Features! Weapons!

Phil Ewing:

The ship that Lockheed could sell to the navy of Saudi Arabia or another foreign client might have many more features and weapons than the ones flying the Stars and Stripes.

Bob Riche, Lockheed’s vice president for seaframe sea-based missile defense, said the company has looked at designing an LCS like the Fort Worth equipped with the Aegis system, including a SPY-1F radar and sets of vertical launch tubes for SM-2, SM-3, Evolved Sea Sparrow or other missiles. (Neither version of the standard U.S. LCS has any of that stuff.) Riche acknowledged that the additional sensors and weapons would require a lot more power, which would probably mean the Aegis-equipped LCS couldn’t shred the ocean at 45 knots like its American counterpart. But a Saudi or other navy wanting a small air and missile defense frigate might not need the high sprint speed that U.S. Navy asked for.

I'm not really the LCS guy around here, so pardon me for asking, but if LockMart could build an LCS that sacrificed some speed for various spiffy bits, why wouldn't it makes sense for the USN to consider it? I suppose that you would have some squadron inter-operability issues, but even with the decision to buy both LCS types, the purchase still seems sufficiently large to allow some specialization.