On 8 November 2002, the U.S. Navy issued six Focused Mission Ship 90-day study contracts that will lead to a Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) class before the end of the decade. The coming months offer the Navy's surface warfare community and the Coast Guard the opportunity to acquire a transformational platform that will be unlike any other warship in the world. It will have unique capabilities and fight in a networked environment never imagined just a few years ago.
The issue is how the Navy should judge these concept studies when they are delivered next month. There is no consensus as to what this ship will be. If all the "wants" or "desires" of everyone with an interest in the LCS were included, the result would be a ship the size of a guided-missile destroyer and one that would cost at least as much. It cannot be everything to everyone. A reduced timeline for development further complicates the challenge. Surely, the most important criterion is that the "C" in LCS stands for combat.
The LCS also provides an opportunity to achieve commonality between Navy and Coast Guard surface assets. The importance of homeland security and the Coast Guard mission as a principal element of Sea Shield in the "home game" make interoperability at the interface of the services' capabilities essential. Commonality of hardware and battle management systems will yield big returns.
Is the best defense still a good offense?
In ancient times, Spartan warriors took great pride in their children not seeing the smoke of enemy campfires from the city walls. The U.S. armed forces have the same legacy: we take the fight to the enemy. Ideally, we fight and win wars near the enemy's shores, not our own. The terrorist attacks of 11 September reinforce the importance of this mandate. Commissioned U.S. combatants always have had—and must have in the future—the ability to operate far from our shores, deployed forward with limited access to ports and other shoreside support.
As part of a global force, U.S. warships operate both independently and as part of strike groups. While the revolution in telecommunications and information technologies greatly has improved our connectivity at sea, real-world situations will require the United States to dispatch ships to locations where they will have to act independently or with limited support for extended periods of time—from near Iraq to Korea, East Timor to Somalia, Sierra Leone to the Aleutian Islands and Marianas, and to the littoral waters of the U.S. mainland. Even with a squadron of LCSs operating together in a network, each ship could quickly come under attack and must be able to survive in intense combat. With the Sea Services' ever decreasing assets and increasing commitments, we cannot assume these ships will operate in an optimum network every day of the year, everywhere in the world. This potential condition is unique to the Sea Services because of their vast areas of responsibility and broad diversity of assigned missions.
The bottom line is U.S. Navy and Coast Guard combatants must be deployable, sustainable, and highly capable of operating in small groups or squadrons and as part of a larger battle force. Indeed, the best defense is still a good offense—it was so in ancient Sparta and remains so today.
What are the unique challenges of the littorals?
The littoral, defined nominally as the area shoreward from the continental shelf, is perhaps the most challenging operating environment for maritime forces. More familiar blue-water warfighting challenges of acoustic and electromagnetic search are compounded by concerns for the limited depth of water (it affects sonar performance and safety of navigation), quiet, air-independent propulsion submarines, mines, swarms of suicide boats, patrol craft with rockets, and land-based cruise missiles. In addition, shortened warning times in constrained and cluttered environments substantially increase the challenge.
These realities suggest that the following critical characteristics will enable our warships to fight and win in the littorals:
- Shallow draft to operate in waters where other warships are encumbered (When the last Oliver Hazard Perry [FFG-7]-class frigate leaves the fleet, the Navy's shallowest draft surface combatant will be 32 feet.)
- Agile and fast to maneuver to advantage, complicating an enemy's attack geometry
- Endurance sufficient to keep pressure on the enemy without having to disengage often for replenishment
- Signature control (radar cross section, visual, infrared, acoustic, and magnetic)
What do sea warriors require for littoral combat?
Because operations in shallow waters reduce the ability to put space between us and a broad range of threats, the LCS—more than any other Navy surface combatant—will require dominant battlespace awareness (DBA). The DBA is predicated on full knowledge, which hinges on the ability of the platform to link into a larger system of sensors and weapons. The LCS contributes to the network while the network augments and enhances the ship's self-defense capabilities.
Critical asymmetric advantages the U.S. sea services possess over all potential adversaries are the quality and training of their personnel. The agility of the LCS and the versatility of its crew, combined with the information technology and systems inherent to DBA, will provide this warship with the ability to survive and prevail in the littorals.
The LCS also must be able to succeed and survive in an environment where network sensors and DBA may not be available. The United States should never build disposable ships or systems to be manned by throwaway crews. Beyond DBA, survivability requires characteristics and capabilities that will make the LCS difficult for an adversary to complete his detect-to-engage cycle successfully. These include:
- Self-defense capabilities—i.e., weapons, sensors, and electronic countermeasures, some of which may be provided by on-board systems and from unmanned vehicles
- A versatile manned helicopter with reconfigurable combat and sensor suites and an unmanned aerial vehicle to reconnoiter high-threat areas and attack enemy targets
- A cross section of surface and unmanned underwater vehicles—exchangeable at sea or in port—to enhance the LCS's sensor capabilities and contribute to the sensor network
- Damage-limiting features, such as fire suppression and electrical reconfiguration, combined with expanded automation in damage control areas
- Adequate sea-keeping characteristics to permit open-ocean transits and extended operations in the world's littorals
What kind of ship will answer the requirement?
The challenge is to develop a class of surface combatants that can contribute significantly to sweeping and keeping open the littoral battle space to prepare the way for a larger force, and to protect that force when it arrives. By any measure, this will be a low-end capability for the Navy and—if the fundamental characteristics are suitable—a high-end asset for the Coast Guard. A key attribute of the LCS will be its affordability in both acquisition cost and total ownership cost. These features and those described previously require the following critical characteristics:
- Basic, combat point defenses and the facilities to add capabilities easily through mission modularity (including different unmanned vehicle and helicopter packages) to provide a margin of superiority in several warfare areas
- Signature management and deception to enhance survivability and limit detection and engagement by enemies
- Capability to connect to large networks to provide DBA and maritime domain awareness
- Flexibility to adapt to new mission environments without the need to reconfigure in safe havens
- An open-systems architecture to allow flexibility and ease in incorporating new systems
- Sea-keeping characteristics compatible with open-ocean transits and extended operations in the world's littorals
- Habitability, sustainability, and human-systems interface designed for extended operations at sea
- Agility to permit the engagement of threats with extremely limited advanced warning
- Fabricated materials that reduce lifecycle cost and structural weight without compromising survivability
- Affordability both in acquisition and total ownership costs
Because of the accelerated acquisition schedule, a proven hull form to provide the versatility required for infusing new technological capabilities—which historically drive toward increased payload weights over the extended service life of the platform
The Sea Services need a lethal, agile, survivable, and versatile Littoral Combatant Ship that can assert the nation's sovereignty in the littorals in the face of anti-access threats. This ship must capture the imagination of our surface warriors, answer the requirement for and fulfill the missions of the 21st century Navy and Coast Guard, and be capable of winning in combat.
Admiral Giffin, former Commander Naval Surface Forces Atlantic, is the Group Vice President of Anteon Corporation’s Systems Integration Group. Admiral Tozzi, former Assistant Commandant of the Coast Guard for Systems, is a Vice President with SYNTEK Technologies, Incorporated.