1/17/2024 0 Comments Us navy frigate![]() However, the Independence class have seemingly fared better, with no similar decommissioning process planned to be undertaken by the USN. The Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates were highly regarded for their toughness and flexibility, with the type continuing to serve in foreign navies long after leaving USN service. In 2024, it is planned that the Independence-class LCS USS Jackson (LCS 6) will be decommissioned after just nine years in service. The USS Coronado is the most recently decommissioned in September 2022, having only joined the fleet in April 2014.Īccording to an official USN report to the US Congress on the annual plan for construction of naval vessels for FY2023, nine Freedom-class LCS (USS Forth Worth, USS Milwaukee, USS Detroit, USS Little Rock, USS Sioux City, USS Wichita, USS Billings, USS Indianapolis, and USS St Louis) will be decommissioned this year and placed into reserve.ĭespite the warships having a nominal 25-year service life, only Forth Worth (LCS 3) will have made it into double figures (12 years), with the USS St Louis expected to be removed from active service after just three years in operation. ![]() Already, three of the first four ships in the LCS programme, the Freedom-class variants USS Freedom, and Independence-class ships USS Independence and USS Coronado, have been decommissioned, having remarkably been built as test and evaluation platforms. With all the above difficulties, the LCS programme has been operating on borrowed time for a while, with operational and sustainment issues plaguing the class in USN service. The US knowingly undertook a frigate capability gap with the retirement of the Oliver Hazard Perry class in the 2010s, a type well-regarded for its seakeeping durability, with its sights focused on the development of the LCS.Īt between $500-600m per ship, the Constellation class is around 50% more expensive per ship than the LCS, although as a much larger warship (7,200t fully loaded) than the Independence variant (3,400t full loaded) and Freedom variant (~3,500t), it necessarily has greater capability, and crucially, survivability. The difficulties experienced by the LCS also appear in part to have been the motivation behind the US decision to initiate the FFG(X) programme, now known as the Constellation class, which will deliver up to 20 frigates into USN service. The 2019 CRS report stated that the LCS programme had been “controversial” due to “past cost growth, design and construction issues with the first LCSs”, with “concerns” about the class’s survivability, armament, and whether it would be able to perform its stated mission set effectively. ![]() With construction beginning on the Freedom-class LCS 1 (USS Freedom) and Independence-class LCS 2 (USS Independence) in 20 respectively, they were similarly spaced in their commissioning into service, with the USS Freedom joining the US Navy in November 2008 and the USS Independence following in January 2010. With the twin designs in a single LCS ‘class’, the programme created the monohull Freedom– and the trimaran Independence-class variants, each broadly intended to fulfill a similar set of missions but using dramatically different platforms to achieve the goal. ![]() The US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) programme described a new naval dawn at its outset, offering a two-variant class of warship intended to operate in the seas and oceanic littorals, a smaller vessel for presence, interdiction, and maritime security operations where an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer might be considered overkill. The former USS Freedom (LCS 1) was towed from San Diego Naval Base in 2021 to the Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility.
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