US Navy's Littoral Combat Ship

[PMedMoe]

That is one neat looking ship.  :nod:

 

[CougarKing]

There doesn't seem to be a generic LCS superthread when I did a search.

Anyways, doesn't an old Russian ALFA class SSN top out at 43 knots though compared to this?

Navy's newest warships top out at more than 50 mph
AP


By DAVID SHARP, Associated Press Writer David Sharp, Associated Press Writer – 49 mins ago

BATH, Maine – The Navy's need for speed is being answered by a pair of warships that have reached freeway speeds during testing at sea.

Independence, a 418-foot warship built in Alabama, boasts a top speed in excess of 45 knots, or about 52 mph, and sustained 44 knots for four hours during builder trials that wrapped up this month off the Gulf Coast. The 378-foot Freedom, a ship built in Wisconsin by a competing defense contractor, has put up similar numbers.

Both versions of the Littoral Combat Ship use powerful diesel engines, as well as gas turbines for extra speed. They use steerable waterjets instead of propellers and rudders and have shallower drafts than conventional warships, letting them zoom close to shore.

The ships, better able to chase down pirates, have been fast-tracked because the Navy wants vessels that can operate in coastal, or littoral, waters. Freedom is due to be deployed next year, two years ahead of schedule.

Independence is an aluminum, tri-hulled warship built by Austal USA in Mobile, Ala. The lead contractor is Maine's Bath Iron Works, a subsidiary of General Dynamics.

Lockheed Martin Corp. is leading the team that built Freedom in Marinette, Wis. It looks more like a conventional warship, with a single hull made of steel.

The stakes are high for both teams. The Navy plans to select Lockheed Martin or General Dynamics, but not both, as the builder. The Navy has ordered one more ship from each of the teams before it chooses the final design. Eventually, the Navy wants to build up to 55 of them.

Speed has long been relished by Navy skippers. Capt. John Paul Jones, sometimes described as father of the U.S. Navy, summed it up this way in 1778: "I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way."

Eric Wertheim, author and editor of the U.S. Naval Institute's "Guide to Combat Fleets of the World," said speed is a good thing, but it comes at a cost.

"This is really something revolutionary," Wertheim said. "The question is how important and how expensive is this burst of speed?"

Early cost estimates for Littoral Combat Ships were about $220 million apiece, but costs spiraled because of the Navy's requirements and its desire to expedite construction. The cost of the ships is capped at $460 million apiece, starting in the new fiscal year.

Both ships are built to accommodate helicopters and mission "modules" for either anti-submarine missions, mine removal or traditional surface warfare. The modules are designed to be swapped out within 24 hours, allowing the ships to adapt quickly to new missions.

While they're fast, they aren't necessarily the fastest military ships afloat. The Navy used to have missile-equipped hydrofoils and the Marines' air-cushioned landing craft is capable of similar speeds, Wertheim said. And smaller ships are capable of higher speeds.

Nonetheless, the speed is impressive, especially considering that other large naval vessels have been cruising along at a relatively pokey 30 to 35 knots for decades.

Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, noted that Independence sustained 44 knots despite a 30-knot headwind and 6- to 8-foot seas in Alabama's Mobile Bay. "For a ship of this size, it's simply unheard of to sustain that rate of speed for four hours," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091022/ap_on_..._speedy_warship

 

[CougarKing]

Defense News

LCS Now Officially Called A Frigate

WASHINGTON — Since its inception in 2001, the US Navy's Littoral Combat Ship program has been described as needed to replace the fleet's frigates, minesweepers and patrol ships. But the ship's place in the line of battle continues to be debated.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus thinks one of the reasons the ship is misunderstood is the nontraditional LCS designator. He directed an effort to find a more traditional and appropriate designation for the LCS and several other recent ship types, such as the Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV), the Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) and the Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB).

(...SNIPPED)

"If it's like a frigate, why don't we call it a frigate?" he said Thursday morning to a roomful of surface warfare sailors at the Surface Navy Association's annual symposium just outside Washington.

"We are going to change the hull designation of the LCS class ships to FF," Mabus said, citing the traditional hull designation for frigates. "It will still be the same ship, the same program of record, just with an appropriate and traditional name."

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[Kirkhill]

So from a simple "boat" with a small crew and limited number of task tailored systems to oversee as it performs a limited set of missions it has grown to a full-fledged "ship" trying to do all things all the time.  The systems have grown.  The crew is growing in step.  And the rank of the CO is, I'm guessing, rising as well.

More billets for all.

And a ship stretched past its original design intentions.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Hasn't "grown" really. It is just a "designation".

However, I doubt that this will change anything. When the USN introduced the Oliver Hazard Perry class of frigate to its order of battle, nobody really knew how to make tactical use of them. It took decades before they  found their place in the order of battle, even though they were true frigates (i.e. close escort ships / independent scouts). Because of their boxiness and lack of planned tactical employment, they were nicknamed the "square-pegs" because they were meant to fill a "round" hole usually filled by destroyers. Once a year every year while they served, the US Naval Institute had a "special" edition of its monthly Proceedings magazine dedicated to new and useful way to employ them. Funny enough, almost the same thing is happening with the LCS's.

 

[CougarKing]

Please note older threads on this subject listed below the article. Perhaps a thread merge is in order?

Defense News

US Navy About To Double Its LCS Fleet
By Christopher P. Cavas 9:55 a.m. EDT August 8, 2015

MARINETTE, Wis. — The launch of a new littoral combat ship on July 18 was another festive occasion here at Fincantieri Marinette Marine, marking the fifth time this heartland shipyard has put an LCS in the water.

But the Little Rock (LCS 9) will also become a milestone departure of sorts for the US Navy's LCS program when, after she's delivered to the fleet next year, the warship will be the first East Coast-based LCS, operating from Mayport, Florida. The first eight LCSs — half of which already are in service —– are based at San Diego.

"All of the odd-numbered hulls starting with 9 won't have to go through the Panama Canal," noted Rear Adm. Brian Antonio, program executive officer for LCS and the Navy's top official on the program. "The Mayport basin is smaller, so [they] get the monohull versus the trimaran."

Antonio spoke in July at Marinette, taking a break from a program review held just prior to the Little Rock's launch.

Freedom-class ships — the ones built at this shipyard under contract to Lockheed Martin — are 387-foot-long monohulls with a 58-foot beam, all with odd numbers in the Navy's LCS designation system. The trimaran-hulled Independence class, built by Austal USA in Mobile, Alabama, and carrying even hull numbers, are 418 feet long with a beam of 104 feet. The smaller Freedom class is easier to handle in the relatively confined Mayport basin, enclosed on three sides, while the California base sits along much wider San Diego Bay.

Another consideration for placing Freedom-class LCSs in Mayport, Antonio noted, is the experience already gained operating the surface warfare mission module, deployed aboard the Freedom during its 2013 deployment to Singapore and currently operated in the southwest Pacific by the Fort Worth. While the Mayport-based ships are expected to conduct deployments operating out of Bahrain in the Arabian Gulf, they'll also be called upon for more operations closer to home.

"If they are not going to Bahrain and you deploy them to the Fourth Fleet [around Central and Latin America] and you are doing counter-drug operations, a surface warfare mission package would be more appropriate to use as opposed to mine countermeasures or anti-submarine warfare" package, Antonio noted.

The ships of the Independence class have yet to officially operate a surface warfare package, although a module using most of the available components was shipped on the Independence last summer when the Navy made a late decision to send the LCS to RIMPAC, a major fleet exercise held every two years off Hawaii. But the Coronado (LCS 4), now coming out of a yard period in San Diego, will soon carry out the first formal tests of the package on the class.

(...SNIPPED)

older LCS threads:

LCS Woes

USN to Eliminate Frigates

LCS 2 Images- Builders Trials

"The USN frigate gap"

Navy Issues stop word order for LCS#3

LCS tops out at 45 knots during sea trials

 

[CougarKing]

LCS getting missiles:

Defense News

LCS To Get Missiles for Next Deployment
By Christopher P. Cavas 12:01 p.m. EDT October 25, 2015

WASHINGTON — The US Navy’s push to increase the lethality of the littoral combat ship (LCS) is getting a major and somewhat unexpected boost with word that an over-the-horizon (OTH) surface-to-surface missile will be installed on-board the next LCSs to deploy.

Rear Adm. Pete Fanta, director of surface warfare at the Pentagon, issued a directive on Sept. 17 calling for the installation of an unspecified OTH missile aboard the Freedom and the Coronado, the next two LCSs scheduled for deployment. The Freedom is to deploy to the Western Pacific during the first quarter of calendar year 2016, while the Coronado is to follow in the second or third quarter.

“The objective is to install the OTH missile system aboard all in-service LCS deploying to forward operating stations starting in fiscal year 2016,” Fanta wrote in the directive, “as well as on all under-construction LCS prior to their commissioning ceremonies.”

The LCS has been without a surface-to-surface missile since the cancellation in 2010 of the Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) missile, a program managed by the US Army that would have provided LCS with a significant weapon. Ever since, the service has been searching for a suitable replacement. A shipboard launch system for the Hellfire missile is being developed for smaller targets, but that weapon is unable to inflict significant damage on larger ships -- a role the OTH is meant to fill.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[CougarKing]

The order has been cut from 52 to 40:

Defense News

Pentagon Cuts LCS to 40 Ships, 1 Shipbuilder
By Christopher P. Cavas 8:13 p.m. EST December 16, 2015

WASHINGTON — The US Navy's fight to buy 52 variants of its littoral combat ship (LCS) from two shipbuilders may have taken a fatal blow this week after the secretary of defense directed the service to cap its buy at 40 ships and pick only one supplier. The directive also orders the Navy to buy only one ship annually over the next four years, down from three per year.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in a Dec. 14 memo to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, told the Navy to "reduce the planned LCS/FF procurement from 52 to 40, creating a 1-1-1-1-2 profile, for eight fewer ships in the FYDP, and then downselect to one variant by FY 2019."

FF is a Navy designation for frigate. Beginning with LCS 33, the Navy is planning to build a more heavily-armed LCS variant with the FF designation — the result of a 2014 directive from then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to produce a more powerful ship.

(...SNIPPED)

Also, an expert suggests for a USN that is more oriented towards expeditionary/amphibious forces?

Breaking Defense

Polmar’s Navy: Trade LCS & Carriers For Frigates & Amphibs
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on December 18, 2015 at 1:26 PM

WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Ashton Carter wants to cut the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program to buy more missiles, aircraft, and upgrades to ships. That’s good as far as it goes, eminent naval historian and analyst Norman Polmar told me this morning — “in my opinion the decision should have been five years ago” — but it’s not radical enough.

Polmar would like a Navy not only with fewer LCS, but with fewer aircraft carriers, the vaunted flagships of the fleet. He’d reinvest the savings not only in new munitions — which the Navy badly needs — but in more big-deck amphibious warships and a modern version of the Perry-class frigate phased out this year.

Let’s start with the carrier cutback, sure to be Polmar’s most controversial idea. We should “take a holiday for 10 or 15 years” on building new nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, he told me this morning. With the carrier fleet down to 10 flattops while it awaits delivery of the future USS Ford, already $2.4 billion over budget, he said,

(...SNIPPED)

 

[CougarKing]

Giving the LCS more teeth:

Diplomat

US Navy Wants New Missile for Littoral Combat Ship by End of 2016

However, no decision on what new missile system to purchase has been made yet, according to a U.S. Navy admiral.
L1001025
By Franz-Stefan Gady
January 08, 2016



The United States Navy wants to equip its burgeoning fleet of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) with a new over-the-horizon missile by the end of 2016, the Navy’s surface warfare director, Rear Admiral Peter Fanta, told USNI News in a recent interview.

According to Fanta, equipping the LCSs with a new missile is “an absolute requirement” for the U.S. Navy. By the end of 2016 the admiral wants to have a new missile on the ships at least as a demonstration.

The U.S. Navy has rebranded the LCS as a frigate due to recent advances in effective counter-swarm defenses and is looking to increase the ships’ firepower. Naval engineers are currently studying what missile system would fit best on the LCS.



(...SNIPPED)

 

[CougarKing]

The 2nd time this month:

Defense News

In Singapore, Another US Navy LCS Is Sidelined With Machinery Problems
By Christopher P. Cavas, Defense News 9:02 p.m. EST January 21, 2016


WASHINGTON — For the second time in a month, a US Navy littoral combat ship (LCS) has been sidelined due to machinery problems.

The Fort Worth, a Freedom-class LCS that has been operating for more than a year in the western Pacific, “experienced a casualty to the ship’s combining gears during an in-port period in Singapore Jan. 12,” according to Lt. Cmdr. Matt Knight, a spokesman for the US Pacific Fleet.

So far, according to Knight, “the casualty appears to be caused by a failure to follow established procedures during maintenance.”

(...SNIPPED)

 

[CougarKing]

Harpoons on the LCS?

Military.com

Boeing Says Harpoon Missile Light Enough for Littoral Combat Ship

Feb 02, 2016 | by Hope Hodge Seck

Boeing Co. is recommending that new Littoral Combat Ships be mounted with Harpoon missile launchers this year before routine trials near Mayport, Florida, a company official said.

In a recent interview with Military.com, Jeffrey "Scott" Jones, Boeing's global sales and marketing lead for the Harpoon and a retired Navy rear admiral, said a new upgrade kit that aims to double the missile's range makes it a strong candidate for mounting on the LCS and the frigate that will follow.

The Navy's director of surface warfare, Rear Adm. Peter Fanta, called an over-the-horizon missile an "absolute requirement" for the ship in a January interview with USNI News, adding that Harpoon was one of the systems under consideration to do the job. Fanta said he wanted to mount a missile on the LCS by the end of this year, for demonstration purposes at a minimum.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[ArmyRick]

Interesting to see the designs of the new USN ships (Freedom class, Independence Class and Zumwalt class).

For you navy guys out there, what are  your thoughts on the LCS?

 

[NavyShooter]

One dropped into Halifax briefly in the fall.  I only saw it from afar.

First impression:  TINY

Second impression:  For a USN ship, it's not that heavily armed.

Third impression:  Minimal AA capability....sounds like a bad plan, especially given the slimming down of the carrier fleets.

Additional points:- Crew is small!  no redundancy in personnel....those folks are all busy.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Here is an easy upgrade for them

 

[FSTO]

Interesting to see the designs of the new USN ships (Freedom class, Independence Class and Zumwalt class).

For you navy guys out there, what are  your thoughts on the LCS?

From what I can find they are called Little Crappy Ships for a reason.

http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.ca/2016/02/as-lcs-failure-is-evergreen-so-senate.html

From the website above:

"What have we warned our Navy about for a decade here? In all the ongoing happy-talk about LCS, our Navy is still betting what little professional capital it has on The Hill for a sub-optimal platform we have forced on ourselves. Even in the face of clear programmatic implosion, while some acknowledge shortcomings, we still have high profile personnel speak and act as if the PPT has been made flesh."

 

[ArmyRick]

I am navy dumb, please bear with me.

The LCS looks like a smaller frigate type ship, what is the point of it? The Littoral part I assume it means to fight close to land? Is there any benefit to it?

I need someone to place this in a "Squad 1..2..3..1" breakdown for me

Thanks,

Not-navy rick

 

[NavyShooter]

Something like 90% of the world's population lives within a handful of miles of every shoreline in the world.

Controlling the inshore area is important, and most warships are designed for deep ocean operations (Blue-water navy) not close-inshore (Brown-water) operations.

These ships were supposed to be optimized for that short-range, close to shore stuff, and not so good at the deep ocean stuff.

The desire is almost always to make a ship as multi-role as possible, but in the LCS, they seem to have made the LSVW of the Navy world.

NS

 

[FSTO]

The proponents of LCS touted it as a littoral war fighter that could be easily optimized for the mission at hand and in theatre by changing modules (ASW modules, MCM modules, bolt on Harpoon or Sea Sparrow) and have a minimum crew.
From what I hear the crew is too small and is being run off its feet, they have yet to prove the capability of changing the modules outside of the continental US, there is a myriad of engineering issues that could be design or lack of crew to do the proper PM and they have needed a far more extensive FLS to support the one unit deployed to Singapore. There seems to be a large cadre of the SWO's (Surface Warfare Officers - same as our MARS Officers) who are not buying the idea that the LCS is a true replacement to the Oliver Hazard Perry (OHP) class frigate. They likely bristle when LCS and Frigate are mentioned in the same sentence!

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Personally I don’t think the USN has the stomach for the Littoral battleground. Even in a “limited war” there is a high likelihood of a ship loss and significant causalities. The USN of today appears very risk adverse. I wonder if they can have a fleet of small ships manned by foreigners working for the USN to conduct these activities.   

 

[Danjanou]

Here is an easy upgrade for them

Even cheaper options available