`LCS (Littoral Combat Ship) aluminum alloy redesign`

Post-Cold-War shift from Sea Wolf submarines to high-speed aluminum littoral combat craft; Navy's pendulum swing back to aluminum after the 1980s steel program.

So they were trying to get rid of the aluminum so they wouldn't have aluminum fires, and trying to keep the weight down. The next thing I know, by early 2000, after the World Trade Center fires and so on, they basically decided — and peace had broken out with the former Soviet Union and you didn't need a Sea Wolf submarine anymore, you needed littoral craft. I never heard the word "littoral" before; most people hadn't. And so now they're high-speed aluminum craft. But the problem with aluminum is it's a lot more difficult to weld than steel. It doesn't corrode as well. It can catch fire — but the Navy has sort of given up worrying about whether it catches fire. If it catches fire, it does.

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