Less than five years after the USS Little Rock and USS Detroit sailed into Naval Station Mayport as freshly commissioned warships, the littoral combat ships have been scheduled for decommissioning.
Whether that will really happen will depend on choices Congress hasn’t made yet.
But the plan to retire the vessels, which entered Navy service in 2017 and 2016 respectively, underscores a bureaucratic risk facing all of Mayport’s LCS fleet, whose unforeseen costs and technical struggles have made them exceptionally vulnerable to federal budget-cutting.
Read the rest of the story at WJCT News partner the Florida Times-Union.