Originally Posted by B.Smitty

Umm, the LCS is a 2800 ton ship, the F100 is a 5800 ton ship. An 8" gun is not going to work on either.

Remember the job of the LCS (or an F100 replacement) is not to bombard beaches. It's to provide relatively economic, littoral forward presense, maritime patrol, anti-mine, ASW, and ASuW.

The gun spec'd for the LCS prototype is a 57mm Bofors, not a 5".

The Mod 4 would be an easy upgrade for the F100, anything larger would be expensive and unsuitable for the mission of this ship.

The weapons the F100 has are fine. If anything they might be overkill. I could see reducing the VLS cells to make room for more electronics or multi-mission areas.

One site had the draught of the F100 at 15ft, compared to 10ft for the LCS, or 20ft for a Burke.

Is that shallow enough? I don't know.

The best thing about a real frigate, IMHO, besides the range, is that it doesn't have to do the time-wasting module swap when the mission changes. It, presumably, has enough room to be multi-mission out of the box.