LCS failure does not prove modular warships cannot work

The Littoral Combat Ship should not be treated as proof that modular warships are inherently unworkable. Denmark had operated the StanFlex approach for much longer, so the relevant comparison is between implementation and acquisition systems rather than between modularity and conventional ships. Intense competition among American defense firms can make supposedly interchangeable systems difficult to integrate with a rival supplier's equipment. That commercial behavior undermines the common interfaces on which a modular combatant depends. The case distinguishes a failed program architecture from a failed underlying naval concept.