The Freedom returned to San Diego under its own power two days later, and eventually participated in the Rim of the Pacific exercise while operating on its gas turbine engines.
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It’s not clear how repairs to the Coronado may affect the ship’s deployment plans. The latest issue, this time with an Independence-class LCS variant, follows a series of problems striking ships of the Freedom class. “An assessment of the casualty will be completed upon return to Pearl Harbor and additional details will be made available when possible”, the San-Diego-based Third Fleet said in a statement.
This marks the fourth time that a LCS suffered a major incident over the last 12 months.
That makes four LCS ships that have broken down in the past year, which is a pretty disastrous track record considering that even the oldest ship, the USS Freedom, was commissioned in late 2008, and the USA only had a total of six active duty LCS ships in total. In December, the brand-new Milwaukee broke down at sea and had to be towed to a Virginian port.
Weeks later the Fort Worth suffered an engineering mishap in port when the ships combining gear was run without oil running through it. Fort Worth was repaired and departed Singapore Aug. 22 after being stuck there since January. The ship was expected to return San Diego under its own power this summer for an extensive fix period.
The Navy’s statement Tuesday said the Coronado’s problem appeared unrelated to those on the Fort Worth and Freedom.
Still, with several billion dollars sunk into the plan and the Navy’s priorities still squarely on quantity over quality, the LCS fleet is being constructed in earnest, even as the few already completed stumble back into the docks, because they didn’t do so great on the reliability front either.
“Some of these were caused by personnel and some were due to design and engineering”.
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Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson gave an extended statement on the run of problems the Navy has had with its controversial LCS program. “These issues are all receiving our full and immediate attention, both individually and in the aggregate”. Crews contained the leak and continued training exercises. “The review is being briefed to leadership before implementation. I am fully committed to ensuring that our ships and the Sailors who man them have the proper tools and training they need to safely and effectively operate these ships”. “These ships bring needed capability to our combatant and theater commanders [and] we must get these problems fixed now”, he said.
