The Plan Worked Perfectly

The CNO along with a bunch of salty dogs read Galrahn. I couldn't have said it any better than below. One of Galrahn's contacts got a recent pic of Huakai with ramp extended. Click on it to enlarge. Also below is a recent pic of LCS-2, been in hiding getting worked on...

The Plan Worked Perfectly

I was thinking about the tale of the Hawaii Superferry while reading this report by Phillip Ewing at Navy Times.

The Navy will also lease four joint high speed vessels next year, instead of two, until DoD takes delivery of its own ships in 2011, Gates said. The Navy leases high-speed catamarans, such as the Swift, now on a humanitarian deployment in the Caribbean, but has ordered its own purpose-built JHSVs from the Austal shipyard in Mobile, Ala.

Gee, I wonder where the DoD will find 2 spare high speed vessels to lease?

HT to Dave Hart for recent photo of Huakai from March.

Offshore Patrol Cutter Update - LCS Still in Play

I wanted to check out what this was about before posting on it specifically. I know this is over two weeks old, but it is important and I wanted to know more before discussing.

Under pressure to cut the cost of its Littoral Combat Ship program, the U.S. Navy is studying whether to lower the required speed and swap out fuel-hogging propulsion systems, said a former senior Navy analyst and another source informed about the effort....