Congress significantly escalated its concern today about the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program. At today’s mark-up of the annual defense authorization bill, the House Armed Services Committee approved an amendment put forward by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) that orders a Government Accountability Office investigation into LCS. The amendment tells GAO to study not only cracking problems found on LCS-1, the USS Freedom, but also to find out what the LCS program officer and contractors knew and when they knew it. Click here for detailed coverage. [Click “download this document” at left to read the legislative language in full.]