Center for Strategi C and Budgetary a S S e ssm e n t S Littoral Combat Ship An Examination of its Possible Concepts of Operation By Martin n. Murphy littoral combat ship: an examination of its possible concepts of operation By Martin N. Murphy 2010 © 2010 Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. All rights reserved. about the center for strategic and budgetary assessments The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) is an independent, nonpartisan policy research institute established to promote innovative thinking and debate about national security strategy and investment options. CSBA’s goal is to enable policymakers to make informed decisions on matters of strategy, security policy and resource allocation. CSBA provides timely, impartial and insightful analyses to senior decision mak- ers in the executive and legislative branches, as well as to the media and the broader national security community. CSBA encourages thoughtful participation in the de- velopment of national security strategy and policy, and in the allocation of scarce human and capital resources. CSBA’s analysis and outreach focus on key questions related to existing and emerging threats to US national security. Meeting these challenges will require transforming the national security establishment, and we are devoted to helping achieve this end. about the author Dr. Martin Murphy joined CSBA in fall 2008 bringing with him a research focus on naval warfare, maritime irregular warfare, mari- time security, piracy and transnational criminal threats. He is the author of Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money, a major study of criminal and political disorder at sea published by Columbia University Press in Spring 2009, and Contemporary Piracy and Maritime Terrorism, an Adelphi Paper published by the London- based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in 2007. He has written on naval special forces, littoral warfare, the mari- time terrorist threat, public-private security cooperation and the marine insurance industry for US Naval Institute Proceedings, the Jebsen Center for Counter-terrorism Studies, Armed Forces Journal, Jane’s Intelligence Review and Maritime Studies. He has advised the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence on maritime ir- regular warfare and related criminal activity at sea. Dr. Murphy holds a BA with Honors from the University of Wales, and a Masters (with distinction) and doctoral degrees in strategic studies from the University of Reading. He is a Visiting Fellow of the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies at King’s College, London. acknowledgments The author would like to extend his appreciation to Jan van Tol, who made significant contributions to parts of this report. The author would also like to thank the CSBA staff for their assistance with this report. Special thanks go to Charlotte Brock, Eric Lindsey and Julie Lascar for their editorial and production support and Cutting Edge for their design. The analysis and findings presented here are solely the responsibility of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and the author. coNteNts 1 Introduction 3 chapter 1. Background 15 chapter 2. LCS Designs 29 chapter 3. LCS Missions 45 chapter 4. CONoP Vignettes 61 Insights and Further Analysis 69 Glossary Figures 48 Figure 1. Pakistani Littoral 51 Figure 2. the Persian Gulf 57 Figure 3. Nigerian Littoral tABLES 32 table 1. LCS tasks by Naval Mission category 33 table 2. LCS tasks by operational environment introduction In 2008, the US Navy commissioned USS Freedom (LCS-1), the first of a new type of ship, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), produced by Lockheed Martin. It an- ticipated commissioning a second, distinctly different LCS variant, to be named Independence (LCS-2), produced by General Dynamics, late in 2009. Despite initial issues with design, operational requirements, and especially cost growth, the Navy plans to order substantial numbers of one variant to help address the problem of declining surface ship force levels. At the urging of then-Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Vern Clark, both types were designed without passing through the normal requirements pro- cess. Thus, by not keeping with previous practice, there was no formal a priori understanding of how these ships were intended to be used operationally, or what defined operational requirements they were intended to help meet. Consequently, despite some conceptual work by various Navy organizations such as Third Fleet and Navy Warfare Development Command (NWDC), there is rather little understanding of what these ships may, or should, be able to do once they are out in the Fleet in numbers. While much of this no doubt will come from future operational testing, evaluation, and experimentation, it is use- ful to consider what potential concepts of operation may be possible and worth evaluating further. purpose of the paper The purpose of this paper is to take the platforms as designed and constructed, and attempt to answer the question: “How can they be used effectively?” This enquiry will offer some possible inputs concerning these four questions: >> What are the ships’ projected missions? >> Where and how could they be employed? 2 center for strategic and Budgetary Assessments >> What do the ships’ characteristics enable them to do that other ships cannot? >> What additional missions could they accomplish if certain modifications were made or capabilities added? chapter 1 > backGround ORIGIN OF THE LCS from cebrowski to clark Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, USN, during his time as the head of the Naval War College and Navy Warfare Development Command starting in 1998, vigor- ously advanced four themes regarding the future of the nation’s maritime force: >> Networks should be the central organizing principle of the fleet, and its sens- ing and fighting power should be distributed across multiple manned and un- manned platforms; >> The fleet sensor component should collect, collate and interpret data faster than any enemy who was not networked to the same degree, giving US forces a major competitive advantage through “speed of command”; >> The fleet should become the nation’s “assured access” force; and >> Numbers of hulls count (quantity had its own quality) and consequently the fleet’s combat power should be distributed over as many interconnected plat- forms and systems as the budget allowed.1 “Assured access” referred to the ability of the fleet to overcome coastal defens- es to enable air and, in some circumstances, ground forces to conduct operations on or over enemy territory. The enemy would oppose US operations through the 1 Robert O. Work, Naval Transformation and the Littoral Combat Ship (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2004), pp. 45–46. 4 center for strategic and Budgetary Assessments use of anti-access and area-denial strategies (A2/AD).2 Clearly, access could only be achieved by engaging the enemy in its own littoral regions. When it came to littoral combat, the destruction of the land-based elements of the enemy’s A2/ AD capability and support for subsequent exploitation operations (as described in the Navy’s Sea Strike concept) would be conducted by the Navy’s main battle force. Engagement on the seaward side of the littoral, however, including the pro- tection of the main battle force and the destruction of enemy coastal naval assets such as mines, submarines, Fast Attack Craft (FACs) and Fast Inshore Attack Craft (FIACs), would be undertaken by small networked combatants. Cebrowski held the view, and reiterated it regularly, that in a fleet battle network it was the distribution of networked combat power across platforms that mattered Access could more than the power of any platform individually, and that for networked plat- forms that were expected to operate in dangerous littoral waters speed mattered only be achieved more than maneuverability or stealth.3 This emphasis on speed might be traced by engaging the back to his background as a jet fighter pilot for whom “speed is life.” Although his thoughts on the need for a small, fast ship stimulated much de- enemy in its own bate, until 2001 the Navy’s planning process appeared unmoved. Yet in November littoral regions. of that year it was announced that a Request for Proposals (RFP) for just such a ship would be issued without passing through the normal concept analysis stage first. Backed by then-CNO Admiral Vern Clark, the development of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) proceeded apace despite Congressional doubts and the fact that Navy Surface Warfare Division’s concept of operations (CONOPS) for the ship was not approved until February 2003.4 The reason the Navy changed its position appeared to stem from three influ- ences: Cebrowski’s advocacy, Clark’s own experience as a small combatant com- mander in the Mediterranean, and a research study called the Advanced Naval Vehicle Concept Evaluation which identified some promising technologies. Taken together these led Admiral Clark and his staff to embrace a number of points that opened the way to the LCS’s development: >> The Navy needed to assure access to the world’s littoral regions for the Joint Force; >> The Navy supported the Marine Corps concept of launching operations from a littoral-based “sea base” that would need defending; 2 Anti-access (A2) strategies aim to prevent US forcible entry into a theater of operations; area- denial (AD) operations aim to prevent US freedom of action in the more narrow confines under an enemy’s direct control. See Andrew Krepinevich, Barry Watts and Robert Work, Meeting the Anti-Access and Area-Denial Challenge (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2003), p. ii. 3 Work, Naval Transformation and the Littoral Combat Ship, pp. 46–47. 4 The Littoral Combat Ship Concept of Operations was recommended by N76, Navy Surface Warfare Division, on February 12, 2003, and approved by the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Requirements and Programs, N7, on February 13, 2003.