Wednesday, February 3, 2024

1980’s Era Test and Evaluation Organization Seeks 1980’s Vintage Warship



USS Fort Worth (LCS 3) in 2013 trials (navaltoday.com)

     The Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E’s) latest (2015) report on the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program would at first glance appear another in a long line of damning reports suggesting the Navy end the troubled littoral combatant effort. A deeper examination, however, suggests a test and evaluation organization hopelessly locked in a 1980’s era of naval design. DOT&E demands the highest levels of physical survivability for the LCS sea frame as if this part of the LCS system alone was to be exclusively employed in high-end naval conflict. It excoriates the lack of progress in mission module development and sea frame reliability, and demands greater levels of testing, but sometimes grounds its disapproval of some LCS program elements on the result of just one test. The test and evaluation authority is unhappy that the sea frame crew cannot diagnose and repair all equipment casualties. This is not surprising as the LCS concept places a substantial portion of the system’s maintenance with shore-based facilities and units. The rest of the report is a “gotcha” list of details on the progress, or lack thereof in the various LCS mission modules and two sea frames. Perhaps it is time for DOT&E to leave the 1980’s and realize that a modular warship cannot be so directly compared with and tested to the same standards as its multi-mission, unitary capability predecessors.
     The first paragraph of the DOT&E report states, “The now-planned use of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) as a forward-deployed combatant, where it might be involved intense naval conflict, appears to be inconsistent with its inherent survivability in those same environments.” The report also says, “DOT&E does not expect either LCS variant to be survivable in high-intensity combat because the design requirements accept the risk that the crew would have to abandon ship under circumstances that would not require such action on other surface combatants,” and “Much of the ship’s mission capability would have been lost because of damage caused by the initial weapons effects or the ensuing fire.”
     DOT&E personnel must not have read or disagree with the descriptions and concepts of operations published by various authorities on the LCS program. Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work’s 2013 Naval War College paper on LCS makes it very clear that the Navy has always accepted limitations in the LCS’s survivability in favor of low cost and greater numbers. Both sea frames are larger and more physically survivable than the Avenger class mine countermeasures ships (MCM’s) and Cyclone class patrol coastal ships (PC’s) that they replace.[1] They are still robust ships in that they can survive upwards of 15% of their floodable length being compromised while remaining afloat.
      They are smaller and less physically survivable then the previous Perry class frigates but have equally robust active and passive defense systems. Unlike the FFG’s, the LCS is not intended to operate alone in high threat environments. If damaged in battle the LCS is designed to limp back to base and not attempt to” return to the fight” as are so-called high-end U.S. surface warships.[2] Large cruise missiles and torpedoes are the likely weapons of an enemy in what the DOT&E report describes as “intense naval conflict.” It remains to be seen, however, that any warship could meet the test and evaluation authority’s demands for “survivability.” The DDG-51 class USS Cole was completely disabled in an October 2000 terrorist attack by what some experts described as a 400-700 pound shaped charge warhead.[3] The Russian supersonic P-270 Moskit cruise missile has a warhead estimated to be 700 pounds of which 300 are actual explosive.[4] The impact of even one such weapon at supersonic speed would likely disable any U.S. surface combatant, making DOT&E’s criticism of LCS survivability in “intense naval conflict” a moot point if physical resistance to damage is the primary concern. The Navy has accepted limitations in the LCS design from the inception of the program. DOT&E is welcome to disagree, but they need to say that in their report and not compare LCS to higher capability warships that are little more survivable if hit by cruise missiles likely to be employed by U.S. opponents.
   In a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on LCS released last month, DOT&E was very critical of the lack of testing within the LCS program. It suggested that, “The sparse data available do not allow a strong statement about LCS’s ability to meet requirements in other operational scenarios.”[5] One month later, DOT&E’s year-end report on LCS questioned the suitability and reliability of the Independence sea frame based on testing of one representative of the class. The DOT&E report lists a number of equipment casualties and other problems, but does not compare these faults against previous ships under similar test circumstances. A laundry list of equipment faults encountered during a testing cycle is useless without comparison to a deployed, functional unit of the class, or another ship engaged in a similar test and evaluation cycle. Despite this, the operational test and evaluation authority seems content to fault the LCS program based on the same limited testing they recently deplored.
     DOT&E criticizes the LCS sea frames crews because, “they do not have adequate training, tools, and technical documentation to diagnose failures or correct them when they occur.” The testing agency acknowledges the emphasis on off-board LCS maintenance when it states, “By design, the ship’s small crew does not have the capacity to effect major repairs. Instead, the Navy’s support concept depends on the use of remote assistance in trouble shooting problems and the use of Navy repair organizations and contractors for repair assistance.” Despite this admission, DOT&E makes the superficial criticism that, “the Navy’s limited stock of repair parts for LCS systems, many of which were sourced from offshore vendors, can result in long logistics delays and occasionally forces the Navy to resort to cannibalization of another ship in order to expedite repairs.” These comments sound more like the usual criticisms of the LCS program from the GAO and CBO, rather than observations on operational testing of LCS capabilities. This is perhaps not surprising given that DOT&E Director Dr. J. Michael Gilmore is a veteran of the CBO and was a critic of the LCS concept while serving in that office’s National Security Division.[6] Dr. Gilmore may very well continue to object to the idea of off-board maintenance support. If so, he should make that clear in his report, and not blame parts shortages. As with its survivability definition, DOT&E’s concept of proper ship maintenance seems grounded in past decades where a warship’s operational and repair capabilities were resident on a unitary hull. The LCS concept tries to limit the costs of maintenance by separating some aspects of the ship’s missions and capabilities from its hull as suggested in a 2006 RAND report commissioned by the Navy to investigate the spiraling cost of naval surface combatants.[7]
USS Coronado fires 57mm gun in 2014 trials (defenseupdate.com)
     The operational test and evaluation office puts on a different “public face” when its 1980’s-era testing methods are criticized. In a recent response to an article by Sidney Freedberg Jr. on the breakingdefense.com website entitled, “LCS Test Vs. Fast Attack Boats ‘Unfair”, DOT&E fell back on a familiar defense to justify its criticisms. The office stated that it accepted that, “LCS is being introduced in an incremental manner,” and that it, “accepted the Navy’s defined success criteria to assess these events.” Despite this, DOT&E goes on to say that, “In a real battle, there would be a good chance LCS might have sustained damage at that point that could have affected its subsequent capability to successfully repel the attack.” This statement shows the test and evaluation office insists on measuring the Navy by its own standards and not those the Navy desired,  in spite of accepting the Navy test criteria. It would be helpful for DOT&E to publish a list of their experts involved in monitoring the LCS program to assess whether or not the test and evaluation authority has the operational experience to be as critical as it has been of the littoral combat ship program.
     The 2015 report includes substantial material from past years’ reporting which makes the laundry list of LCS faults appear more dangerous and distressing. Such reports on warship faults have been the stock and trade of Congressional watchdog groups like DOT&E, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) since the early 1970’s. They are absolute requirements for organizations whose primary mission and reason for continued funding and existence is finding fault.
     LCS was never intended to be as survivable in high-end naval combat as previous warships were designed. The modular warship was designed as a component of a joint, networked battle force whose payloads are more important than the platforms that carry them. LCS is a compromise platform that included elements of previous frigate, patrol and mine warfare platforms. It sacrifices some of the physical survivability of the previous frigate design in achievement of numbers of ships. It forgoes redundancy and other physical characteristics of survivability in favor of active and passive defenses that maximize its ability to field modular payloads. It does not have to replicate the physical and capability-based survivability of larger warships. To do so would increase its price, limit its modular capabilities and needlessly replicate what is already provided by high- end combatants like the DDG 51 class destroyer. Demanding that LCS be more physically "survivable" in order to play a role in high end combat, and retain maximum maintenance and repair abilities aboard represent past naval designs whose costs are not sustainable in building a low end surface warship for present need. In demanding legacy, expensive capabilities in LCS, DOT&E is in effect demanding that MTV play music videos, even when every such program is available in seconds to a customer on youtube. DOT&E is clearly locked in a 1980's assessment of a 21st century battle network force.

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