Adm Clark's LCS Legacy

Admiral Vern Clark leaves a legacy of excellent as well as unconventional service, as this report states. What may be his most enduring gift to America's sea service is the littoral combat ship. When weapon systems generally take decades of planning and procurement before reaching the fleet, the LCS will go from blueprint to service in just a 5 years, as the article states:

The ship’s development has broken speed records for military procurement: Programs routinely take a decade or more to come to fruition. Clark unveiled the idea in 2002, the keel for the first ship in the series was laid this year, and that ship is to be delivered by early 2007.
LCS “is the model for the future,” Clark said – built quickly and simply and designed to accommodate frequent updates of its mission modules.
For Navy watchers, the speed with which LCS has emerged is even more impressive because it comes after decades when service leaders disdained such small and specialized vessels in favor of larger, multi-mission ships such as the Arleigh Burke class of destroyers.

There's more good news: The speed in LCS is being produced harkens to the great days of US shipbuilding, and may turn around the decline in fleet numbers, now at about 288 vessels.