The U.S. Navy has struggled to integrate littoral combat ships (LCSs) into fleet operations. Reliability, specifically with the Freedom variant, has been the most obvious cause for this, but there are other issues unique to how LCS is manned, trained, and organized that also contribute to the difficulty of fleet integration.
The original LCS program was announced in November 2001 and was part of the Navy’s Future Surface Combatant program that included DDX (which became the DDG-1000) and CGX. With the LCS, a small crew size would be possible in part because a shore-based, expeditionary maintenance establishment would conduct most of the ship’s maintenance. As the program proceeded, to maximize availability and employment, a construct was conceived in which three crews would rotate through two hulls, providing, in theory, one crew on deployment with a forward-deployed LCS, one crew “off-hull” ashore in training, and one crew on rest. With one hull deployed, the other would be in maintenance. This 3-2-1 construct, as it was termed, took the successful ballistic missile submarine force blue/gold crew concept to a new level of complexity.
Efforts to Right the Ship
Growing difficulties in the areas of LCS cost growth, reliability, survivability, and lethality led then–Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to direct the restructuring of the program, with the goal of correcting these deficiencies. Under then-Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson, the commander, Navy Surface Forces, was directed to “make it (LCS) look a lot more like a normal shipbuilding program and a ship-operating program.” Surface Forces’ findings led to changes in the maintenance approach, replaced the 3-2-1 crewing concept with a blue/gold crewing construct, shifted to a mission-focused posture in which a given LCS and its blue-gold team would focus on a single mission, such as antisubmarine or mine warfare. In addition, the Navy Surface Forces effort resulted in lethality upgrades, such as long-range antiship missiles and electronic warfare capabilities.
The blue/gold crew construct and the single-mission focus have been implemented. The mission focus is somewhat problematic, however, given that the ASW and mine countermeasures (MCM) mission modules have yet to be delivered despite the LCS program being in its second decade. According to recent Navy testimony, the ASW and MCM mission modules will be ready in 2022. The lethality upgrades have appeared at symposium displays but have not reached the LCS force except in a few trial tests. A further challenge to the LCS program is high operating costs, associated with a large logistics tail. The main reason for high operating costs is that shore-based civilian contractors provide the maintenance. Finally, another impediment to fleet integration is the LCS’s unique combat and engineering systems, such as the rudderless waterjet propulsion system, combined with the crewing concept, resulting in training and manning being insulated from the rest of the fleet.
Going Forward
To better integrate the LCS into fleet operations, changes must be made in the areas of reliability, lethality, endurance (both ship and crew), training, and organization. It appears that a fix has been identified for the Freedom variant propulsion system that should address much of the reliability woes once implemented. The Independence variant has performed better in this area.
However, also contributing to a lack of reliability has been poor crew proficiency in operating the ships’ systems. Going to a single-crew concept would address this shortfall by keeping one crew on one ship full time. This would result in a crew that has familiarity with and a sense of ownership of their ship. Shifting more of the maintenance to the crew would further improve operating proficiency and ownership and help reduce operating costs. This will require a modest increase in crew size and additional training.
The benefits in increased self-sufficiency, systems knowledge, and crew endurance because of more available watchstanders are worth the cost. Blue/gold crewing has a proven record of success in the Navy’s submarine warfare community. Within the surface warfare community, the record has been just the opposite. Reliability of the forward-deployed MCM force with rotational crews has been a mixed bag. The attempt in the 1990s to operate Arleigh Burke–class guided-missile destroyers with blue/gold crews was a failure. The reasons blue/gold crewing does not work in the surface warfare community are subject to debate and beyond the scope of this article. However, it seems counterintuitive to implement the rotational crewing concept for LCS, with its unique and complex systems when the historical record demonstrates otherwise. Rather than rotate crews, forward base the ships with single crews to increase availability.
LCS in Fleet Training
Another detractor of the blue/gold crew concept is it prevents a single point of contact for interface with other fleet units and training establishments outside the LCS community. If fleet training commands or fleet units want to work with LCS units, one must first identify which crew is on hull or will be on hull for the timeframe of the desired interface. Pre-event planning is complicated because the crew that will be on hull during the desired training event may be unavailable or distracted by off-hull requirements during the planning and coordination for the event. Within the Navy’s optimized fleet response training plan (OFRTP), LCS units are typically employed as opposition forces and rarely as part of the “blue force” working up for deployment certification. This is because the LCS training establishment train and certify LCS units, creating an “us and them” dynamic and robbing the fleet of experience in working with and employing LCS units.
Organize for Success
Currently, LCS units are organized under one of two LCS squadrons. Freedom-variant ships fall under LCS Squadron One and Independence-variant ships under LCS Squadron Two, both O-6 commands. This was appropriate perhaps when the program only had a few ships in service. With 22 LCS units now in commission and the number increasing to 32, the existing LCS squadrons should be LCS groups, each led by a one-star flag officer. LCS squadrons of six ships each would then fall under these East and West Coast LCS groups. The LCS squadrons would be equivalent to destroyer squadrons and led similarly by O-6 commodores.
This would provide direct flag-level operational oversight. It also would provide a single interface for the fleet at both the flag-officer group and O-6-unit commander levels for operational and readiness issues and interaction. A flag officer in the operational chain of command would add impetus to integrating the LCS into fleet operations. In addition, it would provide an enhanced career progression for successful LCS commanding officers to apply their experience at the major-command and flag-officer levels.
With appropriate investments in lethality and system reliability, combined with institutional changes that bring the LCS fleet into the traditional fleet rather than set it apart, and with modifications in crewing, the LCS could become a war winning factor in a future maritime great power conflict.
