The Last Independence: USS Pierre and the Littoral Combat Ship's Troubled Legacy
A Critical Assessment of America's Most Controversial Surface Combatant Program
The commissioning of USS Pierre (LCS 38) in Panama City, Florida, on 15 November 2025 marks not a triumph but an epitaph. As the final Independence-variant littoral combat ship enters service, the U.S. Navy must confront an uncomfortable truth: the LCS program represents one of the most expensive and operationally problematic acquisition efforts in modern naval history. With multiple hulls already retired after shockingly brief service lives, chronic mechanical failures plaguing the fleet, and fundamental design limitations preventing the ships from fulfilling their intended missions, the question is not whether these vessels will be decommissioned prematurely—but how quickly.
A Program Born of Optimism, Delivered in Crisis
The Littoral Combat Ship emerged from post-Cold War strategic optimism and the belief that network-centric warfare would revolutionize naval operations. Conceived to operate in shallow coastal waters against asymmetric threats, the LCS promised speed, flexibility, and affordability through modular mission packages. Two competing designs—the Freedom-class monohull built by Lockheed Martin and the Independence-class trimaran constructed by Austal USA—were both selected for production, an unusual decision that doubled support costs and logistical complexity.
From the program's inception, warning signs appeared. Initial cost estimates of $220 million per hull ballooned beyond $600 million. The modular mission packages—surface warfare, mine countermeasures, and anti-submarine warfare—proved far more expensive and less capable than promised. Software integration problems delayed deployments. Most critically, the ships' survivability came under intense scrutiny, with defense analysts questioning whether vessels designed with minimal armor and weapons could survive even modest combat damage.
The Decommissioning Wave Begins
The most damning indictment of the LCS program came not from external critics but from the Navy itself. In a stunning admission of failure, the service began retiring Freedom-class vessels after less than a decade of service—an unprecedented decision for modern surface combatants typically expected to serve 25-30 years.
USS Freedom (LCS 1), commissioned in 2008, was decommissioned in 2021 after just 13 years. USS Independence (LCS 2) followed in 2021 after only 11 years of service. The Navy subsequently decommissioned USS Fort Worth (LCS 3), USS Coronado (LCS 4), USS Milwaukee (LCS 5), USS Detroit (LCS 7), USS Little Rock (LCS 9), and USS Sioux City (LCS 11)—all before reaching even half their planned service lives.
The justifications varied but shared common threads: chronic propulsion system failures, combining gear problems that left ships stranded, and maintenance costs that exceeded projections. The Navy attempted to frame these early retirements as "divesting of capability" to fund more capable platforms, but the reality was starker—these ships simply didn't work as intended.
Mechanical Nightmares and Operational Limitations
The technical failures plaguing the LCS fleet read like a catalog of engineering disappointments. The Freedom-class combining gear system, which connects diesel engines and gas turbines to the propulsion system, proved catastrophically unreliable. Multiple ships experienced complete propulsion failures during deployments, requiring expensive tows back to port. USS Milwaukee suffered a complete engineering breakdown during its maiden voyage to its homeport, a humiliating failure that foreshadowed the class's mechanical woes.
The Independence-class trimaran design, while avoiding the Freedom's specific propulsion problems, faced its own challenges. Corrosion issues with the aluminum hull structure required extensive modifications. The waterjet propulsion system, while enabling high speeds, proved maintenance-intensive and vulnerable to debris damage in the shallow waters the ships were designed to operate in.
Beyond mechanical reliability, fundamental operational limitations became apparent. The ships' minimal armament—a single 57mm gun and point-defense missiles—left them vulnerable in any contested environment. The much-touted mission modules proved difficult to swap, expensive to maintain, and less capable than specialized platforms. The mine countermeasures package, in particular, failed to deliver promised capabilities, leaving the Navy with a critical gap in this mission area.
The Cost of Failure
The financial toll of the LCS program staggers the imagination. The Navy originally planned to acquire up to 52 littoral combat ships at costs far below traditional surface combatants. Instead, the service built 35 ships (16 Freedom-class and 19 Independence-class) at costs approaching those of far more capable destroyers.
With multiple ships already decommissioned after brief service lives, the cost-per-operational-year becomes astronomical. When factoring in development costs, construction overruns, and early retirement expenses, each LCS may ultimately cost taxpayers over $1 billion—delivering minimal operational capability in return.
The opportunity cost proves equally devastating. Resources devoted to LCS could have funded additional Burke-class destroyers, Constellation-class frigates, or unmanned systems. The Navy's surface combatant fleet shrank during the years LCS dominated shipbuilding budgets, leaving gaps in capability the service now struggles to fill.
Strategic Irrelevance in Great Power Competition
Perhaps the most damning critique of the LCS program is its strategic misalignment. Designed for counterterrorism, anti-piracy, and low-intensity operations, the ships entered service just as the strategic environment shifted toward great power competition with China and Russia. In this context, lightly-armed, minimally-survivable vessels operating individually cannot contribute meaningfully to high-intensity naval warfare.
The Indo-Pacific theater—where the Independence-class has primarily operated—demands survivable, well-armed combatants capable of operating in contested environments against peer adversaries equipped with advanced anti-ship missiles, submarines, and air threats. The LCS brings inadequate sensors, weapons, and defensive systems for this mission set. Even in lower-threat environments, allies increasingly question the value of LCS presence compared to more capable surface combatants.
The Decommissioning Timeline
Given the program's failures, informed observers now debate not whether the LCS fleet will be decommissioned prematurely but how quickly. Several factors will drive the timeline:
Immediate retirements (2025-2030): The remaining early Freedom-class hulls will likely follow their sisters into retirement as combining gear failures mount and maintenance costs exceed operational value. USS Wichita (LCS 13) and USS Billings (LCS 15) appear particularly vulnerable to near-term decommissioning.
Mid-term reductions (2030-2035): As Constellation-class frigates enter service in numbers, the Navy will face budgetary pressure to divest LCS hulls to fund operations and maintenance of more capable platforms. Later Freedom-class ships may receive brief service life extensions, but systemic design flaws make long-term operations untenable. Independence-class ships may fare marginally better, but their operational limitations in great power competition will drive retirement decisions.
Complete divestment (2035-2040): Barring unforeseen circumstances, the entire LCS fleet will likely be decommissioned within 15-20 years of the last ship's commissioning—half the expected service life of modern surface combatants. Some later-build Independence-class ships like USS Pierre may operate into the early 2040s in limited roles, but comprehensive fleet replacement appears inevitable.
Lessons for Future Acquisition
The LCS program offers painful but essential lessons for naval acquisition:
Avoid concurrent development and production: Building ships before design maturity proved disastrous, locking in flaws across multiple hulls before problems emerged.
Prioritize survivability: In an era of precision weapons, minimal defensive systems and light construction leave vessels vulnerable even against non-peer adversaries.
Resist technological optimism: Modular systems, network-centric operations, and transformational concepts must prove themselves before wholesale fleet adoption.
Maintain single-class production: Supporting two distinct classes multiplied costs without delivering proportional capability increases.
Match ships to strategic environment: Designing platforms for past conflicts rather than emerging threats wastes resources and leaves capability gaps.
Conclusion
As USS Pierre joins the fleet, she enters service already obsolete—a capable ship for missions the Navy no longer prioritizes, unable to survive in conflicts the service must prepare for. The Independence-class represents better engineering than its Freedom-class counterpart, but both variants suffer from fundamental conceptual flaws that no amount of modification can remedy.
The commissioning ceremony in Panama City should serve as a moment of reflection, not celebration. The LCS program consumed billions of dollars, occupied shipyard capacity, and distracted naval leadership from more pressing priorities. Its legacy will be measured not in operational achievements but in ships decommissioned after embarrassingly brief careers, in missions unfulfilled, and in hard lessons about the consequences of acquisition failure.
The decommissioning of the LCS fleet has already begun. USS Pierre and her sisters will likely follow their predecessors into retirement far sooner than their builders envisioned. For the U.S. Navy and American taxpayers, the question is not whether this troubled class will fade into history, but how quickly—and at what ultimate cost.
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