LCS Hellfire

As we all know, the current plan to beef up the anemic ASuW capability of the LCS is to incorporate the AGM-114L Longbow (Apache helo) Hellfire missile.  The Hellfire replaces the Griffon missile that the Navy briefly considered.  Here’s a few Hellfire specs.

Range:            500 yds – 5 miles (likely less with a sea level vertical launch)

Seeker:          millimeter wave radar

Speed:           Mach 1.3

Warhead:       20 lb, high explosive anti-tank (HEAT)

The missile’s active radar seeker gives it a fire-and-forget capability which, in turn, gives it the ability to engage multiple targets in a short time frame.  This is ideal for the small boat swarm scenario.  Hellfire is proven, lethal to small boats, and cheap enough ($100K+ per missile) to justify using for the intended purpose.

On the other hand, the Hellfire’s target set is extremely limited.  The target is strictly small boats that must close to a few miles or less to attack.  Presumably, this means small boats armed with RPGs and machine guns.  Larger missile carrying boats and fast attack craft (FAC) armed with small anti-ship missiles far outrange the LCS’ Hellfire and, thus, are not an applicable target set.

Still, assuming the Hellfire launch system does not wind up taking up too much deck space or internal ship’s volume, the missile is easily justified despite its limited target set.

The other question is whether the Hellfire will become part of the core seaframe capability or will be present only as part of the ASuW module.  Again, assuming the space and weight requirement is minimal, the missiles ought to be part of the seaframe although this is somewhat at odds with the Navy’s original intention of modular outfitting.  Of course, even the Navy has essentially admitted that the modular concept won’t work for the LCS.

Hellfire Missile

All in all, the Hellfire represents a good choice for the intended target set and can’t help but improve the LCS’ overall capability, at least to some small extent.  A small step in the right direction for the LCS!

Spruance Contract???

Well, here’s an absolutely fascinating bit of Navy contract news.

“Huntington Ingalls Inc., Pascagoula, Mississippi, is being awarded a $12,511,359 cost-plus-award-fee contract modification to previously awarded contract N00024-12-C-4323 to provide long lead-time material procurement and planning yard services for CG-47-class cruisers and DD 963-class destroyers.“

The DD-963 class is the Spruance class and, as far as I know, they’ve all been converted to uni-directional diving submarines. 

I don’t know if this is some kind of outdated cut and paste error or what.  I know there’s waste and fraud in the Department of Defense but working on non-existent ships seems a bit over the top!

Do any of you have any idea what this is referring to?

Sea Control Ship

One of the common suggestions that I encounter is the need for a sea control ship.  This is one of those concepts whose definition, and therefore capabilities and requirements, depends on the person bringing it up.  Everyone seems to have a different definition.

The original sea control concept was derived from the convoy escort mission and consisted of a helo carrier which would provide continuous ASW presence.  Around 14 helos on the ship would ensure that a couple were always airborne.

Sea control as often discussed today has evolved to include anti-surface and medium range anti-air in addition to the original ASW role.  Some even credit a sea control ship with a Marine complement for limited land operations.  The sea control ship most commonly described is a small hybrid carrier with a combination of fixed wing aircraft (Harriers, originally, and now F-35Bs) and helos with, perhaps, some AEW aircraft depending on who’s proposing the idea.

The Navy has experimented with the idea in the past.  The USS Guam was set up as a sea control vessel for a time.  Other countries have also experimented with the concept.  Notably, the Japanese have developed the helicopter destroyer (DDH) and the Soviets developed the Moskva class which combined a bit of a cruiser with an ASW helo carrier.

A sea control ship is one of those ideas that sounds good on paper but may not be worth it in reality. 

Let’s consider its function.  All sea control concepts seem to have ASW as the core function with the major capability being provided by helos.  Fair enough.  Now let’s think through the ship’s usage in a war against a peer. 

A helo carrier is not going to have much in the way of AAW protection other than RAM type short range self-defense weapons.  That means that in combat it would either need to be defended by more capable ships (a Burke, presumably) or relegated to peripheral combat areas that would not expect to see major enemy activity.

An escort is feasible but removes a highly capable vessel from other duty.  On the other hand, a Burke is, theoretically, ASW capable.  I say theoretically because Navy destroyers do not practice ASW enough to be proficient.  Still, a helo carrier and a Burke or two acting as a hunter-killer group is not a bad idea if we have enough Burkes to devote to this.  Presumably, this kind of group would be effective protecting approaches to other naval groups or attempting to deny known enemy submarine transit routes or operational areas.

Without an escort, a helo carrier would be relegated to peripheral activities such as protecting distant sea lanes or sitting on chokepoints.  Is this a worthwhile activity?  A carrier, even a smaller helo carrier is still very expensive to build, man, and operate.  If we think we can get enough benefit for the low risk then it would be worth it.  On the other hand, if the risk is low it’s probably because the possibility of reward is also low.

Finally, let’s look at the more modern definition of sea control.  Some people advocate a sea control vessel that is a jack of all trades.  It would have fixed wing aircraft (F-35B) and helos, anti-ship missiles, and at least medium range area AAW.  Frankly, I’m not sure what role such a ship would play in major combat.  It would be like an aviation frigate:  capable of lots of tasks but incapable of anything serious on its own.  It could operate with a carrier group but would be redundant since a carrier has its own ASW helos.  It could operate with an amphibious group but an amphibious group would always have a carrier supporting it so, again, it would be redundant.  It might be useful as a convoy escort which, of course, is what the modern frigate was intended to be.

Notional Sea Control Ship

Considering the various options and scenarios, it seems as if the Japanese DDH might be the best implementation of this concept.  If so, that’s not exactly the sea control concept.  Instead, it’s more of a focused ASW vessel.

The very idea of a sea control ship during war is on of those concepts that is appealing when considered in isolation but fails to stand up to rigorous analysis.  Proponents envision a sea control ship staking out a patch of ocean and then destroying enemy patrol craft and submarines.  Voila, a secured patch of ocean at a fraction of the cost of a carrier group! 

Now, let’s apply some analytical thinking to that concept.  Can a sea control ship fight an enemy destroyer similar to a Burke?  No.  That’s not even remotely realistic.  Can it fight fast attack craft (anti-ship missile boats/FAC)?  Under the right circumstances, possibly.  A helo, armed for anti-ship missions, can certainly defeat a FAC since very few FACs have any significant AAW capability.  However, the FACs generally far outrange the detection limits of a sea control ship’s sensors.  For example, the Chinese Type 022 (Houbei) missile boat carries C-80X anti-ship missiles that have a range of 60-200 miles, depending on the missile type.  A sea control ship’s onboard sensors would have an effective range out to the horizon (20 miles, say).  Of course, the ship’s helos could extend that range but every helo dedicated to surveillance is a helo subtracted from the ASW mission.

So, yes, if a sea control ship were willing to partially or completely sacrifice its ASW mission, it could detect and effectively attack FACs.  Of course, ASW is the foundation mission for a sea control ship so detracting from that mission is a risky proposition.

Now, what about when the sea control ship is detected by the enemy and faces aerial attack from aircraft and/or missiles.  The ship’s defenses would be limited to short range or point defense (RAM, most likely).  This is completely inadequate for AAW.  Some people argue for a sea control ship with a sizable fixed wing aviation component (F-35B, presumably).  Of course, once you upsize the ship to carry both a large helo and fixed wing component, you’re no longer talking about a sea control ship – you’re now talking about a nearly full size carrier which has been proven to be almost as costly to build, man, and operate as a supercarrier but without the full size carrier’s capacities and capabilities.  So, sticking with a small to moderate size sea control vessel, we see that it is completely vulnerable to air attack.  An escort, such as a Burke, could be provided but, again, that takes the Burkes away from their other high end tasks and negates the very rationale of the sea control ship which is that it can free up high end ships for high end tasks.  We could add VLS cells to provide a medium range AAW capability but, again, that increases the size of the ship for what would be a very modest increase in AAW.

What about ASW, the foundation mission for a sea control ship?  A sea control ship with a handful of ASW helos would be as effective as a surface ship can be and, in the right scenario, could be a useful and effective asset.  The problem is that helos are notoriously unreliable and high maintenance.  Thus, you need several helos in order to maintain a few in continuous operation.  That’s fine – inefficient but fine.  Such a sea control ship sitting atop chokepoints or transit routes could prove highly effective at controlling enemy submarine activity.  Recall, though, that in order to protect itself from enemy FACs the ship would have to dedicate several helos to surveillance which would not leave enough helos available for effective ASW.  Unless we postulate a very much larger ship (America class size), a sea control ship just can’t carry enough helos for both the surveillance/counter FAC mission and ASW, simultaneously.

All of this leads us to the conclusion that a sea control ship is not an effective or efficient concept for war unless we’re willing to dedicate one or more high end Burke escorts for its protection.  If we have sufficient Burkes then this becomes a viable concept.  If not, it isn’t.  This also suggests that a lesser Burke, say a modern frigate, might be a viable escort although the Navy currently has no plans to acquire a frigate.

Thus, the sea control ship, with ASW as its primary mission, is appealing in concept but fails when one considers the details of wartime employment unless a high end escort is provided.

Queen Elizabeth Class - All In Or Half-Hearted?

Beaking Defense website has an article about the UK committing to operating two carriers with F-35B air wings (1).  That’s good news for the Royal Navy and yet I see limitations and weaknesses being baked into the concept as well some disturbing trends being played out just as they have in the US Navy.

Ministry of Defense officials are saying that the UK is committed to operating two carriers regardless of the results of an ongoing defense review.  That strikes me as a bit optimistic but, not knowing the UK political situation, I’ll accept the statement at face value.

One of the trends in the US Navy is minimal manning.  The concept is that automation will allow reduced crews thereby saving on personnel costs.  The flip side of that is that significant maintenance must be performed by shore side personnel.  Thus, the manning isn’t really decreased but rather a portion of it is transferred from sea to shore.  Again, the concept is that the shore contingent will be able to service multiple ships at an overall decrease in manning.  That sounds good on paper but, thus far, the US Navy has not been able to make it work.  LCS shore side personnel have had to be far more numerous than planned and there has been no significant reduction in manning and, quite probably, an increase depending on how one counts the personnel.

Worse than simple overall personnel numbers is the issue of actual maintenance.  The US Navy has been dabbling in minimal manning for at least a couple of decades now and has amassed considerable practical experience with the concept.  The clear finding has been that minimal manning has proven very detrimental to the material condition of the ships involved.  Minor problems have been allowed to grow into major ones and ships have been early retired due to their poor condition – much of that condition directly attributable to the lack of manpower.

It now appears that the UK is going down the same path.

“To save costs, the Queen Elizabeth class has a fewer sailors for its size than older ships, she [Penny Mordaunt, Minister of State for Armed Forces] said, but it requires ‘additional shore support’ to compensate.”

I hope that the UK looks seriously at the USN experience before fully committing to minimal manning. 

Moving on, the Queen Elizabeth class will carry F-35B air wings.

“Each QE-class ship can accommodate 40 aircraft of various types, but not all of those are going to be fighters. … The maximum capacity for F-35s is reportedly 36 aircraft but during routine operations, each carrier might have only a dozen F-35Bs on board.”

The key part of the statement above is the suggestion that the carriers would operate with only a dozen F-35s during routine operations.  If true, this would be a major mistake.

How can a navy learn to operate an air wing under maximum combat conditions if all their operational and training time is spent operating an air wing that is a third the size?  There are just too many differences between a 30-40 aircraft wing operating at maximum capacity versus a 12 aircraft wing operating under leisurely peacetime conditions.

How will the carrier learn the deck “dance” of handling and placement of 30-40 aircraft under constantly changing conditions from only operating 12?

How will the carrier learn the art of juggling launches and recoveries under maximum sortie rates with only 12?

How will the carrier learn the task of munitions handling, refueling, and maintenance of 30-40 aircraft with only 12?

In short, a carrier does not seamlessly transition from 12 aircraft operated at a leisurely pace to 30-40 aircraft operating a maximum sortie rate without constant practice.  The USN devotes months of training workups to its carriers and air wings prior to each deployment and that’s with operating a full air wing routinely.  The art of maximum carrier operations is not something that can be picked up on the fly in a week.

This brings us back around to manning levels.  The reduced manning of the QE class presumably is what’s required to operate the dozen F-35s.  When the carrier surges to a maximum 30-40 aircraft it will need many additional personnel.  Where will these extra personnel come from?  How will they be trained if they aren’t routinely operating with the carriers?  Learning on the fly on a carrier is a recipe for disaster.

Reduced operations is a bad idea all around.  Remember the adage, fight like you train, train like you fight?  Routinely operating 12 aircraft when you intend to fight with 30-40 violates a very wise adage.

Royal Navy, are you operating two carriers because you just like the idea of being able to say you have the carriers or are you operating two carriers because you want to be able to place two fully loaded carriers into high end combat at a moment’s notice?

Lastly, here’s an interesting comment about philosophy.

“What’s more, Britain has prioritized warfighting over low-intensity operations, accepting a smaller fleet as the price of more capable vessels …”

If true, that’s a very wise philosophy and one which, sadly, the USN is abandoning with its emphasis on the toothless LCS, JHSV, smaller air wings, submarine and fighter shortfalls, etc.  Note, though, RN, the contradiction between the stated philosophy of emphasis on warfighting with the reduction in operations of the carriers from max size air wings (30-40 aircraft) to a dozen aircraft for routine operations.  Are you really committed to warfighting or not?  Will you be fully trained and ready, or not?  You certainly won’t have a full air wing at a moment’s notice.

That’s an interesting question, too.  How long will it take to get all those extra F-35s out to the ship?  Are they all going to be parked on a tarmac ready to launch?  Not likely.  Will the extra pilots be sitting around fully trained (and carrier qualified!!) just waiting to launch?  Will the extra maintenance crews be sitting around, ready?  Will the extra spares and maintenance/testing equipment already be on the carrier or will they also have to be assembled and transported to the carrier? 

Those who might suggest that the a dozen aircraft are just fine for routine operations and that the rest of the aircraft can be instantly surged are just not seeing reality.  The F-35 is not a WWI powered kite that can be piloted by someone with a few hours training and maintained by any mechanic with a pipe wrench.  Surging F-35s may take weeks or months and a carrier caught in a moment’s notice conflict will be severely limited in its capabilities.

It pains me to see the Royal Navy preparing to go down some of the same paths that the USN has already shown to be mistakes.  I hope the RN very carefully thinks through their carrier operating plans.

(1)Breaking Defense, “UK Commits To 2 Carriers, Fully Crewed; F-35B Numbers TBD”, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. September 04, 2015,

http://breakingdefense.com/2015/09/uk-commits-to-2-carriers-fully-crewed-f-35b-numbers-tbd/

Appeasement - Follow Up

By now, I'm sure you've read about the Chinese task force passing through United States territorial waters (inside the 12 mile limit) near Alaska in an exercise referred to as "innocent passage".  This procedure allows ships to pass through another country's territorial waters under certain conditions.  ComNavOps has no problem, per se, with the Chinese exercising their rights.  There are, however, a few noteworthy aspects to this incident.

First, the timing was such that the incident occurred as President Obama was conducting a trip to Alaska.  The timing and the implicit message could not be more obvious.  However, we'll leave the political aspects and move on.

The maneuver cannot be interpreted as anything but provocative.  The Chinese ships were not in a position where they had no choice but to take that particular path.  The choice was deliberate.  This should speak volumes to us about our current policy of appeasement.  The more we back off, accommodate, and make peaceful gestures and concessions, the more aggressive the Chinese behave.  That's not surprising, really.  History tells us with 100% certainty that appeasement only encourages further aggression.

Remember the incident in Dec 2013 when the Aegis cruiser Cowpens was harassed and chased off from observing a Chinese carrier in international waters in the South China Sea?  We meekly left the area after being harassed and warned off.  We left international waters!  Despite this appeasement, China engages in deliberately provocative maneuvers in US territorial waters.  Do you see the blatant failure of appeasement?  And this is just one example.

So, the Chinese pattern of response to our appeasement is further provocation and aggression.  So much for appeasement.

What we should have done is observe the Chinese innocent passage by having our ships literally bump the Chinese the entire passage and having a non-stop succession of aircraft conduct low level supersonic observation passes over the Chinese ships throughout the entire passage.  If they wanted to send messages, we should have answered with our own.

I can already hear the sniveling and whining.  "We can't risk escalation".  Well, I've got news for you if you can stop wetting yourself long enough to hear it - the Chinese are escalating the situation on a daily basis.  We need to either get in the fight or back completely out of the Pacific and learn to speak Mandarin while we wait for the Chinese to reach San Francisco.

Combat In The Information Age

Proceedings has an interesting article about combat in the “Information Age”, as the authors put it (1).  The article is an odd combination of the authors “getting it” and “missing it”.  Let’s take a closer look and see what they have to say that we might learn from.

First, it should be noted that the authors are two active duty Lieutenant Commanders, one a Surface Warfare Officer selected for command and the other an Intelligence officer.  As such, they ought to represent a doorway into current naval thought and for this reason, if no other, their writing is worthy of consideration.

The authors discuss the recognition that weapons are becoming more lethal and that, as a result, there is a need to try to cut the kill chain further upstream.  They state that the implication of this is the need to manage our electromagnetic (EM) signatures “as never before”.  Of course, EM silence (EMCON) was the default state of naval units during the Cold War so the “as never before” statement rings a bit hollow and, to be fair, the authors point that out.  As they put it,

“In practice this means, among other things, controlling our EM signature while conducting any type of operations, with EM silence as our default posture.”

Again, this warrants a huge, “Duh!”, but at least they’re saying it.  They go on to say,

“While we became fairly proficient at emissions control during the Cold War, the lack of a meaningful blue-water threat since the fall of the Soviet Union and our vast accumulation of new EM systems have allowed us to forget.  Today, naval vessels and aircraft operate by default with multiple active radar, identification, datalink, and communication systems radiating.  Rarely are we forced to operate in a silent (or reduced) mode for any sort of extended period or while conducting complex operations.”

And there it is.  The authors summed up the entire EM issue.  We knew it.  We forgot it.  We don’t practice it.  You’ve heard me say this on a regular basis and now you’re hearing active duty, ranking officers saying it.

Could we even operate in an EMCON mode if we had to?  The authors, and ComNavOps, do not believe so.

“Similarly, in air defense, we so infrequently practice single-ship or group-restricted radiation operations in tactical scenarios that it is questionable whether we are proficient enough to use them in wartime.”

The lack of realistic training – another pet peeve of ComNavOps. 

The authors bring up another great point concerning the global, universally networked, all-seeing, infinitely datalinked, battle management system that the Navy is so enamored with and that is the awareness of what’s happening at the tactical level.  Allowing, for the moment, that this kind of mythical network can even work (it can’t), the authors point out a tactical level awareness problem.

“Much of the disruption effort will be executed by joint forces or at the operational level, so how will tactical-level Navy decision-makers know what is going on and how or when to exploit success?  For example, if the Air Force disables a sector of the adversary’s passive electronic-surveillance network, how will the officer commanding a surface action group 1,000 miles away know he is now in an advantageous position where his ship’s radars can be energized to locate and destroy an enemy platform in his vicinity?”

An excellent question and it again points to the need for realistic training so that these types of unforeseen problems can be identified and worked out.  Some might casually employ the hand wave and confidently assert that all levels of operation will seamlessly and flawlessly communicate to each other.  They might, or they might not, as suggested by the authors.

“We pay a lot of lip service to seamless joint integration, but it is specious to believe communications between operational and tactical-level commanders in a joint environment are either as fast or as thorough as required.”

Again, these are active duty, ranking officers saying this!

The flip side of the EM coin is also noted.  The enemy will be doing their best to control the EM spectrum and we must anticipate the loss or, at best, intermittent use of our comms, networks, and datalinks.  The implication is that we will be faced with fighting with a lack of higher level command and control – the opposite of what we have now where the movements and actions of individual soldiers can be monitored and ordered from the White House.  As the authors point out,

“In the Navy we are fortunate to be the heirs to a strong tradition of command-by-negation, distributed execution, and autonomous decision-making.  However, with the increase in volume of communications our ability to fight complicated scenarios with minimal or intermittent communications has almost certainly weakened.  We can regain it only with realistic and challenging training at all levels from fleet to unit and individual watchstander.”

Again, straight from the annals of this blog!

Well, so much for the “get it” portion.  Unfortunately, the authors still generally believe that the modern battlefield will be electronic, networked, datalinked, and comm’ed though, to their credit, not to the degree or with the effortlessness that the Navy thinks.  They fail to grasp the reality that modern combat against a peer will see all the magic devices on both sides come up well short due to a combination of countermeasures and the 100% certainty of weapons and systems being vastly overrated.  As a result, the combatants will quickly fall back on simpler, brute force weapons and systems with the resulting combat being closer to WWII than Star Wars.  Complexity is great for wargaming and public relations but when combat starts, simplicity will quickly become king.

We need to begin developing weapons and systems that can function without external inputs and we need to begin training for a state of degraded and lost external inputs.

(1) USNI Proceedings, “The Face of Battle in the Information Age”, Crooks & Robertaccio, July 2015

E for Expeditionary

With all the challenges the Navy faces, what do you think Navy Secretary Mabus and CNO Greenert are spending their time on?  Ballistic missile defense?  Chronic maintenance and readiness problems?  The coming submarine and fighter shortfalls? 

Those are all good guesses but not even remotely close.

Mabus and Greenert have just created a new ship designation.  The new designation is “E” for Expeditionary.  It will be used to redesignate these ships:

JHSV, Joint High Speed Vessels will become EPF, for Expeditionary Fast Transport

MLP, Mobile Landing Platforms will become ESD, for Expeditionary Transfer Docks

AFSB, Afloat Forward Staging Bases will become ESB, for Expeditionary Base Mobile

I don’t really care what the ships are designated but is this really the best use of the SecNav and CNO’s time?  Is this really the issue that moves them?

Further, I doubt that this is just an innocuous redesignation.  I assume this will be used as justification to count these ships as part of the fleet rather than as the auxiliaries that they are.

Navy leadership is truly an embarrassment to the fleet and the nation.