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

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.

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