Littoral Combat Ship Dominates Discussions

Rear Admiral William J. Holland Jr comes out with a sledgehammer of an article in the February issue of Proceedings called Building a Small Surface Warship Mission Impossible? (subscription only)

It is brilliant, and highlights very well where Congress screwed up, where the Pentagon screwed up, where the Navy screwed up, where the administration screwed up, and where industry screwed up for shipbuilding. Most importantly though, he offers guidance on every point regarding how to fix the acquisition system. It is a powerful article, too many pieces to quote in full, but offers a road map for addressing the problems. Unfortunately, Rear Admiral Holland doesn't see a solution for a generation. We don't accept that, and don't believe the Navy should either, it takes that long to develop a shipbuilding program, and by the time the next generation is ready the fleet will number less than 200 ships at the current rate of construction. Instead of diving into his list of problems and solutions for shipbuilding in general, we want to focus specifically on the Littoral Combat Ship. This paragraph is a home run.

Designing a new ship without a well-founded understanding of its mission and a well-developed operational concept is fraught with difficulty. In the past, such activity has generally led to an expensive exercise with not very satisfactory results. The birth of the LCS in many ways resembles that of the Oliver Hazard Perry design of the 1970s. The class was mandated by Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. rather than justified, but the frigates' mission—open-ocean escort of convoys in a major war against the Soviet Union—was clear and unambiguous. While that mission could not be accomplished until long after commissioning, when long-line passive sonar arrays and helicopters finally added the necessary long-range sensor and weapons delivery system, the Perrys did useful work in missions that showed the flag, demonstrated presence, and provided training opportunities. Some of those missions may still be appropriate for a small combatant ship the size of the LCS. But a ship with these kinds of missions would resemble the Coast Guard's National Security Cutter, not a 45-knot speedboat with an aluminum hull. An article in the January 2008 Proceedings by Coast Guard Captain James C. Howe addresses this point. Further, retired Navy Captain Wayne P. Hughes Jr., professor of Operations Research at the Naval Postgraduate School and author of Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat (Naval Institute Press, 1999), argues that such a "low-end" vessel is needed for just these purposes but proposes that only minimal effort and sophistication be devoted to these small ships. Arguments like his evidently carried little weight in the formulation of the LCS.

We have previously compared the LCS to the PF-109 Patrol Frigate Program ourselves. We have also had discussions recently with Captain Hughes, who we honor by listing the book mentioned above on the right side of this blog for most of the last several months. Captain Hughes has been kind enough to return our inquiries on various subjects, and we note that when he discusses the Littoral Combat Ship, it doesn't describe a ship that he would advocate for. Vice Admiral Holland is exactly right, the LCS is not what Captain Hughes advocated for in terms of "low end" vessels. In fact, what is interesting is if you read Hughes books, you'll find he basically highlights the advantage of big and small, and the shortcomings of medium.

We see the LCS as a go medium solution that has failed.

We have been observing the articles regarding the new cost estimates for the Littoral Combat Ship. We think it is important to highlight a few details that get lost in the numbers. This DefenseNews article, with its ultra depressing headline New U.S. Navy Budget Reflects LCS Woes gives us a status report. The program is now officially stalled.

Navy officials aren’t sure which design the 2008 ship will be built to, Bozin said, and explained that the LCS program’s restructuring is not due to “a financial constraint,” but comes from “technical risk.”

“How we’re going to proceed hasn’t been determined,” he told reporters. Until trials are conducted in 2009, “we don’t have a way ahead.”

We have no problem with this, there is nothing wrong with the Navy not spending money while they work out problems. The rush to field the platform and the speed of the acquisition process contributed to the original problem. Besides, the Navy needs to figure out where to go from here.

Right now the cost of Freedom is reported to be $631M total, including module. We think it is important to highlight that in July, Eric Labs told the House Armed Services Committee that the CBO estimated the price for LCS-1 to be $630M. CBO was ultimately off by only $1M, my guess is Congress will be made aware that while the Navy can't cost their ships, the CBO is consistently costing platforms accurately.

In the same July hearing, we also note the CBO had the following comment.

The first FFG-7, including its combat systems, cost a total of about $650 million (in 2008 dollars) to build, or about $235 million per thousand tons.

We note that FFG-7 was a short version of the Perry, which led to a long version that could support LAMPS, added towed sonar, and other modifications at what became a higher baseline cost. This is important to remember, because we are probably going to see the same changes required of the LCS. Back in November we highlighted that the CBO did a study on MIW, and had interesting findings. First, the GBO appeared to validate that the systems within the MIW module were all coming along well and very effective. However specific to the Littoral Combat Ship, the study found some serious problems with weight, manpower, maintenance, and logistics for the MIW modules.

In fact, the MIW module is already too heavy for the LCS, the LCS hull cannot support the personal requirements for the module, there are no maintenance facilities for broken unmanned systems on the LCS, and these factors contribute to a logistics problem of having enough platforms to meet module requirements. At the time we found it ironic, because these metrics basically imply, the Littoral Combat Ship is too small for the MIW mission module.

Given how Vice Admiral Holland outlines in his article how the LCS came to be, that isn't very surprising actually. The Navy is trying to solve irregular warfare with boxed solutions, and the vision is to stuff these mission centric boxes onto ships designed to carry boxes. The problem is, what needs to be in that box are all brand new systems, and will certainly change over time. This is one more aspect of the program poorly accounted for.

This project is heading for a dead end. We don't see how the LCS will be effective as a peacemaker, peacemaking requires manpower, and the LCS doesn't have manpower. This is something we have been thinking about since last month, and we think is an interesting mind puzzle.

What if during the Straits incident with Iran the Navy had armed USVs flanking both sides of the column? Being unmanned surface platforms, we contend they do not offer anything besides surveillance to the peacemaker, and in that situation would increase the potential for hostile action based on any number of non hostile actions Iran could pull. However, what if the column had been flanked by two 250 ton modern versions of the Ashville class, a manned vessel? We don't believe there would be more risk for an incident.

As we highlighted the other day, warfighter solutions are justified for higher costs, peacemaker solutions, which the Navy currently believes the LCS represents, do not justify high costs, they must be low cost if the Navy is going to be able to meet the requirements for the warfighter and field enough platforms to be effective as a peacemaker.

Because unmanned systems contribute to the warfighter, the major platform that carry the unmanned systems can be expensive. For us, that is why we see the LCS as a middle ground design that is both too small to be an effective warfighter, either with organic weapons or deployable systems because it can't carry enough payload, and too big with too few sailors to be an effective peacemaker. If a platform doesn't meet the metrics for warfighter or peacemaker, it doesn't meet the requirements of the 21st Century Cooperative Maritime Strategy.

To us, the LCS now represents the poster child for strategic flaws in a warship for the challenges facing the Navy in the 21st century. It is past time the US Navy aligns its resources with its strategy. The LCS desires to be a mothership, but we believe motherships should be big, they are peacemaker vessels that carry warfighter tools (unmanned systems), so they can afford to be expensive. The problem is, the LCS has become too expensive to be only for peacemaking, thus the problem facing the future fleet continues.