The USS Freedom (LCS-1), designed by Lockheed Martin… or perhaps by a jilted British designer who is pressing IP theft claims against the Navy. (credit: US Navy)
This has not been a good year for the US Navy’s newest ships. Four ships from the Navy’s two classes of Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)—the high-tech, modular warships that were supposed to be the future of naval warfare in areas close to shore—have suffered major engineering problems, including breaking down at sea. Three of the LCS ships that suffered engineering failures were from the Freedom class, ships built by Lockheed Martin for the LCS program: USS Freedom, USS Fort Worth, and USS Milwaukee. The program has also seen other setbacks, including the USS Montgomery (an Independence-class LCS built by Austal USA) suffering a cracked hull after bumping the wall of a Panama Canal lock.
But the LCS’ engineering woes may not be the end of the trouble its shipbuilding programs are facing. As defense writer David Axe reports, David Giles, a British aerospace engineer-turned-marine architect, has filed a lawsuit accusing the Navy of stealing elements of the Freedom‘s design from work he did to commercialize a wave-piercing, “semi-planing” hull—work Giles patented in the early 1990s.
Giles’ design, called the Prelude, was derived from work his firm first pitched to the British Royal Navy. The patents were filed for a design for high-speed container ships, called Fastships. Giles formed a company by the same name to build them. The design patents expired in 2010, but Giles’ company—which is now bankrupt—filed suit against the Navy in 2012 after years of seeking compensation.
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Source: Ars Technica – Troubled Navy ship class design infringed on patent, lawsuit claims