Vice Adm. Tom Rowden, commander of Naval Surface Forces, has issued an engineering “stand-down” across all littoral combat ship squadrons and crew to facilitate a review of the standards and procedures of their engineering units.The U.S. Navy said Monday the engineering stand-down, which the service branch completed Wednesday, sought to address concerns following engineering-related incidents on USS Freedom and USS Coronado.
“These stand-downs allowed for time to review, evaluate and renew our commitment to ensuring our crews are fully prepared to operate these ships safely,” said Rowden.
“I have asked the Surface Warfare Office School commander to review the wholeness of our LCS engineering education and training to include the testing and retraining of all LCS engineers.”
The SWOS engineering team will create a level-of-knowledge test and specialized engineering training that it will implement across the LCS engineering force over the next 30 days, the Navy noted.
The service branch added that the SWOS commanding officer will also perform a potential 60-day LCS engineering review to help identify and implement adjustments to the engineering training pipeline.
