THE CONTROVERSAL LITTORAL COMBAT SHIP the Littoral Combat Ship Program Is a Little Ship in Modules That Are Supposed to Make LCS So a Big Storm

Home , Littoral combat ship, USS Freedom (LCS-1), USS Independence (LCS-2)

STORM-TOSSED: THE CONTROVERSAL LITTORAL COMBAT SHIP The Littoral Combat Ship program is a little ship in modules that are supposed to make LCS so a big storm. The heavy weather hasn’t let up for a versatile, they’re all still in development, making decade, ever since the first two prototypes suffered their ultimate effectiveness hard to judge. huge cost overruns. Congressional criticism has been chronic, with Senate Armed Services chairman Complicating the question is the fact that LCS is John McCain calling the program mismanaged. really two ships, not one. At the beginning of the The Pentagon itself has been ambivalent. In 2014 program, the Navy selected Marinette Marine in then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel tried to cut Wisconsin—backed by aerospace giant Lockheed the program from 52 ships to 32 and ordered an Martin—and Austal in Alabama to build dueling upgunned “frigate” version. In 2015 Secretary prototypes. Marinette’s ships are all designated Ashton Carter called for cutting LCS from 52 ships with odd numbers (LCS-1 Freedom, LCS-3 Fort to 40, a proposal Congress is still debating. Worth, and so on). These Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships have a sleek but traditional design WHY ALL THE CONTROVERSY? derived from a civilian racing yacht, with an Depending on who you talk to, LCS is either a aluminum superstructure to save weight but a steel versatile model for all future naval vessels or hull for robustness. Austal’s ships, all given even blasphemy against traditional naval virtues. numbers (LCS-2 Independence, LCS-4 Coronado, etc.), are futuristic triple-hulled “trimarans” derived THE CENTRAL QUESTION: from high-speed ferries. These Independence-class Is LCS sufficiently well-armed and protected to serve LCS have a larger flight deck than Marinette’s, but as a real warship, or is it an overpriced auxiliary that their all-aluminum structure is more fragile. must retreat at the first shot fired? The Navy has repeatedly considered a “downselect” Navy leaders praise LCS as an affordable, adaptable to a single design, but so far it’s building both in mothership for a host of unmanned air, surface, equal numbers. Keeping the competition alive and underwater vehicles. LCS’s plug-and-play forces both yards to cut their prices, says Navy equipment modules—when completed—will allow Secretary Ray Mabus. It also gives the Navy more commanders to tailor the ship for different missions: options: not only can you pick the best LCS module minesweeping, sub hunting, defeating swarms of for the mission, you can pick the best-suited LCS fast attack boats. An armaments upgrade will add hull. The downside is the need for separate training missiles to sink bigger ships from a long distance. programs and spare parts supply lines. Finally, and perhaps most crucially, at under $500 million per LCS compared to $2 billion destroyers, Currently, the Navy says it will downselect in 2018 the LCS is the cheapest combat ship the Navy’s or 2019, when it chooses one yard to produce the got, so it can be built in large numbers to conduct frigate variant. But the Navy’s changed its mind presence patrols around the world. before. Even if the Navy tries to stay the course, Congress or a new Secretary of Defense may Naval dissidents deride LCS as undergunned change their minds for them. Given the continuing and fragile. They say it’s a half-baked, high-tech churn and controversy over the Littoral Combat experiment prone to hull cracks, corrosion, and Ship, the only safe bet is uncertainty. embarrassing breakdowns. As for the mission

2 NAVY WANTS LCS ‘FRIGATE’ UPGRADE A YEAR EARLIER: 2018, NOT 2019

By Sydney Freedberg Jr. | May 18, 2016

The two Littoral Combat Ship variants, LCS-1 Freedom (far) and LCS-2 Independence (near).

NATIONAL HARBOR: The Navy wants to start building the upgraded “frigate” version of its controversial Littoral Combat Ship a year earlier than planned, the frigate program manager has said. The fixed-price, winner-take-all competition will “tentatively” happen in 2018 instead of 2019. To make that earlier date, Capt. Dan Brintzinghoffer said at the Sea-Air- Space conference here, the Navy will be “less prescriptive” in saying how to implement the various features of the upgrade, giving each competitor more leeway as it modifies its current LCS design.

WHO ARE THOSE COMPETITORS? Currently, the Navy buys two very different versions of the LCS from two different shipyards: Marinette Marine in Wisconsin—partnered with aerospace giant Lockheed Martin—and Austal on the Gulf Coast. When Defense Secretary Ash Carter decided in 2015 to cut the LCS program from 52 ships to 40, he also ordered the Navy to pick one design and one yard no later than 2019, when production shifted from the original flavor LCS to the upgraded frigate. Now the Navy is shooting for a “downselect” in late 2018, Brintzinghoffer said, with a formal Request For Proposals out late in 2017.

WHAT’S THE HURRY? First of all, to have a healthy competition, you need both competitors to still be building LCS: Otherwise one will have to stop and then restart its production line, driving up its costs and crippling its bid. But the Pentagon’s five-year spending plan (the FYDP) only budgets for one LCS in 2018, Brintzinghoffer explained, and whichever yard got to build it would have a big advantage in a 2019 competition. Moving the decision to 2018 keeps things fair.

Second, while Brintzinghoffer didn’t emphasize this point, starting frigate production a year earlier means the Navy gets more of the upgraded frigate LCS. Conversely, it would get fewer of the original vanilla version, although the Navy plans to backfit at least some of the frigate upgrades on basic LCS. Specifically, the captain said, the number of frigates would go up from eight to 12, a whopping 50 percent increase. (The number of regular Lockheed Martin LCS variant LCS would drop from 32 to 28).

Starting earlier is in fact the only way to get more frigates. Continuing the production run longer is not allowed because Secretary Carter has capped the total production—original flavor LCS plus frigates, in whatever combination—at 40 ships.

3 NAVY WANTS LCS ‘FRIGATE’ UPGRADE A YEAR EARLIER: 2018, NOT 2019

The Navy isn’t thrilled with that figure. “The requirement “The biggest thing is we have to come to across the Navy—based on a 2014 Force Structure Analysis— an agreement with both of the primes… is for 52 small surface combatants,” Brintzinghoffer said, to make sure that the design, the level of echoing Navy leaders. (That figure is likely to increase in design is sufficient and mature enough that the Navy’s ongoing Force Structure Assessment). The Navy could build the 40 LCS and then 12 of something else, but they can competitively bid, because we’re so far there’s no clear alternative design. going to be asking them for fixed price bids,” Brintzinghoffer said. The House Armed Services Committee has voted to add an additional LCS to the administration’s proposed 2017 “In a competition one of the advantages the government budget, but its Senate counterparts have not. In fact, gets is going to be a lower price,” the captain continued, the Senate Armed Services Committee draft “prohibits but for the builders to squeeze costs out of their designs, revisions to or deviations from the current LCS acquisition they needed more freedom to make trade-offs. “We needed strategy, which includes…a down-select to a single variant to give them back some of the trade space,” he said, “so we no later than 2019, and a reduction in the inventory became less prescriptive in the way the two shipbuilders objective to 40 ships. were going to… deliver a particular functional capability.”

So, at least for now, “we’re kind of rolling with the punches That said, the Navy is very clear on the frigate’s capabilities: with the way the budget flows and the direction that we a full suite of anti-ship and anti-submarine sensors and have received,” Brintzinghoffer said, “working towards weapons, combining two of the three “mission modules” an FY18 downselect to a frigate design.” for the existing LCS, plus such improvements as a medium- range “over the horizon” missile to sink enemy ships.

The service also wants to backfit as many of these improvements on the vanilla LCS as possible, with a high priority on that Over The Horizon (OTH) anti-ship missile. Some original flavor LCS may even get redesignated as frigates if they’re upgraded enough, Brintzinghoffer said, although just adding the missile won’t be enough to do it.

Nor is it a simple matter of bolting new gear onto the old design, he warned. It’s much easier to build a big component—say, an OTH missile launcher—into a ship in the first place than it is to add one to a ship already built. A backfitted LCS may well fit fewer OTH missiles than a frigate, for example, or have them in a different place.

When you sit there and say, ‘I want to put something internal to the skin of the ship,’ and it’s big enough that you Austal LCS variant can’t bring it in through a hatch, it now gets very expensive,” Brintzinghoffer told me after the briefing. Which brings So, I asked Brintzinghoffer at his briefing, what’s the you to “the other piece about forward fit and backfit,” he biggest obstacle to moving the competition up a year? said: “When you forward-fit something (i.e. build it into a new ship), you’re paying for it with SCN money, Ship Construction, Navy funds. (Upgrades to an existing ship are) using OPN, which is Other Procurement, Navy.” It’s often harder for items to compete for OPN funds than SCN— just one more complication in the long saga of the LCS.

4 LCS CUT RIPPLES THROUGH NAVY’S NEW 30-YEAR SHIPBUILDING PLAN By Sydney Freedberg Jr. | March 14, 2016

330

PB 17 Plan 321 PB 16 Plan 320 Goal (308 ships)

310 311

300

290

280 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Total fleet size per year in current (PB 17) and last year’s (PB 16) 30-year-shipbuilding plan

WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Ashton Carter cut the “I would bet a paycheck it’s going to be a Littoral Combat Ship program by 12 vessels in the fall of number greater than 308 ships,” the Chief 2015, but the surface fleet will feel the impact for decades. of Naval Operations, Adm. John Richardson, The long-term ramifications are laid out in detail by the said at the McAleese/Credit Suisse defense Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan, excerpts of which were obtained by Breaking Defense. conference in March, 2016. “We’re cooking on that right now,” he said, with the new 2015’s 30-year plan projected the Navy would meet or exceed Force Structure Assessment probably coming its goal of 308 “battle force” ships in twelve years (2022-2031 out in the summer of 2016. and 2035-2036), peaking at 321 ships—which Carter called excessive—in 2028. By contrast, and entirely as a result of For now, though, the Navy is still working off the 308 the LCS cut, 2016’s projection is that the Navy will fulfill number, which, Richardson noted, includes 52 Littoral the 308-ship requirement in only eight years, 2021-2028, Combat Ships—not the 40 the program was cut to. Some peaking at 311 vessels—just three ships above the goal. documents cite a 40-LCS “warfighting requirement,” but that by definition does not consider demands for peacetime What’s more, Navy leaders have more than hinted that presence, which for an auxiliary like LCS is easily higher . 308 is not enough and their ongoing Fleet Structure Assessment—the first full review since 2012—will raise the requirement to reflect the increased threat from China, Russia, and the Islamic State. If the goal goes up as little as four ships, to 312, the current 30-year plan will never meet it.

5 LCS CUT RIPPLES THROUGH NAVY’S NEW 30-YEAR SHIPBUILDING PLAN

160 152

140 139

120

100

40 Goal (140 Total Surface Combatants) Total Surface Compatants - PB 17 Total Surface Compatants - PB 16 20 Large Surface Compatants - PB 17 Small Surface Compatants - PB 17 Large Surface Compatants - PB 16 Small Surface Compatants - PB 16 0 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Large, Small, and total surface combatants in current (PB 17) and last year’s (PB 16) 30-year shipbuilding plan.

As part of the current 308-ship total goal, the Navy has a The new plan does add more large warships to the fleet requirement for 140 surface combatants of all types, from compared to the old, but most of them come in the 3,500-ton LCSs to 9,600-ton cruisers. Back in February, 2030s, when an as-yet-undesigned “Future Large Surface 2016, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work assured me Combatant” enters the service. It also increases the number that the Navy would still meet that 140 goal even with of attack submarines, but only by two and only in the near fewer LCSs, because it would get more large ships such as term. Other types of vessel such as logistics, command, destroyers. It turns out that’s not exactly true. (It’s worth and support ships fluctuate slightly between the two plans. noting Work may well have seen an earlier draft of the plan The figures for the ultra-expensive pillars of naval power— when he spoke to me). The new plan peaks at 139 surface aircraft carriers and ballistic missile submarines—stay the combatants in 2028 and drops back down the next year. same, although naval leaders continue to warn they can’t The old plan, with the 12 LCS in it, would have stayed at or afford the Ohio Replacement Program sub without budgets above the 140-ship goal for 12 years. well above current levels.

5 Differences in number of ships, by type, between 2016’s (PB 17) and 2015’s (PB 16) 30-year shipbuilding plan. 0 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

-5

-10

6 -15 LCS CUT RIPPLES THROUGH NAVY’S NEW 30-YEAR SHIPBUILDING PLAN

So the difference between the current plan and the old the next 5-10 years, we can be pretty confident in knowing one is almost entirely driven by the removal of 12 Littoral what we’re getting, because those vessels are already under Combat Ships. LCS critics—and there are many—would contract; but even beyond that, we know what we’ll be say good riddance: The small vessels are too fragile and giving up. The 2016 fleet is still living off ships ordered in undergunned, and while they’re a fifth the price of an the Reagan build-up. The fleet we plan today—with however Arleigh Burke destroyer, they’re much less than a fifth many Littoral Combat Ships—is the fleet we’ll have to live as good. Perhaps. But the question is, good for what? with for decades. Appropriately configured LCS will make up all the future navy’s minesweepers and a good chunk of its sub-hunters, “Ships are going to come out of service at both missions where multiple small ships covering lots of the end of their life at pretty much the same ground (or rather water) can accomplish more than a single rate they came into service,” said Richardson. large vessel, however capable. The Navy’s also working to “When you don’t pay attention to the entire upgrade the LCS’s much-criticized anti-ship firepower. differential equation, if you will…you might The upgraded “frigate” LCS with these added weapons peak at a particular level but you’ve got won’t begin construction until 2019. But when launched a to think further downstream as to what… few years later, it is expected to stay in service for a quarter maintains that.” century. The larger destroyers last 30 to 40 years; the giant aircraft carriers, fifty. It’s these long, predictable lifespans that make it possible to write a 30-year shipbuilding plan in the first place. Ships take long enough to build that for

7 PENTAGON TESTER TELLS NAVY LCS TEST WAS PLENTY FAIR By Sydney Freedberg Jr. | February 02, 2016

LCS-4 Coronado

WASHINGTON: In February, 2016, a Navy official told us a critical test report on the embattled Littoral Combat Ship was “unfair.” Shortly thereafter, we found out the Pentagon’s independent test office had already circulated a coldly scathing response.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter ordered the Navy to cut the LCS in favor of larger, more powerful ships. This particular test is one of the Littoral Combat Ship’s core missions, its ability to repel wolfpacks of Iranian-style fast attack craft. In the test, the USS Coronado used its 57- and 30mm cannon, but not the longer-ranged Hellfire missiles that are planned for—but not yet installed on LCS—a big part of what the Navy official called “unfair.” In essence, the famously tough office of the Director of Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) is saying

• LCS should be tested with guns only because the ships will have to go in harm’s way without missiles until at least 2017; • Even after lowering performance standards to account for the lack of missiles, the LCS still let the simulated attackers get dangerously close; and • Adding the missiles may not make as big a difference as the Navy claims.

“On Saturday, January 30, 2016, Mr. Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr., published an article in BreakingDefense.Com titled: ‘LCS Test Vs. Fast Attack Boats “Unfair”: Missile Missing, Navy Says,’” the DOT&E letter begins. “In that article, he references an unnamed Navy official who contended the testing of LCS Increment II SUW Mission Package was unfair because it didn’t take into account the planned surface-to-surface missiles that will be added to the Mission Package in Increment III. Regretfully, the Navy spokesman was apparently not familiar with the basis for the test and many of his statements are incorrect or not related to what was being tested.”

The Navy “established a much lower performance threshold” for the missile-less LCS in a classified 2013 memo from the then-Vice-Chief of Naval Operations, DOT&E says. “It also defined what the Navy considered to be a successful engagement, specifically requiring each target to be neutralized before any of them closed to within the Navy prescribed minimum stand-off range—a range selected based on the distance at which threat weapons would have a good chance of hitting the LCS. In reality, there are several threat weapons that could hit LCS from an even greater distance...”

Even judging by these lower standards, however, LCS let the bad guys get too close. “Though the ship was able to eventually repel the simulated attack, this was after the targets had successfully penetrated the Navy’s prescribed stand- off range,” the letter continues. “In a real battle, there would be a good chance LCS might have sustained damage at that point that could have affected its subsequent capability to successfully repel the attack.” In other words, it sounds like the test did not simulate battle damage to the Littoral Combat Ship, but rather allowed it to keep fighting—and ultimately prevail—after the point in a real engagement when it might have been too badly shot up to continue.

8 PENTAGON TESTER TELLS NAVY LCS TEST WAS PLENTY FAIR

The LCS Coronado test-fires a Norwegian Kongsberg missile.

What if the LCS had been equipped with missiles, which So were we wrong? I’m sure there’s a lot of highly technical the Navy sees as an integral part of the surface combat debate to be had, which I’m not qualified to judge. It is package? “When the Longbow Hellfire surface-to surface clear that the Littoral Combat Ship will be more capable missile is finally added to LCS’s SUW (Surface Warfare) of destroying enemies at range—and therefore more likely Mission Package in FY 2017, the ship will be tested again, to survive—once the Hellfires are installed, and even more although more robustly,” DOT&E writes (emphasis ours). so with a future “over the horizon” anti-ship missile. What remains in passionate contention is the controversial But the Hellfire’s performance may not be as good as LCS’s overall readiness for battle. destroying seven out of eight attackers, which is what the Navy official said. In fact, the 7 of 8 success rate came from a series of unrealistic scenarios designed to figure out how to adapt the Hellfire fromArmy helicopters to Navy ships, not to test combat performance. What’s more, there were never eight attackers in the water at one time.

9 LCS CAN TOO FIGHT RUSSIA, CHINA: NAVY LEADERS

By Sydney Freedberg Jr. | January 20, 2016

USS Independence, LCS-2

WASHINGTON: Is the Littoral Combat Ship a real warship? That question has bedeviled the small, sleek, lightly armed ships for years. Now it’s taken on new urgency as the Defense Department and the Navy both refocus on high-intensity, high-tech warfighting against “great powers”—i.e. China and Russia.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter wants to cut the program by a quarter to invest in heavier warships, submarines, aircraft, and missiles. LCS critics charge the ship is only useful for peacetime patrols and presence missions in low-threat areas. Navy leadership insist it can fight with the battle fleet—especially once it gets a high-powered sonar for hunting subs and long-range missiles for killing ships.

“LCS fits right in the middle of the modern warfight, great powers or not,” said the Navy’s outspoken director of surface warfare, Rear Adm. Peter Fanta, at last week’s Surface Navy Association conference.

“Would you want to send it solo against a high-end threat? Certainly not, but it’s not alone in that world,” said Richardson. His predecessor, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, spoke of heavy-duty Aegis destroyers providing anti-aircraft coverage and missile defense for LCS in high-threat areas—just as they do for aircraft carriers and other vessels. “We fight as a team, and the Littoral Combat Ship has an Adm. John Richardson important place in that team,” Richardson said. “It is our small surface combatant right now [for] mine hunting, anti-submarine warfare, and… surface warfare.”

10 LCS CAN TOO FIGHT RUSSIA, CHINA: NAVY LEADERS

“We fight as a team, and the Littoral Combat Ship has an important place in that team,” Richardson said. “It is our small surface combatant right now [for] mine hunting, anti-submarine warfare, and… surface warfare.”

The LCS Coronado test-fires a new anti-ship missile from Norway’s Kongsberg. Those three roles correspond to the three interchangeable “mission modules” being developed (with much delay) for By contrast, the Navy is still struggling to find an anti-ship LCS, which can carry any one of them at a given time. missile for the LCS, with stopgaps like the Griffin and All three are arguably auxiliary missions, at least by Longbow having only about a five-mile range. Compare the comparison to the airstrikes, Tomahawk missile barrages, Russian frigate and corvettes—mostly smaller than LCS— Marine landings and missile defense provided by capital which fired missiles from the Caspian Sea a thousand miles ships. But all three have the potential to be pivotal in a overland into Syria. LCS will probably never achieve that major war: range because the Navy decided against installing its standard multi-purpose missile launcher, the versatile but bulky • Mine hunting is a long-neglected role in the US Navy, Vertical Launch System. Instead, the Navy is seeking a mid- currently relegated to aging MH-53 helicopters and range “over the horizon” missile. “We are pushing forward to Avenger minesweepers, even though mines have sunk install over the horizon missiles on LCS in 2016,” said Fanta. or crippled more US Navy ships since World War II than all other causes combined. Our potential adversaries Once the three modules are well aware of the damage mines can do: Iran has and the new missile are in at least a thousand, North Korea an estimated 50,000, service, “LCS fits right in China 100,000, Russia 250,000. “Minesweeping alone the middle of the modern in my opinion justifies a big chunk of the country’s warfight, great powers or commitment in the Littoral Combat Ship program,” not,” Fanta said.” LCS is Rep. Joe Courtney, top Democrat on the House perfectly capable of adding seapower subcommittee, told SNA. the anti-submarine capability, the missile capability, the • Submarines are another rising threat, with Chinese counter-surface capability, and Russian fleets growing larger and more advanced. the countermine capability,” Rear Adm. Peter Fanta Aegis destroyers have significant anti-submarine Fanta said. “All those warfare capacity, but both the baseline LCS (with missions are part of the warfight. They’re not just part of the ASW module) and the future LCS frigate (when skirmishes someplace.” configured for ASW) will have something destroyers don’t: a “continuous active sonar” with a range in the In fact, Fanta frequently says that LCS with medium-range tens of miles and a “variable depth” feature for finding missiles can “put entire enemy fleets on the bottom of the deep-diving subs. Of course, you could theoretically ocean.” Being smaller and less robust than destroyers, the retrofit these same sensors on a destroyer. But you Littoral Combat Ships do take losses along the way, Fanta can buy four LCS for the price of one Arleigh Burke, admits, but in wargames the small warships converge on the and when sub-hunting you want to be looking in as enemy in overwhelming numbers, like piranhas. many places as possible at once. In a 2014 Navy wargame where LCS was upgraded with • Finally, and perhaps most problematically, the Littoral medium-range missiles, participant Bryan McGrath told Combat Ship has its “surface warfare” module. This Congress, “those ships were no more capable of taking a was originally optimized to fight small boats—“fast punch than they previously were; they were capable only attack craft” and “fast inshore attack craft”—of the of delivering a punch.” But that alone radically changed the fast-moving, hard-hitting, but painfully fragile kind adversary’s “risk calculus,” he said. favored by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. That put a premium on relatively short-ranged, quick-firing weapons like 57 millimeter and 30 millimeter cannon. 11 LCS CAN TOO FIGHT RUSSIA, CHINA: NAVY LEADERS

Once the Littoral Combat The LCS will never be able to do significant air defense, Ships got upgunned, the let alone missile defense, unless the Navy reconsiders its enemy commander could decision not to add a Vertical Launch System. (Interestingly, no longer afford to ignore Lockheed has designed a VLS-equipped variant of LCS that them, explained McGrath, got serious consideration from Saudi Arabia). Nor will it ever a naval expert and former be as survivable in the face of battle damage as a destroyer destroyer commander more than twice its tonnage and four times its cost. And the himself. As a result, enemy LCS will always have less room for weapons, sensors, and intelligence, surveillance, other mission systems than foreign ships its size because of and reconnaissance assets its massive engines, which allow a 40-plus-knot top speed for were stretched trying to which tacticians have never fully figured out a use. Bryan McGrath, Hudson Institute track all the little but lethal LCS. Enemy decision-makers had to confront an additional All that said, the LCS is still a young ship with both teething danger on every mission, potentially deterring them from troubles and potential for growth. “Our CONOPS will aggression altogether. Turning LCS from an auxiliary to a continue to evolve as we send this ship to sea. Every single ship-killer literally multiplied the enemy’s problems. time we build a new ship we discover new things we can do with it,” Fanta told the Surface Navy Association. That said, this concept—part of what the Navy calls “distributed lethality”—is very much a work in progress. Then, to applause, the admiral quoted Ralph And there are limits to what even a future LCS can do. Waldo Emerson: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

12 NAVY FIGHTS FOR 52 LCS AFTER SECDEF CUTS TO 40: PRESENCE VS. WARFIGHTING By Sydney Freedberg Jr. | December 17, 2015

The two Littoral Combat Ship variants, LCS-1 Freedom (far) and LCS-2 Independence (near).

WASHINGTON: The Navy is not yielding to Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s memo cutting the Navy’s much-maligned Littoral Combat Ship program from 52 of the small ships to 40 and dumping one of the two shipyards building them. Carter plans to use the savings for other Navy programs such as missiles and aircraft, and in addition would add $1.7 billion to the Navy topline over the next five years. But the Navy’s not happy with that trade-off.

The debate between the Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense boils down to one fundamental question. Should the Navy focus on day-to-day peacetime demands around the world, aka “presence,” for which LCS is suited, or on the prospect of high-end warfighting against Russia and China, for which it’s not? “The Navy is still fighting this decision, so maybe this will play out into the next year’s congressional session,” said one source familiar with the program.

“Nothing is finalized just yet,” a defense official told me. So the Navy is not resigned to the numbers in the Carter memo? That’s correct, the official confirmed.

So if a memo from the Secretary of Defense himself– first reported by Chris Cavas at Defense News—is not the final word, what is? “That’s the direction they want to go, but the ’17 budget to my knowledge has not been locked,” the defense official said. “I wouldn’t steer you away from what you saw in that story [by Cavas] but I would also say the discussions are still ongoing. Nothing’s set in stone yet.”

Even an official Navy statement, in its refusal to comment, noted that the final decision had not been made: “We are aware of the memo; however budget discussions are pre-decisional. It would be inappropriate to discuss anything further until the FY 17 budget is finalized.”

“A HELLUVA REBUKE TO THE NAVY”

A congressional source who saw the Carter memo disagreed with the idea there was any maneuver room left on LCS: “It reads like a helluva rebuke to the Navy, with the last sentence saying, in effect, ‘end of discussion.’”

That rebuke is most pointed in this passage from the memo:

“For the last several years, the Department of the Navy has overemphasized [increasing] total ship numbers at the expense of critically-needed investments in areas where our adversaries are not standing still,” Carter writes. “Earlier this year this year, the Department of Defense gave guidance to correct and reverse this trend of prioritizing quantity over quality; however, counter to that guidance, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter the Department of the Navy’s latest program submission fails to do so.” in Silicon Valley

13 NAVY FIGHTS FOR 52 LCS AFTER SECDEF CUTS TO 40: PRESENCE VS. WARFIGHTING

Then there’s that last sentence, which seems to leave little room for debate: “The Department of Defense is relying on the Department of the Navy to support and carry out these critical strategic decisions.” 2017: THE BATTLE ON THE HILL

But even if Carter wins THE NUMBERS GAME: QUANTITY VS. QUALITY the battle inside the administration, he may The original plan for 52 Littoral Combat Ships would mean well lose the war on one Navy ship in six was an LCS. But Carter counters: 40 Capitol Hill. Carter may is fine: It’s “the number that the Navy’s own warfighting even be counting on it. analysis says is sufficient to need.” It’s an old budgeting gambit Rep. Randy Forbes to cut something you know “Uh, what study is that?” reply our sources familiar with Congress will add back, Navy thinking. increasing your overall budget in the process. “In light of Congress’s willingness to keep adding to shipbuilding these “Nobody knows where that came from. That was a surprise,” last few years,” the congressional source noted, “it may be said the source familiar with the program. “At least, it was a that OSD is hoping that trend will continue and reverse surprise to the PEO [Program Executive Office].” some of these cuts in the appropriations process.” “I don’t know,” said the defense official when I asked where The first indication of Hill resistance came from a source the 40 figure came from. “What we always go off is the worth noting: Rep. Randy Forbes, chairman of the House force structure assessment, [and] that’s always been 52.” Armed Services seapower subcommittee. There’s a subtle but crucial question of wording here. “Secretary Carter has framed this as a Carter’s 40-LCS figure comes from a warfighting assessment. choice between capability and capacity, The 52-LCS figure comes from a more general assessment of force structure required for all missions, including but the undeniable reality is that our Navy peacetime presence needs. needs more of both–and our military needs the top-line budget to make that a reality,” The insatiable demands of the theater combatant commanders Forbes told us. (COCOMs) for ships to strike terrorists, train allies, contest disputed waters, respond to natural disasters, and so on means Admittedly, legislators have been much more skeptical that “normal” demands have run the Navy ragged. There’s of LCS than of other, more traditional warships such as a vicious circle. A shortage of ships means the ships on destroyers, attack submarines and amphibious assault hand have to go out longer at the expense of crew rest and ships. Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John maintenance, which means ships break down more often and McCain said in a statement this morning that: “I will not wear out more quickly, which means the ship shortage gets be speculating on media reports. That said, my concerns worse. It’s this cycle that the Navy wants to break. with the LCS, from cost overruns to schedule delays to poor Part of the solution is new maintenance and deployment performance, are well known.” schedules, but another part is LCS. Why send a $2 billion But Congress has also consistently voted to add vessels Aegis destroyer, designed to shoot down high-end missiles, to Navy budgets, not to take them away, and Republicans to do a presence mission that a $500 million LCS can do in particular have said the fleet is dangerously undersized. just as well? The Littoral Combat Ships will also replace a LCS’s critics call it undersized, undergunned, and fragile, host of very small vessels like patrol craft and minesweepers, but precisely because it’s so much smaller and cheaper than, using interchangeable mission modules (still being say, a destroyer, it’s been critical to the Navy’s campaign to developed) to hunt mines, subs, or Iranian-style fast attack bulk up numbers. boats. Even LCS advocates agree it does not boast the firepower or durability of a much larger destroyer.

14 NAVY FIGHTS FOR 52 LCS AFTER SECDEF CUTS TO 40: PRESENCE VS. WARFIGHTING

The Navy has tried to square that circle recently with In short, Carter is willing to accept a smaller fleet but one its “distributed lethality” doctrine—summed up by Rear that hits harder. That’s a completely reasonable plan for Adm. Peter Fanta as, “if it floats, it fights.” This concept warfighting and a terrible trade-off for presence, where the would arm support ships with long-range missiles and idea is to have lots of ships keeping the peace in lots of network them together so they could concentrate their places so you don’t have to hit anyone. fire. Distributed lethality wouldn’t turn small presence- mission ships into high-end warfighters, but it would make The Carter memo displays “very weak reasoning here and them much more useful in a high-end scenario. Carter’s a lack of understanding of the nature and role of naval predecessor as Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel, ordered presence,” growled retired Capt. Jerry Hendrix. “There are the Navy to build the last 20 LCS as an upgunned “frigate” 18 maritime regions that require constant maritime presence variant with such long-range anti-ship missiles (Carter in order to uphold the current international order. LCS, would cut this to 12). Fanta has been pushing to backfit purchased in large numbers was to be key in providing the current LCS with such weapons as well. presence to perform this mission. As it takes five ships to keep one forward deployed, Secretary Carter has effectively gapped two maritime regions, inviting increasing instability or even war. Other nations are ready and willing to step in with an alternative security environment, one not based on free trade and free navigation. This is a bad decision.”

“It’s tough, because we need numbers, but you also need increased warfighting capabilities,” acknowledged the defense official. “The thing is, when you look at ships, there’s a far greater lead time to build and turn out ships than aircraft or weapons.” If you forgo additional planes, missiles, or upgrades to existing ships and aircraft, you can always buy and field them (relatively) fast at a later time, the thinking goes. If you cut shipbuilding, you’ll feel the effects for decades.

But inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense, they’re A Navy ship launches an SM-6 missile worried about warfighting capabilities now.

“LCS is not a key element in concepts to defeat anti-access WHAT CARTER WANTS INSTEAD threats such as those in China, Iran, or Russia,” said Bryan Clark, a former aide to the Chief of Naval Operations. Distributed lethality, however, doesn’t appear to have “Even though it is intended to address mine warfare and appeased Ash Carter. His plan cuts LCS to buy (among submarines, it is intended to conduct these operations in other things) relatively benign environments because it does not have significant defenses,” he said. “The Navy set itself up for • 31 more F-35C fighters, whose stealth, sensors, this outcome to a degree by not fully addressing the lack of networking, and electronic warfare are touted as survivability in LCS, and by planning the new frigate to be crucial for a future high-tech war (though the Navy essentially the same.” has demonstrated a lack of enthusiasm for the F-35C until recently); As a result, Clark continued, “it is not seen as a big contributor to Offset”—the quest for new technologies and • an unspecified number of additional F/A-18E/F tactics to counter rapidly advancing adversaries like Russia Super Hornets; and China. “When Bob Work talks about devoting money • upgrades to a host of existing aircraft and ships, ($12-14 billion) to implementing the Third Offset Strategy, including an additional Virginia Payload Module this is an example of how it will be paid for. “The 12 LCS cut that massively increases the missile capacity of will result in about $6 billion to shift to weapons and other attack submarines fitted with one; systems such as SM-6 that are directly applicable to the Offset Strategy approach.” • and a lot more high-end missiles, both air-to-air AIM-120s and anti-air/missile defense SM-6s. While the Navy had planned to buy SM-6 and other munitions at the “minimum sustaining rate” required to keep factories going, Carter wrote, his plan “will maximize production of SM-6 missiles and 15 maintain procurement of other advanced munitions.” MCCAIN, REED PUSH TO REPLACE LCS MINE DRONE

By Sydney Freedberg Jr. | September 01, 2015

An unmanned mine-hunting mini-sub, the Remote Multi-Mission Vehicle (RMMV)

WASHINGTON: In a letter obtained by Breaking Defense, senators John McCain and Jack Reed slam a key component of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship as unreliable and urge the Pentagon to explore alternatives to the Remote Mine-Hunting System.

In their Aug. 31, 2015 letter to the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, Frank Kendall, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, and outgoing Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the Senate Armed Services Committee leaders warn against a “rush to failure” and strongly suggest a “delay,” especially since key decisions on the LCS Mine Countermeasures (MCM) module are set for October and February,

The Littoral Combat Ship has been the Navy’s most hated program since its inception, and McCain has been a persistent critic. The core concept—a lightweight warship that could switch missions by loading different mission packages of equipment—remains controversial with naval traditionalists who see LCS as fragile and under-gunned. The ships themselves have largely overcome their early problems with cost overruns and quality control. But LCS can’t do much without its mission packages, none of which is completely finished.

The most complex module—and arguably the most important given the Navy’s long neglect of the massive mine threat worldwide—is the Mine Counter-Measures (MCM) mission package. It’s currently undergoing a series of technical tests, already extended due to mechanical problems. That narrow technical evaluation will determine whether MCM is ready for a full-up operational evaluation, which in turn will determine whether MCM is ready for production. The Pentagon will decide whether to go ahead with Initial Operational Test & Evaluation in October, 2015.

The two Littoral Combat Ship variants, LCS-1 Freedom (far) and LCS-2 Independence (near). 16 MCCAIN, REED PUSH TO REPLACE LCS MINE DRONE

The crux of the problem is an underwater drone meant • Northrop Grumman’s Minehunting Unmanned to seek out submerged mines. The official names are the Surface Vehicle (MHU), which are drones like the Remote Multi-Mission Vehicle (RMMV)—if you’re just balky RMMV but go on the surface of the water talking about the unmanned vessel, made by Lockheed instead of partially submerging. It also uses a Martin—and the Remote Mine-Hunting System—if you’re different sonar (AN/AQS-24 rather than AN/AQS-20). talking about it fully kitted with a Raytheon sonar. It’s a The Bahrain-based 5th Fleet already has four MHUs “semi-submersible” system that projects slightly above the in service. water, neither a submarine nor a boat but something in between. The Navy will decide in February, 2016 whether to • Textron’s Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle award a production contract for more RMMVs. (C-USV), another robo-boat, which is already under contract as part of the LCS MCM package. Its current So what’s the problem? The drone’s supposed to go for role is to tow an Unmanned Influence Sweep System 75 hours, on average, between failures. According to the (UISS) that detonates mines at a distance, but, the Pentagon’s top tester, it manages just 25. (The Navy says senators say, it could tow various sonars as well. its testing shows 200 hours between failures). That’s “The C-USV appears to present both a cheaper and despite years of work to make it work better. “Recent more effective alternative,” they write. developmental testing provides no statistical evidence that the system is demonstrating improved reliability, and • AUVAC’s Mark 18 unmanned underwater vehicle, instead indicates that reliability plateaued nearly a decade in both its Mod 1 Swordfish and Mod 2 Kingfish ago,” wrote the director of operational test and evaluation, variants. Both have served with 5th Fleet, and one Michael Gilmore, in an August 3, 2015 memo. of the Navy’s nuclear-powered attack submarines has used them as well. So maybe it’s time to cut bait, the senators suggest, none too gently, “The decisions made over the next six months will set the course for our nation’s maritime [mine warfare] capabilities With the mine threat especially urgent in the Persian Gulf, for decades to come,” the senators write. “Too much is at the Navy hasn’t waited for MCM-equipped Littoral Combat stake to accept the status quo and permit systems with long Ships to show up. Instead, it’s fielded mine warfare systems documented cost, schedule, performance, and reliability piecemeal and found out what works. McCain and Reed shortfalls to get a free pass into the fleet.” recommend three in particular for the Pentagon to review:

17 LCS: PRODUCTION SURGES, PRICE DROPS By Sydney Freedberg Jr. | July 16, 2015

LCS-9, the future USS Little Rock, awaits launch.

Once, the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship was a nightmare of cost overruns, schedule slips, and design flaws. That was especially true of Lockheed Martin’s LCS-1, the Freedom, with its hull cracks and electrical failures. Eight ships later, the design is fixed and the price has dropped by a third .

Production is moving at such a pace and has become so routine that Lockheed’s vice-president for LCS, Joe North, sometimes forgets which ship comes next. “We’re up here this week [for] the launch of LCS-11, which is the future USS Sioux City—I’m sorry, LCS-9, which is the USS Little Rock,” North said, chagrined, in a conference call from Marinette. “Later this year, we will be launching LCS-11, which is Sioux City.”

Losing track is understandable. “We currently have seven 600 ships in production up here,” North told reporters. LCS-9 will launch in July, 2015, and LCS-11 later in 2015. Work is 500 537 well underway on LCS-13 and -15, while it has just started 470 on LCS-17 is under production. LCS-19 and -21 are under 437 400 contract, and Lockheed expects a contract for LCS-23 soon. 377 362 (Even-numbered LCS are built by Austal in Alabama, which 358 358 349 349 350 350 uses a completely different design). 300

The cost is currently about $358 million for the Freedom 200 version and headed down to a low of $348.5 million. Lockheed Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) (Note these figures are for the ship itself and don’t include 100 cost in $millions military equipment, such as weapons, that the government purchases separately, which can add over $100 million). 0 The price has dropped steeply since the mismanaged early LCS1 LCS3 LCS5 LCS7 LCS9 LCS11 LCS13 LCS15 LCS17 LCS19 LCS21 days of the program, when the Navy changed the design of LCS-1 and -2 midway through construction. Now the price Source: Navy & Lockheed contract announcements is starting to level out. Costs will eventually climb back up slightly: After years of making LCS manufacture more efficient, the shipyard is reaching diminishing returns, while inflation in labor and materials is beginning to catch up. 18 LCS: PRODUCTION SURGES, PRICE DROPS

So what’s unique about LCS-9? The Little Rock is the North made clear, however, that such upgrades would not be first Lockheed LCS to be built entirely in Marinette’s allowed to interfere with ongoing production: They “would revamped facilities. When Marinette was bought in 2008 probably be [done] in a backfit mode once we’re done and by Fincantieri—on whose civilian designs the Lockheed delivered here,” he said. LCS is based—the Italian company committed to a $73.5 million investment in the shipyard, parts of which Lockheed is already looking at how to modify its LCS into dated to World War II. The more streamlined manufactured the frigate design—but the details of what weapons and process reduces the distance ship components travel other equipment it has to carry are still being decided by through the yard by eight miles, North said. the Navy. “We’re working…on cost and weight reductions to account for the fact that you’re going to get rid of large LCS-5 and LCS-7 were built as the yard was renovated open module areas and fill them in” with new systems, around them, with some work done in the old facilities and North said. “They’re supposed to have final definition later some in the new. LCS-9 was built entirely in the new. this year [and] tell us what their final selection of systems is.”

“The one thing we will not to do is…break production,” said North, “because we’ve already bid these ships and we already have contracts in place for them.” That means keeping the design the same—and resisting any urges to “improve” it that might increase cost or impose delay.

That said, the Navy is looking at an upgunned, upgraded, and more expensive variant of the LCS, designated a frigate. The current plan (as of July, 2015) is for 32 of the existing LCS designs and 20 LCS frigates, but there’s considerable interest in cherry-picking some of the frigate’s improvements and adding them to the original-model LCS.

19 WHAT’S IN A NAME? MAKING THE LCS ‘FRIGATE’ REALITY By Sydney Freedberg Jr. | January 16, 2015

The two Littoral Combat Ship variants, LCS-1 Freedom (far) and LCS-2 Independence (near).

CRYSTAL CITY: What’s in a frigate? That which we call a Littoral Combat Ship by any other name would smell as sweet—or stink as bad, according to LCS’s many critics. While LCS is being redesigned and renamed, there’s a lot of hard work and hard choices required to make the improvements real.

Yesterday, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced the new upgunned, uparmored, and as yet unbuilt version of LCS would be formally redesignated as a “frigate.” (From heaviest to lightest, the traditional classification runs: battleship, cruiser, destroyer, frigate, corvette). One of the major criticisms of the original LCS design was its lack of firepower and protection compared to the Perry-class frigates it would replace. The improved design will be worthy of the frigate designation, Mabus insisted. “If you list the attributes of a frigate and then list the attributes of [an improved LCS], we’re actually more capable than a normal frigate is,” Mabus told reporters after his remarks to the Surface Navy Association conference. “They don’t look like traditional Navy ships sometimes, and I think that’s one of the issues that traditionalists have, but if you look at missions, if you look at what a frigate is supposed to be able to do, that’s what this ship does.”

The basic plan set forth in January, 2015 is to buy 32 Littoral Combat Ships of the current design, the last of them in the fiscal 2018 budget. Then the Navy will buy 20 of the Navy Secretary Ray Mabus upgunned version—what’s now the frigate—starting in fiscal 2019. The exact package of upgrades that will actually make the frigate a frigate won’t be finalized until ’19, but it will include more weapons, armor, and sensors.

The Navy wants to add at least some of these improvements to at least some the Littoral Combat Ships being built before 2019. “We’re going to try to fold in these new capabilities earlier than [LCS] 32,” Mabus said.

How many of them? “All of them,” Mabus hopes. “If we fold in some, we’re going to fold in all [the improvements]. It’ll add about $75 million a ship but, as we said, that’s still under the congressional cost cap. We’re not going to piecemeal it, we’re going to do the entire upgrade.”

20 WHAT’S IN A NAME? MAKING THE LCS ‘FRIGATE’ REALITY

The Secretary’s subordinates sounded somewhat less basic features of the design. Since then, the program has made only sanguine. “We’re going to want to do that [upgrade] modest improvements from ship to ship, and it’s made remarkable across the board as best as possible,” said Sean Stackley, progress controlling both cost and schedule. assistant secretary for acquisition. But “this isn’t exactly a binary thing,” Stackley told reporters: It’s not an either/or “What I like is stability in the shipbuilding plan,” said Antonio. “Worst where you either have to add the entire upgrade package thing in the world would be, ‘hey, we’ve got this great new thing, envisioned for the frigate or do nothing. we’ve got to go [add] it,’ and ship deliveries get delayed by six months, a year, two years, and all of a sudden everything’s out of whack.” “[Upgrades] to improve the survivability, we want to “It’s already going to be a sporty timeline,” Antonio said. What do those on all the ships,” the Navy has to work from is the current LCS design—actually Stackley said: extra armor two designs, the Lockheed-built Freedom class and the General around weapons magazines, Dynamics Independence—and a detailed concept for the upgraded for example, shock hardening frigate version, developed over six months by the Small Surface around vital equipment, or Combatant Task Force. That concept calls for such improvements degaussing the hull to reduce as new electronic warfare gear and a new “over the horizon” anti- its magnetic field. But the ship missile with a 100-150 nautical mile range. It doesn’t specify details of more complicated such things as whether the minimum acceptable is 100 or 150 or upgrades—such as missiles something in between, what specific targets the weapon must be and electronics—will take a able to hit, what kind of seeker the warhead should have, let alone Sean Stackley, Assistant few years to figure out. In the which missile to buy. Secretary of the Navy meantime, he said, you might “The task force identified capability,” said Antonio. “We’ve got to have to build ships with places identify the systems; then we have to identify how those systems for the systems-to-be-determined to plug in later. integrate or interface with the current systems; and then there’s a Some of the Littoral Combat Ships already in the water may whole development and testing [process] that has to happen.” never get all the upgrades. Internal armor, for example, is such an integral part of a ship’s construction that it might be impractical or impossible to retrofit. “For ships that are already delivered, it may be such a large charge that we may only be able to do partial [upgrades],” said the Navy’s Program Executive Officer (PEO) for LCS, Rear Adm. Brian Antonio.

There’s also the constraint of time, Antonio told reporters. “LCS-1 was commissioned in ’08, and with a 25-year service life, that takes her to 2023,” when she retires—which would be just four years after the upgrade design is finalized in 2019. Littoral Combat Ships come in for major maintenance every 32 to 36 months. So with the earlier ships, said Antonio, “there’s a mathematical possibility that we wouldn’t be able to get everything in.” (It’s also inefficient to invest in upgrading a ship about to retire).

“We’ll catch as many as we’re funded [for] and can do,” the admiral said.

For every upgrade to the The upgraded version of the LCS-2 Independence. ship, there’s a delicate balance between how much combat How far along are we? Antonio has hired three former Small capability it would add and Surface Combatant Task Force staff to form a “concept how much time, cost, and development team” with full access to all the task force’s analysis: complexity it would require. “That kind of gives me a jump start,” he said. He’ll soon be able It’s worth remembering that to show both shipbuilders a “sanitized” version of the task force the epic overruns and delays materials as well. on the first two Littoral Combat Ships were caused primarily by a decision halfway Rear Adm. Brian Antonio through construction to change 21 WHAT’S IN A NAME? MAKING THE LCS ‘FRIGATE’ REALITY

The Navy needs to take all the task force’s concepts for Then it’s up to the winners from industry to deliver the goods and capabilities and translate them into specific, formal requirements, to the government to integrate everything into a working warship. Stackley explained. Those requirements then need approval by (The Navy is acting as its own “lead systems integrator” here rather a Resources and Requirements Review Board (R3B). Then, for than contracting that function out). Only then will the world be each requirement, the Navy needs to decide if it can meet it with able to judge whether the final product is worthy of the name of equipment already in service—which may require buying more “frigate,” an honorable heritage going back to the USS Constitution. items off existing contracts—or if it must hold a competition for something new. A Request for Proposals will go out to industry in 2018, with award and procurement in 2019.

The upgraded version of the LCS-1 Freedom class.

22 SLEEPLESS IN SINGAPORE: LCS IS UNDERMANNED & OVERWORKED, SAYS GAO By Sydney Freedberg Jr. | April 04, 2014

The first Littoral Combat Ship, USS Freedom, on its way to Singapore in 2013

WASHINGTON: Some spectacular glitches marred the first overseas deployment of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship, including an electrical failure that left the USS Freedom “briefly” dead in the water. Now Breaking Defense has obtained an unpublished Government Accountability Office study of Freedom‘s Singapore deployment that raises more serious questions about a long-standing worry: whether the small and highly automated LCS has enough sailors aboard to do up all the work needed, from routine maintenance to remedial training.

By now, the Navy brass have surely gotten tired of GAO taking shots at LCS. But according to GAO, LCS sailors are getting literally tired of the ship: They averaged about six hours of sleep per day, 25 percent below the Navy’s eight-hour standard, and key personnel such as engineers got even less. That’s in spite of:

• Extensive reliance on contractors both aboard and ashore, with a “rigid” schedule of monthly returns to Singapore that restricted how far from port the LCS could sail;

• The decision to increase Freedom‘s core crew by 25 percent, from 40 to 50—the maximum the ship can accommodate without a “significant” redesign; and

• The 19-sailor “mission module” crew, who are supposed to operate LCS’s weapons, helicopters, and small boats, pitching in daily to help the core crew run the ship’s basic systems.

The core crew’s engineering department in particular told GAO they had no idea how they’d keep the ship going without help from the mission module’s engineers. But the module the Freedom took to Singapore, the “anti-surface warfare” module that includes several small boats, has many more engineers than the forthcoming mine-countermeasures and anti-submarine warfare modules. In fact, while the entire 19-sailor anti-surface module crew has skills useful in running the ship itself, the MCM crew has only four sailors who could help, and the ASW module only one. That means an LCS outfitted to hunt mines or subs would effectively be 15 to 18 sailors short—about 20 to 25 percent.

GAO admits at least some of the problems are first-time-out glitches that affect any new ship. The Navy upped the Freedom core crew from 40 to 50 at the last minute, for example, so the 10 new sailors came in unprepared and required as much training time during the deployment as the other 40 put together. The service is also improving the LCS training program, which the entire crew found wanting, though a complete reform will take two to three years.

23 SLEEPLESS IN SINGAPORE: LCS IS UNDERMANNED & OVERWORKED, SAYS GAO

The Navy is also revising the LCS maintenance program for Navy spokesman Lt. Robert Myers provided the service’s greater flexibility, less reliance on contractors, and more use official response to our story: of diagnostic sensors—already being installed on the USS Fort Worth, which will head to Singapore later this year—to “While I won’t speak to an unreleased, FOUO allow “conditions-based maintenance” when parts show signs [for official use only] report what I can say is of potential failures, instead of having to manually check the Navy is continuously refining and testing (for example) each of the ship’s 350 valves once a month. the LCS program as we learn the full extent The new maintenance program should also fix simple mistakes like not having enough Internet connectivity for of possibilities for these first of a kind ships. maintenance operations at the pier in Singapore. Each successive LCS commissioning is a testament to the hard work and experience Finally, Freedom‘s frequent mechanical failures stem in gained from Freedom’s deployment large part from glitchy equipment that has been replaced with more reliable models on other LCS ships. Not all to Singapore. We have incorporated these fixes can be retrofitted to the troubled Freedom, engineering modifications which improve so the first-born LCS may remain the class’s problem child performance and we continue to look at the and a maintenance headache throughout its service life, concept of employment, as exemplified by more suited to training and/or hazing new LCS sailors the recent war game in Newport.” than for overseas operations. But the rest of the Freedom class should function better—though GAO warns the fixes Navy surface warfare director and LCS enthusiast Rear aren’t yet proven. Adm. Thomas Rowden spoke to reporters recently about Even more worrying is that the Lockheed Martin-built that wargame, in which 125 participants from all the services convened at the Naval War College specifically to test out Freedom represents only one of the two LCS designs: new concepts for how to use the LCS in both peace and war. General Dynamics’ Independence class is entirely different— and that design has never been deployed abroad. Some of the ideas Rowden mentioned were intriguing, Indeed, the Independence itself has spent much of its time such as pairing an LCS and an Aegis destroyer to hunt testing prototype mission modules, so GAO feels there’s submarines in a team that looks to be more than the sum far too little data on how the ship itself holds up when it of its parts. But the Navy’s been able to provide very little spends weeks on end at sea. detail because the in-depth analysis is just beginning.

The Navy moved so fast on LCS that it has already One thing I was able to find out is that the wargame contracted for 24 ships, 12 of each version, but Defense doesn’t seem to have any computer models or simulations Secretary Chuck Hagel has cut the program at 32 ships of the LCS performance, with the outcome of combats pending an extensive review of alternative vessels, from a between the “Blue” (US) and “Red” (enemy) teams being modified LCS to a new and tougher type of ship. While determined by human umpires known as the “White Cell.” Hagel’s guidance emphasizes the LCS’s shortcomings in So while the wargame was a great venue for exploring high-intensity combat, you can bet basic maintenance will concepts, as Lt. Myers said, it doesn’t prove anything about get major attention too. the Littoral Combat Ship’s real-world performance.