LCS Second Life

At this point, not even the LCS’ most ardent supporter would call the LCS a successful program.  Even the Navy seems to be trying to get out from under the LCS given that they’ve retired, or announced the retirements of, six vessels, each with only a few years of actual service.  Talk about early retirement!

 

However, beating up on the LCS is not the purpose of today’s post.

 

The LCS has made many changes since its initial incarnation and, to be honest, most of the changes have been for the better (they’d almost have to be, right?).  The list includes:

 

• Adding the anti-ship Naval Strike Missile
• Adding Hellfire missiles to deal with small boats
• Standardizing on SeaRAM over RAM
• Standardizing on one combat software system
• Dropping the ridiculous 3:2 crewing scheme in favor of a simpler blue-gold scheme
• Increasing crew size
• Eliminating the module swap concept
• Somewhat de-emphasizing the shore maintenance concept and attempting to return some of the maintenance to the on-board crew

 

Of course, there are many other things they should have done and have not but, let’s be fair and acknowledge that the changes listed above are pretty clearly improvements to varying degrees.

 

With that said, and those changes in mind, is it possible that the LCS can now serve a useful function as a member of a combat fleet?  Or, is the ship burdened with so many built-in constraints, weaknesses, and limitations that there is simply nothing productive they can do?  Let’s take a look at some possible combat missions/roles for the ‘new’ LCS.  Let’s see if the LCS can have a second life.

 

For the moment, I’m going to ignore the mine counter-measure (MCM) and ASW roles since there are no active, functional modules and may never be.  In addition, while useful, those roles are not direct combat.

 

So, let’s consider the following possible roles:

 

Hunter-Killer Surface Sweep Squadrons.  The LCS could operate in squadrons, using its numbers, UAVs (surveillance), and anti-surface missiles to sweep ahead of larger surface groups such as amphibious groups and clear the way.  Ironically, this is somewhat akin to the original concept wherein the LCS would clear the littorals (littoral - a discredited notion) ahead of a larger group.  This sweep mission would be somewhat analogous to the WWII fighter sweeps that routinely preceded air strikes.  This kind of sweep could be useful in the Middle East or the islands around the E/S China Seas.

 

Choke Point Patrol and Interdiction.  While not a ‘battleline’ combat function, this kind of peripheral patrol is vital and would likely result in some direct combat.  One issue with this is that the LCS does not possess a ship-killing capability when facing a large commercial vessel.  The Naval Strike Missile is the heaviest anti-ship weapon and it is far too light to pose a lethal threat to large commercial ships.

 

Dedicated Electronic Warfare (EW) Escort Vessel.  This is a long time ComNavOps favorite.  By eliminating the aviation element, the LCS has the deck and internal space to mount numerous large EW antennae, jammers, sensors, etc.  The existing SLQ-32/SEWIP units are small, low powered, and effective only for the host ship (at best).  Just as we have area anti-air warfare protection from Aegis Burke/Ticonderogas, we should have area EW protection using very high powered systems.  One or two dedicated area EW vessels per surface group would be highly beneficial.

 

Peripheral Scout Ship.  This is an intriguing role wherein the LCS would be loaded with passive sensors of all types (EO, IR, SigInt, radar warning receivers, etc.) as well as passive UAVs and operate as distant scouts, far from surface groups, to provide early passive detection of ships and aircraft.  The LCS stealth, such as it is, would aid in keeping the scout ship undetected.  Some external modifications such as removing deck equipment, railings, etc. could further enhance the ship’s stealth.

 

Armed Transport.[1]  The Marine’s Light Amphibious Warfare (LAW) vessel appears to be the key to the Corps’ advanced base concept.  Setting aside any discussion of the wisdom of that concept, the LAW is a weak link in the concept with its very slow speed and lack of defensive weapons, among other drawbacks.  It is also highly questionable whether the Navy will purchase the LAW in the quantities the Marines desire, given the Navy’s many other budget priorities.  As an alternative to the LAW, the LCS could be used as a high speed transport for Company size (or smaller) units in support of the Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations.  In contrast to the slow, defenseless LAW, the LCS is fast and has a degree of short range anti-air defense as well as anti-surface capability.  Loading and unloading would, of course, be a challenge due to lack of equipment, facilities, and crew.

 

Network/Communications Support Vessel.[1]  On a more speculative level, the hangar space and large flight deck could allow the LCS to act as a host for communications drones or high altitude balloons if we anticipate significant satellite losses.  In this case, balloons and communication relay drones could establish temporary local network communications.

 

 

Summary

 

One of the fundamental assumptions in this second life concept is that two of the LCS’ original missions should be dropped.  The MCM mission does not require a high speed vessel and the LCS is not optimized for the mission.  A dedicated, smaller, more conventional MCM ship needs to be designed and procured in large numbers.  Similarly, the LCS is a very poor choice for ASW for a variety of reasons and the Navy needs to design and build a small, dedicated ASW corvette.  Dropping these missions frees up LCS vessels for one or more of the second life roles.

 

So, with the anticipation of having more vessels available, one or more of the preceding second life roles would seem viable and would certainly offer more utility than the neutered vessels we have now that are doing nothing but sitting around waiting for the eternally-under-development modules to mature.  At the very least, with so many LCS sitting around, idle, why not convert some of the ships to prototypes of the various roles and see what benefits they can provide?  If they don’t pan out, they can always go back to sitting round waiting for modules with no harm done.

 

Of course, there’s no escaping the inherent limitations of the LCS such as limited range, lack of ship-board maintenance capability (shops, parts storage, fabrication facilities, technicians, etc.), stability issues, weight limitations, and very limited endurance (lack of food and water storage).  Again, though, modifications could alleviate some of those limits, to some degree.  The modular bays, for example, could be converted to storage and maintenance compartments.

 

It costs money to crew (two crews per ship!  what a stupid idea!) and operate these ships even when they’re doing nothing.  It is crystal clear that we need to either retire the entire LCS fleet, wholesale, to save the operating costs or find something productive for them to do.  These second life roles are at least worth a look.

 

The only caution in this is that, whatever second life role we want to convert to, we need to treat it as a single function role.  We cannot do the typical Navy approach and try to make them multi-role, gold-plated, do-everything vessels with a second life role added on.  We need to strip the ships of everything that isn’t required for the particular second life role.  Generally speaking, we need to remove more than we add for the second life role.  In addition, we need to abandon the idiotic dual crew and shore maintenance concepts.  We need to return to traditional manning and maintenance.

 

The Navy has a chance to give the LCS a second life and salvage something useful out of a disaster of a program but it needs to be done right, as we’ve described, here.

 

 

 

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[1]Sincere thanks to Steven Wills for suggesting this concept during private discussions.