July 14, 2009

A Fashionably Late Debutante

Although there have been cost overruns and delays, the second of the competing designs for the Litorral Combat Ship has started sea trials.

Over at Information Dissemination, Galrhan provides the world with the first pics of the sea trials of LCS-2, which will be named USS Independence.



It appears that Austal and General Dynamics have successfully weaponized 'bad ass'

Good grief that thing is maneuverable!

One of the reasons this ship has hit so many time and budget snags may be that it was designed by Aussies, who are the world leaders in the trimaran hull form it uses and aluminum-smithing. I have heard that there was a very steep learning curve for the US Yard in these areas. This is a riskier design and it pushes US shipbuilding to the limit, but I strongly suspect this design will be more stable at all speeds and most sea-states than the Locheed Martin designed LCS1. It ought to have more room for growth and be more fuel efficient too, all other things being equal (which they may well not be).

As always there is a highly informed and interesting discussion in the comments of this post over at Information Dissemination. If this sort of thing interests you, then you should be stopping by there every day.

UPDATE: Gahlran  has a bunch of gorgeous high res pictures of the trials.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:12 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 That's an awfully big flight deck they got there... almost makes you think that there might be some plans in the works for basing something other than helicopters on it some time.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Fri Jul 17 20:02:52 2009 (ZpwKm)

2 Its a big flight deck to be sure, but that's so it can take the biggest helicopters like the Chinook and Superstallion. It can reportedly accomodate a V22 Osprey too but there is no space for any sort of takeoff run so VTOL aircraft can't be used at their maximum takeoff weight. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Jul 19 12:13:45 2009 (V5zw/)

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