Navy ship Freedom is Singapore-bound despite inspection trouble

The Navy littoral combat ship Freedom will head to Singapore for a 10-month deployment in the spring of 2013.

The warship will be forward stationed in the Asian city-state under a program to place a vessel there for a lengthy stretch but rotate crews in and out.

The Navy mentioned the timing at a media telephone conference Wednesday, during which it also defended the ship in the face of a leaked internal report that showed the Freedom performing poorly in a pre-inspection.

This will be the second deployment for the San Diego-based Freedom, the first ship in a new vessel class that is supposed to be fast, light and versatile for coastal patroling, but that also has been dogged by criticism about early performance and questions about whether it can survive a battle.

The Freedom arrived in San Diego in April 2010 after a maiden deployment from the Florida to San Diego.

The vessel has spent time in the shipyard since then, in part to repair cracks found in her hull. The Freedom is now preparing for its final exam, the congressionally mandated Board of Inspection and Survey test. Failing an INSURV is an enormous black eye in the Navy.

An early May pre-INSURV inspection report something that isn't usually released but leaked out in a Navy-related blog shows that half of the inspected areas were rated red, or no-go, according to a Navy Times story Wednesday night. Eight categories received yellow marks, while six were rated green, or go.

A spokesman at Naval Surface Forces in San Diego said the Freedom isn't the only ship to not fare well in a pre-INSURV review, called a Type Commander Material Inspection Team evaluation. The Navy started performing these pre-inspections last summer as a way to tell if a ship was in danger of failing the final exam.

Since mid-2011, the San Diego-based ship command has conducted eleven of these pre-inspections.Of these, six ships including the Freedom were characterized as "high risk/no go" for INSURV, three as "medium risk" and two as "Ready to Proceed," said spokesman Cmdr. Jason Salata in a written statement.

The Freedom gets two more rehearsals before it will face the big INSURV test.

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Navy ship Freedom is Singapore-bound despite inspection trouble