Remember this post I did on the LCS? I wondered aloud about whether or not we were seeing the rebirth of the original destroyer...a PT Boat killer.
Well Lane responded to that post and I thought that response was so outstanding that I felt it needed to be a blog entry all its own. Check it out below...
Sol to answer your question no we're not seeing a rebirth of the torpedo boat destroyer. The torpedo as a primary small craft (and ship) based weapon was replaced by the guided missile over 40 years ago.I'm still waivering but he makes a strong case.
LCS is intended to deal with "swarms" of small boats. This is ridiculous on multiple levels. The first one is what nation is going to attack us with swarms of small boats other than Iran? The answer is none. The reason for this is that you come up with attacking navies with small boats when that's in fact all you've got since you've isolated yourself from the world community and don't have access to anything else.
Another reason it's ridiculous is that LCS is going to be armed with a 3.5 range missile to deal with small boats. There are literally dozens of systems with a greater range than 3.5 miles that can be carried by small boats.
More importantly is that the main small craft threat isn't a bunch of speed boats armed with RPG's, machine guns, or explosives for suicide attacks but rather actual guided missile boats that have LCS both seriously out ranged and can as fast or faster.
Any basic surface combatant from a missile boat, corvette, frigate, etc., should be able to deal with the modest threat of speed boats given the main surface threat continues to be anti ship missiles launched by boats, ships, aircraft, etc.
LCS is frankly a totally flawed concept on myriad levels. The entire notion of swapping modules has been thrown out by the USN because the modules are too expensive. So in effect each LCS will be a single role ship. This assumes they any of the modules to eventually work as none do at present nor are projected to work any time soon.
LCS simply seems to be about putting large numbers of sexy hulls in the water so surface warfare officers have a greater chance to get their tickets punched. The only real utility of the ships is that they carry 2 helicopters. The fact we have to spend $500+ million for them plus the additional cost of the module(s) in order to carry 140+ knot helicopters around at 40+ knots is absurd.
The one thing in that video that interested me, however, was the projection that LCS can go 1,000nm at 40+ knots. That's one single day of operations at max speed. In effect the USN took the original Street fighter concept of a 500 or so ton fast boat added two helicopters and came up with a 3,000 ton speed boat.
In comparison the rest of the world builds 3,000 ton general purpose frigates that carry 1 or 2 helicopters at lower cost but can also undertake various things LCS can not.
LCS has extremely little ability to deal with surface threats. Assuming they get the ASW module to work only ships with this module have ASW capacity. The ships have extremely limited defense against aerial threats. They can't escort other ships, they're not equipped to do radar picket, naval gunfire support, etc. On top of all this they're far less survivable than a normal warship.
Frankly the USN is out of it's mind. They not only designed single role ships that require each separate combat module to be integrated but then went and bought two different classes each with it's own systems.
Worse they are giving up having small cost effective patrol and mine warfare craft in favor of an ill equipped over priced frigate sized speed boat. By doing away with general purpose frigates they're forcing every real mission to be performed by a DDG. Moreover, every single DDG we have is a large expensive AEGIS equipped ship. It's ridiculous.
It's not just LCS. Instead of putting a couple of the new guns on a cost effective NGS ship they put them on a 15,000 ton cruiser that costs $6 billion. Even more ironic they may end up buying more DDG-1000's because they're cheaper to operate than a DDG-51 III, the DDG-51 III is going to cost a lot more than anyone thought, and DDG-1000 performs shallow water asw far better.
A very strong case that the LCS concept is fucked up from the floor up.
Thanks Sol for posting that but warn me next time and I'll edit it first lol. Also you wrote Lee but I'm Lane, no worries. I had another paragraph but was over the word count so I cut it.
ReplyDeleteBasically it's worth stopping and thinking about how the USN has factored the shallow water asw ability of a 15,000 ton cruiser that costs $6 billion as a factor in whether to purchase more. Now maybe I'm being unreasonable but isn't that a job for a general purpose or asw oriented frigate?
It's certainly possible that LCS with the ASW module does shallow water ASW well, as of the last USN report that module does not add any capability to the mission and it's not acceptable the ship has to stop to deploy the systems, but isn't this rather besides the point?
How many ASW modules will we have? More to the point why have short range LCS with very little anti surface and aerial self defense doing this mission when it's better served by an actual frigate? If the counter argument is that it can go 4,000nm at 18knots great then why are we paying so much for an ill equipped ship that goes 40+? The entire LCS construct is flawed on so many levels it's really a mystery how it got here.
correcting it now. it was too good to just let it stay hidden in the coments section. always looking for guest posts...how about it?
ReplyDeleteBe happy to contribute. I'll drop you an email.
ReplyDeleteAgree with Lane's post pretty much entirely. Here's a couple more things:
ReplyDeleteJust historically, "destroyer" came from "Torpedo Boat Destroyer" which is significant because Torpedo Boats were built in large numbers at up to 600 tons pre-WWII. This were in effect "mini-destroyers" which featured a very heavy torpedo armament (duh) which Lane is exactly correct in equating to today's missile boats: they were designed to use speed and a salvo of launched weapons to attack ships much larger than themselves. This is a much different proposition even from a PT boat, never mind a speed boat with a machine gun and an RPG on it. This is one of the reasons destroyers had such relatively powerful and, again as Lane points out, multi-dimensional armament: a far cry from the LCS.
Speaking of PT boats, they were designed for littoral warfare too and were crammed with armament from stem to stern. A PT boat would have little difficulty fighting quite a number of "swarm" speed boats just by itself. A WWII PT boat that simply fired modern torpedoes could probably kill the LCS by itself as well, since modern torpedoes out range the 57mm gun. To cal the LCS a "PT boat destroyer" is to insult PT boats and, to harp on Lane's theme, ignore the fact that the modern version of the torpedo boat (big or small) is the missile boat, any one of which can engage the LCS from far beyond its weapons' range and then just leave.
If you want to know what littoral craft look like, look at the people who have designed and built to fight there for years: Sweden, Finland, Norway. They build things like the Visby and the Skjold, not anything remotely resembling the LCS. The LCS is a lousy littoral combatant and a lousy destroyer. What it will be is the world's first 40 knot mine sweeper.
Final note: the LCS speed requirement came from the idea that modules would be so easy to develop, so cheap to deploy, so fast to swap out and so easy to use that a single LCS could sortie into the Gulf of Aden, for instance, in the morning with one set of modules, return to port, swap the modules out and sortie again right away with a different set of modules if it could sustain high transit speeds. Since every one of these assumptions about the modules is totally incorrect, the sustained high speed requirement is now pointless and the LCS requires a fleet of oilers to follow it wherever it goes (if you look at early LM videos for the LCS you may be struck, as I was, that every 'mission' started with refueling from a magically convenient oiler).
The thing I don't get is that it's not like the F-35 where there is a desperate need to replace old aircraft. It's not replacing anything as far as I can tell, so why not junk it? IMO they'd be better off buying a foreign frigate off the shelf for less money at this point. (If they simply cancelled it and started over with a new design they'd still find a way to make it cost a billion goddamn dollars.)
ReplyDeleteI'm doing background research on this topic (since POGO so conveniently put it on the table for me, I feel obliged to learn more about the whys and wherefores for the system)
ReplyDeleteNot far enough along to form any strong opinions yet, but I will use these questions as my 'Polaris': For the LCS to get this far along this fast there had to be a whole bunch of "somebodys" in the Navy who thought this system was a good idea - so the questions are: 1) What were they thinking and why? 2) How will the system be used and what is the advantage of the LCS over other systems or technical approaches that caused the Navy to choose this path?
So far none of the answers give me any reason to compare an LCS to other platforms on a one-for-one basis. All the arrows point to networked system comparisons as the most appropriate.
Support comes from two areas:
ReplyDeleteOne is conflating new technologies with the first platform to deploy them. Modular and lower crew sizes are the new world regardless of how good or bad the LCS platform is. Even building poorly conceived ships gets new technologies into service and up the learning curve which has value.
Two is that the service has dug itself a hole with unreserved support of a poorly conceived, poorly implemented weapon system. They cannot back track without leaving a big gap in procurement in the face of block obsolescence with the concomitant loss of platforms, billets, and budget dollars. Thus, in many real ways, better to press on with a known bad design than to admit error and be forced by congress to start over.
Also the LCS isn't networked warfare in any meaningful ways. Fighting a swarm of speedboats with short range direct fire weapons is the current ultimate of mano a mano naval warfare. Mine hunting is still one ship against pretty much one mine at a time. The LCS is, in fact, designed not to be able to fight in a networked manner. This is why none of the modules are topside.
The most modular weapons actually implemented, the Stanflex line, are all topside and deploy a range of guns and missiles where the missiles, and possibly even a 76mm gun with Strales type ammunition, could allow ships to mutually support in networked fashion. This kind of capability is deliberately designed out of the LCS to make sure that, unlike the street fighter proposals it was bastardized out of, it is not involved in actual combat and thus will not be killed.