By Tony Capaccio

(Bloomberg) — Two high senators on protection points say U.S. Navy leaders ought to take into account delaying deployment of the brand new Littoral Combat Ship and tone down their effusive rhetoric concerning the vessel till it efficiently completes extra testing.

With six ships of a deliberate 40 delivered however “practically no LCS mission capabilities proven” for mine clearance, floor warfare and submarine-hunting, “we urge you to reevaluate the deployment strategy,” John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Jack Reed, the panel’s high Democrat, wrote in a letter dated Feb. 5.

As a part of the Obama administration’s promised “pivot to the Pacific,” the Navy has despatched one Littoral Combat Ship to Singapore with plans to have a complete of two there by December and 4 by 2018. The vessel already in place, the USS Fort Worth, has been sidelined since a serious crew-caused upkeep failure in January. The Navy additionally plans to make use of littoral ships, supposed for operations in shallow coastal waters, in Pacific workouts and for a deployment to Bahrain in 2017.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and his predecessor, Chuck Hagel, each questioned the ship’s potential to outlive in fight. They lower the numbers to be bought from the contractors that construct separate variations, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Austal Ltd.

‘Overstating’ Progress

In the letter to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Admiral John Richardson, chief of naval operations, McCain and Reed additionally mentioned they had been “concerned that Navy leaders are overstating the current state of the program and the challenging path to achieving the promised capability.”

“We expect Navy leaders to acknowledge and close the chasm between aspirations and reality for the LCS,” they wrote.

The senators contrasted feedback made by Mabus in January concerning the ship and its “robust” capabilities — “now that’s a success story,” he mentioned in a speech — with a extra crucial evaluation this month from the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester that disclosed new questions concerning the LCS’s fight effectiveness and reliability.

“We seldom hear from Navy leaders about these challenges,” wrote McCain of Arizona and Reed of Rhode Island.

There’s no timeline for declaring the Littoral Combat Ship combat-ready for mine-clearing, its high mission, the senators wrote. In addition, they mentioned,“we are still years away from an LCS anti-submarine warfare” preliminary functionality.

Navy’s Response

Asked concerning the letter, Rear Admiral Dawn Cutler, the Navy’s chief spokeswoman, mentioned, “We will continue to refine how we maintain, operate and deploy LCS based on what we learn in operational tests, maintenance and deployments.”

“The first two deployments of LCS have been successful, but we still have work to do in order to better execute the mission for which this platform was designed,” she mentioned in an e-mail.

In December, Carter directed the Navy to chop to 40 ships from 52 a deliberate mixture of authentic LCS vessels and upgraded fashions that will be better-armed. Twenty-six vessels are actually beneath contract in a $23 billion program.

In its annual report on main weapons, the Pentagon testing workplace disclosed {that a} Littoral Combat Ship had problem in checks at sea defending in opposition to swarming vessels, like these utilized by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards, and that each variations of the ship have in depth reliability issues.

Given these conclusions, the lawmakers cautioned Navy leaders to dial again the reward and provides a extra life like evaluation of the vessel.

In his Jan. 14 speech to the Surface Navy Association, a Navy business assist group, Mabus mentioned that “a group of small surface ships like the LCS is still capable of putting the enemy fleet at the bottom of the ocean.”

McCain and Reed mentioned they doubted that. While the ship’s floor warfare system has been declared as having an preliminary functionality, they mentioned it’s two years late, has “significant unresolved deficiencies,” and nonetheless lacks long-range missiles to take out enemies at prolonged ranges.

“Unless the enemy fleet consists of a small number of lightly armed boats at extremely close range we fail to see how the LCS reality is consistent with the secretary’s remarks,” they wrote.

©2016 Bloomberg News