Exploring the Navy’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Investment in the ‘Little Crappy Ship’

In July 2016, a multinational gathering of warships off the coasts of Hawaii and Southern California marked the world’s largest naval exercise, with over two dozen nations participating alongside the United States. Nations like the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and others sent fleets of destroyers, aircraft carriers, and warplanes, forming impressive displays of maritime power and prestige.

Among this armada was the USS Freedom, a vessel from a new class known as littoral combat ships (LCS). These ships were touted as technical marvels: small, fast, and agile, capable of confronting sea-based threats, detecting mines, and countering submarines.

However, the LCS program was already showing signs of becoming one of the military’s costliest and most underperforming ventures. Two of these $500 million ships had experienced embarrassing breakdowns in the months leading up to the exercise. The Freedom’s participation in the exercise aimed to restore confidence in the LCS program, especially since it was the first ship of its kind, commissioned just eight years prior. Unfortunately, the state of the Freedom mirrored the program’s tarnished reputation. Many onboard systems required repairs, and training crews for these new vessels proved more challenging than expected. Sailors aboard the Freedom hadn’t even passed exams to operate critical ship systems.

As the launch date approached, the pressure mounted. Top officers visited the ship repeatedly, emphasizing the “no fail mission” with a “no appetite” to remain in port, according to Navy documents obtained by ProPublica.

The investigation into the engine’s breakdown took months, but one thing was clear from the start: the Freedom’s fate was a glaring example of how the Navy had invested billions in ships with debilitating flaws.

The LCS program’s issues had been well-documented for years, with cost overruns and mechanical failures plaguing each ship. ProPublica aimed to uncover why such flawed vessels received unwavering support from Navy leadership for nearly two decades. They examined thousands of public records and interviewed naval and shipbuilding insiders involved at every stage of construction.

The investigation revealed that top Navy leaders repeatedly ignored or dismissed warnings about the ships’ flaws. Some politicians fought to build more LCS ships even as they faced breakdowns and system failures. Advocates within the Navy bypassed checks meant to ensure these billion-dollar vessels could perform their intended tasks. Contractors, keen on profiting from the program, spent millions lobbying Congress to secure more ship orders, and Congress members, in turn, pushed for additional ships to be built in their districts, despite mounting evidence of problems.

The LCS program is a prime example of how the military-industrial complex, as President Eisenhower once described it, perpetuates wasteful spending in the defense sector. Despite spending astronomical sums on weapons systems, there is often a lack of accountability and a tendency to allocate more funds to troubled projects, rather than admitting failure.

The Defense Department has requested an enormous budget of $842 billion, nearly half of the federal government’s discretionary spending, to address security concerns. However, discussions on preventing future procurement disasters, like the LCS, are unlikely to take center stage. This would require acknowledging the misuse of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars across various military branches, such as the F-35 fighter jet, the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, and the abandoned Future Combat System.

The LCS program teaches a valuable lesson: once a massive project gains momentum and defense contractors get involved, it becomes politically challenging to halt it. People’s livelihoods are at stake, and admitting to massive wastage of taxpayer funds is difficult. Even when the Navy stated it only needed 32 littoral combat ships, Congress forced the Pentagon to purchase three more.

Former Lt. Renaldo Rodgers, who worked on the Freedom, recalled the ship’s continuous breakdowns and expressed disappointment, viewing the LCS program as a missed opportunity. Many LCS ships are being retired prematurely, despite being designed to last 25 years.

In response to questions, the Navy acknowledged that the LCS was not suitable for confronting peer competitors like China, lacking the necessary lethality and survivability for high-end combat.

John Pendleton, a retired military analyst, estimated that the lifetime cost of the LCS class could exceed $100 billion, a figure that troubles him deeply. He sees the LCS program as one of the most wasteful projects in his 35-year career.

The LCS program’s trajectory aligns with a recurring problem in military innovation: the persistence of flawed projects due to vested interests and political inertia. As Dan Grazier, a Pentagon reform advocate, notes, when so much money and political capital are involved, it becomes challenging to stop such projects until their problems become insurmountable.

The LCS program’s dual narrative – political support in Congress and operational failures at sea – became increasingly evident during a ten-month period when five LCS vessels suffered breakdowns worldwide, further confirming critics’ concerns. The extensive Navy investigation into the Freedom’s failure stands as a stark example of the program’s difficulties.

An Admiral’s Vision

In 2002, Adm. Vernon Clark found himself standing on the deck of a Danish warship, gazing out at a pier in Denmark. Little did he know that what he was about to witness would leave an indelible mark on the future of the U.S. Navy.

Before him sat a substantial deck gun, its presence unassuming. Acting on the orders of a Danish naval official, a crane gracefully lifted the weapon off the pier and seamlessly integrated it onto the ship’s deck. Within a mere 40 minutes, sailors were efficiently configuring the weapon for operational use.

Clark couldn’t help but be awestruck by the Danish navy’s adeptness at adapting their vessel for various missions. It was a sight that left a profound impression on him. “This is it. Of course, this is it,” Clark recalled telling himself. “I didn’t know that they could do that.”

However, skepticism began to emerge at the outset of the LCS’s conception. As Clark began sharing his vision, concerns brewed within the Navy’s shipbuilding experts. They feared that his ambitious vision might be technologically unattainable. But Clark remained undeterred.

He was an unconventional candidate to spearhead a revolution in shipbuilding. With an undergraduate degree from Evangel College, a small Christian institution in Missouri, and an MBA from the University of Arkansas, Clark hardly fit the mold of a typical chief of naval operations who had been groomed for leadership since their early days at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

A self-proclaimed “radical,” occasionally irreverent and deeply passionate, he aimed to manage the Navy with the efficiency of a business, streamlining training, eliminating wasteful spending, retaining top-performing sailors, and removing those who didn’t meet the standards.

Clark firmly believed that the Navy needed a more cost-effective and technologically advanced fleet. Many of the Navy’s existing ships had been constructed during the Cold War era, and updating them with modern technology was financially prohibitive.

Given his business background, Clark sought to minimize the personnel requirements for these new ships. “What I really want is an unmanned ship that’s got R2-D2 in it,” he quipped, reflecting on his mindset at the time.

Doubts plagued Clark’s ambitious vision from the outset. Nonetheless, Congress agreed to initiate the ship’s development in 2003, despite a House Appropriations Committee report that cautioned about the lack of a clear roadmap for achieving the Navy’s objectives.

One former admiral who had contributed to the ship’s planning admitted that Clark’s insistence on an unprecedented speed of up to 45 knots (about 50 miles per hour) presented immediate challenges. A ship couldn’t maintain such high speeds for extended periods without depleting its fuel reserves, limiting its operational range. Additionally, the ship’s compact size, often mockingly referred to as “Little Crappy Ship,” imposed constraints on the types and quantity of weapons it could carry.

This former admiral conceded that he had raised concerns with his superiors but wished he had been more vocal. “As a subordinate naval officer, when your boss tells you, ‘Here’s a shovel, go dig the hole,’ you go dig the hole.”

Despite these challenges, the Navy pressed forward. In May 2004, contracts were awarded to two teams of defense contractors to construct up to two prototypes, each with its unique design.

Both teams had fervently lobbied to secure the contracts. Lockheed Martin, in partnership with Marinette Marine shipyard in Wisconsin, even ran advertisements across the Washington, D.C. Metro system extolling the virtues of its proposed ship.

The other team, a collaborative effort between General Dynamics and Australian shipbuilder Austal, planned to build its version at a shipyard in Alabama.

In response to the Navy’s specifications, both contractors based their initial ship designs partly on high-speed ferries designed for cars or passengers—an unconventional choice for a vessel primarily meant for warfare, not transportation.

With an emphasis on speed and agility, these ships were not designed to withstand extensive damage. Clark envisioned them operating under the protective umbrella of larger, more heavily armed ships. To him, investing heavily in armoring these ships would make them too cumbersome for littoral operations.

However, this perspective raised concerns among lawmakers. Towards the end of Clark’s tenure, members of Congress began questioning whether the Navy had inadvertently deemed LCS sailors as expendable.

After Clark’s departure from the Navy in July 2005, the Navy responded to these concerns by revising the ship’s blueprints during construction to provide better protection for sailors.

However, the costs began to escalate significantly. The original budget for each ship was not supposed to exceed $220 million, a figure that had initially won over Congress. Nonetheless, the final price tag surged to approximately $500 million per ship.

Robert Work, a former deputy defense secretary who became a fervent advocate for the LCS, mentioned that many within the Navy had always considered the initial estimate to be unrealistic. “The Navy never believed it, at least the people who had to build the ship,” he noted.

Despite the mounting costs, the LCS soon found a staunch champion, someone so dedicated to its construction that he waged a multi-year campaign to resist attempts by two successive secretaries of defense to scale back the program.

A ‘Predictable’ Disaster

On the morning of November 23, 2015, the USS Milwaukee embarked on its maiden voyage across the icy waters of the Great Lakes. Despite the earlier headlines about cost overruns, Navy officials were optimistic that the ship’s performance would dispel doubts surrounding the project as it marked the fifth vessel to enter service.

The Navy’s plan was to sail the Milwaukee from the shipyard on the shores of Lake Michigan in Marinette, Wisconsin, to its new home port in San Diego. From there, it would eventually join its sister ship, the USS Fort Worth, in the Western Pacific to counter the expanding presence of the Chinese navy.

In a press tour just days before the launch, Cmdr. Kendall Bridgewater exuded confidence, boldly stating that the enemy “would be hard-pressed to find a vessel that could come up against us.”

However, the ship would face its first major setback without ever encountering an enemy. Its greatest adversary would prove to be its own engine.

On December 11, roughly three weeks into the two-month journey, a software malfunction caused severe damage to the Milwaukee’s combining gear—a complex mechanism connecting the ship’s diesel engines and gas turbines to the propulsion shafts, providing the power needed to reach its top speeds.

A Navy salvage ship had to tow it about 40 miles for repairs at a base near Norfolk, Virginia. The ship hadn’t even made it halfway down the East Coast, let alone to the South China Sea, before breaking down. If the Milwaukee were a brand-new car, this would be equivalent to stalling on its way out of the dealership.

Some former officers would later look back at this breakdown, along with others that followed, as a clear violation of a cardinal principle in Navy shipbuilding: the principle of “buy a few and test a lot.” However, with the LCS project, the Navy was doing the opposite. Commanders were learning about the flaws of these ships as they were being deployed.

“This is a totally foreseeable outcome,” remarked Jay Bynum, a former rear admiral who served as an assistant to the vice chief of naval operations as the ships were entering the fleet. “Just think about it, Toyota checks out all of this before the car hits the showroom floor. What if the engineering guys there said, ‘Well, we think this is how the engine will work, but let’s just start selling them.'”

‘Do We Want This Ship to Survive?’

On a breezy Friday in March 2011, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus addressed a crowd of well-dressed politicians and shipyard workers gathered at a shipyard in Mobile, Alabama.

Mabus, a tall and dapper figure, proudly announced the names of two of the Navy’s newest littoral combat ships. One would be named the USS Jackson, in reference to the capital of his home state, Mississippi.

As he gazed out at the waters of Mobile Bay, Mabus praised the new class of ships that had emerged from Clark’s vision a decade earlier.

“It’s a drug runner’s worst nightmare, it’s a submarine’s worst nightmare,” he declared in his soft Southern drawl. “It’s anyone who wants to do harm to the United States of America or the United States Navy, it’s their worst nightmare.”

Little did he know that the LCS was on the path to becoming one of the Navy’s worst nightmares, and Mabus would become its most ardent supporter.

Ray Mabus, better known for his political acumen than his military experience, served three years in the Navy in the early ’70s, including time at sea as a lieutenant junior grade on board the USS Little Rock.

Afterward, he climbed the ranks of the Democratic Party to become the governor of Mississippi, an ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and ultimately the longest-serving Navy secretary since World War I.

During his tenure as the Navy’s civilian leader, Mabus left his mark on the service by championing various progressive policies, including gender integration and the use of renewable fuels. He also took advantage of a unique perk: throwing the ceremonial first pitch at major league stadiums across the country.

However, his most significant impact on U.S. military strategy was his belief in the urgent need for more ships.

The fleet had shrunk to less than half its size during the Cold War, while China was rapidly expanding its navy and Russia was investing heavily in new submarines.

Mabus, who assumed office in 2009, pursued a plan that would make him one of the Navy’s most prolific shipbuilders.

In an interview with ProPublica, he stressed the “sheer importance of numbers” for the fleet. He supported the LCS because it could meet a wide range of the Navy’s needs as quickly as possible.

Even as a growing number of senior officers began to criticize these ships, Mabus expanded the program, leveraging his political connections and dealmaking skills to defend the LCS against powerful opponents in Congress and the Pentagon.

Mabus acknowledged that his support for the LCS project put him at odds with some of the Navy’s top officers and the civilian military leadership. He remembered facing resistance from what he called the “Alumni Association”—influential former Navy officers who, he claimed, irrationally disliked the ship because it deviated from the Navy’s traditional shipbuilding.

One of the most prominent critics within this group was Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona and a decorated Navy veteran with a family history of naval service. Alongside Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, McCain emerged as a skeptic of the LCS while leading the Senate Armed Services Committee. Both were alarmed by the escalating costs, which had soared to over $750 million per ship for the initial vessels.

In response to these concerns, the Navy sought to lower the price by pitting two teams of contractors against each other in a bidding war. Austal and Lockheed Martin presented two different ship designs with similar price tags, leaving Navy leaders in a dilemma over which to choose.

In the fall of 2010, Sean J. Stackley, the Navy undersecretary at the time, disclosed that Mabus convened senior naval leaders to pose a straightforward question: “Do we want this ship to survive?”

With a “yes” from the group, Mabus proposed a politically savvy solution: the Navy would select both companies to build the new ships in two different shipyards, one in Alabama and one in Wisconsin.

Mabus calculated that he could gain the support of congressional delegations from both states by providing thousands of jobs and millions in spending to each, thereby increasing the ships’ chances of survival. However, it would also make the program more resistant to cancellation when problems arose.

“He was looking at the problem in a different way than we were looking at it because he was a professional politician,” recalled Sean J. Stackley.

Mabus’ plan raised concerns among some Navy leaders. The Austal ship, forming the basis for the Independence class, was an aluminum trimaran with three hulls, while the Lockheed Martin ship, which became the Freedom class, was a more conventional steel monohull. These radically different designs meant that the ships couldn’t share parts or personnel, making them more costly to maintain and crew. Furthermore, the contracts called for the construction of a total of 20 vessels—a significant commitment for a relatively unproven warship.

Yet, Mabus and his team argued that these additional costs would be outweighed by the long-term savings the Navy would achieve. One top official estimated that the Navy would save $2.9 billion by awarding long-term contracts to both companies.

To Mabus, this approach was a win-win for everyone involved: each ship had its unique advantages, taxpayers would get a better deal, the Navy would receive more ships faster, and the shipyards would generate more jobs.

Mabus told ProPublica that while keeping the shipyards active was a consideration, it wasn’t the main driving factor behind the decision. He insisted that the primary incentive was price, not politics.

Nevertheless, the political implications soon became evident.

Senator McCain held a hearing where he sharply criticized the Navy, declaring, “The story of this ship is one that makes me ashamed and embarrassed as a former Navy person and as a person who’s responsible to the taxpayers of my state.”

However, in a last-minute budget bill aimed at keeping the government funded in late December, Senator Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, inserted language to purchase ships from both shipyards.

“He made sure it happened,” said a spokesperson for Shelby at the time.

Even Senator Levin, the Michigan Democrat who had previously been skeptical of the ships, now supported them. The Marinette shipyard was just across the border in Wisconsin, and Levin praised the Navy for its efforts to reduce costs, referring to the plan to build 10 ships there as “a major boost for the region’s economy.”

As one former vice admiral aptly put it, “politics is king in the shipbuilding business.”

‘We Ask for Help, but There Isn’t Enough’

Just one month after the USS Milwaukee experienced its breakdown in Virginia, the ship it was supposed to join in the South China Sea faced its own embarrassing malfunction.

The USS Fort Worth was nearing the end of what had otherwise been a successful deployment. It had contributed to a search-and-rescue operation following the crash of an Indonesian commercial plane and participated in joint exercises with several allied navies.

However, the Navy had decided to frequently rotate the small LCS crews in order to prevent burnout, and in November 2015, a new and inexperienced crew took over.

Even the commanding officer, Michael Atwell, had “few opportunities to gain valuable at-sea experience” before his deployment, as indicated in a later Navy investigation.

On January 5, hundreds of gallons of fuel spilled into the ship’s main machinery room. Sailors had to use chemical foam to prevent it from igniting. Subsequently, in arduous and dirty conditions, they took turns entering the tight compartment to clean it up with rags and pumps.

The day after the spill, the Fort Worth docked in a port in Singapore for a week of scheduled maintenance.

There, it became evident that the ship had been pushed to its limits, as described by officers interviewed in the Navy investigation. Leaks had sprung from various components, the engines were in poor condition, the electric generators needed attention, and the crew was exhausted. One sailor remarked that there was “no break, no reprieve, just increasing daily tasking” during their time on board.

The ship’s executive officer, the second in command, voiced frustration at the lack of support from superiors.

“We ask for help, but there isn’t enough,” he lamented, adding that they were told “they don’t have the bodies.”

Originally scheduled to depart by January 12 for a “high visibility” port visit in Hong Kong, the Fort Worth’s commanding officer, Michael Atwell, and his team felt intense pressure to make it happen, according to the Navy investigation.

As they hurriedly tested the engine, the crew took shortcuts. One of the sailors responsible for starting the engine skipped a routine step, failing to properly lubricate the combining gears.

“I messed up everything because I was going too fast,” the sailor admitted later.

This mistake damaged the ship’s combining gear, forcing it to remain idle for seven months while awaiting replacement parts.

Navy leaders ultimately deemed Michael Atwell unfit for command and removed him from his position.

Reached by phone, Atwell declined to comment.

The breakdowns on the Milwaukee and Fort Worth marked the beginning of a pattern that would define the LCS program:

Ships were rushed to sea with faulty equipment. Understaffed crews and captains lacking adequate training or support struggled to make them work. Breakdowns ensued. The pressure to perform and restore the program’s reputation would intensify, and the cycle would repeat itself.

Soon, it would be the USS Freedom’s turn.

Revealing the Truth Amidst Tensions

In early 2012, Rear Adm. Sam Perez found himself in the unenviable position of delivering some unpleasant truths in a Pentagon briefing room. He had been tasked by Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert to assess the capabilities of the upcoming littoral combat ships (LCS) destined for the Navy’s fleet.

The findings were far from encouraging.

As discussions unfolded around the conference table, one officer used a symbolic gesture, simulating a gun going off at his own temple. It was a not-so-subtle warning that Perez’s career might be on the line for speaking candidly about the LCS program. This ominous atmosphere had become a recurring theme whenever anyone dared to criticize these ships; it often led to undesirable assignments or even dismissal.

Perez’s report highlighted a multitude of issues. The most pressing concern was the inadequate crew size, forcing commanding officers to perform menial tasks instead of focusing on critical responsibilities like intelligence analysis and ship navigation.

Contrary to optimistic assessments elsewhere, Perez found that swapping out various weapons systems on the LCS was not a straightforward process. The Navy hadn’t considered the time-consuming logistics involved in bringing in contractors, sailors, and other personnel from around the world to reconfigure the vessels for different missions.

Complicating matters further were the two different versions of the LCS, each with vastly distinct designs that prevented them from sharing parts or crew members. Perez and his team feared that these discrepancies would render the ships ineffective due to equipment shortages or untrained personnel.

In his comparison of the LCS to potential adversary fleets, Perez concluded that these vessels could only contend with lightly armed, small, fast attack boats. A senior officer cautioned him about presenting such a damning assessment to the highest-ranking Navy officer, considering the commitment to purchase billions of dollars’ worth of at least 20 more LCS ships at that time.

Perez had already shared some of his findings with Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mark Ferguson, the second-highest-ranking Navy official. According to a former senior officer familiar with the events, Ferguson advised Perez to view the LCS’s performance more akin to a patrol boat than a full-fledged combat vessel.

Perez objected vehemently. After several weeks of debate and internal strife, the team decided to abandon the misleading comparison to patrol boats.

Shortly after Perez submitted the report, he received a call from Bynum, a former rear admiral who worked for Ferguson at the time. Bynum instructed Perez to classify the report as secret, citing a multitude of vulnerabilities that should not be disclosed publicly.

During a PowerPoint presentation of his findings to Greenert, Perez was afforded minimal speaking time, with Ferguson urging him to rush through the presentation. Ferguson, in an interview with ProPublica, admitted disappointment with certain aspects of the report but emphasized the need for actionable recommendations on how to address the LCS’s challenges.

In the aftermath, Perez’s career took a detour as he was reassigned to the international relations department of the Navy and later became a liaison to the State Department. These assignments were less prestigious for an admiral with a history of seafaring missions.

Perez declined to comment on these developments. In contrast, Greenert dismissed the notion that Perez had been penalized for speaking up, insisting that it had prompted him to allocate more staffing and budget resources to the LCS program.

Around the same time, Greenert enlisted the help of three-star Adm. Tom Copeman to evaluate the LCS as part of a broader report on the Navy’s surface fleet. Copeman, responsible for assessing the combat readiness of Navy vessels, echoed concerns about the LCS’s combat effectiveness. He believed the LCS lacked the lethality required, and he recommended halting production once the contract for 24 ships had been fulfilled.

In March 2013, Copeman’s memo was leaked to the trade press, leading to a conversation with one of Secretary of the Navy Mabus’s top aides. The aide conveyed Mabus’s disappointment that Copeman had publicly disagreed with him. Copeman emphasized that the memo was never meant for public consumption, expressing his puzzlement about how it had become public knowledge.

As previously reported, Greenert requested Copeman’s early retirement in mid-2013, following his public expression of concerns about the Navy’s ships’ combat readiness.

Greenert disputed this claim, asserting that Copeman was not forced to retire early and credited him with helping persuade him to request additional weaponry for the LCS program.

Copeman declined to comment.

Freedom’s Ordeal

In August 2013, sailors embarked on the USS Freedom in Singapore. However, back in San Diego, the ship had gained an unfortunate reputation as “Dry Dock One” due to its infrequent departures from port, as recounted by a former lieutenant. (Jay C. Pugh/U.S. Navy)

Approximately six months after two of its sister ships underwent repairs, it was the USS Freedom’s turn to face the spotlight.

However, on July 7, 2016, just one day before the ship was scheduled to participate in a global Navy exercise, a series of equipment failures placed its captain, Wohnhaas, in a challenging position. He was forced to send a discouraging “fail to sail” message to his superiors, indicating that the ship was unprepared for deployment.

Working tirelessly through the night, engineers on the Freedom eventually identified a critical component known as a cannon plug within the ship’s intricate propulsion system that needed immediate replacement. Without it, the ship was rendered immobile.

Fortunately, they located a replacement part in Port Hueneme, situated an hour north of Los Angeles. An engineer embarked on a five-hour journey through Southern California’s congested traffic to retrieve the crucial component. Consequently, the ship departed from San Diego a day later than planned, only to encounter yet another setback.

As the ship sailed three miles outside of Mexican territorial waters, a sudden metallic clang reverberated, startling the crew. Wohnhaas slowed the ship down, but it continued to drift. To halt its movement, the crew dropped anchor and subsequently steamed back to port.

Wohnhaas was compelled to send the ship back to sea, and he faced criticism from senior officers for causing delays in the mission.

Then, on the evening of July 11, a leak erupted within the ship’s main machinery room, which served as the mechanical heart of the vessel, spraying seawater into the electrical system. An inch or two of water pooled on the floor. If the leak wasn’t promptly contained, it could lead to short-circuiting or even a fire.

A sailor bravely searched for the source of the leak by hand, burning his arm on a scalding pipe before finally locating a hole oozing seawater. Although the sailors managed to plug the hole, their repair attempt backfired. It forced water to burst through a rubber seal, allowing seawater to mix with the ship’s lubrication oil, creating a thick, emulsified substance that began flowing through one of the ship’s four engines.

Two days later, the crew found themselves, once again, returning the ship to dock in San Diego. The engineer responsible for the ship while in port estimated that a full engine repair could take up to two weeks. However, Wohnhaas’s superiors rejected this proposition. Time was running out for the ship to participate in the Rim of the Pacific exercise, or RIMPAC.

A Navy diesel engine expert proposed a procedure to prevent further corrosion of the engine with a special rinse.

An esteemed Navy expert in Philadelphia, referred to as “the guru” in the Navy investigation, approved this approach, which would enable the ship to return to sea more swiftly and complete the mission using its remaining three engines.

Throughout the exercise, a procession of high-ranking Navy officials, including two rear admirals, a Marine Corps general, and a commodore, visited the vessel to exert pressure on the crew and its captain.

They emphasized that the Freedom’s participation in RIMPAC was “critically important” to the entire LCS program and that there was “no tolerance” for further delays. They believed that the Freedom’s performance could potentially appease some of the program’s critics, as noted in the investigation.

The Freedom ultimately departed from San Diego to take part in the Rim of the Pacific naval exercise in 2016. (Stacy M. Atkins Ricks/U.S. Navy)

Given the previous incidents involving the Fort Worth and the Milwaukee, top Navy leaders felt compelled to secure a positive outcome for the program, a situation described as “severe pressure” in the investigation.

One senior officer even invoked the commander of the Pacific Fleet, Adm. Scott Swift, expressing a desire to utilize the region as a “testing ground” for the Navy.

Adm. Swift clarified that while he was a supporter of the LCS program and encouraged testing new weapons systems in the Pacific, it was not an order to deploy ships at any cost.

“We made it clear if you want to take them off line, take them off line, but I am not surprised that people further down the chain didn’t feel they had that option,” he said. “The offer could have been perceived as an order, or taken advantage of by those that wanted to push harder to get a win out of LCS.”

“As a four-star, if you ask for something too often people think of it as a requirement,” he said.

On the morning of July 17, 2016, the ship finally appeared to be ready for departure.

Contractors completed the rinse procedure and began packing up to leave. However, when the chief engineer examined samples taken from inside the engine, he became deeply concerned.

“Holy shit,” he thought, as recounted in a Navy investigation interview. “There’s still water in the engine.”

He sent a message to Wohnhaas, which he later admitted was misleading because it implied that the ship was ready to sail. He attributed the mistake to failing to proofread the message before sending it.

“Sir, the flush is done,” he wrote at 9:50 a.m. “I [assess] that we are still on track for tomorrow.”

Wohnhaas interpreted this message as good news and relayed it to his superiors:

“Everything is tracking toward an on-time departure,” he said in an email sent to his commodore, Warren Buller, at 11:36 a.m.

In reality, the procedure approved by the Philadelphia guru had not resolved the issue. Investigators later determined that the procedure was designed to remove grit from engine oil, not seawater.

The following morning, as the Freedom was preparing to set sail, a senior enlisted engineer encountered a contractor named Joe.

Joe informed him that the engine was still contaminated.

Alarmed, the engineer discussed the situation with his supervisor, the chief engineer, who was smoking a cigarette on the ship’s front deck.

He explained that if they proceeded to sea, the engine would corrode further. The chief engineer acknowledged this and told the engineer that he was on his way to inform Wohnhaas.

During an interview with investigators, the chief engineer stated that he told Wohnhaas something along the lines of “we can’t get underway like this, we gotta do something.”

Wohnhaas declined to comment for this story. In his interview with investigators, he mentioned that upon learning of the contaminated samples from the chief engineer, he understood that the engine was inoperable. Nevertheless, he remained confident that he could prevent further damage and complete the mission by relying on the ship’s other engines.

“There was a strong sense that we couldn’t have another LCS not meet mission,” Wohnhaas said. He did not divulge the uncomfortable fact that the engine was still contaminated, primarily due to the pressure to proceed with the mission, according to the investigation.

The Freedom embarked on its mission and successfully detected mines in the water. The mission appeared to be a success—at least, that’s what everyone believed.

However, on August 3, just five days after Wohnhaas returned the ship, a routine inspection revealed extensive damage to the engine, with corrosion so severe that the ship required two years of repairs. Ultimately, the engine had to be replaced.

The Navy investigation determined that one failure had led to another on the Freedom: the inexperienced crew employed an incorrect procedure to stop the leak, the Navy’s “technical community” recommended another incorrect procedure to flush the engine, and contractors executed it, providing a “false hope” that it would prevent corrosion.

Wohnhaas’s primary mistake, according to the investigation, was his failure to inform his superiors that the engine remained contaminated by seawater.

‘It Just Felt Like a Big Joke’

In early 2017, Lieutenant Jett Watson found himself questioning the path of his naval career. He was deep into his training to become an LCS (Littoral Combat Ship) officer, spending hours inside virtual reality simulators in San Diego, attempting to simulate the experience of driving the ship. The digital training was impressive, but the reality of getting an actual LCS out to sea proved to be far more challenging.

“It’s probably funny to watch us get underway, only to see a big cloud of smoke erupt because an engine went down, and then have tugboats tow us right back to the pier, which happened quite often,” he recounted in an interview with ProPublica. “It was almost like a game, just watching us.”

Becoming a full-fledged surface warfare officer in the Navy necessitated hundreds of hours at sea. In conversations with current and former officers, the LCS program emerged as a place where careers seemed to languish. The ships experienced breakdowns so frequently that officers spent critical years they were supposed to gain at-sea experience waiting for repairs to be completed.

Watson felt disillusioned.

A couple of years earlier, he had been captivated by the LCS while studying at the Naval Academy. Recruiters for the program had extolled its virtues of a small crew and an allegedly aggressive deployment schedule, convincing him that the ship was meant only for the Navy’s elite sailors and officers.

Watson became so enthralled by the ship’s promise that he became an unofficial “LCS evangelist,” persuading his academy friends to join the program with him.

He remembered the sweltering heat during his graduation ceremony in Maryland, where then-Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus delivered a rousing speech to the newly commissioned officers.

“We are America’s away team,” Mabus proclaimed. “You didn’t come to Annapolis to sit at home when you leave here, and you won’t be sitting at home. Sailors and Marines, equally in times of peace and at war, are deployed around the world.”

Hailing from Lubbock, Texas, Watson believed the LCS would pave the way for a meaningful and exhilarating naval career. He ended up serving on three littoral combat ships, all part of the supposedly less problematic Independence class.

“I would hesitate to say we ever did a mission,” he remarked.

Instead, Watson and his colleagues had to endure what a senior noncommissioned officer referred to as “a big mess” when they first boarded the ship.

General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin considered much of the data and equipment on the LCS as proprietary, a problem that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) had identified across the military. Consequently, only their employees were authorized to perform certain repairs, former officers revealed. This sometimes-necessitated contractors traveling overseas to assist, incurring millions in travel costs and frequently causing mission delays. The Navy eventually acquired some of the data, but the price remained undisclosed “due to proprietary reasons,” according to a Navy spokesperson.

Watson and his fellow officers spent considerable time escorting contractors while on board since many areas of the ship were classified, limiting their ability to perform their own duties. Cumbersome negotiations often meant it took weeks to get contractors on board, which was especially frustrating when attempting to repair the computer network that interconnected everything from radars to weapons systems to the ship’s canteen. This network, according to another former lieutenant, frequently suffered from software glitches, causing it to shut down.

“You can’t even ask for help from your superior commands ashore,” lamented the former lieutenant, who worked as a communications officer on Independence-class ships. “And you can’t even buy yourself a soda.”

The ships demanded constant repairs, yet technical manuals were at times composed solely in the contractor’s native language. One former officer recalled a manual for a davit, a type of crane used for lowering a search-and-rescue boat, being in Norwegian. The Navy had to spend thousands of dollars to fly in a contractor from Norway to change two fuses.

The Navy recently increased the amount of maintenance performed by sailors themselves.

“It just felt like a big joke,” reflected Watson, who departed the Navy in 2021. He noted that many highly qualified sailors he worked with sought mental health assistance because they believed their time on an LCS was a waste, offering them little opportunity to apply their skills or acquire new ones.

“An average week would consist of 90 to 100 hours in port doing, honestly, nothing,” Watson continued. “It felt ridiculous. Many times we were there just because we had to be there.”

A Fight over the Future

The challenges facing the ships had not gone unnoticed by the highest echelons of the Pentagon. In due course, this led two consecutive defense secretaries to take steps to halt their construction.

The first of these secretaries was Chuck Hagel in 2014, a former Army infantry squad leader and U.S. senator. At the time, the military was deeply entrenched in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq while also facing budget constraints. Advisers to Hagel suggested that money could be saved by reducing the LCS fleet from the planned 52 ships to just 32.

This decision wasn’t made lightly, given that the LCS already had a reputation as a deeply problematic vessel. Studies had indicated that the ship was incapable of sustaining combat operations after a missile strike, and the concept of interchangeable warfighting packages, which had been central to the LCS design, was proving ineffective.

One of Hagel’s advisers reflected on the situation at the time, asking, “Do we want one-fifth of the future Navy fleet to be a ship that can’t take a hit and continue its mission?”

In February 2014, Hagel committed to reducing the fleet to 32 ships and tasked the Navy with designing a new type of warship: a larger, more resilient frigate. However, Ray Mabus, the Secretary of the Navy, resisted this approach. A Navy task force suggested that the LCS could be converted into a frigate, a notion disputed by the Pentagon’s top weapons tester. Nonetheless, Hagel sided with the task force, explaining that the Navy would have to adapt, defend, and rely on the LCS.

In December 2014, as one of his final acts as secretary of defense, Hagel granted permission for the Navy to build up to 52 ships, which would include a mix of littoral combat ships and the new frigates, based on the LCS design but with enhanced armaments.

Responding to criticism that he had yielded, Hagel characterized his decision as a “compromise” based on the counsel of the government’s foremost experts. He stated, “We brought in a lot of different people on both sides of it. That’s the only responsible way you can evaluate these big projects as secretary of defense because you can’t know everything about this. It’s just, no one person is that smart.”

Subsequently, the Navy awarded a contract to the shipbuilder Fincantieri Marine Group to construct a new line of frigates, using a different design.

Hagel’s successor, Defense Secretary Ash Carter, also took a critical stance toward the LCS.

In a strongly worded memo in December 2015 addressed to Mabus, Carter accused the Navy of prioritizing quantity over lethality. He instructed the Navy to limit future acquisitions to 40 ships, encompassing both littoral combat ships and frigates.

Mabus expressed his surprise at this change in direction, leading to intense private discussions with Carter. Publicly, he continued to defend his position, voicing support for the LCS at a naval symposium, before Congress, and at a Wisconsin shipyard, where he reassured LCS builders that they were working on the world’s best ship. In March 2016, during a hearing with Rep. Bradley Byrne, an Alabama Republican who had a keen interest in the LCS, Mabus asserted that the Navy had a “validated need” for the 52 ships.

During this period, the LCS experienced an increasing number of breakdowns at sea.

Mabus downplayed the severity of these incidents, stating, “We took it seriously, but it did not seem, from what we were looking at, that it was a systemic problem.”

The contractors responsible for building the ships defended their performance. For instance, Eric Dent, a spokesperson for the Italian-based shipbuilder Fincantieri, referenced the design from Lockheed Martin and the Navy and deferred questions to both parties.

Lockheed Martin spokesperson Patrick McNally expressed pride in the company’s work with the Navy and its commitment to delivering “affordable improvements to the platform.”

Australian-based shipbuilder Austal, responsible for constructing the Independence class of ships, and General Dynamics, which handled the ship’s computer infrastructure, declined to comment on this matter.

Notably, the weapons systems encountered problems as severe as those faced by the ship’s engines.

Without functioning weapons systems, the LCS was merely “a box floating in the ocean,” according to former Lt. Cmdr. Mark West, who had been involved in the Navy’s warfighting package development efforts.

For mine detection, a critical task in modern warfare, the Navy had developed a remotely operated minisubmarine. However, it proved challenging to operate and was eventually deemed impractical. The Navy became reliant on an aging fleet of minesweepers that were often unable to deploy effectively.

Imagine the difficulty faced by a 25-year-old sailor attempting to remotely control a 20,000-pound minisubmarine in the water while the ship moved at 4 or 5 knots. Retrieving it from the water with a crane saddle further complicated the process. It was, as one senior enlisted sailor noted, “damn near impossible.”

After 15 years of development and an expenditure of over $700 million on the remote minehunting system, the Navy decided to cancel it in March 2016.

In the case of submarine hunting, defense contractors had devised a sonar device that the ship towed through the water on a lengthy cable. When this device detected a submarine, it was meant to transmit a signal to the ship, which would then dispatch a helicopter to hover over the ocean and lower another sonar device into the water. Subsequently, the helicopter would drop a torpedo to eliminate the submarine.

Regrettably, none of these components effectively communicated with one another, and the ship’s wake made launching and recovering the sonar device extremely challenging, according to a former commodore with direct knowledge of the program.

Despite the considerable investments made in these modules, they were consistently given lower priority than the ships themselves. Those working on them had to struggle to secure the time and funding needed to ensure their success, as noted by Mark West in an interview.

Coronado and Montgomery

Approximately one month after the Freedom’s engine failure incident, another setback struck the LCS program when the USS Coronado encountered mechanical issues on its journey to Singapore, forcing it to return to Hawaii.

The USS Coronado’s return to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii following its breakdown on the way to Singapore marked a recurring theme in the LCS program’s troubled history. It had become routine for these newly christened ships to receive grand ceremonies, complete with flag waving, handshaking, speeches, and champagne bottle smashing. However, these celebrations were often followed by perilous journeys at sea, only to be marred by yet another mechanical failure, leading to the ships being towed back to port.

This time, on the USS Coronado, the culprit was a component known as a coupling, responsible for connecting the water jets to the engine, a critical part of the ship’s propulsion system. The Navy soon realized that this was a recurring issue on several other littoral combat ships.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), which had previously issued numerous reports criticizing the LCS program, later revealed that the USS Coronado failed to sail on six different occasions between 2016 and 2017 simply because it lacked the necessary spare parts on board to address these seemingly simple problems. Items such as circuit card assemblies, washers, bolts, gaskets, and diaphragms for air conditioning units were missing, highlighting potential deficiencies in the ships’ onboard resources.

In August 2016, the Navy took decisive action, ordering a 30-day stand-down period for all littoral combat ships to retrain their engineering crews and improve overall fleet performance.

However, just a month later, a fifth ship, the USS Montgomery, faced a series of mishaps over a two-month period. Its engine malfunctioned, it collided with a tugboat, and then it suffered hull damage after striking a lock in the Panama Canal.

‘The Navy Doesn’t Want Them’

On May 4, 2017, during the early months of President Donald Trump’s administration, the Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, discussed the Navy’s plan to increase its fleet to 350 ships during an interview with conservative talk radio show host Hugh Hewitt. Amid discussions about various topics, including “Game of Thrones” and the repeal of Obamacare, Hewitt inquired about how President Trump intended to achieve this naval expansion.

Mick Mulvaney disclosed that he had recently missed a meeting on the Paris Agreement to debate whether to purchase more littoral combat ships, emphasizing, “The Navy doesn’t want them.”

With the Navy already moving toward the development of more potent frigates, it seemed that the LCS program was on the verge of being phased out. In that year’s budget request, the Navy had only sought funding for a single LCS.

However, politics intervened once again. Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin, advocated for additional LCS funding, framing it as an opportunity for both her and President Trump to support American workers and products. She argued that a shortage of these vessels in the budget would lead to job losses in her state’s shipyard.

Surprisingly, on May 24, the Trump administration inserted an extra ship into the budget, worth $500 million, after it had already been sent to Congress. This unexpected move was met with shock within the defense community.

In response, Senator Baldwin emphasized her pride in representing Wisconsin’s shipbuilding industry and her support for the LCS, which she believed offered new capabilities and capacity to the Navy.

Over the following year, Congress approved funding for even more ships, ultimately providing the Navy with 35 LCS vessels, three more than the Navy claimed it needed. These additions came at a cost of over $1.5 billion to taxpayers.

In subsequent years, both LCS variants continued to grapple with significant issues. The Independence version exhibited cracks in nearly half of its hulls, while a flaw in the Freedom class’s combining gear required an expensive fix, shared with Lockheed Martin.

Naval experts expressed concerns that the LCS program’s failures had left the Navy at a disadvantage in comparison to China, which possessed the world’s largest Navy with around 340 ships and submarines, as reported in the Pentagon’s latest update to Congress. In contrast, the U.S. Navy had approximately 294 ships and submarines.

To cope with these problems, the Navy initiated the early retirement of several littoral combat ships in March 2022, citing their inability to effectively hunt submarines as the reason. Predictably, lawmakers from states where these ships were based fought to keep more of them operational, resulting in only four out of nine slated for decommissioning. Remarkably, one of these retired ships was less than five years old, and three others had already been mothballed.

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