Fire Damages LCS Freedom

More trouble for the embattled warship program. This is from WFRV.com:

A Wednesday morning fire damaged a first-in-its-class Navy warship under
construction at Marinette Marine Corp.Marinette Fire Lt. Bill Becker said the
fire started about 5:30 a.m. in a berthing area where workers were using welding
and grinding equipment. It took about an hour to extinguish."It was a good size
fire," Becker said. "I went through six teams of firefighters putting it
out."Fire officials did not immediately release an estimate of the damage. No
injuries were reported.The Freedom is expected to be the Navy's first littoral
combat ship.

Which means further delays in getting this essential warship to the fleet. I say essential because even with the sticker price approaching $400 million, its still the cheapest vessel in the navy's modernization program. You may recall the Navy's recent cancellation of the third ship in this class for out of control costs. The LCS is the cornerstone of the fleet's expansion plans to 313 ships in the next decade, with 55 planned for construction. My own prefernce would be a smaller vessel about half the size called the Sea Fighter, with a price tag of only $50 million each. But no one asked me for my 2 cents.