Platforms Without Payloads

Over the next decade, maintaining the Navy’s war-fighting edge and addressing fiscal constraints will require significant changes in how we develop the force. We will need to shift from a focus on platforms to instead focus on what the platform carries. We have experience in this model. Aircraft carriers, amphibious ships and the littoral combat ships are inherently reconfigurable, with sensor and weapon systems that can evolve over time for the expected mission. As we apply that same modular approach to each of our capabilities, the weapons, sensors, unmanned systems, and electronic-warfare systems that a platform deploys will increasingly become more important than the platform itself.

Navy 2025: Forward Warfighters, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, U.S. Navy, Proceedings Magazine, December 2011

From page 110 of the recent GAO report (PDF) looking at Selected Acquisition Report for the December 2011 reporting period:

The Navy plans to purchase 24, and deliver 9, LCS seaframes by 2016; however, it will not have a single fully capable mission module at that time. As of September 2011, the program planned to conduct a key DOD review in January 2012; however, this review, which includes a program cost estimate and technology maturity assessment, has been delayed to an unspecified date in 2012.

In that Proceedings article published in December 2011 the phrase Platforms and Payloads was used to describe how the Navy, with a smaller fleet, can use payloads as a force multiplier to insure capabilities are sustained in difficult budget times. I like the phrase, but I do note the irony that according to the current plan for Littoral Combat Ship modules as discussed in this GAO report on the latest Selected Acquisition Reports, even if Admiral Jonathan Greenert is CNO for two consecutive terms - on his watch he will be fielding 0 platforms with zero mature payloads, which isn't exactly the same thing he wrote about.

For the record, it looks like the ASW module has the least risk because the Navy intends to use technologies already fielded in other Navy's, but the MIW and SUW modules appear to be struggling for capability. The LCS can certainly be used with partial modules and with new modules not mentioned, but in my opinion the ASW, MIW, and SUW modules are the ones that matter most right now.