Littoral Combat Ships

[ace16807]

Mind clearance? I'm pretty sure the Germans took a dim view of L.Ron Hubbard and his Scientology methods in mind clearance...;)


As to these ships I'm beginning to wonder why the hell the Navy decided to go with them the more I read when everyone one else seems to favor well armed frigates today. God help an LCS if it meets up with one of those new frigates.

It's not expected to go head-to-head with one of those frigates. The LCS isn't designed or advertised as a ASuW platform, killing FAC/suicide boats withstanding.

[jlvfr]

It's not expected to go head-to-head with one of those frigates. The LCS isn't designed or advertised as a ASuW platform, killing FAC/suicide boats withstanding.

Yeah, but... what IS the LCS supposed to do, then? Pretty much every navy in the world has light ships that operate reasonably well, in coastal waters or close, in ASW, ASuW and AAA roles, in escort or single... except the US... who is now building a hugely expensive "light" ship that does... what?

[TopHatter]

Yeah, but... what IS the LCS supposed to do, then? Pretty much every navy in the world has light ships that operate reasonably well, in coastal waters or close, in ASW, ASuW and AAA roles, in escort or single... except the US... who is now building a hugely expensive "light" ship that does... what?

Yeah I kinda wonder about that myself. The entire concept seems awfully amorphous

[kato]

Actually, pretty much everyone is designing boats like the LCS. Modular ships for expeditionary deployment. It's just that everyone designs them to their own vices.

The Italians can't decide whether they want weapons on them and hence break the modular approach by splitting it in two classes. The Germans overdesign their modular corvette until it breaks all nominal size categories. The Dutch want to pack in as much as possible in as small a package as possible, as in along the lines of "why don't we put Tomahawks on those multi-purpose ships?". The French go their traditional path of breaking up their procurement into a ton of semi-specialized projects all of which are "multi-mission" and all supposed to do limited MIO/ASuW as part of their mission profile but in the end end up dedicated to specific roles. The Spanish nominally multi-mission OPV program (BAM) is underfunded to the point where you can consider it cancelled after a few units, even if the ships currently prove as pretty robust good ocean MIO ships on deployment in the Indian Ocean. And so on.

When you think of the frigates Europeans and others are building - FREMM etc - you have to think of them in the same virtual context as the US building the AB Flight III ships instead. And don't forget those 14,500-ton "destroyers" either.


LCS suffers from the fact that for some reason the Navy designed a bit of everything into it that the classes it replaces has. It's ASW, we need two helos like on the OHP. And a towed array sonar please. Oh, or maybe we could use those buzzword "drones" for this. It's ASuW, it needs to be as fast as those PHMs the Navy used to have. Oh, but we don't use heavy missiles anymore, so just put something on it that can take out as many pirates as possible in as short a time as possible. It's MCM, well, we need to be able to do... something. With drones. And lasers. Lasers are good. Ah, and don't forget, no fighting aircraft. We have AEGIS ships for that. Let's use the cheapest radar we can find for this ship.

LCS is where you end up when you try to put those together. With some compromises. At least if you add to the equation that the USN doesn't really have any solid concept what "littoral" means - like, somewhere where you could run into a coast. Within four hours at flank speed. Or "littoral warfare" - yeah, that's that stuff with terrorist suicide boats, right?

In the end you'll probably end up with a couple hulls dedicated to SOF support of some kind (insertion, forward C3 platform, coastal patrol mothership, supply...), perhaps a couple hulls pulling MIO/surveillance/patrol duty with secondary fleets of the USN, perhaps with some ELINT systems installed (i could see some use for that in 5th Fleet, 6th Fleet and in particular 7th Fleet), and a couple hulls carrying a limited (but evolving) scope of mine warfare systems. Not exactly what you'd want your standard frigate doing, but useful to some extent too.

[jlvfr]

Actually, pretty much everyone is designing boats like the LCS. Modular ships for expeditionary deployment. It's just that everyone designs them to their own vices.

But, afaik, all those ships have at least, some basic armament. And no one is trying to get that weird "40-knot" requirement...

[ace16807]

But, afaik, all those ships have at least, some basic armament. And no one is trying to get that weird "40-knot" requirement...

Those ships are typically designed to fulfill the role of a main surface combatant of said navy. They need to perform all of the core warfare specialties (AAW, ASuW, ASW) to a decent extent. They, for the most part, do not need to deal with SOF insertions and potential swarms of fast attack craft. And MIW is simply too expensive to be worth the investment (or they rely on dedicated MIW platforms). As Kato indicated, LCS is a modular system that smells like a platform/budget with no actual strategy in mind. The lack of guiding strategy that normally dictates acquisitions resulted in an amorphous platform that can be transformed when a strategy arises. However, said platform is just a super expensive piece of hardware that fills mission roles that seemingly could have been fulfilled by other, more cost effective platforms.

[gunnut]

All I want is a small warship with fricken laser beam on the bow. Throw me a bone here. What do we have?

LCS

Riiiight....

They are, however, very fast.

Are they modular?

Absolutely.

Oh, that's a start.

[gf0012-aust]

Germany is testing a modular ground C4I system based off the CMS for the F125 that is intended as a full solution for harbour protection - large UUVs doing large-scale patrolling of the inshore waters and constantly scanning the harbour floor with ground-penetrating radar and sidescan sonar; small UUVs inspecting ships beneath the waterline; networked posts at accesses to the site; managed road patrols; containerized phased-array radar controlling airspace and littoral sea surface out to 60 miles... and that's just the stuff it could do five years ago. They apparently started reworking the system last year to fully containerize it with all components including sensors in standard TEUs.

I had visibility to some tech that the USN was working on with some other partners, including NAVSEA and Homeland Security - (a really odd partnering) They'd basically come up with a sandwich type array which meant that literally anything trying to insert itself into a harbour was almost guaranteed to get picked up and subsequently dealt with by other local relevant forces. It got caught up in beltway arguments and ended up becoming stillborn (ie until some T successfully manages to drop a ship in a US port, then everyone will gather around the campfire, sing kumbayah, forget their vested parochial interests and get back on with the job)

Within 2 years of this capability being conceived the chinese had managed to implement bits of it under the guise of a mutual interest in dealing with local terrorism so managed to avoid dual use embargoes by the US and EU and managed to build their own version of it.

a lot of the US probs would go away if they managed to hide US Congressional Reps and stop them from interfering in the national interest due to state based interests. It's a disease that more often (from an outsiders perspective) kills some serious latent US industry/tech capability than advances it.

[kato]

And no one is trying to get that weird "40-knot" requirement...

Italy actually has a similar speed requirement.

But, afaik, all those ships have at least, some basic armament.

German MKS180 will come with a 76mm, two RAM, two 27mm guns. Italian future OPV in multi-role version will come with a 127mm, a 76mm, two .50cal RWS.

[jlvfr]

Italy actually has a similar speed requirement.

You mean the PPA? That has a max of 35knots.

[kato]

Same ballpark for propulsion in the end, especially considering the envisioned larger size.

[surfgun]

Posted: July 21, 2014 1:03 PM

Mayport Will Be Base for Eight Freedom-class LCSs

By RICHARD R. BURGESS, Managing Editor

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy is expanding its support infrastructure at Naval Station Mayport, Fla., to accommodate eight littoral combat ships (LCSs), all of which will be of the single-hull Freedom class.

LCS Squadron Two, the parent squadron of the ships, is overseeing the build-up, which by 2016 will include an LCS Support Facility, LCS Training Facility, Integrated Tactical Trainer, and Mission Module Readiness Center, according to LT Sonny Lorrius of the staff of Naval Surface Force Atlantic.

The LCS Support Facility also will serve as headquarters for LCS Squadron Two. The build-up is expected to add 700 Sailors to Mayport.

The eight Freedom-class ships — built by a team led by Lockheed Martin — scheduled to be based at Mayport are the future Little Rock (LCS 9), Sioux City (LCS 11), Wichita (LCS 13), Billings (LCS 15), Indianapolis (LCS 17), LCS 19, LCS 21 and LCS 23, the latter three yet to be named.

[surfgun]

A new multi-media advert.
http://www.navy.mil/ah_online/lcs/index.html

[surfgun]

WASHINGTON — The littoral combat ship USS Coronado will get a chance at an historic LCS first this fall when it launches a surface-to-surface missile in tests off Southern California.

The Navy confirmed this week that the Coronado is scheduled to test-launch the Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile (NSM) off Point Mugu, California, where the Naval Air Warfare Center maintains an extensively-instrumented missile range.

The test will follow a successful NSM launch July 10 from the Norwegian frigate Fridtjof Nansen during Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises near Hawaii. The frigate fired a single NSM at the decommissioned amphibious ship Ogden and scored a direct hit.

The NSM is a 13-foot-long weapon already in service aboard Norwegian warships and with Polish defense forces in a land-based, truck-mounted version. A helicopter-launched version is under development, and the company recently announced it was working on a smaller, submarine-launched variant.

Kongsberg has been aggressively targeting the US Navy as a potential NSM customer. The LCS, although planned to carry the non-line-of-sight missile, has been without a missile system since the Army cancelled NLOS development in early 2011. The Navy recently decided to begin development work to adapt the proven Hellfire missile to naval use for the LCS.

The NSM, in the 500-pound class of missile, is significantly larger than the Hellfire, in the 100-pound class. The smaller missile could essentially be a placeholder until a more effective weapon can be identified.

While there have been calls in the service to develop new surface-to-surface missiles, the Navy emphasized the upcoming NSM tests are not in response to a specific requirement.

“The planned September live-firing demonstration aboard USS Coronado (LCS 4) of the Naval Strike Missile under the Foreign Comparative Testing Program will test the ship’s feasibility to execute an increased anti-surface warfare role,” Lt. Kurt Larson, a spokesman with the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) in Washington, said in a statement.

“Additionally, it will provide insights into the weapon’s stated capabilities of increased range, survivability and lethality.

“While there is currently no requirement for this capability aboard LCS, we view the demonstration as an opportunity to test a possible future warfighting tool,” Larson added.

For now, the US Navy is not committing to anything beyond the September tests.

“At this time, there are no further tests planned for the NSM or similar weapons,” said Lt. Jackie Pau, a Navy spokesperson at the Pentagon.

In addition to Kongsberg, other missile makers, including Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, have been working on potential weapons to arm the LCS. Lockheed makes the Hellfire, while Raytheon’s small Griffin missile was briefly considered, then dropped, as an interim weapon aboard LCS.

One key Navy official acknowledged the NSM as an effective weapon.

“Naval Strike Missile is an incredible missile,” Capt. Michael Ladner, NAVSEA’s program manager for surface ship weapons, said during a July 23 interview. A recent war game, he said, showed that “NSM has a highly survivable, very advanced seeker, and it goes 100 miles.”

Just to be considered for LCS, however, the NSM has to be shown to fit aboard the ships. That’s one aim of the Coronado tests, Ladner said.

“The demonstration is not to integrate it into the ship but to launch it, and to explore the concept of operations for launching a missile that can go far from an LCS,” he explained, noting the LCS is not fitted with long-range fire control systems.

“If I can shoot 100 miles, but I can’t see a target at 100 miles, then that may or may not be the right missile for that ship,” Ladner explained. “If we can figure out how to solve the detect-to-engage sequence then that might be the right candidate.”

But, he added, “maybe the right answer is a shorter-range missile that goes closer to what the ship can detect organically. That is what the Navy is looking at right now to understand where we really want to go for this ship class.”

Coronado’s launch of the NSM will be the first-ever firing of a surface-to-surface missile from an LCS, NAVSEA confirmed.

To date, only the first LCS, Freedom, has launched a missile. The ship fired a Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM), intended for close-in point defense, during a 2009 test and in fleet exercises in 2010.
LCS to conduct test of Norwegian missile | Navy Times | navytimes.com

[kato]

noting the LCS is not fitted with long-range fire control systems.

Lemme scratch my head a bit here, what do "long-range fire control systems" give us for a missile that uses GPS to navigate - without mid-course control - until in terminal phase selecting its target by prioritizing targets from its IIR seeker against an internal database? All you need for OTH-T is a drone or helo with halfway modern comms.

What's next, destroyers getting rid of Tomahawks cuz they can't see half a thousand miles inland?

Coronado’s launch of the NSM will be the first-ever firing of a surface-to-surface missile from an LCS, NAVSEA confirmed.

That would mean neither Griffon nor Hellfire was ever fired from an LCS ?
(and the way I see it probably no HAS mode testing for RAM either with LCS ?)

What does the USN spend its sea trials on, apparently only making sure the ship doesn't sink spontaneously?