Posted on 01/16/2014 9:11:06 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
The Office of the Secretary of Defense has instructed the Navy to reduce its planned buy of the new Littoral Combat Ship from 52 to 32 ships, substantially limiting the size and scope of the emerging multi-mission, shallow-water ship program, according to reports.
Defense News cites a Jan. 6 memo from Acting Deputy Defense Secretary Christine Fox account announcing the decision pointing to budget guidance from the White House on some large acquisition decisions.
Pentagon and Navy officials would not comment on the memo or the acquisition decision regarding LCS fleet size, citing budget deliberations as pre-decisional.
“We continue to work with OSD (office of the Secretary of Defense) on all our ship acquisitions,” a Navy official told Military.com.
However, the LCS program has long been the center of controversy and disagreement within the Navy as well as analysts and lawmakers. An internal Navy report released last year questioned the ship’s ability to perform its mission, and a number of lawmakers and analysts have raised questions wondering if the platform can survive in combat.
The $37 billion LCS program, in development since 2002, is a next-generation surface-ship aimed at delivering a fast, agile, littoral vessel equipped with technologically advanced mission packages engineered for surface warfare, anti-submarine and mine-countermeasure missions, among others.
Overall, the Navy had planned to acquire as many as 52 LCS vessels. In total, this high ship number will comprise a large percentage of the Navy’s overall surface fleet.
The LCS class consists of two variants, the Freedom and Independence — designed and built by two industry teams, respectively led by Lockheed Martin and an Austal USA-led team. Contracts were awarded to Lockheed Martin and Austal USA on December 29, 2010, for the construction of up to 10 ships.
Navy officials and senior leaders have responded by saying the ship’s speed of 40-knots, combined with its sensors, weapons, aircraft and technology packages bring substantial advantage to the fleet and improve survivability. They also emphasize that, while survivable, the LCS is not intended to function as a destroyer or heavy warship but rather perform littoral missions.
So far, the first three LCS ships have been commissioned and the fourth, the USS Coronado, is slated for commissioning in April of this year, Naval Sea Systems Command spokesman Matthew Leonard said.
LCS 5 and 6 launched in December of this year, and ships 7 through 16 are in different stages of production, Leonard added. The Navy plans to wind up delivering four LCS ships per year.
“With some of these they are building portions and modules. They build pieces separately. Fabrication involves cutting steel and beginning to build larger portions which will be assembled together following the laying of the keel,” Leonard said.
Speaking at the Navy Surface Warfare Annual Symposium Jan. 15, Chief Naval Officer Adm. Jonathan Greenert praised the development of the LCS platform, saying the ships would soon be performing mission across the globe in places such as Bahrain, Singapore and the South China Sea. In fact, the Navy Pacific rebalance strategy calls for four LCS ships to be on rotational deployments through Singapore.
“They (LCS) are going to start coming at us and we have got to accept them and move along, bring that mission package capability into the fleet,” Greenert said. Greenert made no mention of the potential reduction in LCS fleet size.
The Navy’s first LCS, the USS Freedom, recently completed a 10-month long deployment which wound up resulting in operational missions in the South China Sea and disaster relief in the Philippines.
Navy officials have long maintained that this first deployment will help refine concepts of operations and tactics, techniques and procedures for the ship as well as afford an occasion to identify and correct problems with the platform. The deployment gave the Navy the opportunities to make adjustments, fixes and corrections for the remainder of the fleet.
“The deployment of Freedom provided a lot of lessons learned and it proved out several key concepts of the program and the platform,” Leonard said.
The fixes included addressing areas such as air compressors, cabling and the ship service diesel generators, officials said.
It is neither littoral nor combat ship. This lemon and crew must keep out of the beach as far as possible for safety reasons. A couple of T-72 tanks are capable to sink a dozen of ships like that under two minutes.
Yeah, this is a ship looking for a mission, not a ship built for a mission.
I guess it is just a gee-whiz R&D platform. That’s ok I guess, but they are trying to war game around it and integrate the LCS into strategy. Whatever. It’s just Chinese money after all.
Wise move. LCS + little crappy ships
THis is a good decision. I think they should stop at 24 myself and then move on to a true multi-role frigate design.
However that still leaves us with 24 or 32 of these. They need to be made effective and I think they can...but they still cost too much.
The LCS has to fight in the littorals. In the littorals it may face numerous threats:
1) Small, perhaps swarming, fast boats mounted with machine guns and RPGs.
2) Corvettes and light frigates mounted with anti-shipping missiles.
3) Conventional diesel/electric or nuclear submarines.
4) Mines.
5) Aircraft.
The LCS is supposed to be designed to fight in this environment.
It does need a light, small missile, like the Longbow, and other weapons like the 30mm auto cannons it mounts, and the 57mm naval gun, to fight the small craft. A 6-12 mile range for combating these threats is adequate.
However, it will also face larger corvette and light frigate sized vessels in the littorals. Right now the LCS has no adequate offense for these types of vessels. They desperately need a longer range anti-shipping missile. The Harpoon would be great for this. One, four missile cannister would work and would be relatively easy to mount. So would a vertically launched Later they can add the VLS these vessels were deigned to ultimately have and place four of the coming LRASM missiles in them. The smaller missiles lack the effective range or size to combat these types of vessels.
The point is, for the role the LCS is meant for, it needs both capabilities. A 6-12 mile missile capability for “swarming” small vessels, and a 40-60 mile missile capability for larger corvettes and light frigates.
As to the submarines, with the capability to carry two medium ASW helicopters (SH-60s) and the capability in an ASW module to have various other options, it should be able to handle that mission.
As to mine warfare, with a Mine Warfare module that allows for remote hunting devices, its own weapons, and the ability to carry a MH-53 Sea Dragon anti-mine helo, it should be able to handle that mission as well.
As to aircraft, its Rolling Air Frame missiles (RAM) are meant to protect it from that threat, but they too are short ranged. By adding the eight cell VLS the vessels were designed for (but did not have installed) these vessels could then pack four of those cells with quad pack them with ESSM and then they would also have a very decent medium range anti-air capability too.
That’s the kind of thing they need to do for the 32 vessels they do build.
Yea, yea, I know why they’re going down this dead-end road.
The fact remains that aluminum expands roughly three times as much as steel due to temperature changes.
And that means that stuff’s going to fail long before anyone takes a poke at the ship with a ballistic weapon.
I hear that many yacht owners make guests empty all change from pockets before coming aboard their yacht out of fear of a penny falling into a crack and eating a hole in the hull.
I didn’t think of the expansion differentials. How is that managed during welding? How do they stress relieve after welding?
I have no direct evidence. I’ve done lots of welding on both types of metal, and being an engineer, I’m not daft enough to try to weld aluminum and steel together.
Do you know how they stress relieve a steel and aluminum joint?
With aluminum having a temperature expansion coefficient about 50%+ more than that of steel, it doesn’t really matter how one stress relieves the joint.
It’s like that old Loverboy song: “Pig and Elephant DNA Just Won’t Splice.”
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