– Aviation Week – By now the recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) findings on a certain U.S. Navy small-ship program are pretty well known. Costs and concerns about survivability keep rising and confidence keeps waning in the ship’s capability to fill national defense needs. Oh, lord, you may be thinking – not another piece about the GAO and the Littoral Combat Ship. But not so fast. The GAO report in question is the Jan. 3, 1979, statement to Congress on “The Navy’s FFG-7 Class Frigate Shipbuilding Program, and Other Ship Program Issues.” That’s right – we’re talking about the FFG-7s here, the now-noble Oliver Hazard Perry guided missile frigate-class ships slated to become the backbone of the Navy’s sea control in the mid-1980s and whose missions, or some of them, the LCS vessels are supposed to assume.