Build a Lot, Test a Lot, Learn a Lot

From the FY 2010 DOT&E Annual Report (PDF):

Assessment

LCS 1:

• Critical ship control systems essential to support the crew have performed well in testing; however, several systems required for self-defense and mission package support have demonstrated early reliability problems.
• The crew appears to be operating at nearly full capacity during routine operations, and the Navy is still assessing whether the crew is “right-sized” to cope with the workload. The ship does not have sufficient installed berthing to accommodate the nominal crew complement, nor is the installed refrigerated food storage capacity sufficient to meet the prescribed provision endurance.

LCS 2:

• Builder trials were initially delayed due to leaks at the gas turbine shaft seals. More testing identified additional deficiencies related to the main propulsion diesel engines, further delaying completion of the trials until October 2009.
• During Acceptance Trials, the ship was found to be incomplete. Several spaces and critical systems were incomplete and had not been accepted by the government. Spaces and systems that were accepted had various levels of documented material deferrals necessitating a second Acceptance Trial, which is tentatively scheduled for early 2011.

• LCS is not expected to be survivable in terms of maintaining a mission capability in a hostile combat environment. This assessment is based primarily on a review of the LCS design requirements. The Navy designated LCS a Survivability Level 1 ship; the design of the ship just allows for crew evacuation. Consequently, its design is not required to include survivability features necessary to conduct sustained operations in a combat environment. The results of early live fire testing using modeling and simulation, while not conclusive, have raised concerns about the effects weapons will have on the crew and critical equipment. Additional live fire testing and analysis is needed to fully assess the survivability of the LCS class of ships. Additional information is available in the classified LCS 1 Early Fielding Report.
• The LFT&E Management Plan describes the major tests and analyses that will serve as the basis for DOT&E’s survivability assessment. To address the vulnerability implications of building ships with aluminum structure to commercial standards, relevant to both ship designs, the LFT&E program will include the following surrogate tests: fire-induced structural collapse test of a multi-compartment aluminum structure, internal blast test of a multi-compartment aluminum structure, and an underwater explosion-induced inelastic whipping test of a surrogate ship.

Recommendations

• Status of Previous Recommendations. Two recommendations from FY05 and FY06 remain; recommendations concerning a risk assessment on the adequacy of Level I survivability, and detailed manning analyses to include mission package support. The Navy has partially addressed one FY09 recommendation to develop an LFT&E program with the approval of the LFT&E Management Plan; however, the recommendation will not be fully addressed until the details of the surrogate testing and the lethality testing are developed.

The recommendations from FY06 on survivability and manning are described as such:

• DOT&E previously recommended the Navy assess the risks to be sure Level 1 survivability is sufficient for a class of small combatants. Level 1 calls for minimal survivability features and is the standard for auxiliary vessels. Most combatant ships are Level 2. The Navy maintains its intent for LCS to have Level 1 survivability.
• DOT&E also previously recommended the Navy conduct analysis to ensure 75 is the appropriate number of personnel necessary to accomplish LCS missions. The Navy conducted some manpower studies, but did not determine by analysis that 75 personnel is the correct number with which to man LCS. Initial conclusions indicate manning levels do not portend success in a stressing mine warfare scenario. Unanticipated damage control efforts and other contingencies may lead to excessive fatigue and failure to accomplish tasks.

FY10 Recommendations

1. LCS 1: The Navy should implement all recommendations from DOT&E’s Combined Operational and Live Fire Early Fielding Report.
2. LCS 2: The Navy should address all deficiencies noted in the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey Acceptance Trials report.

There are four issues here: each platform individually, manpower, and survivability.

The Platforms

LCS 1: Some of the reliability problems have been well documented publicly, others not so much. A lot of this is first in class growing pains, while other is just simply poor design growing pains. LCS 1 is about to undergo the ships first INSURV. While I don't know the date of the availability, I do know that during the first major drydock availability for the ship the refrigerated food storage capacity issue and extra berthing capacity issue will be addressed.

LCS 2: I know much less about LCS 2, except to say I believe the Navy accepted the ship before it was finished and as a consequence will pay a hefty price for it. What I really don't understand is how the DOT&E report suggests the Navy was delivered an incomplete ship, and NAVSEA gives the civilian PEO an award "for efforts resulting in the successful completion of post-repair trials and industry post-delivery availabilities for USS Independence (LCS 2)." How can the Navy give someone an award for post delivery excellence of a ship that still isn't finished?

Manpower

As I understand it the manpower analysis for LCS 1 will be completed before the drydock availability, and if I remember correctly that will be over the next few weeks/months.

A lot has been made of the reduced crew on LCS issue, but here is my take. The manpower issue on LCS is a fact of life issue for the Navy as a whole. Either the Navy learns how to design and operate ships with reduced manning, or the fleet shrinks. That is the choice, there is no middle ground here. Either learn to love ships with fewer sailors, or learn to love a small fleet. No analysis exists anywhere that says otherwise.

Manpower costs are the single greatest expense in the US Navy, and finding ways to address that issue without reducing capability is a challenge the Navy must meet. Anyone who believes the Navy can sustain 300 ships this century without drastically reducing the number of sailors on ships is dreaming. I don't know if 40, 55, or 75 is the right number of LCS, but I am certain the number will be in that neighborhood because it has to be, because the Navy has to learn how to operate ships with smaller crews. Welcome to the 21st century.

Survivability

The LCS is designed as a Survivability Level 1 ship, defined by OPNAVINST 9070.1 as follows:

Level I represents the least severe environment anticipated and excludes the need for enhanced survivability for designated ship classes to sustain operations in the immediate area of an engaged Battle Group or in the general war-at-sea region. In this category, the minimum design capability required shall, in addition to the inherent sea keeping mission, provide for EMP and shock hardening, individual protection for CBR, including decontamination stations, the DC/FF capability to control and recover from conflagrations and include the ability to operate in a high latitude environment.

The Navy's argument is multi-fold, starting with the idea that PCs and Minesweepers are Survivability Level 1 ships. A slightly more impressive argument is based on a study done by Captain Wayne Hughes (ret) that studies all ships damaged since WWII and finds the single most important factor in the survivability of warships, all warships both foreign and domestic, is the length of the ship. Anyone familiar with Captain Hughes work knows that his work on these topics is second to none. In that vein, the argument by the Navy is that the LCS 1 at 378 feet (115 m) and LCS 2 at 418 ft (127.4 m) are both just slightly less survivable than the FFG7s at 453 ft (138 m) based on this historical study of all warships that have taken damage - a study that I have personally never seen.

Look, I am Captain Hughes biggest fan, and if someone called me an internet nerd fanboy of Captain Hughes, I'd simply smile, nod, and voice my answer in the affirmative. I'm sure the study is one of the best of it's kind, but I am skeptical that things can be reduced to such simplicity.

The DOT&E Annual Reports have been asking legitimate questions on survivability for years, and unfortunately they probably will continue to keep asking the question. This comes down to a disagreement on what the survivability standard for the LCS should be. The Navy says Level 1, while I think most observers including myself would suggest Level 2 seems more appropriate given the environment the ship is intended to operate in.

What really irks me on this issue though is that some jackass in the Navy years ago, and I'm speaking about whoever came up with these requirements and every single officer that approved of them along the way, decided that speed was an important and worthy investment for the platform but survivability was not. I struggle to wrap my head around those two distinctly different priorities in the LCS design.

The Navy will argue otherwise, but the fact is the Littoral Combat Ship is expendable. The crew is not, Survivability Level 1 by definition means the crew is not expendable, but by the same definition the platform is. The Navy might as well get comfortable with the idea that some jackass designed an expendable ship, because that is what the DOT&E Annual Report will basically be saying every year when it discusses LCS. If folks on Capitol Hill are unhappy about the US Navy building expendable ships, ask for names - several of the folks involved are still in the Navy and testify all the time.

The Art of Failure

I was talking with a certain SWO who made what I think is a profound observation regarding the development of the LCS. If you study the history of AEGIS, it is a premier success story of program development. "Build a Little, Test a Little, Learn a Lot." The focus from the beginning was the development of a combat capability. The first AEGIS ship was not a cruiser or destroyer, rather the seaplane tender USS Norton Sound. When it came time to put AEGIS on a ship, they reused the Spruance hull to build the first AEGIS ships to save costs. When the Arleigh Burke class finally came along, AEGIS was a mature capability where many of the associated technologies had already been worked out. CEC and BMD are really the only major new technology additions to AEGIS since the Burke was designed, and they are both systems upgrades that plugged right onto the platform.

If you study the history of LCS, it is the exact opposite of AEGIS, and the results simply validate it. Instead of focusing on the capability desired, all of which is associated with the modules, the Navy has been fully focused on the hull. Because the Navy was never primarily focused on the development of the deployable combat systems and the necessary communication networks needed to support those systems from a platform, and because even today those systems don't actually exist in a tested and developed state, how is it possible the Navy ever understood the weight, space, people, power and cooling needed on the platforms for the combat capabilities being deployed. The answer is simple, the Navy never did and still doesn't. The platform is a total mismatch to the capability being delivered because the platform was designed without any understanding of the systems that make up the primary combat capability.

In my opinion, the Littoral Combat Ship program has been the worst managed shipbuilding program since the USS Pennsylvania, a saga nearly 190 years old. The modules have always been the most important aspect of the LCS, but the focus by the Navy has consistently been the platforms. Just as AEGIS is the center of the major surface combatants in the US Navy, under the LCS concept, the NETWORK is the primary combat capability of the Littoral Combat Ship. The Navy is so backwards on this program that they will field the platform to get to the modules, then field modules to get to the systems, and then field systems before finally developing the lethal payloads. Only once the Navy is capable of fielding lethal payloads will the LCS requirements for the network be fully understood, even though that network has always been the single most important capability of the LCS concept.

The Navy's approach to LCS has been the complete opposite of AEGIS, and just as AEGIS was brilliantly developed over time, the LCS has been a disaster.

Is it Worth It?

This is where I usually part ways with folks, because I think moving forward with LCS is worth it. The contracts were a great deal. The FY15 ships, as I understand it, will cost around $400m in FY15 dollars. Since the original estimate was for 400m in FY05 dollars, I'd say the cost issue today, only due to the contracts signed, is mute in my book. I never saw the low contract prices coming, and from a cost/value perspective I'll take the first 24 hulls as a legitimate investment to replace the minesweepers and PCs.

I fully support the Navy in buying 24 Littoral Combat Ships. I am fully opposed to buying more than 24 of the current design based on what I know today. My opinion has long been the Navy has a decade, from FY11 until FY20, to experiment and develop new concepts of operations, new technologies, and new capabilities in preparation for the first half of the 21st century. I can accept the 24 LCS as a legitimate investment in the first half of the decade as an approach towards those ends.

The platform needs to get two things right, and I believe the Navy will only get one of those two things right starting out. The modular engineering for interchangeability is important, and I think the Navy will eventually get that part right early. The second key for the platform is the supporting network, and I don't think that will be fully understood until well after the platforms are built and the modules are more mature. Understanding that supporting network for the LCS should have been the first priority long before the ship was designed, but because the LCS is AEGIS backwards, I fear it will ultimately prove to be the last issue addressed.

The key is, and has always been, the modules. Every time the Navy has run into problems with modules, the Navy has made a good choice by going to an existing technology. The most important impact of those decisions has been the cost reduction and savings associated with leveraging more mature technologies. The systems that make up the modules is part of a network puzzle the Navy has to figure out. The systems represent a development process towards fighting at sea with a network being the primary weapon. Once the systems are fielded, folks will start looking at ways to increase their lethality, and from that we will see a mature systems and payload development process emerge.

In my opinion, if the US Navy reaches that end state towards a steady total systems development for modules by 2020, LCS is a strategic success as a program. If we are being honest, the LCS have only modest objectives: MIW, ASW, and ASuW against small boats. The bar for success here isn't very high.

Either despite or because folks have discussed net-centric warfare in so many different ways for so long - I don't think there is a clear consensus anymore in the Navy what it means nor what it will look like when a network is the primary weapon fielded by a ship. This isn't as easy to conceptualize as people think. Today the Navy does fight with AEGIS networks, but those networks are multiple platforms. What does it look like when a single platform uses multiple systems under, on, and over the sea to form a lethal network itself, and integrated into a broader AEGIS network? How will these overlapping networks strengthen one another? How can independent networks within interdependent networks contribute to the lethality of the total battle force? These are questions I believe the LCS program will answer, and I believe that answer will significantly impact future surface combatant and submarine design in the future.

The emerging threats to the US Navy are networks. Anti-access networks, area denial networks, etc... The stronger, more resilient network will prevail in future naval conflict because the weaker network will suffer greater attrition. Moving forward in development of stronger, more resilient networks is exactly what the US Navy needs to be doing this decade, and the LCS program facilitates that way ahead for the fleet.

I think one conclusion we can derive from all of this is that the learning process for developing 21st century battle ready network capabilities is going to be hard, and it will take time. Buying a total of 24 LCS now gets the process rolling down the hill, an imperfect solution to be sure, but a starting place nonetheless.

As for all the crap piled onto the platforms, like speed, well that is what one should expect when the Navy designs the ship before developing the combat capability. Everything has been done backwards, and that means many things have been done wrong. The choices are quit, start over, and waste time and more money - or push forward. Ultimately, I think the Navy is right to push forward, because while it is pretty close to the opposite of optimal, "Build a Lot, Test a Lot, Learn a Lot" is the best option available today where the Navy moves the ball down the field without wasting another decade.