The Navy's first Littoral Combat Ship, Freedom (LCS-1), was commissioned in Milwaukee today following the Veteran's Day Parade. Built in Marinette Wisconsin, it is the first ship commissioned in Milw. and the Navy's fastest ship.
Littoral ships are designed to defend coastal waters and rivers from mines, submarines and surface attacks. They have turbines instead of propellers and have a relatively shallow draft. The Freedom is unique in that it can be quickly outfitted with different modules, depending on the mission, making it efficiently flexible for multiple tasks.
The Freedom's unique features didn't come without great cost however. Much controversy surrounded the project as costs doubled, halting production on the remaining vessels. The final figure on this one is in the neighborhood of 600 million dollars.
It wasn't a total breakdown of Freedom, but my company had the opportunity to work on Freedom this week. They contacted us because of our experience with transport refrigeration. Their cold plate freezer was acting up so we showed up to replace the Copeland compressor. Our guys told us they had to pass a background check and a search to work on the ship. When they forgot to bring the dehydrator with them, I thought they'd never be let back on with the grenade-looking device.
All in all it was fun to see and read about such a unique ship in Milwaukee.
