U.S. Navy emails and other documents suggest that officials muzzled bad test results for the first Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1) variant, the USS Freedom, at a crucial time in the program’s development, when the service was considering which seaframe to pick for the $30 billion-plus fleet. Top program officers for the ship and at Naval Sea Systems Command (Navsea) told subordinates to avoid certain language in the test-result reports because of concerns over the downselect decision, the documents show. One naval officer said in an email he would delete the offensive wording of the report ...

The U.S. Navy is looking at buying more submarines in the coming years, but the most recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of the service’s shipbuilding plan says more boats will be needed to address fleet shortfalls. The Navy’s recently released 30-year shipbuilding plan includes more subs this year than the service had a year ago, CBO notes ...

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are expected to outspend each of their sister services roughly two-to-one on electronic warfare (EW) programs during the next decade. In a 10-year period from fiscal 2008-17, the Navy and Marines have spent or are set to spend a cumulative total of about $21.9 billion, based on analysis and data provided by Avascent 050, an online market analysis toolkit for global defense programs ...