The Littoral Combat Ship or LCS, is a set of two classes of relatively small
surface vessels designed for operations near shore by the United States Navy (USN). It
was envisioned to be a networked, agile, stealthy surface combatant
capable of defeating anti-access and asymmetric threats in the littorals.
The history of LCS began in the late 1990s, when the USN realized its Cold War-era cruisers and
destroyers had been designed for open-ocean warfare and would be vulnerable in shallow
coastal waters. The first Navy's official solution was the DD-21, a large coastal warship that could
absorb hits. However, in October 2001, Cebrowski, the Vice Admiral Art was appointed to head the
Pentagon's new Office of Force Transformation shortly after the Admiral Vernon Clark canceled
the DD-21 and replaced it with a "family" of ships, including the littoral combat ship,
which was motivated to produce ships cheaper and faster in order to increase fleet size.
Clark declared the LCS was his "most transformational effort" and number one budget
priority in 2003. The Navy finally launched its first littoral combat ship experimental in 2003,
Sea Fighter, designated as fast sea frame or FSF-1. Furthermore, in 2004, Lockheed Martin,
General Dynamics and Raytheon submitted design proposals to produce two vessels each of the
Lockheed Martin design including LCS-1 and LCS-3, and of the General Dynamics design which include
LCS-2 and LCS-4. After these are brought into service and experience gathered on the design's
usability and efficiency, the class’s future design decided with the final decision was
to fund both designs as two different types of the class, the freedom and independence class.
Now, let's find out what went wrong with the Littoral Combat
Ship and why the Navy asked for early ship retirements.
The USN will reportedly seek to decommission 10 Freedom class Littoral Combat Ships,
as part of its budget proposal for the 2023 Fiscal Year. The 10 ships are USS Freedom,
Fort Worth, USS Milwaukee, USS Detroit, USS Little Rock, USS Sioux City, USS Wichita, USS Billings,
USS Indianapolis, and USS St.Louis. However, nine of the relatively new littoral combat ships had
not yet reached the end of their service lives. The fleet's remaining ships were all delivered
between 2015 and 2020, making it extremely young, despite the fact that the oldest example
currently serving is barely seven years old. Navy officials stated that “with no mission module and
unexpected costs for the repair to a complex combining gear for the Freedom-class ships,
it wasn’t worth keeping the ships in commission.” Moreover, the move from the Pentagon to shed the
Freedom-class ships comes days after congress officially rejected the Navy’s FY 2022 proposal
to decommission some of Freedom-class ships as part of the FY 2022 defense budget.
Furthermore, the Navy experienced an intense budget squeeze and authorities say they
are forced to make difficult decisions in order to invest in new ship construction.
The Navy intends to save $3.6 billion over the next five years by decommissioning 24 ships,
including the LCS, which would have cost the Navy a lot of money for the maintenance.
However, the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who chaired the Senate Armed Services
Committee said “in today’s fiscal world, spending the budget as we have done in LCS
is not just reckless and wasteful, but also dangerous.” In addition, the Meredith Berger,
who is performing the duties of under secretary of the Navy, also said “it’s a hard thing to make
a decision to decommission ships, but what we are looking is what offers the best capability
against the threats that we are facing” Lastly, the Navy began procuring Littoral
Combat Ship Frigate program, which is a program to produce a large number of upgraded LCSs. The
modified littoral ships are to be referred as frigates. In addition, the Navy’s frigate program
manager said “whereas a high sprint speed was a driving factor in designing the Littoral Combat
Ship, the follow-on frigate will be more lethal, more survivable, better-engineered successor
to the LCS, and will be able to conduct surface warfare and anti-submarine warfare simultaneously”
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