Littoral Combat Ships (LCS)

Jeff Head said:

The full up frigate version of theLEgend hull would be a great friagte for the US Navy.

But the full up friagte versions of the Freedom and Independence would too.

We just have to decide which one we are going to build and then do it.

Any one of those three will keep US jobs going on lines that are already hot and would require far less to work up than an entirely new design.

I like any of those three built up to the full frigate specs. I think personally that for me, the Freedom and the Legend hulls have the best shot.

Time will tell...just arm them appropriately, give them the right sensor suite, and then ensure that they are built strong enough to be up to combat standards...and for me that almost demands that it not be any kind of an aluminum ship.

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dtulsa said:

Jeff I totally agree tho the Freedom I believ has a aluminum superstructure also not sure if the Legend does or doesn't from what I've read legend would also require additional strenghtening in some places I really hope they get it right this time though

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Jeff Head said:

Well, as I see it, we are going to have 24-32 frigate type vessels in the LCS that once they are upgraded can do a lot of frigate type duties all over they world.

I then hope they build another 28 of these true frigates that can then do the additional escort duties for CSGs and PhibRONs.

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The Navy held an industry day for companies interested in participating in the frigate program, walking them through what is already decided about the future ship program and

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.

The guided-missile frigate program, FFG(X), is the Navy’s latest iteration of the small surface combatant program, which was first filled by the Littoral Combat Ship and then subsequently by the LCS-based frigate (FF), which would be up-gunned, up-armored and multi-mission compared to the LCS.

The FFG(X) program, announced earlier this year, will take the best of the LCS and LCS-based frigate ideas – multi-mission design, a reliance on unmanned vehicles in all domains to increase range, a smaller design to reduce cost and increase access to global ports compared to the larger surface combatants – while adding features such as vertical-launched missiles and more powerful radars, the service says.

According to the Navy’s industry day presentation slides, obtained by USNI News, industry will have until Aug. 24 to respond to the

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. The Navy will then enter a conceptual design phase to help take existing ship designs, called parent designs, and modify them to meet Navy requirements. The request for proposals (RFP) for the conceptual design contracts will provide system specifications and government furnished information (GFI), and conceptual design contracts will be awarded in calendar year 2018 ahead of a Fiscal Year 2020 detail design and construction contract.

Senate Armed Services Committee chairman and outspoken LCS critic

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after reading the July 10 RFI.

However,

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, leading voices in the naval analysis community expressed concerns about the Navy’s approach going forward.

Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments senior fellow Bryan Clark said during the hearing that he worried the Navy had begun this process with too many details left undecided, and said that the Navy should be able to better determine what it wants without first requiring industry feedback.

“I think what it does is it opens up the aperture too much in terms of what that future frigate could be. It makes it seem like it could be anything from a ship that’s only able to do surface warfare and [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] missions in support of distributed lethality, the Navy’s new surface concept. It could be from anything from that, which is a relatively low-end ship or less capable ship, all the way up to a frigate that can do air defense for another ship and do anti-submarine warfare,” Clark said towards the end of the hearing.
“And I think the Navy needs to, instead of opening a wide aperture and seeing what comes in, make some choices about what they need the ship to do – and it needs to be a more capable ship that’s able to do multiple missions. So, it needs to be able to do anti-submarine warfare and air defense, and surface warfare, all three of them, all at about the same time. So, it needs to be a multi-mission ship and not something that’s single mission or a dual mission ship like the RFI implies.”

The RFI clearly outlines what anti-submarine warfare and surface warfare capabilities the FFG(X) will have to have, listing various systems and weapons the FFG(X) must include. The extent of its anti-air capability is less clear, with the RFI posing questions to industry about how to incorporate Vertical Launching System cells into the ship design.

Jerry Hendrix, senior fellow and director of the defense strategies and assessments program at the Center for a New American Security, said at the Tuesday hearing that, opposite of Clark’s concern, he worried too much emphasis was being placed on the addition of VLS cells and anti-air warfare capability.

“I’m a little concerned about the emphasis on the air defense factor in this. I believe that the ship should provide self-air defense. But, we … have been buying excess capacity of air defense in the [Arleigh Burke class of guided-missile destroyers] for a number of years. Where we have a real deficit is anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare. And, any time that you cause a ship or require a ship to be good at all things, you’re going to drive up the cost factor on this, and I think that there’s a certain sweet spot on costs that if you exceed that – and by that, I look generally in the $700 million to $850 million range per unit – if you exceed that by adding in air defense capability, certainly we start edging over $1 billion per copy. And, at that point in time, we’ll find ourselves in argument which is to the extent of, shouldn’t we just buy some more Burkes? We really need something that we can buy in high enough numbers, so we can drive up that portion of the fleet. We talk about the need for 52 small surface combatants. Currently, we consider the LCS to be part of that 52. I actually think that number is higher, that you need something in the 70 to 75 range on small surface combatants to be able to fill out the requirements from the combatant commanders around the world. And I would like to see this to be a robust ASW, anti-surface design with a 6,000-mile range. I think that that’s a good starting point.”

On the 6,000-mile range issue, the RFI notes the “minimum distance the ship can sail without replenishment when using all of its burnable fuel” is 3,000 nautical miles while sailing at 16 knots. Hendrix told the SASC subcommittee that “given the reserve fuel requirements, because we’ve never run the ships all the way down to zero, we always want to keep fuel for ballast and emergencies, that would actually limit that ship to have to at least take one refueling for even a transatlantic convoy escort. It would seem to me that any type of ship that’s built, and it’s written into the document, needs to be able to do [anti-surface warfare], anti-submarine warfare and convoy escort, that it ought to be able to do convoy escort without having to peel off and hit the tanker on the way over,” he said.
“So it struck me that something in the 4,500- to 6,000-mile range ought to be, sort of, a walking in the door minimum, and the higher the better in order for it to give the most independent steaming out of it.”

According to the industry day slides, the FFG(X) will: supplement the fleet’s existing undersea and surface warfare capabilities, relieve cruisers and destroyers from non-combat duties, host unmanned systems that can penetrate and operate in contested environments, conduct over-the-horizon anti-ship missile operations, escort logistics ships, provide electromagnetic information exploitation capabilities and intelligence collection, and more.

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Naval Analysts Weigh in on New Frigate Concept
Naval analysts have expressed concern to Congress over aspects of the Navy’s new guided-missile frigate FFG(X) concept and how it would fit in the service’s plans to grow its battle force to 355 ships.

Testifying July 25 before the Senate Armed Services seapower subcommittee were Dr. Eric J. Labs, senior analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons, Congressional Budget Office; Ronald O’Rourke, specialist in Naval Affairs, Congressional Research Service; Dr. Jerry Hendrix, senior fellow and director of the Defense Strategies and Assessments Program at the Center for A New American Security; and Bryan Clark, senior fellow, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

The analysts were asked about the Navy’s request for information (RFI), released July 10, for the FFG(X) by the subcommittee chairman, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.

“I don’t think it does move us in the right direction”, Clark said. “It opens up the aperture too much in terms of what that future frigate could be. It makes it seem like it could be anything, a ship that’s only able to do surface warfare and ISR [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance] missions in support of distributed lethality. It could anything from that, which is a relatively less capable ship all the way up to a frigate that can do air defense or another ship and do anti-submarine warfare.

“The Navy, instead of opening a wide aperture and seeing what comes in, needs to make some choices about what they need this ship to do. It needs to be a more capable ship that’s able to do multiple missions: anti-submarine warfare, air defense and surface warfare. All three of them about the same time. So, it needs to be a multimission ship and not something that’s single-mission or dual-mission, like the RFI implies.”

“I found the RFI generally to be good, however there are a couple of troubling points within it,” Hendrix said. “Probably the one that leapt out at me the most was the requirement within it for a 3,000-nautical-mile range at 16 knots. Given the reserve fuel requirements — we never run ships all the way down to zero [fuel]; we always want to keep fuel for ballast and emergencies — that would actually limit that ship to have to at least take one refueling for even a trans-Atlantic convoy escort.

“It would seem to me that any type of ship that’s built — and its written into the document — needs to be able to do anti-surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare [and] convoy escort, that it ought to be able to do convoy escort without having to peel off and hit the tanker on the way over,” he said. “So, it struck me that something in the 4,500- to 6,000-mile range ought to be a walking-in-the-door minimum, the higher the better in order to get the most independent steaming out of it.

“I’m a little concerned about the emphasis on the air-defense factor,” Hendrix said. “I believe that the ship should provide self-air defense, but we have been buying excess capacity of air defense in the [Arleigh] Burke class for a number of years. We have a real deficit in anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare [ASW], and any time that you require a ship to be good at all things, you’re going to drive up the cost factor in this. There’s a certain sweet spot on cost that, if you exceed that by adding air-defense capability, certainly we start edging over a billion dollars per copy. At that point, shouldn’t we buy some more Burkes? We need something that we can buy in high enough numbers that we can drive up that portion of the fleet.”

Hendrix said that Navy needs more than the 52 small surface combatants (including littoral combat ships, or LCSs) in its current plans. He said the number should be in the 70 to 75 range “to be able to fill out the requirements from the combatant commanders throughout the world.”

“I would like this to be a robust ASW, anti-surface design with a 6,000-mile range,” he said. “That’s a good starting point.”

“This is going to be our third attempt in the last 15 years to try and get right the issue of small surface combatant procurement,” O’Rourke said. “When we started the LCS program in the 2000-2003 time frame, the Navy didn’t do all the homework, in my view, that it needed to, to provide a firm analytical foundation for the program. And the weakness in that analytical foundation, in my view, that I’ve argued for many years now is a principal reason for many of the difficulties that the LCS program experienced in subsequent years.

“The Navy had a chance to firm up that analytical foundation when the program was restructured in 2014, but this time — not so much the Navy’s fault, but rather OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] — they missed a second opportunity to create a firm analytical foundation for what they were doing,” O’Rourke said. “So, this is the Navy’s third bite at the apple, to put a proper, robust analytical foundation to explain to itself and others what kind of ship it wants to buy.

“And it needs to be able to answer three questions, and not just with opinions or subjective judgments, but with strong robust numbers,” he said. “First, what are your capability gaps that you’re trying to address? Second, what is the best general approach for filling those gaps — should it be a small ship, a big ship, a plane, something else, some combination? And, third, when you pick that best approach, then what are some of the key attributes than the ship should have?

“If they don’t put a firm analytical foundation under this effort, there will be a risk of this effort also experiencing difficulties in execution in the years ahead,” he said.

“It would be good if there were more specificity in the RFI, without getting in a recommendation of what that specificity should be,” Labs said. “The more specificity you have, the more you can zero in and get that ship designed and the faster you can get a cost estimate based on what the specifications were going to be.

“You want to be careful about not trying to do things too much on the cheap,” Labs said. “At the same time, I you can design a ship that has a great deal of capability and you can get maybe two frigates for the price of one Burke-class [ship], you’re starting to get somewhere in terms of building a larger fleet in a timely manner.”

Hendrix said that for the price of one destroyer the Navy could procure a couple of frigates or a couple of offshore patrol vessels “or missile boats by, perhaps, converting a joint high-speed vessel and uploading it with missiles, given that cost range that you could pack six smaller combatants into the cost of one Burke.”

He also said that a “clean-sheet design” is too late and that the Navy should look at the Coast Guard’s national security cutter or the FREMM frigate used by France and Italy.

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FORBIN said:

Concerns...

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Dizasta1 said:

Isn't it kinda late in the day for the US Navy to admit that it requires frigates? What purpose were the littoral combat ships suppose to serve, the US Navy is purpose built to be a blue water navy?

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FORBIN said:

Concerns...

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