Littoral Combat Ships (LCS)

credit goes to dtulsa :) who told me on Facebook
Debate Over LCS/Frigate Future Continues With Disagreement Among Senators
The future of the Littoral Combat Ship/frigate program is still far from decided with the split between factions spilling into a Tuesday Senate hearing.

It has been clear for months that the Navy and Defense Department do not see eye-to-eye on the issue of how many small surface combatants to buy and from how many shipyards. What began as a whispered-about schism turned public earlier this month, with
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that decisions about the program’s future “will be made by the next administration and by Congress,” not by Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

On Tuesday, it became clear that difference of opinion exists in Congress, too.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on March 15, chairman Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) – a vocal critic of the LCS program – praised the decision to curtail production of what he called an expensive and unproven platform. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), in whose home state half of the LCSs are built, warned the discussion wasn’t over.

During his opening statement, McCain railed against the program.

“Initial cost-overruns more than doubled the cost of each Littoral Combat Ship, and development costs now exceed $3 billion and counting,” he said.
“Meanwhile, key warfighting capabilities of the LCS, including mine countermeasures and anti-submarine warfare, have fallen years behind schedule and remain unproven. Because of the long running cost, schedule, and performance issues with this program, I support the (Defense) Department’s proposal to down-select to one variant no later than 2019 and reduce the inventory objective to 40 ships. I am encouraged to see the Navy has begun the process of identifying the LCS replacement, and I hope we can transition to a more capable small surface combatant expeditiously.”

The Navy had previously planned to buy 52 small surface combatants – LCSs and follow-on frigates – and continue building ships at both Marinette Marine in Wisconsin and Austal USA in Alabama throughout the remainder of the program. Carter’s December 2015 memo called for downselecting to just one shipyard and stopping the program at 40 – a move the Navy has said will almost certainly force one yard out of business.

Sessions picked McCain’s comments apart during his time to question both Mabus and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson.

First asking about the cost of the ships as the program has matured, Mabus replied that the cost per hull today is “a good bit below” congressional cost caps. The first ship from each yard saw cost overruns, but as the shipyards have improved their facilities and processes and the Navy has moved into serial production, costs have plummeted.

“The first concern, and rightfully so, is on cost. The price of ships coming off the line today is 50 percent of the first ones that came off the line,” Mabus said.

Sessions then questioned if that trend would continue under Carter’s plan to downselect and stop at 40.

“It seems to me, having seen that shipyard line, the ships being produced, it’s moving out at a fine pace,” Sessions said.
“The bugs are getting out, they’re virtually all gone, it’s coming through an assembly line almost like an automobile. And I fear that we’re going to end up raising the cost per copy if we reduce the number of ships, and we end up like we did with the B-2 and a lot of other programs – Congress says we’re going to do this, the Navy sets out to achieve the goal, and then we alter the plan.”

Mabus confirmed that fear, replying that “I think it’s almost a certainty that if you reduce the numbers the cost per copy will go up.”

Sessions then asked about the mission module testing – the surface warfare package has deployed twice, but the mine countermeasures package is currently being reworked after the Remote Multimission Vehicle (RMMV) at the heart of the first increment proved unreliable in testing last year. The anti-submarine warfare package is furthest behind, and though it’s test schedule has slipped over time, officials familiar with the sonar system have called the capability a tremendous improvement over anything else in the fleet today.

Richardson assured that “we can fix this” in regards to the ASW test schedule. “We’re behind on the testing, it’s not where I want it to be,” he said, but “this is nothing that can’t be overcome.”

Sessions ended his back-and-forth by noting the place of small surface combatants in the Navy’s plans to reach 308 ships by 2021.

“I hope we can get to the 308-ship Navy, but I don’t know how we get there if we lose another 12 ships,” the senator said.
“And if you replace it with a ship that costs two or three times as much, that’s going to be difficult. And it also is lean in terms of fuel use and low crew – 40, 60 crew to operate this ship compared to 200 or so for the next destroyer-type ship. So I’m concerned about this and I hope we can continue to discuss it as time goes by.”

It is unclear how this disagreement will play out in Congress. McCain, as the chairman of the committee, certainly wields a lot of influence. But the LCS program has its industrial base spread out over all 50 states and would operate out of East and West Coast naval stations, potentially creating a broad coalition of lawmakers to support the program.

Importantly, the disagreement does not follow party lines. Whereas some recent issues, like whether to allow another round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) have been largely partisan arguments, others have proven more complex. The debate over allowing the Air Force to retire its aging A-10 Warthog fleet two years ago split lawmakers in odd ways – those in favor of keeping the planes around had A-10 bases in their districts, had Army units that relied on A-10s for close-air support, were veterans themselves, were pushing back against budget- rather than strategy-based decisions from the Obama administration – and myriad other reasons to unite in support of saving the planes from early retirement.

If the LCS debate in Congress resembles the A-10 debate, it may take full committee debates and potential House and Senate floor debates to fully settle the issue of how the program will look going forward.
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Brumby

Major
credit goes to dtulsa :) who told me on Facebook
Debate Over LCS/Frigate Future Continues With Disagreement Among Senators

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“It seems to me, having seen that shipyard line, the ships being produced, it’s moving out at a fine pace,” Sessions said.
“The bugs are getting out, they’re virtually all gone, it’s coming through an assembly line almost like an automobile. And I fear that we’re going to end up raising the cost per copy if we reduce the number of ships, and we end up like we did with the B-2 and a lot of other programs – Congress says we’re going to do this, the Navy sets out to achieve the goal, and then we alter the plan.”
These statements are so symptomatic of Washington politics and BS. The fact is having two variant of the program that are dissimilar in design and not commonality based was simply politics driven. The ugliness of politics has surfaced now that a decision to down select has to be made. The fact is the whole concept was modular driven but given all the modules are behind schedule, you now have a platform looking for a purpose. Spending $600 million plus on a vessel that doesn't meet expectation is just good politics but bad for the taxpayers because the military is not getting what it needs. The spin goes on and on ........
 

dtulsa

Junior Member
I was reading this morning that the follow on to the lcs class is already being planned talk about strange kind of like admitting its wrong without admitting its wrong according to the Washington way of doing business same publication stated the same thing about the F35 I am quoting the defense news early bird report
 

dtulsa

Junior Member
Some times I wonder if this type of thinking was around during WWII if it would have had a disastrous trail but then I am reminded of the Sherman versus Tiger tank as an example but that's for a different thread so I'll leave it at that
 
These statements are so symptomatic of Washington politics and BS. The fact is having two variant of the program that are dissimilar in design and not commonality based was simply politics driven. The ugliness of politics has surfaced now that a decision to down select has to be made. The fact is the whole concept was modular driven but given all the modules are behind schedule, you now have a platform looking for a purpose. Spending $600 million plus on a vessel that doesn't meet expectation is just good politics but bad for the taxpayers because the military is not getting what it needs. The spin goes on and on ........
... and US Navy awards Austal $14M for LCS review
The U.S. Navy has awarded the Australian shipbuilding company Austal a US$13.97 million modification to a previously awarded Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) contract for special studies, analyses and review efforts for the Littoral Combat Ship Program.

Austal said it would be providing engineering and design services to reduce acquisition and lifecycle costs for the Independence variant LCS.

Austal has a US$3.5 billion block-buy contract from the U.S. Navy to build 10 Littoral Combat Ships and a separate US$1.6 billion block-buy contract from the U.S Navy to build 10 Expeditionary Fast Transport vessels (EPF). Seven LCS and three EPF are currently under construction in Austal’s Mobile, Alabama, ship manufacturing facility.
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I've commented on that "commonality" recently:
...
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inside is this chart:
Frigate.jpg


great sales talk, as if LCS+AB was FF ... according to so many ticks
anyway
LCS Program Seeking Commonality In Frigate Transition, Review Of Manning Construct
As the Navy prepares to field its Littoral Combat Ship in numbers as well as transition the acquisition system from block buys of LCSs into the new frigate program, both the fleet and two shipbuilders are working to plot a path forward.

The Fleet
The Navy has so far only deployed one LCS at a time – USS Freedom (LCS-1) and USS Fort Worth (LCS-3) have both operated out of Singapore – but the first ships from the Navy’s Fiscal Year 2010 block buy are now delivering at regular intervals and will soon begin operating in the fleet.

As the Navy nears a turning point in LCS operations,
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to look at lessons learned in manning, maintenance and operations so far. Richardson said March 3 that it was the perfect time to see what we’ve learned now and not being committed to the original model – if we cement that in place, we basically embargo all of the lessons that we learned and we don’t incorporate them.”

He added that he wanted to find ways to make the LCS program more effective in terms of manning, ship maintenance – which is primarily performed by contractors ashore – and the use of distinct mission modules.

Cmdr. Michael Brasseur, commanding officer of LCS Crew 111, told USNI News last month aboard Freedom that having a core crew of 53 “is a definite challenge” in terms of each crew member having to be cross-trained and qualified for multiple jobs, but ‘there’s some huge advantages to having a small crew, it’s more like a family.”

With the limited manning, sailors pitch in with cooking – which Brasseur said has allowed the crew to share family recipes and traditional meals from their hometowns and home countries. The sailors also share in chores like washing dishes, a departure from larger ships. He said the LCS crews have promoted a strong culture of health and fitness – physically and mentally – to deal with the stresses of juggling multiple roles on the ship.

Each of the 53 billets on the ship has a primary role designated, along with recommended secondary and tertiary roles. LCS Crew 111 Operations Officer Lt. Cmdr. Michael Welgan told USNI News that about 10 people stand watch while underway, with three shifts a day, which takes up 30 crew members. The rest are engineers, flight deck officers or other primary roles – but everyone has three or four jobs they’re trained to to support flight operations, small boat operations and emergency situations.

Though the mission package and aviation detachment crews can help in some cases, “we don’t train to that, we always train to the worst-case scenario,” Welgan said. “So right now we’re going through our training cycle, and we can’t use those people because there’s no guarantee they’ll be available every single time. So we’ve got to learn how to self-sustain.”

“I have never seen 53 do so much as I have on this ship. It’s the most rewarding experience I’ve had in 19 years in the Navy,” Brasseur said.

That manning and training construct may change for future LCS operations based on lessons learned, and it is certain to change when the frigate joins the fleet, since the surface warfare and anti-submarine mission packages will be permanently affixed to the multimission frigate.

Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin, which builds the odd-numbered Freedom-variant hulls, said recently that its vendor base is working efficiently thanks to a predictable multi-year block buy. Though the acquisition strategy for the frigate is still being developed, Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley at a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing that the Navy would likely buy all the frigates in a block buy contract to ensure competitive pricing for the remainder of the program, if Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s plan to curtail the program to 40 ships instead of 52 and downselect to a single builder comes to fruition.

For Lockheed Martin, having a block buy has allowed the company to lower the cost per ship to an average of $360 million, Neil King, director of business development for the company’s Littoral Ship Systems, said March 15 at a company media day.

“This is the type of acquisition approach that we would like to see as far as future procurements – it will allow us to be able to maintain our workforce, it will allow us to be able to maximize our vendor base buying power and to be able to ensure the affordability of this program as it goes forward,” he said.

King said affordability is the key to the frigate program and that Lockheed Martin is stressing commonality with the LCS and the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers (DDG-51) as a means of achieving an affordable design. Nearly all the major systems added to the LCS hull to create the frigate either come from the LCS mission packages or from the destroyers. The Navy already decided the frigate will use the Freedom-variant’s COMBATSS-21 combat system, and the surface warfare mission package’s Longbow Hellfire missile and 30mm gun will become permanent features on the frigate hull, according to Lockheed Martin’s current designs. The Lockheed Martin frigate would also have the TRS-4D radar, which is an upgrade from the current TRS-3D radar and will be inserted into the LCS ship class beginning with LCS-17. Lockheed Martin would also include a Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP) “light” package and Nulka decoys, both of which come from the DDG-51 program.

“We’ve demonstrated SEWIP on LCS-1, it’ll be cut into the program,” business development manager Tim Fouts said at the event.
“Nulka’s probably the only one that won’t have been demonstrated in the next year or so; all the rest of that is part of the current program of record. We’re not reinventing the wheel, the only thing we’re doing in our 118-meter hull is rearranging some of the deck chairs for the additional crew to support multimission capability.”

Dale Bennett, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training, told USNI News at the media day that Lockheed Martin is comfortable with its plan to take the LCS and add lethality and survivability while maintaining affordability.

“Right now we’re focused on the capability for the fast frigate and focused on delivering the capability,” he said. “The 40 versus 52? We’ll let the Navy and [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] work through that. I think the requirement to get to the force structure of getting 308 ships, I think LCS plays an important part in the mix.”

Austal USA
Austal USA, who builds the even-numbered Independence-variant LCSs, will be conducting studies to reduce acquisition and lifecycle costs of its ships. The company was awarded a $14-million contract modification last week to “provide engineering and design services to reduce acquisition and lifecycle costs for the Independence-variant LCS.”

Austal USA told USNI News that a similar contract modification for $6.5 million was awarded about a year ago and that this work will build off of what was started last year.

“Our workforce is strong, the production line is hot, and our LCS program has a great deal of momentum right now,” said Austal USA President Craig Perciavalle. “Our partnership with the Navy remains strong as we continue to deliver the LCS and prepare for the advanced high-speed future frigate.”
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Feb 17, 2016
details emerging (I put one part in boldface):
Littoral Combat Ship USS Milwaukee Could Leave For Mayport Under Propulsion Restrictions As Soon As Wednesday

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(that part in boldface read The Navy and shipbuilder Lockheed Martin consider a flaw in the ship’s software as the prime culprit for why the clutches didn’t immediately disengage from the MT30s); now
Lockheed Martin: Software Fix for USS Milwaukee Control System Weeks Away
The software fix to correct the glitch that precipitated a chain of events that resulted in extensive damage to the propulsion system of the Littoral Combat Ship USS Milwaukee (LCS-5) could be only weeks away, a Lockheed Martin official told USNI News.

Dale Bennett, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin’s Mission Systems and Training (MST), said the repair from the company was working its way through a series of approvals at Naval Sea Systems Command ahead of being installed on the ship.
“We’ve got our arms around it, we have got the root cause, we understand exactly what happened, we’ve got a prototype of the software fix working in the labs and we’re working through the approval process with NAVSEA to implement it,” he told USNI News last week.
“It’s months, if not weeks. It’s pretty simple.”

USNI News understands the software patches for two other Lockheed-built Freedom-class ships – Detroit (LCS-7) and Little Rock (LCS-9) – will be installed on the ships ahead of their commissionings with no delay in delivery schedule.

In December, Milwaukee suffered a propulsion casualty that sidelined the ship for two months. The cause was determined to be a failure for the ship to disengage its combining gear – the complex machinery that connects the output of the ship’s Rolls Royce MT30 gas turbine engines to the ship’s diesel to the driveshaft – in an emergency stop in time to prevent grinding of the clutches inside the gear that subsequently resulted in a propulsion failure.

After two months of repairs, the ship left Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, Va. for Naval Station Mayport, Fla. for shock trials.

Shortly after Milwaukee, sister ship USS Fort Worth (LCS-3) suffered a similar combining gear casualty but it was unrelated to software and widely thought to be the result of operator error.
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Brumby

Major
Feb 17, 2016

(that part in boldface read The Navy and shipbuilder Lockheed Martin consider a flaw in the ship’s software as the prime culprit for why the clutches didn’t immediately disengage from the MT30s); now
Lockheed Martin: Software Fix for USS Milwaukee Control System Weeks Away

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Anybody knows why the software fix is only needed for future series and not the earlier completed ones?
 

Brumby

Major
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