CBO Studies Small Combatants

Eric Labs has a new report (PDF) on modernizing Small Combatants for the Coast Guard and Navy released this week. A lot of this is very interesting. This is from the executive summary.

Summary and Introduction
As articulated in their respective long-term shipbuilding plans, the Navy and the Coast Guard intend to spend more than $47 billion combined over the next 20 years to purchase a total of 83 small combatants. Of that number, the Navy plans to purchase 53 littoral combat ships (LCSs), in addition to the two that were purchased in 2005 and 2006. The LCSs will be built using two different hull designs—one, a semiplaning monohull; the other, an aluminum trimaran—although the exact mix of hulls has not yet been determined. The ships will carry one of three sets of equipment, or mission packages, depending on which mission they are expected to perform (antiship, antisubmarine, or countermine warfare).

The Coast Guard plans to buy five new high-endurance cutters, commonly referred to as national security cutters (NSCs), and 25 new medium-endurance cutters, often called offshore patrol cutters (OPCs). Three other NSCs ordered prior to 2009 have been built or are currently under construction. Although the Coast Guard plans to begin buying the offshore patrol cutter in 2015, it is not yet certain what the OPC will look like or if it will be confined to one class of ship. Together, the NSCs and OPCs, which are designed to operate 50 nautical miles beyond the U.S. coastline, are part of the resources and force structure that make up the Coast Guard’s “Deepwater
assets.”

As the designation “small combatant” implies, the Navy’s LCSs and the Coast Guard’s NSCs and OPCs are designed to be significantly shorter in length, lighter in weight, and shallower in draft than most Navy surface warships (carriers, amphibious ships, cruisers, and destroyers). For instance, the Navy’s LCSs have a full-load displacement—the weight of the ship plus its crew, weapons, fuel, and cargo—of about 3,300 tons. The national security cutter displaces about 4,300 tons of seawater, and the most recent notional design of the offshore patrol cutter would have the ship displace 3,700 tons. By contrast, the most modern Arleigh Burke class destroyers, the backbone of the Navy’s surface combatant force, displace about 9,500 tons; amphibious ships displace from 16,000 to 45,000 tons; and aircraft carriers displace about 100,000 tons.

Despite a superficial similarity in size, the small combatants being developed by the Navy and the Coast Guard have different characteristics and capabilities, which are designed to fulfill different missions. In general, the Coast Guard ships are meant to operate independently at sea for long periods of time and at some distance from the shore (that is, to have a large, unrefueled range of operation) and not to engage in major combat operations. The Navy’s LCSs, by contrast, are designed to have less range than Coast Guard cutters but to operate at much greater speeds and serve during wartime as part of a naval battle network in close-in littoral waters in other parts of the world. Those differences in mission requirements have led the two services to reject a common ship platform for their small combatant needs and to adhere to their previously articulated procurement plans.

In the early stages of implementing those plans, however, the Navy and the Coast Guard have encountered various challenges. Cost overruns and construction problems have plagued both versions of the Navy’s littoral combat ship—designated LCS-1 (the semiplaning monohull) and LCS-2 (the aluminum trimaran)—as well as the Coast Guard’s national security cutter. Because of the difficulties associated with constructing the NSC, development of the Coast Guard’s notional offshore patrol cutter has been delayed by five years. All three ship programs have experienced substantial cost growth above the original estimates the services provided to the Congress as well as delays in construction of more than a year for each ship.

As a result of those delays and cost overruns, some members of Congress and independent analysts have questioned whether the Navy and the Coast Guard need to purchase four different types of small combatants and whether—in spite of the services’ well-documented reservations about using similar hull designs—the same type of hull could be employed for certain missions. To explore that possibility, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) examined three alternatives to the Navy’s and the Coast Guard’s current plans for acquiring littoral combat ships and deepwater cutters.

• Option 1 explores the feasibility of having the Coast Guard buy a variant of the Navy’s LCS—specifically, the semiplaning monohull—to use as its offshore patrol cutter.
• Option 2 examines the effects of reducing the number of LCSs the Navy would buy and substituting instead a naval version of the Coast Guard’s national security cutter. (The rationale for this option is that, according to some analysts, the NSC’s longer mission range and higher endurance might make it better suited than the LCS to act as a “patrol frigate,” which would allow the Navy to carry out certain activities—maritime security, engagement, and humanitarian operations— outlined in the sea services’ new maritime strategy.)
• Option 3 examines the advantages and disadvantages of having the Coast Guard buy more national security cutters rather than incur the costs of designing and building a new ship to perform the missions of an offshore patrol cutter.

According to CBO’s estimates, all three alternatives and the services’ plans would have similar costs, regardless of whether they are calculated in terms of acquisition costs or total life-cycle costs (see Table 1). CBO’s analysis also indicates that the three alternative plans would not necessarily be more cost-effective or provide more capability than the services’ existing plans. Specifically, even if the options addressed individual problems that the Navy and Coast Guard might confront with their small combatants, it would be at the cost of creating new challenges.

The report turns out to be a very easy and interesting read with a lot of content worth discussing.