As a midshipman soon to be commissioned, I have followed closely the controversy over the littoral combat ship (LCS). While this will undoubtedly continue, the LCS is a reality for my generation. We should find the best way to employ it in an era of high-end warfighting. The U.S. Navy has an obligation to the taxpayer to make best use of the LCS, even if it was not designed primarily with a high-end maritime fight in mind.
Modularity is supposed to ensure the LCS remains relevant for decades, even with the fielding of a new frigate. I agree with some critics that the LCS needs more manpower, stronger armament, and a better maintenance system to be productive in a fleet-on-fleet engagement. My generation may fight a near-peer war in our professional careers, and we will have to do it with the current fleet, including the LCS.
The LCS does have limitations in a major fleet-on-fleet conflict, but it also brings some advantages worth mentioning. Specifically, it affords junior officers assigned far more bridge time than their peers get on larger ships, it is well-suited for convoy protection, and it can be very effective engaging enemy targets in the littoral before they reach the open ocean.
Junior Officer Training
While the LCS crew size increased from 50 to 70 in September 2016, it remains relatively small, a fact that creates extensive amount of bridge and shiphandling experience for the small number of junior officers onboard. The surface Navy should consider ways to use the LCS creatively to take advantage of this, perhaps by temporarily assigning some junior officers from ships in maintenance and upkeep to an operational LCS for a few days or weeks to gain more shiphandling experience.
To train LCS crews, the Navy combines intense classroom instruction with advanced simulator training to “prequalify” sailors before they set foot on the deckplates.1 This is a good idea, but the Navy should also leverage the LCS’s unique design and exceptional maneuverability to maximize bridge time for its junior officers. It is a platform that offers these officers greater opportunity than their cruiser and destroyer colleagues to become skilled in the finer points of shiphandling. With a very shallow draft (14–15 feet), the LCS has a much harder time bottoming out.2 This coupled with its agility allows commanding officers to be more permissive in letting junior officers drive.
Convoy Protection
With more bridge time, LCS junior officers will be better prepared for an important wartime duty—protecting convoys. As the U.S. and Royal Navies saw in World War II, war cannot be waged on foreign soil without established sea lines of communication. In a future engagement, it is all too likely U.S. cruisers and destroyers will be too heavily tasked with other missions to protect supply convoys. The LCS can fill that role. Traditionally convoy defense has fallen to more lightly armed surface ships, and the LCS was designed to assume traditional patrol craft and frigate missions.
Moreover, although it is not as survivable as a larger warship, the LCS certainly is capable of escorting ships through hostile waters. Its speed alone makes it a good platform to counter enemy convoy hunters, and it has a significant armament of guns and missiles for air and surface threats. Furthermore, the LCS’s hull is designed both for stability in the open ocean and to operate in the shallow littoral. This will allow the ships to escort merchant ships closer to the coasts where they need to unload. Though it was not an initial mission for the LCS, protecting convoys will become very important to any war against a near-peer adversary.
The High-End Littoral Fight
Because the LCS can be adapted for many missions, it will be an instrumental component in countering China’s PLA Navy. China has a formidable array of capabilities in its own littoral—fast patrol craft armed with antiship missiles, diesel-electric submarines, land-based aircraft armed with antiship weapons, and truck-mounted antiship missile launchers.3 All pose a significant threat to U.S. ships operating near the Chinese coast and the “reclaimed islands” in the South China Sea. This gives the Chinese a buffer zone to hide behind while its blue-water navy conducts missions farther away.
The LCS will be called on to fight in China’s littorals, countering Chinese missile boats before they can venture farther to attack main elements of the U.S. fleet. This also will enable U.S. destroyers and cruisers to focus on antiair and antisurface warfare, not to mention land attack missions.
When the LCS program began in 2002, the world was a very different place. The LCS may have been designed for yesterday’s fight, but the concept is still relevant. The Navy must adapt and think creatively on how to use it in a high-end fight. That will be one of the key challenges for the next generation of surface warfare officers—my generation.
1. U.S. Navy, “United States Navy Fact File: Littoral Combat Ship Class – LCS.”
2. U.S. Navy, “United States Navy Fact File: Littoral Combat Ship Class – LCS.”
3. James Holmes, “Visualize Chinese Sea Power.” U.S. Naval Institute, Proceedings, June 2018. www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2018-06/visualize-chinese-sea-power.