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.
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Proponents talked about its speed of 40-knots and shallow-water ability to perform coastal reconnaissance and access ports and critical littoral areas less accessible to deeper draft surface warships. Advocates spoke regularly about its modularity, meaning the ship could quickly transition between its configurable “mission packages.” Described as integrated suites of tailorable technologies, the ship’s three mission packages are Anti-Submarine Warfare, Surface Warfare and CounterMine operations. Following years of testing and development, both Trimaran Hull Independence variants and flat bottomed Freedom variants entered operational service.
Not long after entering service, former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel massively reduced the planned LCS fleet size and called for a host of additional “survivability” enhancing adaptations for the ship, such as over-the-horizon missiles, deck-launchers, space armor and reinforced armor as well as additional weapons for larger-scale maritime warfare. The initial plan was to build a new, more survivable LCS-like ship in place of the remaining ships called a Frigate, however the plans for the Frigate have substantially evolved and move well beyond operating merely as a more survivable LCS.
Nonetheless, when equipped with helicopters, deck-launched drones and guns to counter small boats, the Navy’s LCS may indeed serve a vital function after all. In the South China Sea, a US Navy LCS could launch and operate surface and undersea drones, patrol for submarines, secure port and coastal areas and, if needed. launched lethal land attacks with its over-the-horizon offensive firepower. To a certain extent this is already known, yet an ability to transit dangerous, littoral island areas in the South China Sea with the Philippine Navy seems to offer a useful and somewhat unique tactical advantage. Perhaps the LCS can find an enduring place in the fast growing sphere of US Navy missions, despite the service’s major focus on great power war through operations like this one in the South China Sea.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization and Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
