The LCS was a poor design and implemented even worse. Life expectancy in combat is kiss your ass good-bye IF you can keep it running. Aluminum doesn’t do well in the high heat from an incendiary round. The LCS was nothing more than a gift to Lockheed from their friends in the Navy and the K Street lobbyists. The lifetime cost of the LCS project is estimated at $100 billion. Where is DOGE? 
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In the survivability world, LCS (both of them) are referred to as One Hit Wonders.
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Would you go up the coast in the winter with those lashings??? /s
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No. Outside would be bottom of 2nd & bottom of 3rd, three cells on each side.
Very few lashings viable, but obviously enough for inside. Minimal longshoremen lashing labor required.
I’m accustomed to more lashings on every stack for going the least bit outside. A lot more labor required.
Depends on the local contract. Some ports include lashers in the gangs, so no extra. Some require a totally separate lashing gang. Have to know the contracts to know the costs!
I don’t need to show the lashings on the barges, I see them every day from my backyard. They are going, frequently with a full load of 40’ containers, up the James River from Norfolk to Richmond. Since it is an inland route they are only secured with twist locks.
I would like to see there be a truly viable coastwise fleet of purpose-built container ships similar to those seen in Northern Europe plying their trade, with their cargo properly secured to endure the rigors of the route. With the proper approach, I think the ILA could recognize the benefits for all.
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You mean like this network of feeders from NW European ports to ports all along the Norwegian coast as far as Hammerfest
With multi-purpose ships like this?:
Or geared container feeders, like this:
In January 2025, the first dual-fueled newbuilding was delivered, embarking on a 15-year charter to NCL.*
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Notwithstanding the limited container barges on the East Coast, let’s simply agree that dry cargo feeder vessels really only exist in coastwise trades where there are no or very limited highway or rail networks. Barge and shipping lines to Alaska carry almost all cargo from the lower 48 even though there are highways through Canada because it is less expensive to ship by sea as opposed to land. In the CONUS, it is just the opposite and I do not ever expect there to be the much yacked about Short Sea Shipping on the Atlantic Seaboard unless it were done with a ro/pax ferry type operation which would eliminate longshore workers handling the containers or trailers. Even that still would only work for very time sensitive cargoes that would command the premium freight rates required.
Another overlooked factor is the shape of the east coast. There aren’t many port pairs that are significantly shorter distance by water than by land.
The stuff that works in the CONUS are petroleum based cargos. In Europe there are other incentives to use water based transport including the tolling of arterial roads.
Many European ports have an historic footprint and can’t be extended to handle the container vessels now in transoceanic trade necessitating feeder vessels often transiting the Baltic,North Sea and the English Channel to hub ports.
Most of the cargo moving on the Danube and the Rhine was bulk cargo such as petroleum products and aggregate but there was some very modern vessels carrying about 280 teu.
I have loaded railway line directly from a inland vessel secured alongside at Rotterdam.
Apparently the railway line had been loaded on the vessel at a wharf at the steel works.
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Container feeders comes in many types ans sizes. They serve regular feeder services, both on inland waterways, short sea and longer distances, like S’pore - Australia and India.
Inland ships of this type:
carry containers on routes through out the European inland water way system:
Short sea feeders from 400 - 1500 TEU capacity:
cover european ports from the Arctic & Baltic to the Med. and Black Sea:
One of the major feeder service provider is X-press Feeders in Singapore.
They have feeder networks covering many parts of the world with a fleet of over 100 vessels from 500 to 7000 TEUs:
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That’s part of it. US build costs are another: Four Corridor Case Studies of Short-Sea Shipping Services - Google Drive
Pretty sure Bob Kunkel and Per Heidenreich said that capital costs were the #1 obstacle to getting their proposed Coastal Connect SSS service started along the East Coast.
Off the top of my head I have seen ideas for a multi stage and incremental approach. For instance, buy 6-12 ships from S. Korea with the agreement that they sell us the softeare template designs and we also import their knowhow, their navarchs etc to scale up and reopen closed shipyards. As the Asian built ships age out, they must be replaced with the hybrid ships newly built in the US with the knowhow imported from asian and european sources. Yes it means we have no new innovative designs now, until we possibly introduce the SMR reactor engines 5-10 years from now. We must do what we can do not what we fantasize about accomplishing.
If the new build Jones Act short sea shipping ships were free, short sea shipping would still not be competitive with trucks due to the high cost longshoremen.
Tugs and barges are much cheaper than ships on short runs. They are also capable of serving many more small ports with minimal facilities and lower port costs.
US shipyards build good quality tugs and barges at competitive cost. They could build small ships competitively, if there was sufficient demand.
Jones Act ships are competitive with tug and barge for high value, time sensitive cargos, or on longer runs: Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, Alaska.
Are US yards actually building “tugs and barges of good quality at competitive cost”?
Competing with who? Can they even compete with European yards on costs?
How many tugs and barges do you think would be ordered at US yards, if there were free competition?
How does high labour cost European yards manage to stay competitive in the market for specialized vessels (incl. large Cruise ships)?
They concentrate on the high end part of the ship building process and contract out the low end parts, welding together steel into hulls, ready for outfitting:
Other European companies supplies the design + the machinery and equipment that make an empty hull into a functioning ship.
These companies also supply yards in other parts of the world, incl. China, S.Korea and Japan.
PS> US has been the champion of free competition for the last 80 years, until now.
It has benefited the world and the US, but does not appear to incl. US shipping and shipbuilding for some reason.
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Tugs and barges are much cheaper than ships on short runs. They are also capable of serving many more small ports with minimal facilities and lower port costs.
If this is true, why don’t tugs and barges dominate short sea shipping in Europe? (earnest question) Or do they? I was under that this is mainly the domain of self-propelled vessels.
US shipyards build good quality tugs and barges at competitive cost. They could build small ships competitively, if there was sufficient demand.
If they are truly competitive, then they should be exporting, no? But I’m pretty sure US vessel exports are few and far between, which would seem to suggest they are not competitive. Last I checked, US-built OSVs are ~70% more expensive than those built overseas, so I’m not sure why tugs would be much different.
I think that US built tugs and barges are comparable cost with Northern Europe. This would be an interesting research topic.
Quality tug yards are busy with a good order book.
US tug builders are certainly not competitive with China. Nor should they be.
Based on…?
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