A Wednesday Morning on USS Freedom

We discovered over breakfast on Wednesday that the first item of the morning was to turn on the turbines and do a little high speed testing. Sounded great to me, the speed of the LCS was one aspect I was interested to see first hand. It didn't take long, after completing breakfast I made my way to the bridge to monitor the crew prepare. There would be several different evaluations conducted during the 30 minute high speed test.

The most important evaluation was to inspect some repair work done with the anchor. There had been some flooding during previous high speed runs due to a part that didn't quite fit right, and the crew had made some makeshift repairs. I didn't actually feel any change as the turbines kicked on, but I could hear a high pitch sound very slightly from the bridge that represented the turbines being engaged. We built speed from 10 knots, then 20, 25, 30, 35, then finally 40 knots racing across Lake Ontario. To be honest, it was difficult to tell we were actually going that fast, and as I watched the ship hit 42 knots I had to find markers on the horizon to give an indication we were truly moving that fast.

Chris Cavas and I kept repeating a phrase first coined by Phil Ewing of Navy Times: Full CODAG power. It was kind of an inside joke to describe the unique nature of USS Freedom (LCS 1), but essentially describes the full power combination of the 2 Rolls Royce MT-30 gas turbines for a combined 96,550 hp (72 MW) and 2 Fairbanks Morse Colt-Pielstick 16PA6B diesels for a combined 17,160 hp (12.8 MW) that pushes water through 4 Rolls Royce Kamewa 153SII waterjets. USS Freedom (LCS 1) was not actually pushing full power, but we got to 42 knots that day without any problems.

After 30 minutes, the ship pulled beside the tug Ohio we were traveling with and normal transit resumed. I was impressed, it is an interesting capability that is part of the ships package. Rather than monitoring the crew review the various evaluations, I decided to use the time to take another long walk through the ship. Thinking about the speed I had just witnessed, I started by heading back to the mission zone bay, and taking measure of the ship I was on. Lockheed Martins Littoral Combat Ship is an interesting ship with interesting capabilities, but it comes with interesting limitations. The ship has a lot of speed, and looks like a warship, but the ship conserves weight by reducing survivability and has a ton of usable space, meaning that while it looks like a warship it is in fact more akin to a logistics ship. While I doubt the Navy would agree with me, the LCS is built to be a littoral combat logistics ship, or to borrow an acronym, a Littoral Combat Support ship.

The mission zones below deck on the Lockheed Martin LCS not only look big, they feel big. The aft zone has two doors, one I liked and one I have some concerns, but will wait and see. The doors in the back of the ship supposedly swing all the way open. I've read a bit about the aft doors on the USCGC Bertholf (WMSL 750), and how that will be one aspect of the cutter changed in future ships. I'm not a fan of doors that swing all the way open. I much prefer the way the side doors open, basically out and to the sides. I don't know how the door issue on the LM LCS will work out, but I think that is one aspect of the ship to watch for.

One of the big differences between the LM version of the LCS and the GD version of the LCS is that the LM version has an internal lift system along the ceiling for moving around the mission module components. I did not get a chance to see this crane system work, but I have heard the GD system uses the manual system to move the modules around. I'm not sure if it gives the LM version an advantage over the GD version, but I was thinking that if a mission module had a requirement to launch multiple RHIBs out the back hatch, the crane system would be much better than the manual system. Seems to me with small crews, the last thing you want to do is intentionally create extra manual labor to wear them out.

There is nothing remarkable about the middle mission module bay, except there is more space. It is about the same size as the back mission zone, minus the doors and the ramp. The large hatch on the runway drops down into this mission zone. The third mission zone is slightly smaller, and does not have the same crane system the first two zones have. The elevator inside the hanger connects to the third mission zone.

The Navy intends to use this space for MIW, ASuW, and ASW mission modules. For deploying the robotic systems of the MIW and ASW modules, the ship should be able to perform that role without any issues. I have no idea how speed helps in either role, indeed I have a hard time seeing anything in the seaframe that really relates to either of these mission profiles. If the Navy is hanging their LCS hat on the ASW or MIW modules for this seaframe, even after spending 3 days on the ship I'm not sure I fully understand how the seaframe is a good match for the mission module profiles. For the ASuW module, I can see where speed would be useful, but we will discuss that later.

In my opinion, the seaframe capabilities and limitations tend to support mission profiles that involve manpower. I've seen a few slides that suggest manned mission modules can only support up to 25 people, but I don't think that is right. After sitting in the mission zones for awhile, my only advice to anyone developing alternative mission modules would be to never, under any circumstances, ever put land vehicles in that space, because it would be one of the worst uses of reconfigurable spaces in the Navy.

The real challenge for alternative mission modules with the LCS is berthing. Unless someone can come up with a creative way to dampen sound and create a habitat in the mission zone, the ability to put a Marine rifle company on a LCS is going to be strained at best, and probably not work out. Same with the Coast Guard, assuming you would create a Coast Guard VBSS module, you still run into problems unless you can address the berthing issue of the ship. The space best used for berthing is the third, smaller mission zone, but I imagine it can get pretty loud in there when moving at full speed.

As I have considered the LCS, I'm still stuck on several contradictions the platform needs to resolve. It is ultimately best suited to either be the shotgun platform for something smaller in very low intensity environments, or the LCS requires a larger ship to ride shotgun with to support it in maritime combat environments, and that platform needs to be centric to the littoral environment. I'm thinking of the DDG-1000 specifically, not the DDG-51, but in a very real sense considering the limitations, the larger LPD-17 hull might be a better match.

What do you do with space and speed? It is an interesting combination, but ultimately I don't see the seaframe/module combination as they exist today as the right combination. While I tend to think there are creative ways to use the combination of speed and space for dealing with a number of maritime challenges, those ideas are on the drawing board, not part of the ships current intent. One of the questions I have regarding the LCS going forward is whether the Navy's gamble to build a platform that could potentially do anything has ultimately produced a ship that can't really do anything really well. Put another way, the LCS is a laundry list of compromises, and after spending several days on the seaframe I remain concerned that regardless of configuration there will always be one compromise too many. Only time will tell.