*After a little more than year in business, Information Dissemination has become perhaps the most vital, most influential blog on all things Navy. *Small Wars Journal recently called the site "simply amazing." Military strategist Tom Barnett counts the blog's author, "Galrahn," as a "mentor." So, needless to say, we are psyched in the extreme to have Galrahn contribute to DANGER ROOM. This is the first of what we're hope are a great many posts.
The Navy's shallow-water warship program has seen all kinds of trouble
-- budgets ballooning, contracts canceled, future uncertain. But the
Littoral Combat Ship project does have one thing going for it: YouTube.
With the first LCS going through its so-called "Builders Trials" this week, Lockheed Martin has pulled out a big-time online marketing push for the star-crossed program.
Freedom, or LCS 1, may be the first warship to get such a sophisticated internet push. But big-time marketing tactics are hardly new in American shipbuilding history. The "Builders Trials" and the associated public marketing blitz of* Freedom* is a trip back in time when thousands and thousands of Americans would gather at the river banks by a shipyard on the christening date. Citizens would crowd the streets, look out from rooftops, and compete for the best lookout position to watch a warship launched. On November 28th, 1799, newspapers reported 20,000 people, a big part of the population of
Philadelphia at the time, crowded the riverfront to see the launch of the namesake USS Philadelphia. At the time, that event marked the largest gathering of American citizens in one place since the founding of the country.
Lockheed Martin appears to be trying to evolve warship marketing to the internet era. Rather than a large gathering for a christening, Lockheed Martin has both pictures and videos up on its official LCS website, a YouTube video, and has even started a photo gallery on Flickr for people to grab pictures and share.
As for the LCS Builders Trials, Tim Colton reported on August 4th, "Builders' Trials are going very well. LCS 1
achieved over 38 knots on turbines and is a spectacular sight with its
25-foot rooster tail." *Freedom *has 2 Rolls-Royce MT30 36 MW gas turbines and 2 Colt-Pielstick diesel engines. If Freedom can hump 38
knots in the fresh waters of Lake Michigan with just turbines, this thing should be able to do some serious speed when you add in the diesels and get it into salt water. Salt water has higher density, so one would expect the LCS to go faster than any speeds reached on Lake
Michigan.
If your interested in more Freedom eye candy, I have some pictures of the interior of LCS 1 posted on my blog.
-- Galrahn
