US Navy LCS Coronado Faces Engineering Issue During First Deployment

The US littoral combat ship USS Coronado has experienced engineering causality on its first deployment to Western Pacific.

The ship immediately returned to Pearl Harbor after the incident, Navy Times reported Tuesday.

The Coronado departed Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in the US on Friday last week for an independent deployment to the Western Pacific, said Third Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Ryan Perry.

"The crew took precautionary measures and the ship is currently returning to Pearl Harbor to determine the extent of the problem and conduct repairs." Perry added.

However, it is not the first incident. The incident follows few days after the Navy has admitted that the littoral combat ship, USS Freedom sustained significant damage to one of its diesel engines.

The Coronado is the fourth littoral combat ship to be sidelined by an engineering casualty in less than a year. The other ships which had breakdowns previously were the USS Freedom in July, and the USS Milwaukee and USS Fort Worth in December and January, respectively.

But notably, Coronado is the first of the Independence-class littoral combat ships, made by Austal USA, whereas the other ships are all part of the Freedom Class, made by Lockheed Martin Corp.  

The issue appears to be unrelated to recent propulsion problems of Fort Worth and Freedom, Third Fleet officials said.

Commissioned in 2014, the Coronado participated in the Rim of the Pacific multinational exercise in July, where it was used as a platform to conduct a live-fire missile test with a Block 1C Harpoon over-the-horizon missile, a key step in development of an improved LCS with increased lethality and capacity.

Navy officials have yet to disclose the results of investigations into the three prior LCS engineering casualties.