LCS MCM - What's The Point?

As we all know, the LCS is, by design and intent, utterly useless without a module.  Of course, the first LCS was commissioned in 2008 and here we are, a decade later, still waiting for any useful modules.  Now, USNI News website reports that the Navy is developing an unmanned surface vessel (Common Unmanned Surface Vessel – CUSV) as the prime ‘carrier’ for the various planned mine countermeasure equipment packages (mine hunting, mine sweeping, mine neutralization).  This is actually somewhat old news – not sure why it’s being reported as new other than the Navy’s constant attempt to spin news.

As a bit of memory refresh, the ASW (anti-submarine warfare) and MCM modules are running neck and neck in terms of the most module program starts, stops, start-overs, revamps, and slipped schedule dates.  The MCM module was originally planned to be a combination of helo-towed equipment and the unmanned underwater (UUV) remote multi-mission vehicle (RMMV).  Unfortunately/unbelievably, no one bothered to see if the helo could actually safely tow the required equipment and, as it turned out, it couldn’t.  Plus, the RMMV was a failure.  So, it was back to the drawing board.  After a few years of floundering around, the latest plan is to use the CUSV to tow sonars and influence sweep gear.

The really interesting point to this is the time frame.  As the article reports,

NAVSEA is set to compete for the MCM USV with an acquisition program that could start as early as 2020. (1)

So, the CUSV acquisition program won’t start until 2020 (or later – everything LCS related seems to slip its schedule!).  Integration and testing will take several more years.  Let’s be generous and say that the MCM module will be ready in 2025.  By then, the first LCS will be 17 years old and staring at retirement (the Navy hasn’t kept any ship class for its full service life in recent times).  More likely, the testing will slip further.

Okay, all of this highlights the abject stupidity and incompetence of the Navy but that’s hardly news at this point, is it?  Is this just another beat up on the LCS and the Navy post?  No, it’s not.  There’s a larger point here.

For sake of continued discussion, let’s assume that the LCS MCM module works perfectly and is fully deployed by 2025.  The question then becomes, so what?

As a reminder, the LCS fleet has been reorganized into two squadrons, one on each coast of the US, and each squadron will consist of four 4-ship divisions with one division each for training so there will be one division of ASW, one of ASuW, and one MCM in each squadron. (2)  Thus, there will be a grand total of 8 MCM-configured LCS ships in the entire US Navy.

The Navy’s entire MCM fleet will be 8 ships.

That bears repeating.

The Navy’s entire MCM fleet will be 8 ships.

Those 8 ships will be replacing the previous 12 Osprey class and 14 Avenger class mine countermeasure ships.  In addition, the Navy’s entire helo-based mine countermeasures inventory, 30 MH-53E Sea Dragons, are old and barely flightworthy and will retire very soon and without replacement.  Thus, the 8 LCS MCM ships will be replacing the Ospreys, Avengers, and MH-53E’s.  So, 8 LCS will replace 26 ships and 30 helos.  Does that sound rational to you?  Do you really believe that 8 LCS are equivalent to 26 ships and 30 helos?

Let’s recall a few salient points related to mine warfare and mine countermeasures. 

• In WWII, the Normandy (D-Day) invasion used over 250 minesweepers to clear the sea lanes and approaches in a combat-useful time frame.
• China’s inventory of mines is in the tens or hundreds of thousands.
• Iran’s inventory of mines is in the tens of thousands.
• N Korea’s inventory of mines is in the tens or hundreds of thousands.
• A single LCS can clear a couple of mines per hour.

Ponder the interrelated ramifications of those five related points.

Considering the concept of combat-useful time frames, the size of the mine inventories our enemies have, and the clearance rate of the LCS-MCM, it becomes immediately apparent that we have a mammoth mismatch between needs and capabilities which is only going to get worse as the LCS becomes the only MCM asset in the fleet.

The mine clearing capacity of the entire LCS “fleet” is absolutely dwarfed by the enemy inventories and combat time frame requirements.  There is almost no difference between having the LCS-MCM fleet and not having it at all.  We have atrophied to the point that we may as well have no MCM capability since even with the LCS-MCM fleet we essentially won’t have any for any relevant use.

The conclusion is inescapable.  We need to abandon both the LCS and the LCS MCM concept (modular, remote, unmanned vehicles locating and removing single mines at a time) as an effective mine countermeasures asset and move on to an entirely new concept.  What that concept is, I don’t have a solid idea about.  Certainly, though, it needs to include high speed, high volume mine removal – sweeping – combined with individual mine removal, as needed.  Whether this can be done with small, unmanned craft towing influence sweeps or whether we need dedicated small vessels, as in WWII, is something for the experts in the field to determine.

Oddly, the Navy’s LCS MCM module development has been almost exclusively focused on one-at-a-time mine removal which is useless in a combat scenario.  I’m completely baffled by the thinking behind the effort.  What is needed, as I stated, is high volume, high speed clearance.  From day one of LCS MCM module development, we should have been focused on combat clearance (sweeping), not leisurely one-at-a-time clearance.

We also need to hugely increase our MCM asset numbers.  Mine clearance in a combat-useful time frame requires numbers of assets … large numbers of assets (250 minesweepers at Normandy!). 

We need to produce an immediate replacement for the MH-53 which currently forms the backbone of our MCM effort.

The Navy bet ‘all in’ on the LCS for MCM and crapped out.  We have, essentially, nothing left.  We need to invest heavily and quickly in a multi-faceted and robust MCM force.  As it stands, our vaunted amphibious assault capability can be stopped in its tracks by any country with a handful of mines.  Further, a system of mines laid in the gaps between the various islands of the first island chain can effectively close the E/S China Seas to the US Navy and don’t think that thought hasn’t occurred to China.

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Related thought:  Given China’s willingness (eagerness?) to flaunt international treaties, laws, and norms in constructing artificial islands and expanding their territorial claims, it’s only a matter of time until China decides that the negative political repercussions of laying mines between the first island chain waters and truly closing the E/S China Seas to the US is worth it.  We would have no means of conducting large scale clearance operations and would have no choice but to fully concede the E/S China Seas.

Another related thought:  In a war, if China places just a few mines in just a few US harbors, stand back and watch the US Navy convulse in an effort to protect and clear all our harbors with just 8 LCS – leaving none for forward combat operations!

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(1)USNI News website, “Navy Developing New Mine Countermeasures USV for Littoral Combat Ships”, Sam LaGrone, 17-Oct-2018,

https://news.usni.org/2018/10/17/navy-developing-new-mine-countermeasures-usv-littoral-combat-ships

(2)USNI News website, “Littoral Combat Ship Program Vastly Different a Year Into Major Organizational, Operational Overhaul”, Megan Eckstein, 6-Sep-2017,

https://news.usni.org/2017/09/06/littoral-combat-ship-program-vastly-different-year-major-organizational-operational-overhaul

Amphibious Connectors

An amphibious assault?  We all have the mental image of hulking amphibious ships lurking on the horizon and Marines storming the beach.  But how did the Marines get from the ship to the beach?  Well, a variety of ways, I guess, from the futuristic (though they’re actually getting quite dated!) looking Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) hovercraft to the ubiquitous Assault Amphibious Vehicle (AAV) to helos and now MV-22 Ospreys among other means.  All of these vehicles can be collectively referred to as connectors.  Simply put, the connector is the transport between the ship and shore.

The connector has the potential to be both a potent enabler of the amphibious assault force as well as a  bottleneck and vulnerability.

As an enabler, the connector should be able to transport Marines and their gear quickly, safely, and, ideally, with a little bit of inherent firepower to provide some support at the point of landing.  The Marines should land in good physical shape and intimately integrated with their gear.  In other words, they should be landed in peak physical readiness for battle.

As a weakness, the connector represents a potential bottleneck if there are too few connectors to transport sufficient numbers of Marines and weight of gear in a given time frame.  Marines and gear sitting piled up on ship waiting around for connector transport are a recipe for disaster. 



LCAC



Similarly, the connector represents a possible vulnerability.  Just as naval tacticians recognize that it’s far better to shoot archers than arrows, so too would any enemy recognize that it’s far more efficient to kill loaded connectors rather than deal with landed Marines.  Unfortunately, current connectors are slow and unarmored for practical purposes relative to the modern missile age.

The current connectors are aging rapidly and most are only marginally suited for the modern battlefield.  The AAV has been serving since the early 1970’s.  The AAV’s long anticipated replacement, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) is now a dead program with no other replacement in sight.  The LCAC entered service in the mid 1980’s and only 91 were built.  In addition, they’re large, slow (relative to missiles), attractive targets.    MV-22s are great for rapid transport of troops but can’t carry heavy gear.  The CH-53E heavy lift helo entered service in 1981 and airframes are being used up rapidly.  And so on …

All right, so the existing connectors are aging and ill-suited.  Can’t we just design new ones?  Well, therein lies the initial problem and the crux of this discussion.  What basic conceptual design is needed?  Do we need a traditional short range amphibious vehicle or do we need a very long range, way-over-the-horizon vehicle?  Are we doing traditional beachfront assaults or airborne, inland, maneuver warfare assaults? 



Cancelled EFV



The Marines tried to develop the EFV which is a short range beachfront assault vehicle despite the fact that both the Navy and Marines have stated that amphibious ships can’t survive within 50 miles of a defended beach due to the proliferation of shore launched anti-ship missiles.  In fact, for a decade or more, the Marines have embraced behind-the-lines, bypass-the-beach, maneuver warfare doctrine.  That being the case, why have they been fixated on the EFV?  Even now, with the cancellation of the EFV, they seem to be looking for yet another short range, slow, AAV-like replacement, suggesting a continued emphasis on short range beachfront assaults which is at odds with public statements regarding assault distances. 



On the other hand, the Navy is currently building a new class of amphibious ship (LHA-6) that doesn’t even have a well deck!  OK, so that means we’re going to be doing long range airborne assaults, right?  That’s fine except how do you transport M-1 Abrams tanks and all the other Marine combat vehicles and tons of gear and supplies by air?  The MV-22 can carry troops but not much more.  But wait a minute, didn’t the Navy just build an entire class of new LPD-17 class amphibious ships with well decks?  So, I guess we are doing beachfront assaults.

You see the problem?  I don’t think the Navy and Marines currently have a clear consensus on what type of assault operations they want to conduct in the future.  Of course, they could just opt to try and cover all possible scenarios but the cost of that would be staggering.

The Navy and Marines need to agree on how amphibious assaults will be conducted in the future and then start designing new connectors that complement that vision.

On a related note, here are some capacity/range figures for aerial connectors as cited in an NPS thesis (1).

MV-22

5 ton external, 50 nm range

10 ton internal, 100 nm range

CH-53E

18 ton external, 215 nm range

15 ton internal, 230 nm range

(1) Naval Postgraduate School, Thesis:  Cost Benefit and Capability Analysis of Sea-Base Connectors, Justin Dowd, Sep 2009, p. 17-18