Originally posted by Gun Grape
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Posted: July 30, 2015 4:51 PM
Surface-to-Surface Missile Test for LCS Successful
WASHINGTON — Engineering development tests of modified Longbow Hellfire missiles for use on littoral combat ships (LCSs) were successfully conducted in June, a Naval Sea Systems Command spokesman said in a July 30 release.
Integration of the Longbow Hellfire missile system, designated the Surface-to-Surface Missile Module (SSMM), will increase the lethality of the Navy’s fleet of LCSs. The SSMM is expected to be fully integrated and ready to deploy on LCS missions in late 2017.
“This test was very successful and overall represents a big step forward in SSMM development for LCS,” said CAPT Casey Moton, LCS Mission Modules program manager.
Termed Guided Test Vehicle-1, the event was designed to specifically test the Longbow Hellfire launcher, the missile, and its seeker versus High-Speed Maneuvering Surface Targets (HSMSTs). The HSMSTs served as surrogates for Fast Inshore Attack Craft that are a potential threat to Navy ships worldwide.
During the mid-June tests off the coast of Virginia, the modified Longbow Hellfire missiles successfully destroyed a series of maneuvering small boat targets. The system “hit” seven of eight targets engaged, with the lone miss attributed to a target issue not related to the missile’s capability. The shots were launched from the Navy’s research vessel Relentless.
The test scenarios included hitting targets at both maximum and minimum missile ranges. After a stationary target was engaged, subsequent targets, conducting serpentine maneuvers were engaged. The tests culminated in a three-target “raid” scenario. During this scenario all missiles from a three-shot “ripple fire” response struck their individual targets.
Integration of the “fire-and-forget” Longbow Hellfire missile on LCS represents the next evolution in capability being developed for inclusion in the Increment 3 version of the surface warfare mission package for LCS. When fully integrated and tested, each 24-shot missile module will bring added firepower to complement the LCS’s existing 57mm gun, SEARAM missiles and armed MH-60 helicopter.
http://www.seapowermagazine.org/stor...0730-ssmm.html
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Originally posted by Tankersteve View Post1. Are there standing universal principles of ship design (that may have evolved, as our understanding about the superiority of battleships and then aircraft carriers also evolved) or nation-specific ones, such as Italians seemingly always favoring faster ships with their primarily Med focus, or the idea that every (expeditionary) ship of a certain (decent) size/tonnage should have point defense, ASW, ASuW and AA capabilities, with sensors to match?
Tankersteve
Italian ships have (relatively) low endurance and heavily armed for the tonnage. Why? Italians are focused on Mediterranean. Don't need humongous endurance inside the Roman Lake.
Old time Royal Navy and current US Navy ships need humongous endurance because of their world wide defense commitment. Their ships are larger than most for added range.
French and Danish ships are much lighter armed than their peers because they still have far flung colonies to patrol but don't really need major warships to enforce fishing rights or drive away pirates. Large ships are more expensive to maintain.
As far as weapons, they depend on what the role of the ship is designed for. Usually ships focus on one aspect of naval warfare with limited abilities in others. Air defense destroyers focus on fleet air defense. Anti sub ships rely on air defense ships to cover them while they hunt for subs. It's expensive to cram all known functions of naval warfare into a single hull.
Here's an extreme example of a lightly armed warship:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thetis..._patrol_vessel
She's a 3500t patrol vessel, armed with a 76mm gun and a handful of machineguns. But she can cruise 16k km
Here's a 3500t frigate armed to the teeth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formidable-class_frigate
She has less than half the range of Thetis."Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.
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Originally posted by Tankersteve View PostI am not a naval officer or engineer. However, I am not sure that a lightly armed, lightly built, very role-specific ship is the one I would want to be on. I appreciate the role of modularity. I would offer that the Mk41 VLS (and follow-on systems) are the hallmark of naval modularity. Perhaps in the future, space should be provided for faster sensor and workstation changes (or simply open architecture software workstations in the CiC or whatever squids call it).
But the LCS has very little capability in its own self-defense. It is undermanned to the point that crews report being overstressed just standing regular watches. It has to have made significant tradeoffs (likely in endurance, possibly in seakeeping and even seaworthiness) for the vaunted 40 knot speed. It is overly dependent on its aviation assets which may not be as available during various weather conditions. And it is weight-sensitive, and therefore limited in its own expansion through modularity - this is no pickup truck of a ship. It's more of a sports car with a radar detector that can be traded out for a scanner to monitor police or fire nets.
I'm on this site to learn. I have a few questions that may help me understand/appreciate the LCS design.
1. Are there standing universal principles of ship design (that may have evolved, as our understanding about the superiority of battleships and then aircraft carriers also evolved) or nation-specific ones, such as Italians seemingly always favoring faster ships with their primarily Med focus, or the idea that every (expeditionary) ship of a certain (decent) size/tonnage should have point defense, ASW, ASuW and AA capabilities, with sensors to match?
2. Why the preeminence given to sensors nowadays, which appears to outsiders at the expense of lethal systems to deal with the data produced by those sensors?
Tankersteve
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True Destroyer sailor...
Originally posted by desertswo View PostI am both. In fact, for three years I was the Navy's "school master" on all things engineering and damage control related. My staff of 32 officers and CPOs taught every officer assigned to a surface combatant, from brand new Ensigns to senior Captains on their way to their major command rides. Among other facilities in my bag of tricks were fire fighting and DC wet trainers. In all approximately 18 of my 25 years of active duty were spent either being an engineer at sea, a fleet engineering inspector, or an instructor. So with that as my bona fides, my take on these ships is that they are simply not survivable in an environment wherein missiles and/or major caliber guns are in play. Why? Aluminum hull combined with minimal manning. Bad combination all around. If I were king for a day, they'd be gone . . . with the exception of their 40 knot speed.
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Originally posted by blidgepump View PostIn short..... "the Good Captain feels the need for speed" or " I'll have what [He's] having......
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The Littoral Combat Ship’s mine countermeasures (MCM) mission package will not reach initial operational capability (IOC) by the end of September as planned, after reliability issues forced the program to stretch out the test period and delay Pentagon-level initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E).
USS Independence (LCS-2) has been off the coast of Florida conducting a technical evaluation since April, and that test event was supposed to have wrapped up by early June to allow for IOT&E this month and a final IOC declaration by the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30.
But LCS Mission Modules Program Manager Capt. Casey Moton said Thursday at a Mine Warfare Association lunch that across-the-board reliability problems in the two start-to-finish mine clearance runs in the technical evaluation led the program to extend the evaluation for several months rather than move prematurely to IOT&E.
“At a high level, we’ve been pleased with the performance of the individual MCM systems in detecting, classifying and identifying mines,” he said.
“Each of the systems is doing well in the missions that they were designed to do – they’re finding mines on the bottom, they’re finding mines in the near-surface, they’re finding mines in the volume. And frankly, they’re doing so I think better than we, in some cases, anticipated.”
But, Moton continued, “my primary focus right now is reliability. It’s not enough that the systems are good at detecting, classifying and identifying mines – I need to deliver systems that can offer sustained, repeatable performance. And so far, I’m not satisfied with how that’s going. I’m not satisfied with that performance,” he said.
“In the runs so far, principally in Run Number Two, we experienced some ship and some system mission package failures that hurt our reliability. So we’re very confident that we know all the issues that occurred, there’s not a one of them that we don’t have a corrective action path that’s being executed. So I’m confident. But what we have decided to do is, we’re going to add some run time to techeval. So we’re going to make [the technical evaluation] go a little bit farther because we want to be rock solid as we head into IOT&E. There is going to be a delay, we’re talking a few months – I don’t want to give you an exact number, it’s not a year but it’s not a couple weeks either. It’s going to be a couple months.”
Moton said there was not a single point of failure in the testing – in some instances, the ship itself had a failure, in some cases a procedure proved unworkable for the Navy crew and in some cases there were integration flaws. He added that the actual mine detection tools – the Airborne Laser Mine Detection System (ALMDS) and the Airborne Mine Neutralization System (AMNS) experienced fewer problems out at sea. Rather, the integration issues affected the communication system for the mission package and the launch and recovery system for the Remote Multimission Vehicle (RMMV), for example.
As for the procedural problems, Moton said that a procedure developed by a subject matter expert may, in theory, be the best way to accomplish a task, but it may not make the most sense for a crew of sailors on a ship at sea. In those instances, this extended techeval period simply buys more time to work out the kinks before demonstrating the crew’s and systems’ performance for Pentagon testers.
Moton praised the crew, which underwent extensive training last fall and is “showing significant proficiency,” as well as resiliency during this lengthy preparation period. He said shore support, including a remote operating station, was also performing well and made him confident that the ship and its MCM mission package would be well taken care of on deployment.
He added that the testing community, both in the Navy and at the Pentagon, were supportive of the decision to delay IOT&E until all the reliability issues are worked out. The office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) is looking at the schedule now to determine when the test may be rescheduled.
Overall, Moton said he’s not concerned about the mission package’s ability to reach IOC.
“There’s not a single [failure] that caused us to look at the systems and say, that’s not going to work, or we’re going to have to take and off-ramp. It’s all stuff we can go after.”
http://news.usni.org/2015/07/30/lcs-...ility-concerns
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First off, glad to see desertswo posting on here again after things appear to be back to normal on the site.
Second, I want to address this new surface-to-surface mission module for the LSC. While I know this was planned right from the start, with the NLOS missile, and then the modified Griffin missile, and now apparently a naval Hellfire variant, IS IT USEFUL?
I know the RIM-116 RAM has SOME utility against surface threats (at least it's manufacturer claims it does). So why not just develop this capability for defense against small/fast boats?
They have similar warhead wights, sure the RAM has half the range, but I thought the point was more about defense against small/fast boats and not necessarily strike missiles against surface threats. Maybe I am missile something, but it doesn't appear to me the new naval Hellfire gives you anything the RAM couldn't. Yet now you have to take up a missile module to have this capability on-board. And you still don't have a relevant anti-surface weapon for anything other than a close range small/fast boat. Neither the 57mm or the Hellfire have the range or destruction required to be considered a serious threat to larger surface combatants.
Am I reading this wrong?
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RAM with HAS mode is very useful against surface threats, and used in this fashion for swarm defense by the German Navy. RAM Block 1 has about the same range in HAS mode as Hellfire, Block 2 - currently IOC for USN - has a classified considerably higher range. The HAS mode is a simple software update that should be installed with all currently deployed launchers, and was specifically developed for anti-speedboat defense.
What Hellfire gives you that RAM doesn't is lower cost. Block 1 RAM has a unit cost of US$ 450,000 (Block 2 US$ 750,000), current Hellfire has a unit cost of around US$ 100,000.
In addition, for LCS, you have limited capacity and cover with the RAM launcher. Hellfire is supposed to be vertically-launched for LCS, giving it 360-degree capability and probably a bit more than the 11 shots SeaRAM has. SeaRAM additionally complicates it a bit by using its own radar instead of feeding off the ship's (superior) sensors.
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Originally posted by JA Boomer View PostSecond, I want to address this new surface-to-surface mission module for the LSC. While I know this was planned right from the start, with the NLOS missile, and then the modified Griffin missile, and now apparently a naval Hellfire variant, IS IT USEFUL?
I know the RIM-116 RAM has SOME utility against surface threats (at least it's manufacturer claims it does). So why not just develop this capability for defense against small/fast boats?
Unit cost for RAM is $998.000
(Both figures from Wiki)
They have similar warhead wights, sure the RAM has half the range, but I thought the point was more about defense against small/fast boats and not necessarily strike missiles against surface threats. Maybe I am missile something, but it doesn't appear to me the new naval Hellfire gives you anything the RAM couldn't. Yet now you have to take up a missile module to have this capability on-board. And you still don't have a relevant anti-surface weapon for anything other than a close range small/fast boat. Neither the 57mm or the Hellfire have the range or destruction required to be considered a serious threat to larger surface combatants.
That extra range gives you standoff capability. I would much rather start killing my attackers at 12 miles than at 6. Fewer attackers that can get me within the range of their weapon systems.
LCS isn't designed to nor should it go against large surface threats. If we used that standard for "Should we build this platform?" Then The Navy would have nothing but CVs and BBs. The Army would only have Abrams tanks. Because OMG what if that Humvee/Striker/MRAP runs up on an enemy tank?
BTW what are those threats? And how many do our future enemies have?
LCS will be getting a ASM in the future. The Navy's RFP for that program should be out next year.
(edit: See Kato beat me to the reply button. )
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Captain, what size gun are you thinking of? As I recall a mk 45 5in 54 machinery went down 2 decks and the magazines another couple of decks on a Sprucan. Would either LCS class be able to accomodate that or would we have to shop around overseas for another system? A larger gun would also have to have a more robust fire control system than the current gfcs they have for the mk 110.
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Originally posted by kato View PostRAM with HAS mode is very useful against surface threats, and used in this fashion for swarm defense by the German Navy. RAM Block 1 has about the same range in HAS mode as Hellfire, Block 2 - currently IOC for USN - has a classified considerably higher range. The HAS mode is a simple software update that should be installed with all currently deployed launchers, and was specifically developed for anti-speedboat defense.
What Hellfire gives you that RAM doesn't is lower cost. Block 1 RAM has a unit cost of US$ 450,000 (Block 2 US$ 750,000), current Hellfire has a unit cost of around US$ 100,000.
In addition, for LCS, you have limited capacity and cover with the RAM launcher. Hellfire is supposed to be vertically-launched for LCS, giving it 360-degree capability and probably a bit more than the 11 shots SeaRAM has. SeaRAM additionally complicates it a bit by using its own radar instead of feeding off the ship's (superior) sensors.
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Originally posted by Gun Grape View PostSure it is. Against the threats that LCS will most likely encounter in its operating environment. Small boats
Originally posted by Gun Grape View PostUnit cost for maverick missile is $110,000
Unit cost for RAM is $998.000
(Both figures from Wiki)
That extra range gives you standoff capability. I would much rather start killing my attackers at 12 miles than at 6. Fewer attackers that can get me within the range of their weapon systems.
Originally posted by Gun Grape View PostLCS isn't designed to nor should it go against large surface threats. If we used that standard for "Should we build this platform?" Then The Navy would have nothing but CVs and BBs. The Army would only have Abrams tanks. Because OMG what if that Humvee/Striker/MRAP runs up on an enemy tank?
BTW what are those threats? And how many do our future enemies have?
Originally posted by Gun Grape View PostLCS will be getting a ASM in the future. The Navy's RFP for that program should be out next year.
And if the LCS was outfitted with ESSM (which IMO isn't unreasonable), the ESSM apparently has a surface targeting capability as well. I understand we live in a budget driven environment, but the cost to develop, test, and field the new surface-to-surface mission module is a waste IMO. Existing weapons can do the same job as well as provide the LCS with addition capabilities.
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ASM= AntiShip Missile You post was talking about a anti-surface weapon.
The Navy is putting out a RFP on a antiship missile for the LCS and LCS based Frigate.
Will either be a modified harpoon or the Norwegian Naval Strike Missile.
The Navy has already tested the NSM from the flight deck of a LCS. Both, NSM and Harpoon, are capable of hitting both ship and shore targets.
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Originally posted by JA Boomer View Post
And if the LCS was outfitted with ESSM (which IMO isn't unreasonable), the ESSM apparently has a surface targeting capability as well. I understand we live in a budget driven environment, but the cost to develop, test, and field the new surface-to-surface mission module is a waste IMO. Existing weapons can do the same job as well as provide the LCS with addition capabilities.
When you shoot all your ESSMs to take out small boats, what will you use to take out the Silkworm?
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