LCS OPNAV Review: Executive Summary
(Source: US Navy; issued July 22, 2013)
In January 2012, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations directed that there be an assessment and review of the Navy’s readiness to receive, employ and deploy the Littoral Combat Ship.
This document provides a summary of the effort that went into that review.
As a reminder, this report is more than a year old and many of the issues identified in the report have been addressed – in many cases corrected prior to the deployment of USS Freedom (LCS 1) in April 2013.
Click here for the report (3 PDF pages) on the US Navy website.
http://navylive.dodlive.mil/files/2013/ ... M-LCS1.pdf(EDITOR’S NOTE: This 3-page summary sounds very much like an obituary for the Littoral Combat Ship concept, if not for the program itself. No wonder that its public release was delayed by a year.
It notes that “seven areas require modification to effectively integrate LCS into fleet operations: concept of operations, manning maintenance, modularity, MP capability, training and commonality.”
In other words, none of the original concept’s tenets have worked out.
The report also “highlights the gap between ship capabilities and the missions the Navy will need LCS to execute,” leaving only two options: modify the ship to meet its requirements, or downgrade the requirements to what the ship can do.
There can be no greater admission of failure.
Three other points merit a mention here:
- two out of three mission packages are unsatisfactory, while the sentence relating to the third is blacked out: i.e., none work.
- the small crew concept is impractical and unaffordable;
- the shipbuilding strategy is also a failure: “divergent seaframes and ship systems prevent greater use of economies of scale for equipment, maintenance and training.”
Given all this, one wonders how the report can possibly conclude that “LCS has the potential to be a remarkable ship and modularity an outstanding asset,” except to note that many brilliant naval careers no doubt urgently require rescue.)
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