Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Military TV. In today’s session we will focus
on the question Why the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship Seems to be a Failed Project.
If you are curious on this topic, don’t go anywhere, stay tuned only at this channel.
The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is a fast, agile, mission-focused platform designed
to operate in near-shore settings. The LCS is capable of supporting maritime security,
sea control, and deterrence. Moreover, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is a class of Small
Surface Combatants armed with capabilities focused on defeating global challenges in the littorals.
In addition, LCS is designed to provide joint force access in the littorals.
Ships in this class can operate independently or in high-threat environments as part of
a networked battle force that includes larger, multi-mission surface combatants.
Furthermore, the concept behind the littoral combat ship, as described by former Secretary of
the Navy Gordon R. England, is to create a small, fast, manoeuvrable and relatively inexpensive
member of the DD(X) family of ships. The ship is easy to reconfigure for different roles, including
anti-submarine warfare, mine countermeasures, anti-surface warfare, intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance, homeland defence, maritime intercept, special operations, and logistics.
Due to its modular design, the LCS will be able to replace slower,
more specialized ships such as minesweepers and larger amphibious-type assault ships
To be precise, the two first variants of LCS includes The Freedom class and the Independence
class. Each of this ship is slightly smaller than the U.S. Navy's Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate
but larger than Cyclone-class patrol ships. Each has the capacity of a small assault transport,
including a flight deck and hangar for housing two SH-60 or MH-60 Seahawk helicopters,
a stern ramp for operating small boats, and the cargo volume and payload to deliver a
small assault force with fighting vehicles to a roll-on or roll-off port facility.
Another aspect to note that the LCS is the first USN surface combatant class in a generation
to not be outfitted with the Aegis Combat System, though Aegis-equipped variants
have been offered to foreign customers. Therefore, they have had suffered from
problems in their communications and radars and these need to be repaired accordingly.
In addition, both LCS classes are unable to defend themselves effectively against
anti-ship cruise missiles, which are frequently used in the littorals,
but they do have more survivability to disperse in shallow waters better than larger warships.
In regard to the weaponry system, these ships are equipped with standard armaments such as Mk
110 57 mm guns and RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles.
They are also equipped with autonomous air, surface, and underwater vehicles.
Possessing lower air defense and surface warfare capabilities than destroyers,
the LCS concept emphasizes speed, flexible mission modules and a shallow draft.
For the information, as of December 2019, a total of 35 littoral combat ships are planned,
including 16 Freedom-class ships and 19 Independence-class ships.
The Ships are assigned to either Littoral Combat Ship Squadron One which are based
in San Diego Ca., or Littoral Combat Ship Squadron Two which are based in Mayport,
Florida. To take a closer look, the first littoral combat ship, USS Freedom,
was commissioned on 8 November 2008 in Veteran's Park, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While the second one,
the trimaran USS Independence, was commissioned on 16 January 2010, in Mobile, Alabama.
However, it cannot be denied that this project has experienced numerous concerns. It has been
a long 13 years since the navy commissioned the first LCS, the U.S.S. Independence. After years
of disappointing performance and corrosion issues that were causing the ship’s hull to collapse in
2011. Moreover, these ships had endured numerous cost overruns and delays. At the end of September,
another LCS, the Freedom, was decommissioned. As more Littoral Combat Ships became operational,
new issues arose. In 2015, one had to be pulled back to the port after mechanical issues.
Moreover, according to the report by USNI, the Navy in 2018 didn’t deploy
a single LCS. The service was supposed to push forward three ships in Fiscal Year 2018,
after a 2016 overhaul of LCS homeporting, command and control and manning constructs.
Since there were many problems existed especially regarding th
engine and propulsion concerns, those all lead to mounting disappointment.
For this reason, the navy had enough by January 2021 and stopped all new deliveries.
What seems to be the problems then? One of the reason can be having more designs
that might cause more problems. The LCS has two separate designs from two different defence firms,
which further complicating the acquisition program. The Independence-class is an aluminium
trimaran, while the Freedom-class is a monohull. Each one cost around $360 million. Both classes
of ships have issues with maintenance. Critics questioned their capacity to survive a gun war
and the engines also were not working properly. Moreover, one of the unique points of the ships
was that different missions, such as anti-piracy and counter-terror, could be systematically
swapped out. However, that feature was ended after a myriad of difficulties. The navy then attempted
to incorporate the Naval Strike Missile into several LCS versions. That is likely promising,
but keeping the LCS at sea rather than docked for repairs remained one of the main difficulty.
In another word, it can be predicted that the biggest issue was the two designs.
The ships had different problems depending on who manufactured them. Maintenance costs has
increased. In this case, the navy figured out that missile frigates could perform the same missions.
Moreover, it is mentioned that the Littoral Combat Ship program has always been
excessively complicated from the beginning. The Navy originally planned for each ship to cost $220
million, according to the Project on Government Oversight, but the Government Accountability
Office estimates that procurement costs for the first 32 ships are now over $21 billion,
or roughly $655 million per ship, nearly three times what they were supposed to cost.
Additionally, according to the most recent select acquisition report,
the program's three mission packages total nearly $7.6 billion.
From this explanation, it can be said that large cost overruns, a lack of
combat survivability and lethality uncovered during operational testing and deployments,
and nearly devastating technical problems and schedule delays in each of the mission modules
have already forced the LCS into many major concerns that leads to program improvements.
Lastly, it took nearly two decades for the Navy to recognize that the LCS program had failed.
In 2014, the sailing division reduced LCS procurement from 55 to 32 ships.
Congress eventually added three more ships, bringing the total number of ships in the
class to 35. As a consequence, the Navy intends to replace the 20 cancelled LCSs with 20 modern
missile frigates. To realise this mission, of 2019, the service requested $1 billion from
Congress for the first ship in the new class. The new frigate, unlike the LCS in its original form,
will be a conventional warship with a large crew and hard-wired systems.
For this reason, the Navy undoubtedly expects that the new ship will be more deployable than the LCS.
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