Weeks may be needed to repair LCS Milwaukee after breakdown

A week after the Navy's brand new littoral combat ship Milwaukee broke down at sea, naval engineers and experts are still trying to determine why metal debris fouled the ship's were still trying to determine what caused metallic debris to build up in key components of the propulsion system.

Engineers are pulling apart a system called the combining gear, which allows the ship to use power from its diesel and big gas turbine engines for propulsion, to determine where the flakes of metal came from, according to Navy officials familiar with the repairs.

The repairs to Milwaukee are likely to take weeks, officials said, because identifying these kinds of problems of this nature require flushing out the systems and taking them apart. and a lot of disassembly.

The crew took the right actions when the debris was discovered by  in the wake of the engineering casualty, shutting down the propulsion system to limit further damages and calling for a tow, the Surface Navy's top officer said.Rowden told Navy Times in a Dec. 17 interview that . Rowden praised the crew for taking caution to preserve the ship.

In the days following the Dec. 10 breakdown off the Virginia coast, speculation arose that a shipyard mishap was to blame for the debris, after the engines were run without lube oil. But engineers believe that's likely not the cause, according to two sources. accident over the summer where contractors started the engines without lube oil running through it was to blame for the debris, but two sources say that engineers at the scene say likely not the source.

The ship suffered the engineering breakdown an engineering casualty while transiting from Halifax, Canada, to Mayport, Florida, and ultimately its home port of San Diego.

In The ship was on its way to Mayport, Florida, the ship where it was scheduled for a yards period and was going to be temporarily used as a training ship for the new Littoral Combat Ship Squadron 2 based there before making its way to Milwaukee's home port in San Diego.

Engineers cleaned out the metal filings from the lube oil filter and locked the port shaft as a precaution. In the early hours of Dec. 11, the ship was conducting steering tests and lost lube oil pressure in the starboard combining gear due to the presence of the same metal filings in that filter.

The ship then dropped anchor while the engineers troubleshot worked on the system. By mid-morning, the salvage ship Grapple rendezvoused with Milwaukee and towed it into connected a towing hawser line for the trip back to Little Creek for its unceremonious arrival there.

Crew 104 manned the ship for the transit to Norfolk, where Crew 108 took over. The ship is currently manned by Crew 104, and was scheduled to swap with Crew 108 in Mayport, but swapped instead in Virginia while the ship was repaired.

News of the breakdown concerned the influential chairman of the caused great consternation on Capitol Hill, prompting LCS critic Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who called for transparency. to call for accountability.

Milwaukee's breakdown kicked off a terrible week for the LCS program. Less than a week after the breakdown, news emerged that the Pentagon is ordering the Navy to a memo obtained by Navy Times' sister publication Defense News from Defense Secretary Ash Carter to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus directed the Navy to cut the total buy of LCS and the new up-gunned frigate version to 40 from 52, and to pick between the mono-hull version and the trimaran version built by Austal USA in Alabama.

Instead of the ships, the Pentagon directed the Navy to Carter directed Mabus to invest in more F-35Cs, Virginia Payload Modules and missiles.