Recent posts have seen some speculation on what the LCS
speed was intended for. As many pointed
out, speed is not a useful feature in and around mines. So, what was the LCS speed intended to
do? Why was it such a major design requirement? One could make a good argument that speed was
the number one design requirement … but why?
I have no idea.
Well, that was a short post.
Actually, the purpose of the post is to, yet again,
emphasize the purpose and importance of a concept of operations (CONOPS) prior
to committing to a finalized design and, ultimately, production.
The Navy has publicly acknowledged that it never developed a
CONOPS for the LCS. Thus, we have no
idea what purpose the LCS speed was to have served.
The best speculation I’ve seen is that the speed was
intended to move the ship as quickly as possible between the operational/combat
area and the nearest module swapping port which, logically, would be quite a
long distance from the combat area. Of
course, the Navy abandoned the module swapping concept fairly early on thus
rendering the speed feature moot.
In addition, the intra-theater speed concept was highly
questionable to begin with. The LCS had
short range to begin with and the DOT&E reports and trials quickly reported
that the range capability was nowhere near the design spec and they
significantly downgraded the range.
Further, high speed consumes fuel at a prodigious rate, further reducing
the effective range. An LCS that made a
sustained, high speed, long distance dash from a module swapping port to an
operational area would have a useful loiter time in the operational area of
just a few hours or days, having consumed its fuel in the dash to get
there. That’s not a combat-useful
feature. A well thought out CONOPS would
have revealed that prior to final design and production … assuming that was
even the reason for the speed requirement.
This is why you do CONOPS.
The LCS provides an object lesson in the need for a CONOPS.
CONOPS, CONOPS, CONOPS!
Wild baseless speculation
ReplyDeleteLittoral operations was the mission, when did the USN operate in the littoral?, the Solomons Campaign, so PT boats come to mind. What makes a PT boat, speed, small size and flexibility
in armament. PT changed from torpedo boat to gun boat
to attack coast shipping. So the LCS is an oversized, under armed, but fast PT boat.
I've always reckoned that its original purpose was to stomp all over Iranian speedboats in the Gulf, and "Littoral Combat" was meant to be a codename for that. Then they got aircraft companies to bid on it, and the gold-plating got so thick it undermined the hull strength. Metaphorically, that is.
ReplyDeleteI remain amazed that a ship called a littoral combat ship would be designed and built without a single capability of use in littoral combat.
ReplyDeleteFirst, there is no such thing as littoral. That's something the Navy made up to sell Congress on new hulls after the end of the Cold War cast doubt on the Navy's rationale for existence, in the Navy's panicked mind. See, Littoral Warfare - Is There Such A Thing?
DeleteSecond, to be fair, the original LCS did call for shallow water ASW, MCM and the NLOS would have provided a potentially significant land ?and sea? strike capability. Of course, none of those modules existed and still don't.
MCM was a stupid mission to assign to the LCS. It's just one more example of the US Navy saying we don't really need a viable MCM capability, so we will just say the LCS can do it, and be done and dusted. Shallow water ASW could be a littoral mission, but as you note that module has never existed. NGFS might also be a littoral mission, but not with a 57mm popgun. You might also want some kind of anti-air self-defense, but I don't see anything for that.
Delete"Recent posts have seen some speculation on what the LCS speed was intended for."
ReplyDeletePartying? I mean, it's not like anyone designed that thing with actual combat in mind...
Would speed be useful for mine laying? -LP
ReplyDeletePerhaps, but we don't lay mines with surface ships. We use aircraft primarily and submarines secondarily. And I'm not aware of any particular need for ship speed, other than maybe to get in and out in a hurry. Most effective mining is in restricted waters, where too much speed could hazard the vessel.
Delete"we don't lay mines with surface ships."
DeleteNow that's an interesting statement. It's true that we don't, currently, have any dedicated minelaying ships but only ships can carry and deliver the quantity of mines needed for effective minefields in war. During WWII, we converted all manner of ships, mainly commercial, to minelaying. There's no reason to think we'd do differently in the next war. Subs can deliver around 20-40 mines per mission depending on the torpedo loadout they want to maintain. Aircraft are capable of deliver a few to a few dozen depending on which aircraft. Neither are capable of deploying mines by the tens of thousands as was done during WWII. Of course, I don't think we have tens of thousands of mines so ...
Of course, there may be a few, isolated, very restricted waterways that could be effectively mined with less than tens of thousands but, almost by definition, those are along the Chinese coast and that rules out aircraft delivery and makes even sub delivery a very hazardous undertaking.
As with so many things, the Navy has virtually ignored offensive mine warfare.
Do the Burkes have any capacity or potential for minelaying (thinking of the old WW1 flush deck destroyer conversions that were so useful in the Solomons campaign) in 1943? They layed mines through their torpedo tubes which had been fit with a sort of caterpillar track mechanism (which sounds like risky work).
DeleteIf the LCSs could be made more reliable they would - potentially at least - have the large internal capacity and high speed that might make them more useful as minelayers than MCM ships.
Being able to lay 2 or 3 hundred mines quickly where the enemy was expecting clear sailing would be a useful thing to have.
I thought the speed was so it could slip from OTH to shore at speed. For whatever reason...
ReplyDelete" For whatever reason..."
DeleteExactly. What reason? It's not a landing craft. It hasn't got a large caliber gun for shore gunfire support. So why would it want to be by the shore?
I always just assumed the speed requirement went something like this:
ReplyDeleteManufacturers:"Iran speed boats and other small vessels all go really fast, do you want to fight them with a ship that's SLOWER?!?"
Admirals looking at each other:"No way! USN has to be just as fast as Iranian navy ships! Yes, we need to be just as fast if not, faster!"
Manufacturers:"How does 40 knots sound?"
To be fair, after Operation Praying Mantis in 1988, the Iranian navy was forces to rebuild. Almost from scratch.
DeleteHere is an article I wrote nine years ago attacking the LCS and suggesting something much better, with a diesel-electric engine, more weaponry, and supported by tenders.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.g2mil.com/LCS.htm
We are a bit constrained on building a large composite ship. Christensen Yachts, builder of the Sea Hunter USV had planned and built a facility in Tennessee for larger commposite yachts up to 225'. THey seem to have gone belly up, but we could borrow their plan and building for our own design. I might also suggest also building a version from Aluminum at Gulf Craft LLC in conjunction with Metal Shark. Then maybe a slower Steel/Aluminum version using other available yards like Swiftships. We need a flood of networked combatants to sense and maneuver under the protection of Aegis ships.
DeleteLCS was a product of post Cold War and Iraqi War thinkings. They are designed to counter second tier powers which not US' pals. They are designed to fight regional powers and support land invasions thus "littoral" means other nations' coasts, nothing to do defend US coasts.
ReplyDeleteUnder this thoughts, high speed is an important tool to hit and run while facing 2nd tier powers without advanced weapons.
Nevertheless, so called high speed end up only in show cases as they don't work most times. Planned Cyberfire (or Netfire) also failed miserably (XM-501 project cancelled).
You may want to criticize then policy makers who made this strategic blunder but ask yourself, have you seen this strategy was fundamentally flawed at that time?
LCS and DDG-1000 programs have made Navy lost a generation. Now, there is no really usable frigates and FFG is still years away. Burkes are overloading to conduct almost all tasks yet its halls and designs have little room to upgrade, not to mention, DDG(X) is years away even in design.
"Under this thoughts, high speed is an important tool to hit and run while facing 2nd tier powers without advanced weapons."
DeleteThere is no documentation that this was ever the intended use for the LCS speed. Thus, this is pure speculation on your part. There's nothing wrong with speculating but be sure to make it clear that it is so rather than presenting it as fact.
"have you seen this strategy was fundamentally flawed at that time?"
Emphatically, yes! Almost everyone outside the Navy criticized the LCS from day one for a wide variety of reasons: ridiculous cost estimates, lack of a CONOPS, non-existent modules, lack of armament, features incompatible with function, poor choice of propulsion system, lack of weight and stability margins, idiotic manning levels, idiotic maintenance scheme, etc.
Regarding 'hit and run', this is likely completely irrelevant. A 30-40 kt ship is not going to outrun helos, aircraft, coastal missiles, radar, etc. and would be an absolute liability in the face of mines. Naval hit and run was a WWII tactic that worked because none of those things existed.
Second tier. Like Yemen or Ukraine? They missed reality.
Delete"Like Yemen or Ukraine?"
DeleteDo you have something informative to offer that will further the discussion?
"(H)it second tier powers..." With what? A 57mm popgun?
DeleteI can think of some capabilities that might be useful for a combat ship in a littoral environment:
- Gunfire support/shore bombardment; at least a 5-inch gun, possibly a missile battery
- Shallow water ASW
- At least self-defense against air/missile attacks
- Stealth
- Ability to transport commando/raid personnel and put them ashore
- As fast as possible consistent with the other objectives
As far as MCM, that needs to be a separate vessel or separate vessels devoted to that single purpose. I have proposed two types--a drone sweep mother ship and a minehunter. Both would carry ComNavOps's seek-and-destroy weapons that I have called Wild Walrus (a play on Wild Weasel).
I don't see the LCS having any of those useful attributes except speed (when everything is working), and clearly usefulness was sacrificed for speed.
"combat ship in a littoral environment:"
DeleteHow would a 'combat ship in a littoral environment' be any different than a regular ship? For example, the destroyers at Normandy that moved right up to the beach to provide fire support were just regular destroyers. What were they missing that would have made them more effective as specialized littoral combat ships?
We need to be cautious not to buy into the Navy's propaganda about 'littoral' . As I've pointed out, there is no such thing. 'Littoral' was something the Navy made up when it thought its budget was in danger after the end of the Cold War.
We have a tendency to think, sure, the LCS was a failure but we still need a littoral combat ship and that isn't true.
If you think there's actually a need for a littoral combat ship, what characteristics would it need that are different from regular ships?
"""have you seen this strategy was fundamentally flawed at that time?"""
DeleteI mean the strategic blunder of assuming US would no longer counter a nation having competent navy. Not many criticized this strategy at that time.
Rumsfeld's reform has done lots of damages to US forces. Ironically, his strong ability to enforce policies but wrong ones has caused more harm than good. His strong support of 2003 Iraqi War made .... lament!
DeleteLCS, DDG-1000, reduction F-22 orders, insist F-35 as a common platform, ...
"Not many criticized this strategy at that time."
DeleteOutside the military/Navy, it was widely recognized that Russia and China were gearing up to take on the US. As one easily documented example, you may recall that presidential candidate Mitt Romney stated in 2012, before the second Freedom class LCS was commissioned, that Russia was our number one geopolitical enemy.
I, and many other bloggers, have been highlighting the Chinese threat for years/decades. For example, China forced down and seized a Navy EP-3 aircraft and crew in April 2001 four years before the first LCS was laid down.
And the examples go on and on. Our enemies were well known as the LCS was being birthed.
"How would a 'combat ship in a littoral environment' be any different than a regular ship?"
DeleteI think my list of requirements for a littoral combat ship would apply pretty well for a regular escort ship. Perhaps noot the emphasis on shallow water ASW, but a general ASW capability would apply. The way to have a good littoral combat ship is to have a good combat ship and drive it into littoral areas.
"Perhaps [not] the emphasis on shallow water ASW"
DeleteWhat do you think would be specifically required for shallow water ASW that an open ocean ASW vessel wouldn't have?
"The way to have a good littoral combat ship is to have a good combat ship and drive it into littoral areas."
That sums it up quite nicely. A littoral combat ship is a regular ship that happens to sail into near shore waters. So, what makes a ship 'littoral' is its location not any particular equipment.
In the comments section on this blog, someone once mentioned that the Buckley-class destroyer, which its 11-foot draft, would have been a good for littoral operations. Wikipedia says these ships had three 3/50 guns, two Bofors 40 mm guns, eight Oerlikon 20 mm guns, three tubes for 21-inch torpedoes, a hedgehog launcher, and up to 200 depth charges. The sonar dome was retractable.
DeleteCarlton's diesel-electric corvette article is very interesting. In addition to its potential for shallow-water ASW, this concept would have considerable capability against speedboats. Wikipedia says a Visby-class corvette has a draft of 7 feet, 10 inches.
Do you have an idiots guide for establishing the criteria the CONOPS for vessel or weapon system
ReplyDeleteEvery industry and every process uses CONOPS and each has their own, unique requirements. The military has formalized and overly bureaucratized the process and templates and documents are readily available on-line.
DeleteTo put it simply, as a guide for the development of a new ship, the CONOPS should describe what the ship will do, how it will do it, how it will fit in with other assets, how it will fit into command and control, how it will be supported logistically, what its crewing and maintenance needs are, what its strengths and weaknesses are, and so on.
What am I missing as that would seem to leave a lot of wiggle room to end up with a gold plated monster.
DeleteFor what it's worth, I like the description of the ASW corvette on the Fleet Structure tab. It describes what the ship is for--and what it is not for.
DeleteA political fundme barter in order for the USN to decommission the Oliver Hazard's and remaining Avengers with their replacements, LCS. Faster lead times, reduced costs, reduced manning in contrast to an Arleigh Burke. A tradeoff for the DDG to keep the sexy missions. LCS would take the rest of the hand-me-downs-MIO, MCM, limited ASW, waterdown NGFS, HADR, COMREL. The 40 kts was more or less giving the LCS a way to get in the short fight and maybe a chance to escape buying time for the other ships in the strike group to egress, sacrificing as a decoy against a torpedo, missile sponge with AL hull, and being a metal mine hunter.
ReplyDeleteI would suspect the speed crept in if somebody had the bright ideal that with some multi super inter extra interchangeable missile package and a different crew it could be like the old Pegasus class. A frankly disposable high speed missile boat in an era where that speed and likely assumed US air superiority meant you might even live to run away in resolvable seas and back to arms of the larger us ships.
ReplyDeleteThe LCS developed out of the Streetfighter concept circa 1999 that envisioned squadrons of small fast ships working close to enemy shores to inflict damage before the “ships of the line” made the scene. The high speed was I believe both to be able to strike quickly but also withdraw quickly because the ships otherwise weren’t supposed to be very survivable. Remember these were envisioned as 300-1200 ton vessels.(Even if you like that CONOPS it’s not what we got in the LCS. Just trying to address the speed requirement posed here)
ReplyDeleteInteresting Feb 2000 article defending the concept.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2000/february/22-questions-streetfighter
"The LCS developed out of the Streetfighter concept"
DeleteNo. The two concepts appear to be totally unrelated. I posted on this. See, What Happened To Streetfighter?
I’m familiar with the timeline and am going to suggest both might be true. The USN was clearly playing around with the concept of a “littoral concept ship” as part of the SC-21 family discussions in the 90s. No argument. Was it defined to the extent the LCS is today, at that point (e.g., speed requirements)? I don’t see evidence it was. It was just something in the SC-21 family that was smaller and wasn’t a destroyer (DD-21) or cruiser (CG-21).
DeleteWhat could have happened was this small ship concept was then picked up by Cebrowski and others who said basically, you know this LCS we’re thinking about? Let’s buy 100+ and make them fast and disposable and we can use it in this “streetfighter” concept. In other words, the idea of what LCS could look like continued to evolve from its initial concept to design. What ended up being locked in (in terms of the speed requirement) reflected the vision of this small combatant advocated by cebrowski et al.
I think there’s a logic here in the timeline. The fact that we didn’t start seeing actual LCS designs until the early 2000s (that is, after streetfighter was the rage), and not, say, in the mid-90s, gives this theory some support. Not to say it’s correct, just that it’s plausible.
It would be interesting to find some of the initial RFPs or what have you - they might shed some light.
The timeline and documentation presented in linked post from above clearly demonstrates that LCS did NOT come from Streetfighter. It is remotely possible that Streetfighter was influenced by LCS but there is ZERO evidence or documentation to support this and quite a bit of circumstantial evidence to the contrary. In all Cebrowski's writings, he never once even mentions LCS which would seem quite odd if he was influenced by it or, indeed, if he had ever even heard of it. In fact, the timeline suggests that he may never have heard of LCS.
Delete"didn’t start seeing actual LCS designs until the early 2000s"
Incorrect. Read the post "LCS Conceptual Orign". It is quite clear that the LCS design was being solidified in the mid-1990's versus the first public mention of Streetfight in 1999.
You appear to be trying to rewrite history. Let the facts, rather than your desire or pre-conceived notion, tell the story.
I, too, thought there must be a link between the two concepts when I began researching my post but the evidence said otherwise. It is theoretically possible that there was some unknown, undocumented cross-pollination between the two concepts but, again, there is ZERO evidence of that. If you ever find any documentation to the contrary, I'd love to see it and I'll gladly update/revise my post. Until then, the evidence says that two concepts are completely unrelated.
Littoral is mentioned 4 times in the article cited here and 19 times in their article introducing Streetfighter on USNI. They discuss the 2 ship types with the larger making use of advances in the high speed ferry industry. MIC and big Navy grabbed it and thrashed it from there. FSF-1 streetfighter was close to their big ship concept. Sea Slice was close to their small ship concept. I'd say the intervening quarter century has played out the same. Navy missing easy opportunities being provided from commercial industry. I see signs for hope with MUSV and Mk 70 launchers.
Delete