Analyst's note:  Why?  What is wrong with this picture? 

The Navy is sending one if its newest combat ships overseas, even though the Pentagon knows the ship's guns don’t properly function and is unsure whether the ship can even survive combat.

[....] “We’re going to learn a lot of lessons from this deployment,” Vice Admiral Tom Copeman told Defense & Security Intelligence & Analysis. “Do we have the best strategies for maintaining the ship? Is our strategy for how we’re going to do the crew swap correct? Logistics, maintenance, spare parts: do we have that right?”

But in the case that the ship were to get attacked, it faces a very real chance of being unable to defend itself.

[....] The Navy wants to buy 55 of the new combat ships, including an alternate design of the USS Independence, which costs about $808.8 million per piece.