Littoral Combat Ships (LCS)

strehl

Junior Member
Registered Member
Way too many posts to find out if this video was already posted. It shows LCS Coronado being "launched" with views of the below water hull area.

 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
Yes, the launch of the Coronado was covered as it happened, ALMOST FOUR YEARS AGO... both here and in the US Military News Thread I believe.

Since that time. three more independence class LCS have been launched, Jackson, Montgomery, and Gabriella Gifford.
 

Brumby

Major
it's.my understanding that the mission module have been pretty much scrapped and they will mostly just use the original equipment installed with rare module changes if at all very worried about damage control it doesn't have to be battle damage as several collisions have occurred in the past between ship's and subs etc

The mission modules are targeted for the first 24 vessels and most likely the transitionary batch of eight as well. The last 20 units in the program being ASuW and ASW focussed will have less capacity for mission modules. These facts are all covered in the latest CRS report (23/9/2015). The mission modules are not being scrapped.
 
...

related to
LCS Mine Countermeasures Operational Test Rescheduled for November, Pending Approval
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... is this:
Navy Launches Independent Review of Littoral Combat Ship Remote Minehunting System, New Look Could Cause More Testing Delays
The Navy has chartered an independent review of its criticized Remote Minehunting System (RMS), a key component of its Littoral Combat Ship mine countermeasures mission package, which may affect the service’s decision to move forward with LCS testing and RMS acquisition, a Navy spokeswoman told USNI News.

“The Chief of Naval Operations and the Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Research, Development and Acquisition) chartered an independent review of the Remote Minehunting System (RMS) capability and reliability on September 25, 2015,” Capt. Thurraya Kent said in a Tuesday statement.
“Focus areas of the team’s review include validating the requirements and mission concept of operations; assessing the RMS against the requirements; evaluating alternatives; assessing the program’s technical risk, schedule and cost; and evaluating the program’s management structure.”

The team will report back to CNO Adm. John Richardson and acquisition chief Sean Stackley within 60 days.

Between now and the conclusion of the review, the LCS program office must decide whether to move forward with its final operational testing, which, if successful, would lead to a declaration of initial operational capability (IOC) on the MCM mission package. Most recently,
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, pending a formal decision to actually move forward with the testing.

Kent said in her statement that “the progress of this review will also help inform the Navy’s operational test decision and subsequent actions critical to the future of the Navy’s mine countermeasures capability,” though it is unclear if the program office will have to wait for the team’s final recommendation or if it could choose to move ahead with the November test window.

The RMS – consisting of a Remote Multimission Vehicle (RMMV) towing the AN/AQS-20 sonar – is a workhorse in the LCS MCM mission package but has faced reliability problems since its development. Though Navy officials have said the LCS MCM mission package as a whole has performed well in testing and completes missions faster than legacy Avenger-class MCM ships, the service
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, which had originally been scheduled to take place over the summer to allow for an IOC declaration by the end of September.

The LCS program office encountered problems across the board during a technical evaluation that immediately preceded the initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E). Rather than bring Navy and Pentagon testers down to Florida, the program office chose to extend the technical evaluation to work out some of the problems – which LCS Mission Modules Program Manager Capt. Casey Moton said included processes that sailors needed to refine, integration and communication challenges and reliability issues in both the ship and the mission package.

In the midst of the Navy’s efforts to address the RMMV and LCS reliability issues, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) and ranking member Jack Reed (D-R.I.) wrote to Navy and Pentagon leadership on Aug. 31 to
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.

“Following a Nunn-McCurdy breach five years ago, the Department [of Defense] certified to Congress that the Remove Minehunting System … would perform more effectively if the Navy were to invest in a reliability growth program, and Congress funded that effort,” the letter reads.
“However, in a memorandum signed earlier this month, the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) assessed the current Remote Minehunting System and RMMV reliability as being 18.8 hours and 25.0 hours between mission failures, on average, respectively, which is well below the Navy’s requirement of 75 hours. Moreover, DOT&E noted that, ‘Recent developmental testing provides no statistical evidence that the [Remote Minehunting System] is demonstrating improved reliability, and instead indicates that reliability plateaued nearly a decade ago.”

McCain and Reed asked that the Navy and Pentagon look into alternatives for the LCS mission package, including several other unmanned mine countermeasures vehicles in use in other parts of the Navy.

“The decisions made over the next six months will set the course for our nation’s maritime MCM capabilities for decades to come,” according to the letter.
“Too much is at stake to accept the status quo and permit systems with long documented cost, schedule, performance, and reliability shortfalls to get a free pass into the fleet and further production.”
source:
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dtulsa

Junior Member
Not surprised why didn't they go with proven system's already in use and to think that's the one thing I thought they were good at
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Navy’s Future Frigate Will Be Optimized For Lethality, Survivability; Will Not Retain LCS’s Speed
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October 15, 2015 5:02 PM
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Sailors assigned to Surface Warfare Mission Package Detachment 2 prepare to be hoisted out of the water by the littoral combat ship USS Coronado’s (LCS 4) twin-boom-extensible crane following a visit, board, search and seizure training exercise. As the LCS transitions to the frigate, certain design features, like the crane and the back mission bay doors, will be eliminated to save weight for other add-ons like armor and missiles. US Navy photo.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Whereas a high sprint speed was a driving factor in designing the Littoral Combat Ship, the follow-on frigate will instead be optimized for lethality and survivability, the Navy’s frigate program manager said Thursday.

As the LCS program transitions to a multimission frigate, the 40-knot sprint speed requirement will go away to allow for more armor, more weapons, an over-the-horizon missile and full-time anti-torpedo protection, Capt. Dan Brintzinghoffer said at an American Society for Naval Engineers event.

This change, he said, is a recognition of simple physics.

“If we don’t change anything [in the hull design] and add a lot of weight, they’re not going to go as fast as they do today,” he said, noting that a total redesign to maintain the high speed is out of the question.
“It’s acknowledging the reality of physics: it’s heavier, it’s not going to go as fast, and it’s no longer a requirement they have to design to.”

Instead, he said the frigate will be more lethal, more survivable, and will be able to conduct surface warfare and ant-submarine warfare simultaneously, whereas the LCS had to choose only one mission package to work with at any given time.

The frigate will take the basic LCS designs – likely keeping both hull variants – and add extra armor. It will have a torpedo decoy, variable depth sonar and multi-function towed array permanently onboard, rather than included in a part-time mission package for LCS; will deploy two 7-meter rigid-hull inflatable boats rather than the 11-meter RHIBs on the LCS surface warfare package; and will retain the Mk 50 30mm guns rather converting to the more common 25mm gun. The ship will be upgunned with a SeaRAM anti-ship missile system, a ship-launched Hellfire missile system and an over-the-horizon surface-to-surface missile system that will be competitively contracted. A
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, the Lockheed Martin Combat Management System Component Based Total Ship System – 21st Century (COMBATSS-21), will manage those weapons.

Among the challenges of turning the LCS – which performs either surface warfare, mine countermeasures or anti-submarine warfare at a time through single-mission packages of equipment – into a multimission ship is command and control. Brintzinghoffer said the combat information center will need more and possibly different consoles to accommodate hunting a submarine and firing a missile at a surface target at the same time, for example.

Brintzinghoffer said he was also given the challenge of reducing lifecycle costs, in addition to creating a multimission ships with greater survivability and lethality.

“One of the ways you do that is by inserting commonality, so where we can … we’re going to make [the two frigate variants] the same, and we’re in the process of going through trade studies to figure out what exactly that means system by system, box by box.”

As a result, Brintzinghoffer said he expects much more government-furnished equipment on the frigates compared to the LCS, where prime contractors Lockheed Martin and Austal USA were given leeway to outfit the ship as they saw fit so long as the final ship design met certain mission-based requirements.

The captain noted, though, that commonality could come in many forms. The two frigate designs may be common with each other to reduce costs for the program, but there are also lifecycle savings opportunities by creating commonality between the LCS and the frigate, or the frigate and other classes of surface combatants.

“The key for us is to strike the balance between the performance of the system, the cost of the system – in some cases we’re going to change to something that’s more expensive, or make a change that costs money in order to save in the long-run – and this is our opportunity to do that.”

Brintzinghoffer told USNI News after his presentation that for each change his office looks to make – whether it is intended to increase capability, create commonality or save money through efficiencies – the program conducts “a cost-based analysis that will tell you if you implement a change and it costs $5, how quickly will you get a return on your investment. And that’s what we’re balancing against, added capability versus when will you get a return on your investment.”

One idea is to use LED lighting instead of fluorescent light bulbs, which Brintzinghoffer said will cost a little more upfront but begin to save money quickly – the Navy won’t have to buy replacement bulbs or store them on ships, and there won’t be any manpower costs associated with changing burnt-out bulbs.

For ideas that change the overall capability of the ship, Brintzinghoffer said he has to get approval from the resource sponsor, the surface warfare directorate on the chief of naval operations’ staff (OPNAV N96). For changes that do not affect warfighting capability, such as the LED lighting, Brintzinghoffer gets the final say in the cost-benefit analysis.

After the program office completes these studies and finalizes its preliminary design, Brintzinghoffer said during his presentation that he expects to release a request for proposals for ship construction in late calendar year 2017, and the contracts will be awarded in fiscal year 2019. Contracts for the over-the-horizon missile and other pieces of GFE will be handled separately, and he said the Navy does not yet have a timeline for those acquisition projects.
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So more protection but slower speed.
Independence class has a speed of around 44 knots in it's current form Freedom about 47 knots Oliver Hazard Perry clocked 29 knots so It's likely that the Frigate variants will still be faster then OHP probably some where in the mid 30's
 

dtulsa

Junior Member
Thanks I've been thinking and saying the new frigs would be different in a lot of ways guess I was closer to being right than I thought they still need some kind of mid range SAM in my opinion I have read they are supposed to be able to operate alone or under the cover of destroyers and cruisers
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
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So more protection but slower speed.
Independence class has a speed of around 44 knots in it's current form Freedom about 47 knots Oliver Hazard Perry clocked 29 knots so It's likely that the Frigate variants will still be faster then OHP probably some where in the mid 30's
If it can keep pace with the carriers, meaning 32 knots, it will be fine.

I really like this paragraph which summarizes the new armament:

Article said:
It will have a torpedo decoy, variable depth sonar and multi-function towed array permanently onboard, rather than included in a part-time mission package for LCS; will deploy two 7-meter rigid-hull inflatable boats rather than the 11-meter RHIBs on the LCS surface warfare package; and will retain the Mk 50 30mm guns rather converting to the more common 25mm gun. The ship will be upgunned with a SeaRAM anti-ship missile system, a ship-launched Hellfire missile system and an over-the-horizon surface-to-surface missile system that will be competitively contracted. A
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, the Lockheed Martin Combat Management System Component Based Total Ship System – 21st Century (COMBATSS-21), will manage those weapons.

Pretty much what we expected, and that will do. I am surprised that the VL Hellfires will be standard faire.

So:

1 x 57mm dual purpose main gun
8 x ASMs
2 x 30mm guns
1 x SeaRAM (with 11 missiles)
24 x VL Hellfire (I believe that is the number)
2 x SeaHawk helos or some combo of Seahawka nd VUAV
2 x 7m RHIBs

VDS and TAS standard.

Torpedo deco system standard

...and dtulsa, if a later congress and admin add a four cell VLS with ESSMs, all the better.

But this will do for now.
 
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