U.S. Navy Celebrates LCS Crew's New Ability to Repair Their Own Engines

The U.S. Navy is celebrating the crew of the Freedom-class littoral combat ship USS Wichita for a remarkable turnaround: fixing their own engines at sea. The Freedom-class was designed by aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin for a lean-crewed, contractor-centric service model, heavily reliant on civilian techs for maintenance during port calls; the crew's completion of repairs on the class' complex mechanical systems - on their own, under way - is a landmark achievement for the Navy's attempt to wean the LCS fleet off of its usage of contractors without overburdening the crew.

USS Wichita (LCS-13) is a seven-year-old Freedom-class hull based in Mayport. She was on the service's nine-ship list of Freedom-class hulls slated for decommissioning in the FY2023 budget, but Congress intervened to prevent the removal of these new vessels from the fleet (though it did allow the early retirement of USS Freedom, Milwaukee, Detroit, Little Rock and Sioux City.) The service says that the reliability issues that partially motivated the decommissioning push have largely been resolved, and that the twin LCS classes are now a valuable asset on the water.

Wichita was delivered with the original Freedom-class combining gear, the gearbox that marries up its twin diesel engines and twin gas turbines with its four waterjet drives; this mission-critical power transmission component suffered a high rate of failure in early deliveries. Wichita sustained a propulsion casualty unrelated to the combining gear in 2022 after one month on deployment in the Caribbean, and she returned home to Mayport under her own power for repairs.

On this deployment, Wichita's crew was prepared for mechanical failures. With technical documentation in hand, they were able to repair an auxiliary engine, a main diesel engine and certain other equipment on their own, all at sea.

In the first instance, the sailors in Wichita's engineering department spotted a lube oil leak on an auxiliary engine, identified the leaking part and made repairs within 24 hours - the kind of fix that a merchant ship's engineers would be expected to perform under way. The task was easier because they had brought spares and tools, the service said.

Separately, they also fixed a failed heating element on a main diesel engine within 72 hours.

USS Wichita has been under way since October, providing a working platform for a U.S. Coast Guard law enforcement detachment on a counter-narcotics mission in the Caribbean. The crew's newly-developed ability to conduct repairs kept the ship on-mission, the Navy said. Previously, personnel would have conducted these component-level repairs during a shipyard availability, not while under way.

"To say I’m proud of Wichita’s engineering team would be an understatement," said commanding officer Cmdr. Travis Snover in a statement. "With maintenance requirements becoming less reliant on contracted shore side support in the LCS community, it is imperative that Wichita sailors take ownership of our equipment."