The USS Sioux City (LCS-11) was decommissioned on 14 August 2023 after only five years of service and having just completed a historic and successful deployment to Fifth and Sixth Fleets, according to Navy press releases. Rather than discarding the littoral combat ships (LCSs), the Navy should install the lethality and survivability upgrades that have been proposed for the class. These upgrades would create viable warships, employable in any theater.
Both LCS variants—Independence and Freedom—have struggled with reliability, driven partially by mechanical and engineering problems, but progress has been made.1 The Freedom variant’s propulsion issue has been corrected and could be installed in the five ships recently or about to be decommissioned. Navy leaders, currently at least, plan to commission the six new-construction Freedom hulls, which will incorporate the fix. In 2022, the Sioux City was the first Freedom variant successfully deployed to the Fifth Fleet area of operations. In 2023, the USS Indianapolis (LCS-17) returned to the Central Command area of operations. Other Freedom variants have operated throughout the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Fleet regions in recent years, including more than 600 operational days in Fourth Fleet in 2021–22.2 It appears the reliability concerns, though not eliminated, have been addressed.
The argument that the LCS cannot contribute to the “high-end fight” also should be laid to rest. Both surface warfare mission packages—one centeredon over-the-horizon antiship missiles and one featuring short-range Hellfire Longbows—have been validated, as has the mine countermeasures mission package.
The antisubmarine warfare (ASW) mission package was deemed a failure because the ship-deployed variable-depth sonar (VDS) could not be stabilized when deployed. This is surprising given that navies the world over have been fielding VDS from corvette-sized and even smaller ships for decades. Nevertheless, former Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday used this issue to justify his decision on LCS early retirement.
Certainly VDS would be a key component of the ASW package; however, the SQQ-89 ASW combat system, multi-function towed array, and MH-60R helicopter apparently were tested successfully. Of note, the MH-60R is equipped with VDS, so the LCS ASW package would have had an active sonar component, though not with 24/7 all-weather availability.
Other navies (the Royal Saudi Navy currently and likely the Hellenic Navy) are purchasing the “upgunned” multimission surface combatant variant of the Freedom. Why can’t the LCS be similarly equipped for the U.S. Navy?
The Navy needs every hull it can muster. Not every mission, even in a high-end fight, requires an Aegis guided-missile destroyer. Four or five appropriately upgraded Freedom-variant LCSs deployed to Bahrain with the surface-to-surface missile module and the latest electronic warfare gear could give the Iranians pause. The LCS’s short fuel “legs” would not be a significant factor in the confined waters of the Gulf.
The Marine Corps and Expeditionary Strike Group Three in the Pacific are demonstrating what can be done with the Independence variant. The ships’ large flight decks and mission bays argue for a role in amphibious operations and related support missions, so it is gratifying to see the Independence ships flexing their mine countermeasures mission modules; supporting Marine Corps expeditionary advanced base operations; and being experimented with as “mother ships” for unmanned systems.
With upgrades that already have been engineered for the LCS, the Freedom variants also could contribute to the fight. Employing manned and unmanned aerial systems and using their speed to rapidly reposition, the Freedoms could serve as fleet scouts, much like light armored reconnaissance units support heavy ground formations. When combined with Naval Strike Missiles, they could not only scout the enemy, but also attrite some of his surface ships.3
Every new class has issues (including the now venerable Arleigh Burke class), but in the case of the LCS, Navy leaders did not appear to drive solutions aggressively. This is reminiscent of the battleship “gun club” that dominated the Navy in the 1920s and 1930s. Today it is the “Aegis mafia” that dominates naval surface force thinking.
The LCS concept, though flawed in its original form, can be made to work with the application of tactical imagination and institutional will. Three-crew rotation has been replaced by a blue/gold crewing concept, which could be replaced by a conventional single-crew concept. Lethality and survivability upgrades offered by industry—previously implemented in a limited and seemingly grudging way—must be incorporated and accelerated. The Independence variant has been the only beneficiary so far of some of the upgrades.
Surely in a high-end fight against a maritime adversary such as China, a risk-worthy, fast, low-signature ship with a small crew that can dash out from the littorals, fire off a salvo of Naval Strike Missiles, and dash back has a role to play—if given the opportunity and the right kit.
1 Gidget Fuentes, “Navy Keeps Expanding Littoral Combat Ship Missions Even as Both Classes Shrink,” USNI News, 8 November 2023.
2. Fuentes, “Navy Keeps Expanding Littoral Combat Ship Missions.”
3. 2d Lt James A. Winnefeld, USMC, “Call in the Blue-Green Cavalry,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 145, no. 8 (August 2019).
