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U.S. Navy (Ignacio D. Perez)
The USS Freedom (LCS-1) prepares for a replenishment-at-sea exercise alongside the USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) off the coast of southern California in April 2015. The DOD’s Director of Operational Test & Evaluation stated three years earlier that the LCS “is not expected to maintain mission capability after taking a significant hit in a hostile environment.” The author points out that the subsequent “heated discussions” were the first exchanges in public “since the Navy first adopted official survivability standards in 1988. . . .”
U.S. Navy (Ignacio D. Perez)

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Rethinking Survivability

The Navy needs a fresh approach as it assesses how current and future ship classes will hold up structurally against evolving weaponry.
By Lieutenant Commander Ryan Hilger, U.S. Navy
January 2016
Proceedings
Article
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In April 2012, the Defense Department’s Director of Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) dropped a bombshell, stating that the littoral combat ship (LCS) “is not expected to be survivable in that it is not expected to maintain mission capability after taking a significant hit in a hostile combat environment.”1 Immediately thereafter, then-Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert and Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus commenced damage-control actions to try and restore faith in the new platform.2 The backlash was intense, to say the least. But the heated discussions about the survivability of LCS represent the first significant, public discussions on surface-ship survivability since the Navy first adopted official survivability standards in 1988, and more presciently, since the instruction was updated and reissued in September 2012.

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