http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/0...in-Secret-Memo

Littoral combat ships, known inside the Navy as little crappy ships, are too lightly armed to be effective on offense and too lightly armored to survive on defense according to information released by Bloomberg based on a secret memo written by the commander of naval surface forces, Vice Admiral Tom Copeman. The $37 billion ship program, developed after 9-11, has been beset with cost overruns and materials engineering problems including cracks and corrosion. The cost of the troubled sea turkeys has doubled to 440 million per ship since 2005. The objective was to develop a fast small ship for near shore action but, as the Navy should have learned from swift boats in Viet Nam, lightly armed boats near shore are easy targets to kill. Navy contractors are developing 2 different designs for the LCS, but both are failing.