We spent $22.5 billion for 3 destroyers (DDG-1000) that have no ammo for their guns and cannot target aircraft/missiles without the help of the very destroyers/cruisers that they were supposed to replace.
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We spent $28 billion in R&D and another half billion each for 28 LCS ships - Ships that cannot go into the littorals without getting sunk by a couple of tribesmen with an Italian field gun from 1898, cannot do combat because their onboard weapons are too short ranged and they have no armor, and aren't even really ships. They're glorified Coastguard cutters that cannot go to sea for more than 30 days without breaking down.
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So if we spend a trillion or so to help the Ukrainians kill Russians, I'm good with that.
But maybe that's just the old Cold Warrior in me.
@jurban In the end the votes came from the politicians from the states where each version were built and the states where the defense contractors were located.
Bless ol John McCain, he did try to kill it.
@jurban I had a small part in the informal discussions around the LCS and its design that happened on the old Information Dissemination (USN advocate) blog. Which means that with the exception of a pithy comment here and there I kept my fingers still and did a whole lot of reading. Seemed cool at the time - and then the final armaments types were announced. That's when I knew that it would be an expensive failure.
Politically the consensus for and against the project was bi-partisan.
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