LCS…

Posted on by October 12, 2016

It’s time for the Littoral Combat Ship, better known in the Navy as the Little Crappy Ship to be a thing of the past…

The Yemeni rebel’s attack on the MV Swift last week should be making people stop and think…

This is the result of ONE outdated missile C-802 hitting the Swift.

swift-702x336

OBTW, the Swift is aluminum, as are all the LCS… Full article HERE, death toll was 22, probably the entire crew aboard.

As originally conceptualized by CNO Clark, it was supposed to replace 30 FFG-7 Oliver Hazard Perry Class  frigates, 14 MCM Avenger Class mine countermeasures vessels, and 12 MHC-51 Osprey Class  coastal mine hunters. Those were/are three VERY distinct mission sets…

Navy Fact Sheet, HERE. Wiki HERE. Global Security.org, HERE.

And the ship had to be able to do 40-50kts in a ‘standard’ sea state…

It was also supposed to be minimally manned, as all the damage control and operational systems were to be computerized and all the ‘crew’ needed to do was watch the systems perform. Originally the concept was 75 total crew, including an aviation det and a ‘mission package’ det. Bottom line was around 40 bodies to actually run the ship itself…

The FFG it replace was ‘minimally manned’ at 176 personnel for comparison.

And due to the complexity, no junior sailors would be given orders. E-5 was the minimum rank required…

Then there were the mission modules- ASW, Mine Warfare and Surface Attack. Supposedly changeable in 96 hours or less…

In 2012 report by Rear Admiral Samuel Perez, faulted the ships for both manpower and firepower necessary to actually complete their missions and they were potentially a problem in the small waterways and harbors they could be expected to operate in (Of note, then Captain Sam Perez was the Commodore of DESRON 15 out of Yokosuka, and definitely knew what he was talking about).

Yeah, right…

Oh yeah, and crew survivability??? Well, they were supposed to take a hit and allow the crew to abandon ship.

There have been problems with basic operation of the ships from the start- Blue screens of death (ship going DIW), maintenance issues (maintenance crews are shore based), equipment failures, etc. Defense Industry Daily has a good article, HERE on the whole program.

Last week, one of the LCS got a cracked hull trying to get out of Mayport ahead of Hurricane Matthew, so they went to sea patching a hole in the boat… Article HERE.

Problems continued to surface with the crews, even after the expansion to 60 personnel. This requires three-four crews to adequately man/fight the ship, as the crews have to rotate out every 4-5 months (supposedly) for ‘crew rest’ and retraining. This was, believe it or not, an improvement from the original manning concept and length of time the crew could actually manage the ship without running the crew into the ground.

So they moved the mission from littoral to ‘offshore’ with the CSG, but if the LCS runs at speed, it also means it needs to fuel up about every three days… There aren’t enough tankers to go around and meet that requirements.

I could go on, but my BP is about peaked now… IMHO, the Navy needs to stop throwing good money after bad, kill the whole program and go back to the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class before we lose a bunch of sailors needlessly. The DDGs work, have a proven track record, and can and are being updated…

Just my $.02 worth (I really wish they still had the cents symbol)… Sigh

Comments

LCS… — 25 Comments

  1. I worked with a man (bosun’s mate) that was on the Blue Ridge. He said the old baby flat-top was refit with an aluminum superstructure. That it was super important to kill the fire is x amount of time, as the aluminum would melt and burn.

    I think Cent in Ascii is Alt 162, or A2 (hex)
    Lookup says HTML is “&#162”, “&cent” without quotes. &#162

  2. The only bone I have to pick is that the HSV-2 is/was a logistics vessel. The LCS are meant to be combat capable ships that are not very capable nor very much ready to participate in combat. My 2¢.

    😉

  4. The reason navies have been using aluminum superstructures is because of top weight. Too much weight up top decreases sea keeping ability and reduces the reserve buoyancy. Of course, the trade-off is increased susceptibility to fire damage.

    No country has fought a major naval war since WWII. The closest was the Falklands and that was almost 35 years ago. Everyone complains about the military “fighting the last war”. Well, for naval warfare, the “last war” was over a generation ago. So what do you do?

    I am not necessarily defending the LCS. I’ve been gone from the USN since the seventies so I don’t know enough about it. The thing I do know is that *anything* on the surface is vulnerable if you don’t have complete sea control – above, on, or below.

  6. I’m with Roy & WSF, above. That 1944-issue tin can on which I served in the ’70s could – and did – outrun and out-gun the other five, more modern, destroyers in DESRON 12 out of Elefsis, Greece. “Newer” is not a synonym for “better”, unless it can be proven so. In this case, not at all.

  7. We’ve ranted (in concert) over the weakness of the LCS over hamburgers at Hodads before and agree. Other than looking cool, there is really nothing that the LCS ads to the fleet, and there are a number of take-aways.

    Question: The HSV-2 is an unarmed ship (or is my recollection tainted?). What is it doing there in a position to be attacked by the aloha snackbar crowd?

    The FFG-7’s were designed as ASW platforms with a single mission and as such they weren’t all that ready for “prime time” either. Adding the single phalanx helped their survival profile but – we salty types all know that the single missile rail was usually ‘down’ more than it was ‘up’. Anyone who was or knew a WEPS on a FFG-7 was familiar with the rant. And the 3″50 amidship was not of much use either.

    So sub hunting relied on the helicopter if the ship couldn’t rail and launch an ASROC.

    With these lessons learned and a TON of FFG-7’s in inventory, the US should have known better – but we didn’t.

    The SPECWAR mission of the LCS was a JOKE because it was so accousticly loud that any sophisticated nation with an inshore undersea warfare capacity would hear it coming for hours before it was close enough to drop off the combat rubber raiding craft.

    But we keep building them.

    • PS- I speculated that the Iranians/Houthis had fired a SS(N)2 Styx/Silkworm when the attack was first announced. Thanks for clarifying that it was a C-802.

  8. STx- That’s true. I’ll check on the other issue.

    Marc- No disagreement, but they have NO capability to defend against an anti-ship missile. I don’t see any computerized DC capability surviving a hit like that, much less the crew…

    Ed- Think $$$… sigh

    Roy- EXCELLENT point, and we currently have neither in that region of the world…

    WSF/Rev- All true… sigh

    LL- That we did.HSV-2 was unarmed, and it was on a ‘mercy mission’ for the UAE. Re the FFGs, you are also correct. FFGs without a helo were nothing more than a missile sponge in the CSG. The SPECWAR mission has been dropped, according to my contacts… At least THAT is good news!

    • Unless people are familiar with warships and the operational criteria of same, there is a romantic dash to small ships. But when the navy is forward deployed, the small ships become far more work than they are worth because they lack the capacity to defend themselves in a high threat environment and the case of the LCS, the legs to operate without very significant UNREP continually.

      The DDG-51’s are an excellent balance of capacity, capability and sustainability and have a solid track record. We should focus on what works, not on “fads” that don’t.

      SPECWAR has its own peculiar needs and putting equipment that they need in the hull of a LSD or similar is a better choice than saddling them with something like an LCS, which is unacceptable. I’m out of date as to mission creep, but I’m not surprised that the SPECWAR folks said “NO-NO-NO” to the LCS. When I had a finger in the pie, Big Navy was trying to force us to accept them.

  9. I read that the swift boat that was attacked had been leased from the UAE. No indication where it was made.

  10. LL- That they do. I was on USS VANDEGRIFT FFG-48, one of the last FFGs still active a few years ago for testing. That was basically all they were doing… DDGs are the ‘ideal’ mix especially the flight 4s that are being updated.

    Randy- Swift was built by Austel, the Navy had it for testing for a few years back in the early 2000s. It was replaced by Westpac Express for 31st MEU out of Okinawa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Westpac_Express_(HSV-4676)

  11. 2¢ – hold down the alt key, then type 155 on the numeric keypad.

  12. “I really wish they still had the cents symbol”

    Alt 0162

  14. The more things change, the more they stay the same

    “…Now Congress wants to trim down the Navy, so it will fit in the bathtub too. Ya know, it seems to me like we’re the only nation in the country, that waits ’til they get into a war, before we start getting ready for it.” — Will Rogers

  16. Never been a sailor-man, but I know something about armored vehicles. Aluminum is no replacement for steel. I’ve owned several aluminum pleasure craft and they’re fine for light weight and corrosion resistance, but for crew protection, you want steel. You MIGHT be able to make good aluminum protection with layered alum/ceramic, but that gets expensive.

    As to the lowest rate being an E-5, rank is relative. The lowest ranking member of a team is still the lowest ranking member, and he’s the guy that’s going to be sweeping the floors. There is a reason why we have the lower grades; to do the grunt-work and to teach the junior NCOs how to lead. An E-5 with no one to supervise is simply a “high private”. That does a disservice to the junior NCO. He’s expected to use that grade to learn to lead, to start learning staff work, and to prepare himself for higher levels.

    But then again, I ain’t no sailor-man. Maybe you folks do it differently. Just my 2 cents.

  17. If they are gong to be scrapped, can I have one?

    As a private yacht, I mean.

    I can pay anything up to $50.

  18. Too long since the Kennedy/Belknap collision I suppose, for people to recall how aluminum is fires.

    A major problem, as I see it, with the module concept is training an integration. To perform pretty much any mission well, a crew has to have worked together at that mission, first. Sticking module teams into the seaframe crew and expecting them to merge seamlessly is fantasy (I’m preaching to the choir of folks who’ve been in the service, I know). It takes time and practice to integrate everyone and their thought/action patterns.
    The mission focused division concept will help, but the ship still lacks basics like organic sonar for the ASW and MiW mission areas.

  21. Here’s my few ¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢¢!

  23. How many Navy officers working on the LCS program retired directly to a job w/ Lockheed-Martin?
    Cynic? Why yes, I am.