July 14, 2007
LCS and Its Progeny
EagleSpeak links to this sobering take on the current woes with the Littoral Combat Ship.
The cost overruns of the LCS eat at the raison d’être of the whole program, a light cheap fast (expendable) combatant. Note though that the LCS is still vastly cheaper than it's big brother, the DD1000.
The DD 1000 is the size of a small Battleship* and cost about as much as a BB would. Yet these vessels are being pitched as destroyers, and their vapourware half sisters, the CG21,are to replace the DDs and CGs in the escort role....apparently by replacing the big guns with missile tubes and adding a better air defense system...which promises to push the cost up even higher.
The LCS is cheap for a destroyer, but has the armament of an OPV. It has all sorts of potential for improvement by adding various modules, but none of these give it any area defense capability, or any capability for surface combat beyond the 30 click range of the as yet non-operational NLOS missiles. With their big flex deck, impressive helicopter capability and good seakeeping they might make useful auxiliaries but they are an insanely expensive solution to all the problems they are intended to tackle and little more than toothless coffins for their crews in a hot war.
In response to this, as I pointed out on the old blog in April, there is an upgraded design being offered by General Dynamics see here , here and here.
One would assume that similar options would be available for the currently defunct LockMart design. One would be right.
This part time Coasties suggestion?
Scrap DD1000.
For fire support use ATACMS fired from VLS tubes, and develop the POLAR missile...a ship based derivative of the off the shelf MLRS system that the Navy rejected in the 90s. (but give it the unitary warhead of the current GMLRS). Buy something in the class of these 2 designs as replacements. Get ferocious about cost discipline. Buy as many of them as possible.Most importantly, buy enough modules, particularly ASW modules, that the ships really are multi mission. Numbers are what the navy needs...but it needs numbers of vessels that can take care of themselves. This strikes me as a far better compromise than the high-low mix as the low end vessels tempt the congresscritters to count them as full on units.
*The USNs first Dreadnoughts, the South Carolina and Michigan were 16,000 tons.
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The cost overruns of the LCS eat at the raison d’être of the whole program, a light cheap fast (expendable) combatant. Note though that the LCS is still vastly cheaper than it's big brother, the DD1000.
The DD 1000 is the size of a small Battleship* and cost about as much as a BB would. Yet these vessels are being pitched as destroyers, and their vapourware half sisters, the CG21,are to replace the DDs and CGs in the escort role....apparently by replacing the big guns with missile tubes and adding a better air defense system...which promises to push the cost up even higher.
The LCS is cheap for a destroyer, but has the armament of an OPV. It has all sorts of potential for improvement by adding various modules, but none of these give it any area defense capability, or any capability for surface combat beyond the 30 click range of the as yet non-operational NLOS missiles. With their big flex deck, impressive helicopter capability and good seakeeping they might make useful auxiliaries but they are an insanely expensive solution to all the problems they are intended to tackle and little more than toothless coffins for their crews in a hot war.
In response to this, as I pointed out on the old blog in April, there is an upgraded design being offered by General Dynamics see here , here and here.
One would assume that similar options would be available for the currently defunct LockMart design. One would be right.
This part time Coasties suggestion?
Scrap DD1000.
For fire support use ATACMS fired from VLS tubes, and develop the POLAR missile...a ship based derivative of the off the shelf MLRS system that the Navy rejected in the 90s. (but give it the unitary warhead of the current GMLRS). Buy something in the class of these 2 designs as replacements. Get ferocious about cost discipline. Buy as many of them as possible.Most importantly, buy enough modules, particularly ASW modules, that the ships really are multi mission. Numbers are what the navy needs...but it needs numbers of vessels that can take care of themselves. This strikes me as a far better compromise than the high-low mix as the low end vessels tempt the congresscritters to count them as full on units.
*The USNs first Dreadnoughts, the South Carolina and Michigan were 16,000 tons.
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