Navy investments for the future emphasize connectivity, modularity, and unmanned systems. Taking these concepts to sea will be a trio of surface sea frames—beginning with the Littoral Combat Ship in 2007.
The U.S. Navy is in undisputed command of the seas. Now we have some work to do to maintain this advantage—and we know how to do it right.
During the last revolution at sea in the late 20th century, the surface Navy fielded the Aegis weapon system, the Standard and Tomahawk missiles, the Vertical Launch System (VLS), and gas-turbine-powered warships, distributing striking and defensive power to distances and areas barely imagined in the previous generation of ships. The changes we are investing in today will be even more profound.
We may never again be in a better position to build on our strengths, innovate and experiment, and push the envelope of operational art and technological genius. The next revolution at sea will not be driven solely by the challenges of our dangerous world, but also by the genius of Americans answering the bell when opportunity comes calling. That means reaching farther and more precisely with striking power from the sea. It means broader protection not only for naval forces, but for forces ashore as well. It means taking advantage of our command of the largest maneuver space on earth—the sea—to deliver the combat power of the joint force with ever-greater agility. And it means harnessing the power of networked sensors, weapons, and platforms to develop persistence and operational speed that no enemy can counter. The surface Navy is right in the middle of all of this, and it is exciting. The 21st-century revolution at sea is about new opportunities, new capabilities, and new ships.
Our performance in Operation Iraqi Freedom validated the path on which "Sea Power 21" places us. Using the maneuver space of the sea, we established the rapid flow of joint force personnel and equipment to the theater without requiring the permission of regional host nations. We let loose with hundreds of Tomahawk missiles and supported thousands of carrier-based aircraft in striking our enemy with unprecedented precision, speed, and intensity, all the while defending sea-based forces from missile attack and greatly enhancing the defense of land-based forces from missile attack as well.
"Sea Power 21" and the early U.S. experience in the global war on terrorism are shaping the 21st-century surface Navy. On the strategic level, three imperatives guide those who are building the future fleet:
- Protect the joint force. The surface Navy must be able to defend the joint force—not only against traditional threats such as supersonic missiles and ever-quieter submarines, but also against asymmetric attacks, both ashore and at sea. The type of threat that materialized alongside the USS Cole (DDG-67) persists today.
- Provide access. We must provide access for the joint force, even in the absence of available bases ashore. In short, we must own the littoral and be able to exercise and exploit that ownership whenever and wherever we want.
- Project power ashore. We must be able to reach out and strike down the enemies of our country. That is what taxpayers pay for when they buy a Navy.
These three strategic imperatives describe what the surface Navy does so well today, and what it must do even better to contribute to the success of future joint campaigns. It is our investment in these new capabilities that will transform how ships will serve as instruments of national defense.
In making those investments, we will seek to apply the full force of U.S. technological strength and innovation in three key areas: advanced computer networks, modular design, and unmanned vehicles. These are the three pistons of change that are driving the 21st-century revolution at sea. All are part of systems and concepts of operation that are being evaluated for what they bring to the larger all-service campaign, not as part of an isolated Navy-only approach.
Advanced computer networks will link sensors, weapons, and ships throughout the maritime and land domains as part of the emerging ForceNet architecture. On the wave of the Internet and with the power of commercial off-the-shelf technology, the surface Navy is becoming a more networked force. Sensor and weapon coverage will expand from ships to reach a greater portion of the battle space over longer periods. Response times from sensor to shooter will decrease as a function of ever-nearer real-time visibility of targets across all levels of command.
Modularity as a governing tenet of ship design will enable more efficient reconfiguration, modernization, and maintenance, which amounts to greater operational flexibility and availability. Modular design allows the Navy to swap out and add state-of-the-art capabilities to a ship's growth margin more rapidly than the current approach, where new tools must undergo a lengthy integration process and vie for scarce hull space.
Employment of unmanned air, surface, and subsurface vehicles from ships will further extend sensor coverage and combat reach. In just a few years, ships will launch and link to a school or flock of unmanned vehicles that will carry sensors and weapons over and under sea and land.
Taken together, these concepts—Get Connected, Get Modular, and Get Unmanned—are driving efforts to reshape the surface Navy. This is how the surface force is developing innovative tools to take advantage of our unprecedented opportunity to revolutionize our service. However, these and other new and exciting concepts need a home. We have decided on a trio of new surface sea frames to bring them to life and to take them—and the fight—to the enemy.
A Balanced Team of Ships
Three new ship classes are in various stages of development and will serve as flexible forward platforms for new capabilities. The first to premier will be the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) in 2007. The advanced land-attack destroyer (DD[X]) will follow in about 2011. And just a few years later, the keel will be laid on the first CG(X), the next class of cruiser, designed from the keel up for theater air and ballistic missile defense. Each unique class will carry its share of the surface warfare mission load and operate in concert with the other two.
LCS will be a focused-mission ship able to "climb into the ring" close to shore and take on those threats we see beginning to coalesce in the littoral. Employing a system-of-systems approach that will feature continuous access to networked sensors, tailored mission modules, a variety of manned and unmanned vehicles, and innovative hull designs, small groups of Littoral Combat Ships collectively will add combat capabilities to dominate the littoral and to provide access for joint forces. Proven signature-management technologies along with speeds in excess of 40 knots will make this ship an agile and elusive welterweight littoral champion.
The operational employment of HSV-X1 and Cyclone (PC-1)-class patrol coastal combatants during Iraqi Freedom, particularly in gaining and then sustaining the joint force's access to the port of Umm Qasr by interdicting Iraqi minelayers, affirms the requirement for a shallow-draft, fast, and flexible littoral combatant. This experience is buttressed by conclusions of recent Navy and Army war games that highlight the need for lethality and mobility in the littoral to sustain our access, as do several Navy Department studies and Fleet experimentation projects with vessels that have attributes desired for LCS.
LCS is a large step to getting better connected. It will be the first ship built from the keel up to operate as an element of the highly networked naval force envisioned under ForceNet. This will allow the design of a core LCS vessel carrying only the most essential onboard sensors for self-protection and mission accomplishment. As a user of and contributor to the common operational picture, LCS will facilitate greater sensor presence, closer to shore. What this means is the ability to deny potential adversaries the sanctuary they expect home waters to be by providing persistent surveillance, tracking, and the threat of rapid engagement.
Modularity will assume center stage with the advent of LCS. The ability to deploy various mission modules on board a fast, shallow-draft ship is the cornerstone of the LCS concept and builds on Navy experience with de facto modules such as carrier air wings, ship helicopter detachments, and vertical launching systems. The use of plug-'n'-play—or more appropriately plug-'n'-fight—mission modules will change the way we develop combat systems, and not only in LCS. And building LCS will spur the development of new modules that have yet to be imagined.
A collection of the latest warfighting tools and people specially trained to wield them will be packaged into a toolbox, or module, for employment in LCS. In this sense, the LCS hull is a sea frame to bring combat capabilities to the littoral in much the same way that an airframe serves to get weapons and sensors in the air. Modules will interface to the LCS for power, cooling, and data through a common interface to an open combat systems architecture, akin to various pieces of hardware connected through a computer's USB port and operating in the Microsoft Windows environment. The first modules to be developed will be for the LCS primary mission areas of mine, surface, and antisubmarine warfare. Follow-on modules will include state-of-the-art intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems and equipment to enable Marine Corps or joint special operations forces to conduct operational maneuver from the sea.
LCS is also about exploiting unmanned systems. From the first ships constructed, LCS will host a variety of unmanned vehicles. Imagine several LCS platforms deploying unmanned vehicles above, on, and below the surface, uncovering mines, detecting submarines, and even reaching ashore to image or strike a terrorist camp. And imagine these ships doing all of this for weeks or months at a time, providing the joint force commander much clearer insight into the murky littoral environment. Unmanned systems that will be integrated in the first LCS mission modules include the Remote Minehunting System (RMS), a vertical take-off unmanned air vehicle (VT-UAV), and an unmanned surface vehicle.
As a fast, focused, and flexible combatant, LCS will serve as a sea frame to get much-needed capabilities, tools already on the shelf as well as those about to emerge, quickly into the fight and in support of national objectives. These ships will help sustain our littoral maritime superiority for decades to come.
If LCS is about sustaining access, DD(X) is about exploiting that access to project decisive combat power over land. DD(X) is being designed as a multimission ship optimized for power projection. If it had been in service for Iraqi Freedom, coalition forces in Umm Qasr and to the north in Basra could have called in rounds from its 100-nautical-mile-range Advanced Gun System (AGS). The unmanned AGS magazine allows automatic firing and will incorporate an "infinite magazine concept" to enable rapid replenishment of fire support rounds at sea. In addition, DD(X) will be capable of conducting precise, all-weather strikes with Tomahawk and tactical Tomahawk missiles to distances more than 1,000 miles ashore. The current DD(X) design calls for two AGS guns, 600-750 rounds of onboard magazine capacity, and 60-80 vertical launch cells.
The haze gray hull of DD(X) will have a solid undercoat of Army and Marine Corps green, for it will be optimized to support forces ashore. Though coalition naval fire support was a small part of Iraqi Freedom, there is no guarantee that the next conflict will not require a large volume of precise fires from the sea in support of joint forces. In DD(X), the Navy is moving beyond the standard 5-inch round that travels out to 13 nautical miles to a new realm of fire support. Imagine an Army or Marine Corps rifleman and Navy petty officer looking at the same real-time picture of enemy troops encamped at a municipal airport. With the push of a button, the rifleman sends GPS coordinates to the DD(X) sitting 50 miles offshore, and within minutes rounds start falling on the airport, or a tactical Tomahawk pulls out of overhead loiter and zeros in on the target 1,000 miles inland.
As the Navy seeks to expand its ability to influence events ashore and improve fire support, technology is pointing it in the direction of an electromagnetic rail gun and directed-energy weapons. Rail gun technology has been under serious development since the early 1980s and is projected to be a reality in the next decade. Ranges of up to 200 nautical miles are envisioned, with GPS-guided projectiles traveling at six times the speed of sound. The fact that rail guns and directed-energy weapons do not require powders or explosives will free magazine space for strike and other mission areas, but surface ships will be required to generate increasing amounts of electric power to support them. The debut of the all-electric drive warship in DD(X) with the Integrated Power System (IPS) is a large and important step in this direction. The IPS design and its ability to scale to provide additional electrical power as demand grows are the key enablers to transforming surface fire support capabilities.
The commercial revolution in advanced computer networks will go to sea in DD(X) in the form of a rugged and open combat system backbone called the Total Ship Computing Environment (TSCE). The surface Navy is spearheading the development of a joint open combat systems architecture. The current mix of different software baselines and the costly requirement to integrate them on each platform will be transcended by an architecture of shared, industry standard, computing rules of the road. A common and open combat system architecture that works across different platforms and services lies at the core of the 21st-century revolution at sea, for it will create the environment essential for the surface Navy to get fully connected, modular, and unmanned. The TSCE in DD(X) is a large step in this direction. Moving to this system will enhance interoperability, enable rapid modernization, lighten maintenance workloads, and lower life cycle costs. Improved automation also supports smart manpower reductions, as much as a six-to-one reduction in combat information center watch team manning alone.
DD(X) will be connected with the Cooperative Engagement Capability to maximize the reach of advanced VLS-launched Standard and Evolved Sea Sparrow missiles against air threats at sea. It also will be a launch pad for the new Extended Range Active Missile designed to counter air threats over land, including land-attack cruise missiles, expanding the umbrella of Sea Shield.
The revolution at sea is reflected in DD(X) in several other important ways. Like LCS, DD(X) will host a variety of unmanned vehicles. Her tumble home hull design, where the bow angles out, will improve stealth and survivability. The deckhouse will be constructed of composite material and house all of the ship's radars and antennas. With no rotating radars and minimal angles to reflect an adversary's radar, DD(X) will cut a clean and stealthy profile as she moves into position to deliver her punches toward land. A Peripheral Vertical Launching System (PVLS) places missile cells along the outside of the hull with antipropagation interior bulkheads so that if struck the magazine blast will be directed outward toward the water. Modularity of the PVLS system supports efficient upgrades.
Though designed primarily around precision strike capability, DD(X) will feature an improved antisubmarine warfare suite called Integrated Undersea Warfare 21 (IUSW-21). "Integrated" is the key word for this suite that will handle a range of onboard and offboard systems, including unmanned vehicles operating from the ship or from LCS, dual-band sonar that can automatically adapt to different water conditions, a multifunction towed array, vastly improved torpedo countermeasures, and in-stride mine avoidance capability. The sum of these systems, all linked and feeding a common undersea picture, represents a significant advance in antisubmarine warfare capability. DD(X) will be strong on undersea warfare self-defense and serve as a primary processing and command-and-control hub for the networked and distributed undersea warfare game plan for the 21st century.
While sustaining supremacy in air defense that was won with Aegis cruisers and destroyers, CG(X) marks an expansion in defensive coverage against ballistic missiles. Missile defense is a new primary mission for the Navy and recently was formalized in a presidential directive to field an initial sea-based capability in 2004. This evolving mission could range from sea-based missile defense of the battle group, regional missile defense of cities and countries, and, if required, national missile defense of the homeland. While the Navy's role at each of these levels still is being worked out, it is clear that a new platform to host new missile defense capabilities at sea is required. That platform is CG(X). This next-generation cruiser will use many of the same design attributes of DD(X) to serve as a sea frame for air and ballistic missile defense.
In building three new ship classes, the Navy is investing in a balanced team. Like players on a football team, LCS, DD(X), and CG(X) each fills its own unique role, yet they work together toward victory in the larger joint fight. The surface Navy needs strong linemen, running backs, and quarterbacks. By focusing on a solid running as well as passing game, the team will achieve the balance necessary to prevail against a wider range of opponents. And given that the line of scrimmage has returned to littoral waters, LCS provides increased blocking power to keep open the way for sustained ground and air play from DD(X) and CG(X). Thus, putting all three ship classes on the field together is the best path to maintaining the U.S. Navy's command of the seas.
Thanks to visionaries such as Admirals Jim Doyle, Joe Metcalf, Hank Mustin, and Wayne Meyer, the surface Navy was transformed by a 20th-century revolution at sea in the 1970s and 1980s. Under the banner of "Up, Out, and Down," new cruisers and destroyers went to sea with new tools that expanded in every dimension what a surface warrior could contribute to national defense. We have opportunities today the likes of which our predecessors could scarcely imagine. Seizing the day will require the collective brilliance and effort of the surface Navy community, a team of uniformed, civilian, and industry professionals. Sending a host of new capabilities forward in three new complementary ship classes amounts to nothing less than a 21st-century revolution at sea. Get connected, get modular, and get unmanned.
Rear Admiral Ulrich is Director of Surface Warfare. Rear Admiral Edwards is Deputy Director, Surface Warfare.