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LCS 2 delays trials after engine issue

The littoral combat ship Independence postponed starting its builder’s trials by 24 hours Monday after engineers noticed “an anomaly” with the ship’s propulsion plant, and decided to tie back up out of “an abundance of caution,” a spokesman said.

The shipyard crew aboard the Independence noticed an unusual noise in one of the ship’s two main diesel engines just after the ship had pushed off from its dock in Mobile, Ala., said Jim DeMartini, a spokesman for shipbuilder General Dynamics, so it decided to keep the Independence in port another day to investigate. Technicians are confident the ship can get underway Tuesday morning, he said.

“Looks like we’re going to go bright and early tomorrow morning, as far as I know,” DeMartini said.

The Independence, an aluminum trimaran, is the second of the Navy’s two configurations for its littoral combat ships, which are designed to carry interchangeable sets of equipment to deal with mines, submarines and surface targets. The first, Freedom, is a steel and aluminum monohull built by a contractor team led by Lockheed Martin; it was commissioned in November. The Navy hopes to take delivery of Independence this summer and commission it this fall.

Both ships have complicated Combined Diesel And Gas engineering plants, each with two main diesel engines and two gas turbines, designed to run in concert to push the ships to speeds above 40 knots. Freedom set a speed record of 47 knots during trials in the Atlantic, and naval observers will be watching Independence’s builder’s trials to see what speeds it reaches during its full-power runs.

Both ships are also more than a year behind schedule and more than 100 percent over-budget. Navy budget documents for fiscal 2010 put the cost for Independence at about $704 million and for Freedom at about $637 million, compared to projected cost of about $220 million for each.

Congress has imposed a cost cap of about $460 million per ship, and lawmakers have said if Lockheed and General Dynamics won’t or can’t meet that, the Navy should compile the technical information for each ship design and allow other shipyards to bid on building copies of each LCS.