Why the Littoral Combat Ship lost a stable design standard

Was the Littoral Combat Ship a program the US Navy did not need?

Its underlying need was real, but abandoning a clear frigate-like role and lacking firm design authority allowed requirements and compromises to run away.

Calling the project a wholly new 'combat ship' removed the familiar boundaries supplied by established frigate or destroyer roles. A recognized ship type gives designers and operators a shared baseline for what the vessel must do. Without that baseline, competing stakeholders could add incompatible ambitions to thousands of tons of available design space. The alternative would have required a single authoritative sponsor with enough power to defend one coherent concept. Lacking either constraint, the Littoral Combat Ship accumulated compromises and lost a stable standard against which decisions could be judged.