“Freedom is solid, all of the issues are fixable,” the service says. “Deficiencies will be corrected and Freedom will stay on the path to deployment this spring.”

Areas that need work, the Navy says, “as identified by the special trail, were not a surprise.”

An exclusive Aviation Week investigation published last month, written following a guided tour of LCS-1 while in drydock, revealed maintenance and design issues far worse than either the Navy or LCS-1 prime contractor Lockheed Martin had acknowledged up to that point (Aerospace DAILY, May 16).