveats, Comments and Corrections:
All normal caveats and disclaimers apply
In particular - I would like to note as always that this material has been created for entertainment purposes and is not intended to be a complete or comprehensive examination of the topic in question and should not be relied upon to inform financial or other similar decisions, judgements or evaluations.
In keeping with the above, nothing in this presentation should be taken to be an allegation of wrongdoing or any particular act or inaction by any individual or entity.
Sources have not been validated.
Readings and Sources:
US DOD - Selected Acquisition Report on LCS Mission Modules
www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Do...
US DOD - Selected Acquisition Report - Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)
www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Do...
LCS Mission Modules Program - CAPT Gus Weekes Program
www.navsea.navy.mil/Portals/1...
CAPT Robert Powers (USN Retired) - Birth of the Littoral Combat Shipwww.usni.org/magazines/procee...
Quadrennial Defence Review - 2001
history.defense.gov/Portals/7...
CRS - Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program
crsreports.congress.gov/produ...
Navy DD(X) Destroyer Program: Background and Issues for Congress (2004
)apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA472...
CRS - Navy DDG-51 and DDG-1000 Destroyer Programs
sgp.fas.org/crs/weapons/RL321...
CBO - The Cost of the Navy's New Frigate (features LCS lead ship cost graph)
www.cbo.gov/publication/56675
House Armed Services Committee - Projection forces subcommittee - 19 July 2005 commdocs.house.gov/committees...
LCS breaking down on deployment
www.defensenews.com/naval/202...
thediplomat.com/2016/08/dropp...
AGS being placed in storage
www.navalnews.com/naval-news/...
AGS Rounds
news.usni.org/2016/11/07/navy...
Reporting on Zumwalt
www.defensenews.com/naval/202...
LCS Decommissioning
news.usni.org/2023/09/27/navy...
www.navalnews.com/naval-news/...
US navy requests to decommission ships early
www.defensenews.com/naval/202...
USN Considers non LCS options for MCM ships
www.defensenews.com/naval/202...
Lieutenant Commander Steven Wills (USN Retired) - Why the LCS has been slow to deploy
www.usni.org/magazines/procee...
SC-21 program page (archived)
web.archive.org/web/202300000...
Featured report on LCS and the Red Sea
www.telegraph.co.uk/us/commen...
LCS Middle East Deployments
news.usni.org/2023/01/11/navy...
DDG(X) Design Contract Reporting
www.naval-technology.com/news...
LCS MCM package reporting
news.usni.org/2023/05/12/navy...
Emma Salisbury - Lessons from the Littoral Combat Ship
warontherocks.com/2021/11/les...
Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Opening
00:00:53 - What Am I Talking About?
00:01:58 - Evolution of The US Navy
00:07:15 - LCS - The Beginning
00:15:29 - LCS - The Issues
00:23:10 - LCS - Lessons
00:34:59 - LCS - The Redemption
00:39:28 - DD(X) - The Beginning
00:46:02 - DD(X) - Lessons
00:50:55 - DD(X) - Redemption
00:56:15 - Reflection
01:05:47 - Update

[@PerunAU]

While we spend a lot of time on this channel looking into the issues with the Russian Defence Industrial Base (because those points are directly relevant to an ongoing conventional war), most militaries have at least some procurement skeletons in their closet. And with the sheer scale of US military expenditure, they inevitably end up with some very interesting stories to go along with the more successful ones. Even if I can't tell the entire story of these programs today, I hope you enjoy, and if you have any reflections of your own on the programs, I'd love to hear them.

[@riskinhos]

why no subtitles? 😢

[@PerunAU]

@@riskinhos Autos take a few hours to generate, and my subtitle guy (who is an absolute legend) needs some time after release to do the manual ones as the videos don''t have a script and can't be subtitled until complete.

[@i-love-comountains3850]

​@@PerunAU Many thanks to you and your team for all the hard work and exceptional-quality content!🤘🎃

[@positroll7870]

At some later time a comparison between US and Europe re next gen IFV might be interesting, but I'd wait with that until new upgraded Puma S1 standard is out in the fields and the Muricans have finally decided on what they want...

[@riskinhos]

@@PerunAUautos are pretty good already. for us non english speakers it's a must have otherwise it's unwatchable. love your content. watch them all. keep it up

[@honestlyreed1612]

"shortly [after the USA built up its military], the Soviet Union suffered CRITICAL EXISTENCE FAILURE" -Perun

[@Haan22]

They had a little oopsie.

[@chugachuga9242]

The Soviet Union blue screened

[@dpelpal]

Russia always fails at existence 😂

[@tiaelago-oretukaumunika7017]

I laughed out loud

[@michaelwaldmeier1601]

Russia is developing the largest Black Sea Submarine Fleet possible. Should be a divers' paradise in the future after Russia disintegrates.

[@universityeducatedjab]

Kelly Johnson (the legendary first leader of Skunk Works) on the Navy: "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy."

[@ninefox344]

This line was running through my head for the whole hour long video.

[@patrioticshitstain]

It is worth pointing out that at that point in time, the various branches of the US military were in a feud so bad they would basically screw each other over for no reason but to do it. The air force and navy in particular absolutely hated each other and would intentionally sabotage attempts to create a standardized fighter jet for both branches, even though that would be in everyone's best interest.

[@JoshuaC923]

​@@patrioticshitstainsounds like ww2 Japan

[@danapeck5382]

The guy got it right, as usual

[@issacrice4025]

F35???

[@ElijsDima]

The sad thing is, an LCS suited mission would be exactly patrolling the red sea, covering merchant ships there. And yet the LCS is unusable there because the LCS is unusable *anywhere*.

[@Connor312_]

as far as i know they dont have nearly as powerful air defense as a destroyer - so against ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones the LCSs are very very vulnerable.

[@ahmadtheIED]

@@Connor312_ The Houthis? My friend, these people, wearing nothing but turbans and rags and using weapons from the 1950s, have paralyzed the mightiest army the world has ever seen. In Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Tunisia, and Syria you were dealt the same thing. Defeat. Was it bitter for you? Of course. Pathetic? Even more so.

[@up4open763]

@@Connor312_ All of that is loadout, not core design.

[@mshepard2264]

@@ahmadtheIEDit’s not about being paralyzed it’s more that the the American public doesn’t care about the houthis or the region at the moment so no one wants to bother getting involved in a BS sideshow. re-arranging the craters and gravel in the middle east just isn’t that appealing at the moment.

[@lolasdm6959]

@@ahmadtheIED I think depolying LCS in the red sea would just get them sunk... by primative weapons.

[@mirsh2541]

As a German, I'll really have to give props to the US Navy on the level of design specification issues, overengineering and general procurement hell achieved on these ones. Quite impressive.

[@Sofus.]

Now they just have to learn how to build them 10-15 years late with more water cannons and an apology letter to Russia.

[@kevinp7056]

😂🦾👨‍🔧

[@thafunktapus]

yeah...do you have any submarines that can leave the dock?

[@everettputerbaugh3996]

"Close enough for government work" has been defined as; measure it with micrometers, mark it with chalk, and cut it with an axe.

[@CharlesYuditsky]

Being that you are German, you would know what hellacious overengineering looks like.

[@samiamgreeneggsandham7587]

I heard a sailor compare the LCS program’s reliance on contractors to McDonald’s reliance on its contractor for ice cream machine maintenance. Seems apt to me.

[@crinklecut3790]

Great analogy! I’m a former submariner and I can’t imagine not being able to service our own equipment. So many times we would have been forced to return to port without completing our assignments if we hadn’t been able to make needed repairs while deployed at sea. Granted, there are times when you can’t do a repair at sea with just the ship’s crew members, but we became very resourceful when it came to figuring out a way to get through equipment failures and remain on station.

[@richardarriaga6271]

There's a Wired article that shows McD's and the ice cream machine vendor colluded to make only the ice cream maker the vendor to repair the machines, tossing out a third party that actually helped franchisees cut down time.

[@nexusyang4832]

I literally thought of the same exact thing!!!!!!!!!!!! 😢😢😢😢😢😢

[@BrettBaker-uk4te]

Part of the problem with LCS was Congress had a VERY negative reaction to the word "expendable" in regard to a US ship.

[@conroc01]

They should have replaced "expendable" with "cost effective". Lol

[@ALLMINDmercenarysupportsystem]

I would have thought they'd love the chance to get a super cheap ship for jobs that would be done by expensive ships otherwise.

[@afaultytoaster]

@@conroc01I liked Perun's use of the word "attritable" haha

[@N.i.c.k.H]

Politically, there's no such thing as an expendable ship except in time of direct threat to the nation.

[@robomonkey1018]

I'm a navy vet. The zero loss attitude prevents us from being effective. War fighting involves loss. It's not like I wanted to get killed for my country but I knew what I was signing up for.

[@benwilson6145]

The Danes understand Lego.

[@TB-zf7we]

Concept that can build ships as well😉

[@Sofus.]

Denmark here. new "Lego concept" for patrol boats is in the making 2025-2026

[@grahamstrouse1165]

The thing to keep in mind about STANFLEX is that the Danish modules aren’t very complicated. Mostly their different weapon suites.

[@DavidRoberts01341]

True, although worryingly, "Boat does not float in water", is a standard warning on many of Lego's nautical models...

[@classifiedad1]

@@grahamstrouse1165 If only the United States Navy had a system which they could, at least at port, configure a warship such that it can launch anti-ship, anti-air, anti-ballistic missile, anti-sub, and missile decoy. Paired with a versatile combat management system and powerful sensors, and maybe give it a smattering of self-defense guns, it would be a massive "game changer" so to speak. I'd build dozens of them if I could. If only.

[@Orieni]

Back in the late 70s, a Star Trek board game called Starfleet Battles featured the Romulus trying to very quickly and cheaply build modern starships. They were modular, so you could use the hulls for occasional, specialized roles when needed and conventional warships the rest of the time. The game then discussed what the Romulans didn’t foresee. For instance, you can’t install a module which is light years away. You end up having to buy, store, move and protect modules far in excess of the number of warships projected, so you can support fleet need where needed, when needed. The main hull is what it is, the module cannot magically turn the base hull into a very specialized hull, it’ll never be as good as the real thing, and the expertise of the crew means that it is very hard, expensive and time consuming to train one crew to be an excellent surface combatant, ASW platform, minesweeper, hello carrier, EW platform and whatever else. They end up aiming, like the base hull, to aspire to good enough, and focusing on their main mission, not everything. Funny how the USN, with decades of experience, admirals, wargames and contractors failed to foresee as much, given the differences involved in getting it wrong in an absurd game, or defense of your nation.

[@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818]

The thing is though is that we already have a system in place to make a ship very multi mission capable as far as weapons go. Its called the mk. 41 VLS. Which can carry antisubmarine weapons, anti aircraft weapons, land attack missiles and anti ship missiles. The only thing it doesn't do is mine warfare. So why the US navy didn't procure some smaller frigate sized hull with a weapon system they already used is perpetually confusing. Of course that is exactly what they are doing now with the constellation class frigates.

[@up4open763]

Are you suggesting the US doesn't have enough international naval bases?

[@williammagoffin9324]

@@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818Yup. We really should have built an longer Americanized Sa'ar 5 corvette with a 57mm cannon and some kind of fast heavily armed mine hunter.

[@Orieni]

@@up4open763 Not at all my argument. If you have a modular ship, intended to allow quick and easy conversion, that implies many things. Those bases must have any module you might need in theater, ensuring you will have a great many of them which just sit around, not being an effective use of money. They need trained personnel, who will instead be used for the Ned’s of the base, not being as current and sharp as needed, when that happens. The accountants will deplore the waste of having those modules collecting dust, and those expensively trained specialists mowing lawns, and demand cuts, which means that when you need the modules and experts, they won’t be forward deployed and they won’t exist in required numbers. And all it takes to predict this is observation of a bureaucracy.

[@Davey-Boyd]

@@Orieni This. Well said.

[@maxdelayer]

I love the fact that denmark, where LEGO is from, actually successfully implemented the modular warship stuff first. Subtle dig there.

[@LordRambo]

Dane chads i kneeeeeel

[@thafunktapus]

Why is it a dig?

[@maxdelayer]

@@thafunktapus the US can't out-LEGO the Danes

[@sidewalks29]

Denmark They only LEGO the thing need for 24/7 availability like MAIN-GUN,Missile cell,Crane and Storage but not the core system. when the availability drop they will LEGO it out. any thing don't need 24/7 they will put it into a container and call it modularity. XD

[@MrDmitriRavenoff]

Sounds like America shoukd have used or adapted Stan-flex.

[@sean2074]

39:12 park a couple of HIMARS on the back US Navy: Write that down!

[@piedpiper1172]

Nearly all combat situations are improved by the addition of HIMARS

[@pieterfaes6263]

-Ukraine: "Would you like us to test that concept?"

[@GintaPPE1000]

The funny thing is, there was a VLS-launched GMLRS rocket in development for Zumwalt. It was called the Precision Over-the-horizon Land Attack Rocket (POLAR), and a lot of the R&D went on to be reused in GMRLS-ER. The program was canceled because Congress were skeptical that a missile could do fire support as well as a gun.

[@MarcosElMalo2]

@@GintaPPE1000 something that popped out to me in the video was the stupidity of the insanely expensive 155mm rounds coupled with the inability to shoot any other type of round. I can only assume that this lack of capability is due to branch rivalry. What is preventing the ordinance departments of both branches from designing a long range precision munition, something like an Excalibur with greater range?

[@classifiedad1]

They actually tried that, and successfully yielded a hit. In 2017, the US Navy strapped a Marine Corps HIMARS launcher to the helicopter deck of USS Anchorage (LPD-23) and hit a pre-designated target 70 kilometers away with a GMLRS.

[@bogatyr2473]

The amazing part of the LCS is how no one ever asked things like, "Hey, how far away are the ports we're gonna swap the modules at from the places we need them? How are we gonna keep people trained and ready to operate the modules that aren't loaded? How are we gonna keep the modules maintained and how many are we gonna need to keep stationed so we can swap them out?"

[@sniperfi4532]

The program makes no sense for what they got out of JMAG either. “Hey our wargames showed we need a littoral combat ship that can minesweep, fight surface combatants and perform ASW”. “Hmmmmm what if we made a LCS ship, wait nooo let’s make 2 classes and we’ll make each combat role a seperate installed module and you can only have one module at a time.” “So in order to perform in JMAG I’d need at least 3 ships to perform each task required and it could be possible that I have two ships to do it with with no compatible parts or modules?” “Yes…. And it’s going to suck at any of those roles” “WTF”

[@apparition13]

It's worse than that. They based naval strategy on trying to force the straits of Hormuz. The job is sea control, fighting land fortifications has always been a losing proposition. You can't sink land. @@sniperfi4532

[@alexlowe2054]

​@@sniperfi4532All these problems stem from the basic fact that they want more Arleigh Burkes, but they want something dramatically cheaper than Arleigh Burkes. They want something they can't have. That paradox led to all the strange and problematic requirements that created the disaster in the first place. Creating one ship class with all those capabilities would have resulted in something larger than the LCS design. Which was probably what they really needed, but that's not what the cost and size requirements said they could design and build.

[@gfenwick1]

if the conops are what you are using to define and design then its either a fundamental project definition failure or the conops are stuffed. the latter can get twisted about but theyre unlikely to be that far off.

[@bigd4366]

A lot of people *did*. We were ignored, because "transformation" and "budget cuts". Being penny wise can be pound foolish if you do it wrong.

[@bt8593]

Missed a golden opportunity to say, "Littoral dominance ashored."

[@kennethferland5579]

I am just happy that SOMEONE knows how to say the word 'Littoral' rather then 'Literal' when talking about these ships. I have been screaming at my screen for years.

[@kmech3rd]

Well, it is neither suited for littoral nor "literal" combat, and possibly not figurative nor metaphorical for that matter.

[@FleetAdmirable]

Latrine Ship

[@karabenomar]

Ye, some people littorally can't even speak English.

[@TomTomicMic]

Lit tore al, Mod yew la!?!

[@TS-bj8my]

I loved the "A fast ship that couldn't out run a WW2 freighter".

[@a44jon1]

As an Independence Class LCS sailor who basically did most of his career on the platform (USS Coronado, Jackson, Kansas City and Canberra) I though your really good video gave it a fair shake and although I'm bullish on the capabilities of the platform, I very much agree with everyone else that the requirements and acquisitions bit of it is a clear example of how not to do things. You hit the nail on the requirements and strategic outlook. LCS (and Zumwalt to a point) was built for the asymmetric fight. But even with the shift back to near-peer, some of the decision points made that have caused us a lot of consternation might actually help us out. You didn't really hit on crewing and maintenance as much because of time so let me expound on that. The crewing and maintenance model was a part of the new innovations as well. Minimally manned, but well trained. Preventative maintenance done by outside contractors. Admin and personnel managed outside the ship at the squadron level. Rotating crews to keep the ships out in theater longer. This was more on the lines of saving money. The Navy was trying to run more efficiently like a business. This went to personnel and ship manning decisions. For crewing, the "Optimal Manning" model that came about in the surface fleet was heavily used for LCS and the training programs that went with it. Basically we would do a lot of shore based training and the sailors would show up to the ships ready to qualify and stand watches vs the more on-the-job model we use in the rest of the surface fleet. Watch-standing requirements would be a lot closer to merchant ships vs a traditional warship. For example, the engineering officer of the watch would also help drive the ship. The training model worked and LCS crews and ship-drivers are some of the best in the fleet. Training has a limit though. We learned the hard way that crewing a frigate sized ship with 40 people did not work and were leaving people exhausted and burned out even if they were awesome. Also there were more people we needed on watch than previously planned (like separating out the engineer from the bridge watch). We've stabilized currently at 74 between a blue and gold crew concept and will eventually get to 99-112 with a forward deployed single crew. However, the watch requirements and manning that works is still far below what you'd see on a traditional frigate so LCS is still "optimally manned". LCS is the only ship class that made it work, albeit after a lot of trial and error. With a larger crew, we've taken on more of the preventative maintenance while leaving the heavy, in-port, annual checks to regional maintenance center sailor teams, which is fine, even in theater. Emergent repairs are still contractor vs sailor, but that's a fleet wide, not just LCS problem. We've learned lessons fleet wide regarding how manning should be done for ships and that innovation has its limits for what we want to do in the US Navy specifically. Lessons that are being applied now to the new Constellation Class FFGs, and future LSMs. Oh, and never try to manage personnel admin and maintenance off-ship. For the future, we're going to an expanded single crew. The retained 6 Freedom Class will mainly do South America ops while 8 of the 15 retained Independence Class will be forward deployed with hull swaps for extended maintenance and dry dock. I think we'll be good there but boy was it a lot of trial an error I had to live through when you're dealing with trying to make revolutionary concepts work. personally, I'd recommend 8 Freedom Class and 16 Indy class. That gives you 2 in South America at any given time and gives you space to keep 8 indy class forward deployed. As for some of the things you hit on: 1) Modularity was not done right with the packages, but the design of the ships to be modular was a good choice that has really helped with easily fitting lethality and protection upgrades since. We have the space for it and the combat systems architecture for it. Even major engineering maintenance was done pier side because of ease of access vs regular ships that would have to be in dry-dock with a hole cut in the side to do the same maintenance and upgrades. I was on USS Jackson for shock trials and we actually left the post shock repair period 2 months early (basically unheard of for the USN) because, well, the damage wasn't as bad as people thought it would be and we could access and fix things easily. For the US Navy, I'm hoping we can have a replacement class that keeps a mission bay and that modularity, but with a frigate level of protection and armament built in from the get go. The type 26/hunter class, although a bit large, does that well, and perhaps a lengthened Mogami Class FFG would fit the bill for the USN. I would love to see some of that in the USN's LUSV/LOSV that we want to develop personally. Another thing on modularity is that the USMC and SEALS are salivating over what they can use LCS for. We've got space for insertion craft, marine raider and seal teams, and their stuff and we have experience deploying them. We can get in and out quick and actually be able to defend ourselves (point instead of area defense though). Basically be able to fulfill the mission that the Cyclone Class PCs were meant to do but couldn't. It only takes us 48-72 hours to switch it out too and embark them if shore side is ready to go. Switching between the MCM and Surface/MIO missions actually isn't hard, and a lot of the Minemen often double over to other roles such as deck or combat watch (that's how US Navy MCMs work right now...my best deck hand was a mineman. lol) The fleet commanders actually like the options it give them for the other fleet missions that aren't Air and Missile defense or long range strike. 2) Speed: That really did hamper us regarding weight limits. I do like the fact I can theoretically outrun a torpedo and the Independence Class LCS got the engine configurations right. It's great for the anti-swarm fight and even ASW theoretically as you can easily stay outside a Diesel electric's torpedo danger zone and run circles around them. That being said, 35-36 kts probably would've made the designer's lives a lot easier. 3) Keeping both shipyards online was a good choice in hind-sight. We've got two new military grade shipyards at a time when we need to be expanding and recapitalizing the fleet. The Freedom Class yard in Wisconsin is building the new Constellation Class and the Austal Yard in Mobile, Al is building coast guard replacement cutters and sections of the VA class SSNs. Helps take the pressure of our other traditional yards. That was a win from the LCS program, although not exactly intended. The lesson here though is that unless your country owns Mitsubishi and Hyundai's shipyards, you can't do ship procurement competitions like you can with the way you do aircraft. That gets back to that "run the military like a business" thing that doesn't work. Don't be wasteful, but understand that for the US, the way you do aircraft procurement does not translate to the way you do ship procurement. Japan, China and Korea, with robust shipyards, don't even do this. 4) You did hit on a lot of the problems with the ships and you did mention that we did fix them. I think what annoys me, especially with LCS press, is that the stigma lingers when it's been fixed and that you do actually have similar problems with other ship classes as well. Fun fact, Arleigh Burke DDGs were restricted to Sea State 5 until they got a hull strengthening mod which was just last decade. Overall though, very good video about what caused the procurement headaches. I think that we would've still had to do the shift we're doing now back to a peer conflict if Zumwalt and LCS actually worked out as advertised because it was geared towards an asymmetric conflict, not a US vs China one (i would've included Russia 3 years ago but...lol). It gets to your point about strategy, global outlook, and planning for that and not to get stuck in optimism. We don't need to go back to a cold war fleet, but we do need to prepare for a peer conflict though. I think one thing the Zumwalt and LCS program did do right though was leaving enough room to change to a shifting environment and with the improvements being made and proposed, that has been realized. It's a lesson we are carrying forward w/ the new DDG/Large Surface Combatant and to an extent the Constellation FFGs. We haven't always done that in the past and it did bite us. We couldn't really upgrade the Oliver Hazard Perry FFGs and Spruance Class DDGs and we ended up retiring them early. Heck the Aussie tried with the FFGs and still retired them early.

[@bigd4366]

Great points. ~36kts flank speed seems to be the "sweet spot" for displacement hulls. Going over that, together with the shallow-draft requirements, was what forced the vendors to submit exotic hull and propulsion designs in the first place. Question: have you seen any real benefit to the low draft? Was it worth *any* of the performance costs for not going with a displacement hull? Oh, and how do you deal with mine or submarine threats if the helo is down for whatever reason?

[@a44jon1]

@@bigd4366 shallow draft helps with speed as it’s less water that the ship needs to push out of the way. Shallow draft also does help give us access to shallow water (great for hiding in archipelagoes) and ports (like South Pacific ones) that deep draft ships cannot go. Performance is fine but we did have to iron out kinks in the hull because of the design for speed vs a conventional hull. Wasn’t cheap. ASW for LCS really is just torpedo avoidance at this point and a helo contribution for observation. For MCM work, the package includes USVs we can launch so we can do work w/o the helo

[@nitinnair7918]

Great points, you should put them on a PowerPoint deck and get an aussie to voice over

[@kingalphawerewolf]

I wanted to note that all of the empty design space can be put to use, but you've beat me to it, and are far more well informed, not a armchair general like me, lol. Just because the original suites sucked, doesn't mean you need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Can easily make, better, improved ones to fit in that space with lessons learned. My biggest question is when is the navy going to make a drone carrier. Some of the still very cheap compared to the reaper and kin, but larger, drones being built up in ukraine, seem to point towards that being a possible niche. Able to use a bigger flight compliment then a normal carrier with MUCH less take off space needed, and integrated c&c centers to provide guidance, and it seems like a wet dream for small threat littoral combat. Fly in the swarm low and fast and be able to service targets that you would NEVER want to use a much more expensive missile, or less expendable heavier drone, on. (and also because I think it'd be funny as fuck to harass pirate boats by using cheap as fuck drones to literally just knock them off ships/slam into crew. Still non-lethal, but humiliating, drains ammo, and makes for great footage.

[@a44jon1]

@@kingalphawerewolf SEALs and Marines have plenty of ideas for that mission bay space. trick is getting the admin/logistics side of it rolling and that's probably the hardest part. As for a drone carrier....we already have the ships with the space needed, everything from LCS to ESBs to L Class ships and the carrier itself. Trick is developing it and particularly making it EW resistant and with enough payload and range to make it useful. Small drones are great but generally LOS limited and the larger ones basically become a slower aircraft or missile easy to target.

[@cmajaa1]

Part of this was to give these shipyards (Ingalls, Bath Iron Works) complex technical work so that they could maintain their design team, and work force (Zumwalt). It's literally a national security issue to retain military ship building capacity. I've seen what happens when inexperienced shipyards try to construct military ships, waste and ships that never achieve their designed performance (Example, Littoral ships).

[@djbiscuit1818]

And we hobbled the navy to do it. Instead of, I dunno, cutting losses and trying a new, even halfway sensible design which could have also gone through those shipyards and given an end product that wasn't a concentrated summary of graft and sunk cost fallacy.

[@phaeronseherekh1754]

The capacity to actually make various things within a nation is very much subject to atrophy in the same way a muscle is with some capabilities being significantly harder to get back up and running than others with minimum wait times sometimes in the decades.

[@capitalinventor4823]

Example Canada, every generation of ships built for the navy after the Second World War. Our yards don’t build large ships, except those for the navy every generation or two. There aren’t enough ships built to keep the workers employed at one yard employed from one generation of ships to the next. A generation of ships gets built and then around 20 years later the next generation starts. Then there’s the political pressure to spread the work between three areas (East coast, West coast, and Quebec). So every time a new generation of navy ships needs to be built, like there is going on now, the government needs to renovate the yards and train the people to work on the bigger ships. Our yards our too inefficient to win any contracts for large ships and it’s only politics that keeps ships being built completely within Canada. We should outsource the basic shipbuilding to a country that is efficient at it. Then bring it to Canada for fitting out of the electronics, weapons, and other items that companies here have expertise in. The taxpayers would get better built ships at a lower cost. The price to renovate the shipyards would pay for at least two ships. Many other nations outsource their shipbuilding.

[@up4open763]

@@djbiscuit1818 Have you seen what cheap ships are doing in the black sea? To be fair, you may need a dive bell.

[@lolwutyoumad]

Thats why America is so afraid of Chinese ship making capabilities as they can essentially shit out warships on demand

[@MM22966]

I remember the first time I saw the LCS design, a late 90's article in (I think) Popular Mechanics. Nice glossy, full-color nerd schematic to highlight all the cool, new features. I greedily scanned back and forth...and then looked up and said to myself, "Wait, it doesn't seriously just have a 57mm gun, does it??? Where are the rest of the weapon systems??! This is a COAST GUARD cutter!"

[@joem5037]

Yup. Meanwhile China is presently building so many destroyers / burke clones that they're commissioning "coast guard" vessels with repurposed destroyer hulls... with more displacement than tico cruisers LMAO. And have joked - rather accurately mind - that they should've bid on the USN's constellation contract since they could probably build as good / better frigate hulls, in short order, at a tiny fraction of the billion+ the US is spending on them. Anyways the idea of an LCS, or non-upgunned zumwalt going up against even a _now-20-years-old_ PLAN Type 052B is downright comical (well, given that the PLAN's stuff all actually works, mind), and really has to make you wonder what the hell the USN / Congress / US military intelligence were smoking back in the late 90's. Nevermind that the LCS is also, obviously, completely useless / exceptionally vulnerable against ANY modern-ish ASM threat it could be up against, without aegis and VLS cells, in the littoral combat environment it was supposedly designed - and at utterly ridiculous cost and design specs - to operate in. In general this - or rather more specifically the zumwalt, and entire stated need / directive for naval direct-fire support - seems like yet another fairly obvious instance of where putting congress - chock full of corruption, pork, and copious amounts of expert syndrome, often with extremely outdated ideas of how modern warfare needs to operate - in charge of the fine details of US military procurement, has resulted in... erm... exceptionally _terrible_ US procurement decisions and priorities. Not that the USN brass in charge of greenlighting and managing these projects didn't also have their own heads up their own asses, either, afaik. Nevermind the fact that some idiots in / outside of the US military apparently straight up sold nonexistent science fiction tech _from sci-fi hollywood movies_ to US military brass, and went so far as to plan an entire military modernization program around them, before (at best) scrapping nearly all of them because they _obviously_ wouldn't work. The LCS at least, to its credit (sort of), seems to have simply born of a reading / projection of US military requirements w/ the end of the cold war that was very naive, as well as a wholehearted, very strong commitment to "fix" a - pretty much entirely invented - missing USN capabilities gap in about the dumbest, most overengineered / over-specced way possible. Aka keep pork flowing to naval contractors when the cold war unexpectedly ended, with a bright / shiny new thing that was poorly understood and completely unnecessarily. (contrast: simply engineer + build a new minesweeper replacement, and some goddamn cheap-as-hell low-capability corvettes to deal with pirates / whatever) For the cost of all these programs I'm _pretty sure_ the US could've simply dumped money into US shipbuilding subsidies, to still _have_ a non-military US shipbuilding industry that could pretty easily be shifted into military production a la China / Korea / Japan if / as necessary. Or simply take a hard look at + reevaluate our security situation + future trajectory and just resign ourselves to (and build much closer ties with) building future USN fleets with shared multinational engineering + components, and just build our DDG and FFG hulls out of shipyards in Japan and Korea or whatever.

[@MM22966]

@@joem5037I couldn't be bothered to read all that, but I skimmed it. I wouldn't rate everything China builds as working straight out the builder's yards. They built their stuff in a helluva hurry and with little prior experience. They also have the "fake until you make it"/tofu approach to building things, so I don't know what their quality control is like except there are probably some failures.

[@KJAkk]

Popular Mechanics glossy picture also had it equipped with 32 VLS cells as I recall.

[@MM22966]

@@KJAkkOn the LCS?! Where? (I demand link/pic)

[@ki3657]

I remember thinking the same as a teen in the 00s. I knew nothing at the time but even I could see the glaring issue in a tech spec that looked suspiciously like a ww2 era destroyer escort, but built to be as expensive as possible. The Zumwalt on the other hand I'm still saddened by. Those sounded like they had so much potential but it's only now, looking back with much more insight, do I realize they were a solution looking for a problem that probably never existed, regardless of how advanced the idea was.

[@honestlyreed1612]

"on the Avenger's power level scale, [the Avenger class ships are] very much more towards the Hawkeye side" -Perun

[@paulsteaven]

I hate how he described that the Avenger class has the same power like its WWII counterparts (4 .50 cals), when the latter were equipped with 3"/50, 40mm, and 20mm guns.

[@DOSFS]

My Hawkeye gets bullied again 😭

[@normtrooper4392]

​@@DOSFS justice for hawkeye

[@Squirl513]

Funny how he skips over the part where minesweepers have wooden hulls as a design choice to reduce the chance of tripping magnetic detonators.

[@UrbanCohort]

I would get offended, but true Hawkeye appreciators know he can stand on his own. 🥲

[@nickhancock589]

I don't think the modular idea is completely off base, but the twenty-four turnaround idea was just nuts. A much more realistic concept would be a week or two in port to refine the ship into two different closely related roles before heading out to deployment. Less "T-1000 Terminator" polymorphing adaptability and more like "Time to winterize the car with snow tires" adaptability.

[@CompatibilityMadness]

It still makes you suffer when in situation where all ships of one style are busy while few others from the other type are doing nothing. Also, planning ahead can only get you so far in real life. You can't plan how many ships will sink or break down in future. Possibly making your module split between all ships irrelevant. That's why during war (or with "enemy rich environment"), it's better to have many ships that can fulfill the same role(s) [ie. "spares"], than to have multiple ("cheaper") ships that can do multiple roles (but with added time swap between them). Module swaps are fine (regardless of time), but only if certain circumstances are met.

[@christineshotton824]

It's been successfully used by Blohm und Voss building the MEKO line of ships since 1981. But, yes. A 24hour turn around time is wildly optimistic. The modularity was/is primarily a way to avoid cost redundancy by using the same hulls and modular equipment/weapons/electronics for multiple classes of ship performing multiple missions.

[@GintaPPE1000]

The 24-hour turnaround time was actually achieved very early on. The first source Perun links mentions it. The problem is the USN made the modules too complex and integrated into core systems. The result is that most of the crew had to either retrain in 24 hours, or learn to master all three modules. That’s why STANFLEX succeeded where the mission modules didn’t - those were simple bolt-on pieces that you could just embark a few extra personnel to operate.

[@davidgoodnow269]

Nah, if the Navy/contractors hadn't completely f*d the goat, by not creating a *standardized connector in a standardized location on the modules* in the draft requirements, then it would be as fast as stacking cargo containers on a freighter!

[@dgthe3]

@@GintaPPE1000 Did nobody question the logic of combining 'swappable modules' & 'core systems'?

[@roberthoward9500]

Can you get more American than naming two ship classes the "Independence class" and "Freedom class"? They need the "cheeseburger class" to go with it and they have the trifecta.

[@MrBizteck]

What about Fries class too

[@danielpeirson3071]

'Murica, F@#K Yeah!

[@briankoepke9891]

Ice cream class

[@jodyfulford8215]

😂 I was thinking along the lines of a Freedom Fries class. ​@MrBizteck

[@ItsJoKeZ]

can we make all the electronic warfare ships "deepfried class"

[@8darktraveler8]

As a retired Industrial Electrician who had to deal with many Engineer design cluster F@cks, I can feel the pain of the technicians telling their supervisors "the F do you want me to do about it?, you designed it like this!". They get the big dollars, a pat on the bum AND literally trophies for things boilermakers, fitters and Electricians have to make work. By redesigning it, and then WE have to update the drawings while management takes the credit. Engineers should be onsite for prototyping, THEY should be updating and redesigning as per their contracts. While the people who actually fix their designs, are getting a spanking by the managers who oversaw the F ups, that caused the problems in the first place. Even years later, I get fired up seeing this shit, I was on the edge of getting fired for years for "agitating the workforce". More like saying what everyone is thinking.

[@kmech3rd]

Without revealing too much, I can say for 100% certain that they were still redesigning the mechanism for raising THE US FLAG on the Zumwalt a year after production ended. If that's a sample of what happened... eek.

[@ashgamble1168]

They sound like architects Looks great in the drawing, but it's up to the poor schmuck with a hammer to make it work

[@doltBmB]

reminds me of the bradley scene in pentagon wars "if you have to design hats for the troops to wear the missiles then design the god damn hats"

[@8darktraveler8]

@@kmech3rdBut how? lol That would be a wire rope winch with a big flag attached or something...

[@8darktraveler8]

@@ashgamble1168 Yeah, I'm actually a big fan of practical modern architecture, big concrete boxes. We should be building cities that last for 1000s of years like ancients did, especially if they scream about climate change. I don't care and I live a practical, low impact lifestyle. I replace phones when manufacturers stop making the batteries for em.

[@jeremygibbs7342]

A fun Canadian procurement challenge was deciding 20 years ago to go with the f 35's. Change our minds, spend the ladt 20 years shopping around and then decide to still go with the f 35's. 2 decades later and millions spent additionally on procurement.

[@watchm4ker]

Considering that the JSF program had started in the early 90s, and after 15 years had resulted in barely functional and horrifically overbudget nightmares, second thoughts were inevitable. Grabbing the Super Hornet at that time would have been understandable - It was a cheaper, ready-to-go package that fit Canada's relatively modest needs. But while the F-35 eventually got better, Canada basically sat on its hands. For decades.

[@jeremygibbs7342]

@@watchm4ker Yeah, we took way too long inevitably to still go with the F 35's.

[@everypitchcounts4875]

The Merge has a really great episode on his podcast about Canada's Air Force. The podcast is a former USAF pilot doing an interview with a former Royal Canadian Air Force pilot

[@jeremygibbs7342]

@@everypitchcounts4875 I'll check it out. Thanks! 👍

[@ricardokowalski1579]

1-Solid content. 2- litoral combat and fire support was known to be difficult since 1982 when the argentinians hit HMS Glamorgan with a (iron man reference) "box of scraps" 3- that Perun can talk for an hour, and still could not fit in the corruption aspect of the LCS builders.

[@f_lawless7689]

Enjoyed point number three, thank you

[@ricardokowalski1579]

A federal grand jury returned an indictment Thursday charging three Alabama men with orchestrating an accounting fraud scheme at Austal USA LLC, a Mobile-based shipbuilder that constructs vessels for the U.S. Navy, including the Independence-class Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).

[@PhilipDK5800]

To be fair, the hulls of the Avenger-class ships are constructed of wood with an external coating of fiberglass because of the added flexibility, strength and low weight. This construction also allows the hull to withstand a nearby blast from a mine, and also gives the ship a low magnetic signature.

[@pRahvi0]

With all the problems with aluminium hulls I've heard of, a wooden hull doesn't actually sound that bad.

[@eddapultstab2078]

​@@pRahvi0aluminum forms voids when casted and can't completely be forged or rolled out without extremely expensive means, I mean I watched one jewlery channel pump Argon in a crucible and while it helped it did not prevent microscopic voids from forming.

[@scottgiles7546]

Now if there was only some experience building wooden ships! @@pRahvi0

[@exharkhun5605]

I've always liked how navies deny the existence of land. As far as they're concerned the world exists of sea, the littoral zone and the rest is beach.

[@capitalinventor4823]

Armies deny oceans and lakes, submarines deny anything above the water.

[@watchm4ker]

And, occasionally, the infuriating existence of Rivers and Canals.

[@jean-bastienjoly5962]

Or, if you're russian navy, Kamchatka

[@jlvfr]

Zumwalt and LCS in one video? It's a horror movie!

[@martshearer498]

Problem Solving 101: Step1. Define the problem.

[@andersjjensen]

Addendum: Define the problem with articulated tolerances.

[@tyrialfrost4286]

Congress: Meet the need for shore bombardment. Navy: How can we salvage something useful out of this program?

[@user-vy8ff8cl2i]

Step 2: ? Step 3: succeas

[@scottyfox6376]

Save money by using off the shelf proven components. For example integrating Logitec game controllers as proven on imploding deep sea private experimental submersibles.😂

[@UnumNullum]

Navy LCS module solution: 1) Find preexisting land vehicles that can do the modules job. 2) If none exists, then create land vechicles that can do the modules job. 3) Create a basic ship possessing; a ramp, cargo space, and any nessessary cababilities not providable by land vehicles. 4) Modules: Drive the land vehicles with the desired cababilities into the ship's cargo area where they can perform their job.

[@stupidbro2301]

How exactly do you solve the problem with seawater which corrodes everything and small reality that if the ship is hit it will go boom in spectacular fashion. It is not really like putting HIMARS on a ship. Germans tried it and it did not work.

[@UnumNullum]

@@stupidbro2301 HIMAR's operated on ships haven been used for some time by U.S. Marines. If you want there are publically avalible videos where you can view this occuring. I can't seem to find any refences of Germany using HIMARs onboard their ships. However, I have found plenty of articles refencing German HIMARS being used by Ukraine to destroy Russian ships. Could you please point me to the source you refrenced?

[@Flexsan]

Or just look at the designs of the european modular ships and use then as inspiration instead of reinventing the wheel.

[@timp3931]

Then make your vehicle corrosion resistant, or, replace it more often. Aircraft landing gears are very corrosion resistant, but most are not meant for ships. @@stupidbro2301

[@UnumNullum]

@@Flexsan Agreed, that is why utilizing preexising equipment in an unothodox way is benifical. The Patriot's on thier road trip would propbably agree with us as well.

[@ProuvaireJean]

Like many men, the Navy had trouble finding the littoral sweet spot.

[@lhaaa1059]

What's even funnier/more sad - they have no idea of what you speak, since always referred anatomically incorrect as v a g .... Continue keeping sex ed out of our schools - Who needs it ?!

[@jeremy____5747]

DAMMIT, I wanted to make this joke!

[@Rob_F8F]

Naval build strategy is a perfect subject for Perun coverage: complex military industrial economic systems

[@rewanas]

Hey Perun love your videos. Former Navy Mine Counter Measures guy. Regarding the Avenger class ship. Mine counter measure ships (MCMs) are a special lot. You want to keep the magnetic and the acoustic signature as low as possible to not activate acoustic or magnetic mines. There fore you want the hull to be - wood, plastic or non-magnetic steel (expensive). Mine hunting typically happens at speeds 2 - 5 knots. So having a giant engine does not make sense. A it will be noisy there fore you might go BOOM in the mine field B they will take a lot off room which could be used for other stuff. Also the more you weapons you have the bigger your magnetic signature which is dangerous. So usually when MCM ships are operating they have a surface combatant close by to baby sit them.

[@hurrdurrmurrgurr]

So why was the Littoral class intended to be fast and metal?

[@bigd4366]

@@hurrdurrmurrgurrIt was intended to use newfangled deployable systems (based on helos, USVs, and UUVs), so that the LCS itself could stand off several miles away from the suspected minefield. The MH-53E already did something similar, if less sophisticated, so it wasn't completely stupid on the face of it; the problem was, all of the new tech simply wasn't ready for production when the ships themselves were, and the USN bought into this crazy idea that they could simply make the pieces fit later.

[@rewanas]

I guess the idea was to come close to the Mine Threat Area drop the drones off and leave the Area as fast as possible then come back a few hours later to do the post mission analysis. Charge the batteries and repeat or do counter mining depending on the situation.

[@downix]

Back in the cold war, when developing a new system such as the modular warfare system, what they would do is take an existing ship hull and retrofit it with the new system, so you dont have a blocker for new ship class design. You work the bugs out with this older ship. So, for the LCS modules, they should have taken a Perry class frigate, and done just that. People forget, the Aegis was originally installed on an old Seaplane tender (the USS Norton Sound) long before the USS Ticonderoga class had her hull laid down.

[@piotrd.4850]

Oh, good old days of iterative development instead of Silly-Conn Musk style "move fast and break things"

[@mshepard2264]

move fast and break things works fine if you do it before you get to production. Musk is a prick but that doesn’t mean he is always wrong.

[@downix]

I still feel that the Zumwalts could be saved by replacing those cannons with the tried and tested Mk71's that the Navy originally developed for the stand off gunfire role, but didn't put into service in favor of the advanced cannons that eventually wound up on Zumwalt. Sure, they're WW2 era 8" cannons remounted in a modern autoloading setup, but they were ready for service when the program was cancelled.

[@dougerrohmer]

@@downix What range and accuracy do the Mk71's have? I guess I can google it... Edit: "The Operational Test and Evaluation Force determined that inaccuracy made the gun operationally unsuitable, and concluded the lightweight 8"/55 gun would be no more effective than a 127 mm (5")/54 gun firing theorized Rocket Assisted Projectiles, which ultimately never materialized."

[@downix]

​@@dougerrohmer Those theorized projectiles are what eventually became the Zumwalt's cannons, so as far as I can tell, they are of comparable capability, with the advantage of actually existing. (Do understand that I am not a military expert, and only have a basic surface level understanding of these systems. My main reasoning for the suggestion has to do with it being the original program to fill this role, so if the replacement, superior system fails to deliver, using the existing system seems like a logical decision to me)

[@TheShmileyDawg]

Oh hey, this one should be fun. I remember touring an LCS when I was in the Navy. The OOD told me the crew size and all I thought was "I bet these guys are six on six off. Ahaha... that really sucks."

[@wallacegrommet9343]

Red Bull, anyone?

[@squireson]

Ahh the joy of seeing a new orange and black power-point arrive on a Sunday Morn !! Thanks again for the work Perun, we appreciate the stimulating subject matter and entertaining presentation.

[@bokodasu]

I remember those ads on the metro, Washington is indeed a strange place. Everyone knew they were for like ten people in the entire world. It's nice to find out years later what that was all about.

[@reverance_pavane]

Don't forget their staffers who advise those ten people. It was on the Metro after all.

[@pnutz_2]

"never in the field of human history has so much been spent by so many on so few"

[@yaki_ebiko]

21:29 That's gotta to be the longest continue roast I've ever heard from Perun. Well done LCS program.

[@thomas.02]

even the russian military didn't receive this level of high intensity sustained bombardment from PowerPoint Man

[@lolasdm6959]

meanwhile in Russia:"We now have a nuclear torpedo!!!!!!"

[@Horible4]

@@thomas.02 It's pretty par the course on the internet still sadly. The United States will always catch flak despite leading all branches of military tech by a significant margin and 2nd place doesn't come even close. The United States military will always have to prove itself all because of few failed projects while getting zero credit for the ones that revolutionized the battlefield. For most people (not throwing Perun into the mix), roasting the US Military is more about grinding an axe and "proving" that it's actually bad than it is actually proving a design sucks. If it was, people wouldn't have done such a massive 180 on the F-35 or Patriot, who harshly ridiculed such systems for being abysmal on a battlefield they didn't understand it was built for. One month the Patriot is considered one of the worst ground to air defense systems in the West while Iron Dome is praised for being the most advanced in the world, and the next Israel is begging the US to sell them Patriot systems. Just assume 90% of the people on the internet have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to the capability of military vehicle design.

[@blaydCA]

I play that section more than once and cried until it HURT.

[@GintaPPE1000]

As with most roasts, it also trades factuality for brevity. The Freedom-class could still use only their gas turbines when their combining gears had issues - the ban was only on using both diesel and GT together. On GTs alone they still did *37 knots* - faster than most normal warships. Moreover combining gear issues didn’t stop them from deploying - Milwaukee did a 6-month SOUTHCOM deployment every year from 2018 until retirement in 2023, even though she was the poster child for combining gear failures after suffering one in 2015 and another in 2016. The Independence hull cracking issues also first emerged in 2020 and were actually fixed by the time the notice got leaked to the press, and in fact did little to reduce the ships’ operational availability. Omaha went through an entire 26-month forward deployment to Singapore *after* the hull cracking was discovered, and spent nearly 400 days of that deployment at sea. Seventh Fleet was recently on record stating these 3 Independences in Singapore put in about 1/3rd of their total annual sea time.

[@jonathanwerner3664]

God i love sundays. The holy chruch of military procurement powerpoints rocks

[@Dommifax]

The joke about Impulse buying warships reminds me of Task and Purpose Videos being sponsored by Raytheon lately: for all those KZbin watchers interested in impulse buying missiles

[@talscorner3696]

I remember KZbin showing me ads about Israeli made anti-drone and anti-rocket missiles just about the time they were getting the hots for the laser defence system that was supposed to replace Iron Whatever (Dome?) a few years ago. And then YT did it twice more, in the past 2 years xD

[@steemlenn8797]

The best handbook for a game I have ever seen was the one for Strike Commander. (Yes, I am old.) It was made like a (aircraft) mercenary magazine, complete with a love corner (Search for Domina, please no Jennifers), a story from a famous assassin and of course ads. And the backside was a full page ad for "Adnan's Place - AMRAAM on SALE!!"

[@user-lo8bg2pk3h]

Love your channel. Classic "we need a drill" when nobody "needs" a drill, they need a hole. A drill is just one way to get one. Keep up the great work.

[@snegglepuss6669]

>Joint Multi-warfare Analytical Game >JMAG Hats off to the absolute mad lad/ette(s) who managed to get this thing named jazz mag

[@seneca983]

Can you explain what's special about that name?

[@smergthedargon8974]

@@seneca983 Yeah, I'd like to know too.

[@snegglepuss6669]

@@seneca983 Jazz mag means pornographic magazine

[@joby10095]

There's a reason they're called Little Crappy Ships.

[@carlthor91]

This is a good reason, that a marine engineering degree, would be a must have for the people specifying ship's RFP's., not just a pumped up admiral, going 'gee it would be great if (required), it could fly to the moon'.

[@miamisasquatch]

The MBA-ification of military procurement

[@up4open]

And that's because the new recruits are lazy, the fleet command didn't want to use it in a way that assists its designs, and certain builders' legislators wanted a name to stick. The US has the best builders on earth, and we ought to use them. Accepting a toss-off insult as a reason to ignore US builders is questionable on intent, to say the least. Each of the problems with the two LCS can be solved in redesign.

[@jagerdergroe8604]

​@@up4open no matter how much you redesign them, they will always provide too little capability for too much money. They are failed concepts and always will be.

[@up4open]

@@jagerdergroe8604 The weapons applied to the platform are not a failure of the platform.

[@user-xv2hs9ow9v]

During the entire Zumwalt-as-a-hypersonics-platform idea pitch, I could not get it out of my head that this is just a ballistic missile submarine which can't submerge itself. Both are stealthy, expensive ships launching vertical missiles which can pack a hell of a lot of punch. One of them can get much more stealthy than the other however, and it's not the one which is stuck on the surface (at least until enemy powers get a word, or maybe warhead, in). That said, it would give them a lot more space and a lot fewer other constraints to put the missiles on a surface ship.

[@poh1126]

Can submarines mount the proposed hypersonic missiles, though? I don't know a whole lot about what the Navy has planned for those weapons, and only know about them due to the Zumwalt apparently having the idea tossed around to have it use them instead of the guns with no ammo. **Edit/addition: If the submarines can't use hypersonics, then it still gives the Navy another tool to use that may be harder for an enemy to plan around.

[@TomatoFettuccini]

46:23 Point of note: there are only 4 Iowa-class ships, and there have only ever been 4 of them. 6 were planned but only 4 built, Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin, with Kentucky and Illinois being cancelled mid-construction because the war ended. As always, great analysis Perun.

[@boobah5643]

If the USN had wanted _Kentucky_ and _Illinois_ they would have been finished before the end of the war.

[@k53847]

The solution to how you fit all the tools you need on a LCS is to ignore the laws of physics and the experience of how to make Navy crews work effectively and handwave the whole problem of how you maintain a ship that requires flying dozens of civilians techs into a combat zone. Then it went into 'service' and the real problems started to be be found.

[@calenedgar3722]

The Norwegians already do it. The Swedes already do it.... Multi-capability small boys is nothing new.

[@pRahvi0]

@@calenedgar3722As mentioned also on the video.

[@noconsent]

@@calenedgar3722 At least the Norwegians have civilians to work on swapping out the modules on the same hemisphere as the red sea channel.

[@GintaPPE1000]

@@noconsentThe US has a base in Djibouti, which is literally on the Red Sea, and even bigger bases in Greece, Malta, Bahrain, and Spain, all of which host forward-deployed US warships. The facilities exist - the problem is the training.

[@hurrdurrmurrgurr]

@@GintaPPE1000 The US has over 700 overseas bases, if they're all expected to carry modules in case the nearest littoral needs a hotswap it gets very expensive and space inefficient very quickly. I can't imagine how many modules would need to gather dust around the world if this bad idea took off.

[@WalaVeioMala]

I think the LCS is a great idea, with mind boggling multiple layers of incompetence on the development process. The project needed accountability by the contractors, I can see it being a great vessel if developed properly.

[@Carewolf]

But not necessarily for the US military. Denmark needs something like that for flexibility with few ships. The US really doesn't. They could save money can get better performance, by having dedicated ship types. Perhaps with shared components F-35 style, but not replacable on or near the battleground.

[@TheMaristBoy]

The copius amount of "she'll be 'right" in this is just *chef's kiss*

[@FergusODonoghue]

The story of the LCS blows my mind. I'm not a strategy guy at all, but all I could think was, 'why not just create a template for squads of very light, distinctly super-specialised ships' that can together represent an all-purpose entity, but separately fulfill specialised functions? It's insane to me that that idea wasn't considered seriously enough to move forward with. I understand how modular ships is a superior concept, but it is idealistic as hell. The specialised squads concept would also work out as a win in terms of the in-politics of engaged a broader range of stakeholders to build stronger support for the project.

[@bobrichards6696]

G’day Perun 👍🏻

[@ZeCroiSSanT950]

As someone who let's say is affiliated with the industry, I think Perun was quite spot-on in this vid, although I'll comment a few points that reflect my beliefs as well as those of the vast, vast majority of my coworkers. 1. Commercial vs milspec - although Perun touched a bit on it in his vid, the decision to go by commercial as opposed to mil-spec standards for the LCS really makes maintenance on the ships difficult - from an increase in casualties to the contractor having to come in and maintain a lot of equipment that would otherwise have been maintained by enlisted personnel. There is a collective sigh of frustration in the office every time we have to deal with those ships lol. 2. I am surprised that Perun was not harsher on the Zumwalt. DDG 1002 (the third and final ship) is STILL in the shipyard after years and years of delays. 3. Putting aside the first 2 points, I'm really, really glad that Perun brought up the conflicts of interest in the various parties, especially with respect to the LCS. A lotta people's jobs and careers are on the line, and it is essential to national security to keep the shipyards we have. Making the LCS more specialized as Perun said would probably contribute significantly to its effectiveness, but I'm also thinking that if part of the requirement would have been to go MIL SPEC and FMM and Austal were less slimy and more honest companies (seriously Austal was caught committing fraud a year or so back), LCS would be cheaper, easier to maintain, and have less issues overall. With this evaluation Perun has definitely solidified himself in my eyes as a very trustworthy source of defense info. It's one thing to evaluate a "generic" expert based on what the youtube comments are saying, it's another to evaluate someone based on a topic that you yourself are quite familiar with and are involved in on a frequent basis.

[@0Defensor0]

From other videos about the Freedom class, I have noticed a design contradiction that turned out to be critical. Littoral ships are intended to operate close to the shore, but apparently the US navy considers their carriers in the middle of the ocean to be part of their "shore" for some reason, which means these tiny ships had to be fast enough to keep up with the carrier groups, which resulted the infamous combining gear problem. As for why are large carriers faster than small frigates, it's wave physics: basically the longer the ship is, the faster it can go, unless it's small enough to "jump" over it's own waves.

[@tomc.5704]

Strange that they had to keep up with the carrier group when they...aren't part of the carrier group. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but LCS don't defend or support the carrier. They go do other things in other places where the carrier would be excessively overdelivering firepower or too valuable to risk.

[@dgthe3]

@@tomc.5704 I assume that their anti-sub missions would be in support of a carrier group.

[@egoalter1276]

Im not aure the speed requirement was because of carrier interoperability, but in any event, it was a solved issue. Hydrofoils have achieved it decades earlier

[@tomc.5704]

@@dgthe3 Fair, but then it's swapped out its entire payload and the ship is no longer engaging in combat in littoral regions

[@bigd4366]

The speed requirement had nothing to do with CVNs. It, along with the low-draft requirement, was purely for dealing with Iranian speedboats, and was probably the costliest mistake of the whole program (because it removed any excess margins in weight or volume for adding weapons or equipment).

[@jbeason2929]

The Zumwalt class sounds like it went under similar condition the Seawolf SSN went through. They built three really expensive hulls (with the last hull being in its own class), then using that to re-design a more cost effective build, that became the Virginia Class, which is now the main Submarine of the Navy today.

[@demondoggy1825]

Seawolf and the Comanche program of all things are the best comparisons of what happed to Zumwalt.

[@tyrialfrost4286]

I still think it was the Navy getting handed a shit directive from Congress, and instead using that to improve the navy as a whole. 11 key technologies proven in the Zumwalt, which has helped follow on projects from the Frigates to the Carriers.

[@wiryantirta]

The LCS program reminds me when I was an in-house product designer in a company. The engineers (and marketing people) were busy on coming up with "how do we make X" when what we needed to do was ask "what do we need to make" and "why" which luckily the design team was able to convince the product managers and leadership to slap some sense onto them.

[@jparbiter1972]

I was so excited by the LCS program, the idea of smaller costal oriented ships to patrol North and South American coastlines and liberate Burkes for long deployments seemed like such a win

[@a44jon1]

In a sense, It actually kinda did. LCS is taking the South American and patrol/south pacific island country engagement missions from the DDGs and such so that they can go to the Red Sea.

[@RichardHuffman]

Washington is a very strange place. Source: I worked in DC for decades.

[@1inimilian567]

I agree Source: I lived there for 18 years.

[@DscntnuousMgntic]

I welded on the Zumwalts for years, thank you for this cathartic (for me) analysis of the program. Boy was it ever frustrating to work on from the inside out.

[@dannyn.6933]

4:01 I don’t know how it has never occurred to me that Saddam decided to invade Kuwait at the worst time possible. That entire war is such a meme.

[@boobah5643]

Well, in his defense, he (according to some reports) thought he had assurances from the US that they wouldn't care if he did. Whether or not that was true, Kuwait's fall was very alarming to the Saudis, and between their money and influence and a handy little-guy-being-oppressed story...

[@boldCactuslad]

@@boobah5643 i always took that to be mostly a case of him hearing and seeing only what he wanted to hear and see

[@shaider1982]

The end of the Iran-Iraq war, I guess. Also, he probably was banking on the US avoiding another possible Vietnam War

[@Some_Average_Joe]

​@boldCactuslad There are diplomatic records of the US telling Saddam they would not back Kuwait, while simultaneously telling Kuwait not to bow down to Saddam because the US would have their back. So if it wasn't a setup then two parts of the US State Department who should have been talking to each other weren't.

[@chickenfishhybrid44]

​@@Some_Average_Joe failures of communication like that unfortunately wouldn't be surprising at all.

[@rikulappi9664]

LCS concept is not new - Baltic Sea is all littoral, hence Sweden, Finland and Germany all build and operate comparable ships. Teaming with them would have given designers a 10-30 years head start...

[@sniperfi4532]

It’s only in the last 5 years the US has realised you can use other countries systems and build upon them, not everything has to be indigenous and made from scratch.

[@kennethferland5579]

@@sniperfi4532 Yea our refusal to use EU Naval designs has been inexcusable.

[@seneca983]

But they're Not Invented Here. (Well, I'm not in the US so I can't really say that but you get what I mean.)

[@forcea1454]

​@@kennethferland5579A lot of European designs are built to lower survivability standards, have smaller crews and incompatible combat systems, insufficient volume, topweight reserves and power reserves for future additions etc. The extra cost of designing from scratch is vastly outweighed by maintaining sovereign design capacity, and maintaining institutional knowledge (without which you can't make good procurement decisions even if you buy off the shelf).

[@copter2000]

​@@forcea1454Except in the real case you get no ships, no institute knowledge and waste a ton of money.

[@adamwells9352]

Every American interested in being a good citizen should probably watch as many Perun vids as they can, but _especially_ this one.

[@HungNguyen-sy4oz]

"You will struggle to find a military that hasn't pushed out more than a few products with more bugs than your average Bethesda release." -Perun.

[@Attilles]

Thanks for being part of my Sunday Perun. :)

[@raumfahreturschutze]

I'm in the USN, so I have some... impassioned ...opinions on this stuff. On this point, I find it noteworthy that frigates are not a discrete category unto themselves here. 3:14 I cannot emphasize how much (IMHO) I think Navy's divestment of frigates has hurt it in the long run.

[@andrewpease3688]

This is the real reason.Not glamorous enough,not enough complexity

[@forcea1454]

​@@andrewpease3688Honestly I think they made the correct decision. Combat systems are the most expensive part of any warship, a reasonably capable FFG is not going to be all that much cheaper than a DDG.

[@andrewpease3688]

@@forcea1454 no where near.DDG $7.5 billion each in 2016 money

[@forcea1454]

@@andrewpease3688 Flight III Burke costs $2 Billion, Constellation cost $1 Billion, and for that you get a ship with worse radars, and a third of the magazine depth.

[@dgthe3]

@@forcea1454 But $2B buys you 2 ships, which can be in 2 places, doing 2 missions. An Arliegh Burke, while it might do any given mission better, cannot be in the eastern Med and the South China Sea simultaneously.

[@TheRcfighterpilot]

I just wanted to thank you. I had my first born in late dec 23. On his fussy days, your channel is one of the few things that seems to help calm him down.

[@thomasromanelli2561]

Thank you so much for summarizing how these failed platforms came to be and more importantly, how the USN and other agencies failed to manage their goals and execution. I hope people in Congress and the E ring are watching this, too, so we don't repeat these disasters. An encouraging sign is the selection of the FREMM base for the Constellation class frigates now under construction, although it was just recently announced that this program will already miss its 2026 delivery mark due to shortages in skilled labor. The US very much needs to reinvest in its national ship building infrastructure to not only create new hulls but to service the old ones in a timely manner. 🤞

[@jeffcaird6801]

Next up: the US Army’s six attempts to replace the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Which would be: ASM FIFV (1988), FCS ICV (2003), GCV (2010), FFV (2014), OMFV Spin 1 (2018), OMFV Spin 2 / XM30 (2020j.

[@stephens1950]

Spins idiotic name for an acquisition

[@ttpechon2535]

Or all the helo programs, they just canceled FARA

[@WWFanatic0]

Nothing like morning coffee and a powerpoint lecture on procurement disasters. Keep them coming Perun!

[@cryptickcryptick2241]

Some years ago I knew an engineer involved in a ship building program (this might have been one of the ships he was working on) he lamented that they were being pushed into making foolish decisions by politicians. While he couldn't say too much specifically, he explained that he was working on electronics for a ship that was highly important and needed power backups. While there were already suitable rack mounted products on the market, his team was pressured into using a particular venders solutions because they were from New York, a state that had an important senator that they had to keep happy and that is what she wanted them to use the vendor from her state. The equipment in questions was less than optimal, because it could not be easily serviced without removing it from the rack. This lack of fast an effcient servicing made it a nightmare for maintenance. Batteries have a shelf life so instead of having a 10 minutes job to swap out pre-made modules now the equipment required hours of down time and complete to be disassembled in a tight space, in order to do simple servicing. That was not good for the ship rocking back and forth at sea in the middle of combat.

[@karl0ssus1]

Ah the Zumwalts. I seem to recall rumour going around that they were really designed with railguns in mind, hence the absurd power generation capacity. How that fits in with the shore bombardment role I have no idea, but at the time railguns and lasers were very much in vogue as potential weapons systems.

[@grantmonsma3569]

The idea with railguns for shore bombardment was that because they fire chunks of metal at high velocity with a rate of fire mostly limited by cooling and available power, you could in theory get a lot of long-range fire support at a much lower cost than the equivalent achieved through missile systems. In practice, wear and tear on the rails themselves has been a huge obstacle that's prevented railgun systems from actually being implemented, as having a barrel life of "no" is bad news for the railgun's cost and accuracy advantages...

[@karl0ssus1]

It's more, even if they worked, they still have a few other issues. The most obvious one is that most dumb artillery is used for suppression or in the anti-artillery role, which typically means impact or air-fuzed projectiles for a wider blast effect. KE projectiles on the other hand, will generally produce a more focused, on-target effect, which is great for cracking a hard target, but is less useful for providing suppressive effects or shredding light armor in a larger radius.

[@Gentleman...Driver]

Greece "had to" buy 4 Freedom-Class vessels in order to buy 40 F35s, 60 modernized Bradleys, and at least one C-130. Availibility might also have played a role, since they also ordered Belharra-Class frigates from the French and they probably need some time to be delivered. That said it is quite astonishing that the Russian "Projekt 22160" corvettes faced similar problems as the LCS program. They were often critisized for being a "useless but expensive" ship that lacks anti air and surface fighting capabilities. Its also said that they have had problems with the mission modules. Russia famously strapped a "Buk" missile system from the army to one of those ships while being repaired in Sewastopol.

[@Jeffrey_Liu_]

51:30 "Zumwalt has decent onboard power generation." - Understatement. It generates as many MWe as a QE carrier.

[@sniperfi4532]

One door closes and another opens. It’s failed as a main line destroyer but it makes an amazing test bed for future combat systems.

[@Jopey_Meow]

Been looking forward to this one! Fantastic presentation, as is the absolute usual over here. Perun doesn't miss, and this is no exception. Thank you for providing your sources for further reading. Thank you kindly for all the work you put into these, and for doing them at all. Hope you're well, lad and congrats on your well deserved success.

[@WhyWhatWhoWhenWhyAgain]

Great choice for a video Perun! Love the sound of your voice rocking out the parts of the military industrial complex that would not otherwise ever see the light of day!

[@zbcc12]

Yay! It's Perun Sunday here in USA.

[@f_lawless7689]

Perun-day

[@donaldhill3823]

1 of the things that went wrong with Zumwalt that few know is the Generator controls while state of the art when designed were by a company that subsequently was bought out & discontinued by the company that purchased it. Thus I lost it’s manufactures technical support.

[@comlitbeta7532]

The zumwalt is my favorite ship design. I really dig the look

[@plehmann72]

Absolute quality mate. I've listened to every episode since All Bling No Basics and I'm still loving it.

[@dzzope]

Glorious Sunday powerpoint. ☺️

[@laggerstudios3392]

Some alternate views, especially on LCS. As I have heard it, the combining gear and hull cracking issues are already mostly fixed. It fact for the hull cracking issue apparently by the time the news articles started publishing the ships already had hull patches over the vulnerable spots. If I remember correctly, in recent years the LCS, the Independences especially, have taken up to 40% of the deployed time in the Pacific, freeing up the Burkes for other duties and taking pressure off their overworked hulls and crews. So not everything is all doom and gloom just yet.

[@Th3EpitapH]

procurement videos are have a good chance to be my favorite of yours. they have a very 'forgotten weapons' vibe of being a great mix of history, "mechanics" (realities of procurement, in this case), and very informative rundown of existing, and maybe one day historic, systems and forces. i can't stress enough how special a thing this is in my eyes, perun. i'm glad you got to release this one too haha

[@rackstraw]

"Adversaries are not NPCs." Truer words were never spoken. Totally agree with @PerunAU regarding the greatest penalty imposed by the failure of DDG 1000 and LCS is the opportunity cost on top of the the squandered time and resources. The overreach with too many unproven systems and operations/maintenance approaches was too much to overcome, and the immense arrogance of leadership to ignore reasonable cautionary voices deserves a special Circle of Hell. We got away from RADM Meyer's apparoach of "build a little, test a little, learn a lot" and let the competition close the gap.

[@DefaultProphet]

The Zumwalt class should have, and still could be, an arsenal ship. I genuinely do not understand how they jacked up the LCS, like the concept is not awful, but we couldn’t just idk make a Corvette or a Frigate?

[@k53847]

Never underestimate the power of lies and denial. There were lots and lots of people calling it out by 2010 in USNI and various commentators like say Commander Salamander. And the program and Navy leadership just used the power of denial and lies to press on. And then they all retired to cushy jobs at shipyards making navy ships....

[@jlvfr]

I still think one of the main problems was the stupid 40 knot top speed... like a WWII torpedo boat... I mean _why_ ?!

[@dwwolf4636]

​@@jlvfrtry >45 knots.

[@jlvfr]

@@dwwolf4636 which is utterly stupid and pointless in a warship of the missile age. You can't outrun a missile.

[@phaeronseherekh1754]

@@jlvfr Hell just making a modern WW2 torpedo boat would have been much, much better I'd think

[@charlesmelenyzer8919]

So while modern wargamers and military planners use Warhammer 40k references, in the 1990s the warships were designed by people who played FASA Battletech and were talking about Omni-warships.

[@boobah5643]

The Clans (and Omni-tech) were shiny and new.

[@fritztango]

A wonderful episode. I am sure it was a bit of a treat to make. And I am very glad you did not leave it as a "best pratfall" reel for USN procurement.

[@Bl3sshope]

To put the cost of the Zumwalt into perspective, the entire annual Swedish defense spending is ~ $7.5 billion, meaning each of the Zumwalt ships on average cost as much as the entire Swedish defense budget...and they barely even work.

[@ricardokowalski1579]

39:20 "more dakka" is always the answer. 🙂

[@rkitchen1967]

There is a reason why mine sweepers were built with wooden hulls. They were not affected by magnetic mines. Sometimes, you don't need space age materials and the simplest solution is the best. Today's Navy would probably prefer to spend billions on developing a new composite material, instead of building a ship adequate for the job using the same material from which ships have been made since the first ship was built.

[@ruskimofia]

Yeah but that wood may not be as strong as, for example, a metal.

[@Tesserae]

What does “wooden hills” refer to, in this context?

[@rkitchen1967]

@@ruskimofia It worked before, when naval mines were much more extensively used, and it doesn't trigger mines, which is nice. Perun lost an opportunity to discuss simplicity and cost savings in this.

[@rkitchen1967]

@@Tesserae Autocorrect error. I fixed it. Thanks for pointing out that the key word in the post was a typo...lol

[@ruskimofia]

@@rkitchen1967 I mean yes, but again it’s niche. Because a bunch of houthis with PKMs can now penetrate you very expensive, very delicate mine clearer. It’s a weird world we live in but it’s absolutely an avenue for expendable AI driven ships

[@hvy1ton]

39:15 - They also borrowed a radar and generator from the Army. The Marines are pretty far down the ship class checklist with "can we fire a HIMARS from the deck?"

[@hunterparke9059]

Your procurement videos are some of my favorite content on this platform as of this moment. From their relatively long form nature to the sheer amount of insight you and your sources are able to provide I look forward to every single one. I hope you are able to do more in the future discussing many programmes wrought with propaganda and miss-information such as this one was. Being able to have a better understanding of where my tax dollars are going and if any use is being gained is another greatly appreciated side effect of your content, especially for someone focusing on passing the next college course without the time to dig as you do for info. Hope to see more of these in the future:)

[@Pasteurpipette]

Great vid. Two thoughts I have to add: -An additional problem of the modularity idea is that you still need to develop the modules. Like you mentioned the two lines of LCM, you end up having to spend on R&D, without the eventual savings through economies of scale. -The LCS concept, coming out of a hypothetical Strait of Hormuz scenario, always felt a bit limited to me. Yes, there are several areas of the world that are somewhat analogous, but to develop a class and ship category based on a single projected combatzone seems kind of odd for a global hegemon. Nice work Perun

[@NemoKeine]

As an intern I was given a LCS project as what I can only assume was Busy Work, some of the requirements for what features were requested were on the verge of impossible given material limits

[@michaelinsc9724]

Easily the best analysis / explanation of the LCS mess I've seen, heard, or read.

[@MBBurchette]

I get heartburn just reading the title of this video.

[@zephyrast3036]

God the Navy is giving Army procurement a stiff competition for who's acquisition process can waste the most money 😅

[@Lanser84]

I was enthralled throughout this video. Learned so much. Loved it. Such terrible mistakes, and the 'redemption' stories are wonderful as well. Humans and institutions make sometimes terrible mistakes, and humans and institutions sometimes also find ways to make the best of it.

[@domothepilot]

good job perun. i think from a rhetoric and entertainment value perspective, this is your best video yet!

[@jadetehauaruadams]

This came up on my feed 7 minutes ago, awesome!

[@billymunce4602]

Night night fellow Australians

[@MrDalisclock]

As an Former USN sailor I can't decide if I should laugh or cry watching this.

[@jaime683]

Worked on zumwalt during competition and after award. The teams did propose replacing the guns with land attack missiles. We did this based on cost and effectiveness. The Marines were stuck on gun support so guns it was. Also, the pressure to unfund the program and shift funding towards more burkes came after the larger shipyard started to get cut away from funding.

[@todo9633]

To be fair, they were right about Russia not being a threat to NATO.

[@caffetiel]

That depends on how you define threats. A direct military threat? absolutely not, you're right. But they're taking very good advantage of weaknesses in their competitors in other spheres, and if they manage to expand the cracks in NATO (or at least help the process in time and/or scale) that doesn't need to continue being the case.