US Navy Littoral Combat Ship Serves It Purpose in South China Sea With Philippine Navy

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

Perhaps like a Phoenix emerging from the ashes of its own demise, the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship has arguably aligned with its original concept of operation and performed critical security missions.

While the LCS has of course had its share of successes and effective deployments over a number of years despite its troubled history, its recent Maritime Cooperative Activity with the Philippine Navy in the South China Sea placed the ship in optimal conditions for the missions it was designed to perform.

The USS Gabrielle Giffords Littoral Combat Ship recently transited the South China Sea with the Philippine Navy’s Gregorio Del Pilar. Both Philippine and US Navy warships launched ship-based reconnaissance helicopters and pursued joint security missions.

As a ship engineered to reach ports and littoral areas inaccessible to larger, deeper draft warships, the LCS can bring distinct surveillance and reconnaissance advantages to Navy forces operating in a coastal or island-hopping kind of environment. The LCS is also more heavily armed in recent years and is capable of extended land and surface attack, as it is armed with a deck-launched, over-the-horizon Naval Strike Missile. 

Challenged LCS History

The Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship has had a challenged existence, pretty much since it first became a concept and vigorous debate surrounded whether the ship would exist. Then, in its early existence, the ship was repeatedly discredited as ill suited for great power, blue-water maritime warfare.

“Not survivable enough” was the standard refrain, as critics lambasted the flat bottom hull, lighter armor configuration and fewer number of heavy offensive weapons. LCS detractors also denigrated the ship’s mission scope, arguing its technologies did not align with concepts of operation necessary for a modern threat environment.