LCS Manning

I tried to post this as a comment to Galrahn's post below, but I am apparently computer literate enough to be a contributor but not a commenter.

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G--fantastic analysis, especially the identification of "manpower as module" concept. I've been watching with some amusement the proliferation of "I told you so's" in the blogosphere attending to the recent Navy announcement that LCS 1 will deploy with 20-25 "extra" people. These folks look back to the FFG7 design days and the manpower claims made then--only to be proven unworkable in the fleet. They say that LCS was headed in the same direction, and that the Navy's "reversal" is a testament to their prescience. I disagree.

A ship's maiden deployment was moved up some 18 months (I believe). The full-up ASUW module was not complete, and so a variant of it will deploy--along with the people to support it (as has been the scheme of maneuver from the beginning). But the CoComs wanted VBSS and Maritime Security capability on the platform (imagine that--driving the Maritime Strategy into the mix) , and so the Navy is flexing to provide it--AND THE PEOPLE TO MAN IT. So what do we have here? Is it evidence that the Navy was low-balling manning in a nefarious plot to hide costs? Or is it that the way the Navy wants to man the ship is actually the way they are manning the ship. Put another way--just what in the announcement doesn't comport with what we believed would be the way the ship was manned? What was the manning associated with a Maritime Security module? There isn't such a thing, you say? Well there is now. The flexibility and adaptability of the LCS concept is unfolding itself right before our eyes, yet some would rather engage in picayune "see how smart I was" debates about manning. The Navy is (I believe), courageously attempting to adapt in real time--something even the most loyal navalists among us would not grant it as one of its strengths.

Could the Navy eventually wind up adding billets to LCS? Yes, it could. Should it at least have some time in which something other than the R and D budget and the shipbuilders are taking care of maintenance to refine exact manning needs based on manpower analyses conducted with actual data rather than good guesses? Yes it should. Is there a chance that we might all just for a second, suspend our abiding negativity and superiority and give the Navy a chance to work its way through what Galrahn has with great insight described as a time for new ways of thinking and operating? Yes we should. The Navy's collective IQ quite possibly rises with each retirement--and the longer I'm retired the more valid I find this possibility.

Bryan McGrath