New Realities Mean the Navy Must Dominate in the Littoral Future Family of Ships Will Counter Terrorists’ Tactics, Provide Safe Haven in Theater

By MARK EDWARDS

Our Navy is a force challenged today by a broad spectrum of increasingly capable traditional threats. Moreover, our smaller, but more capable, force is confronted by asymmetric threats that directly focus our adversaries’ strengths against perceived U.S. weaknesses.

These threats are especially prevalent in the littoral, or coastal areas of the world. The littoral is becoming ever more important to our nation in this era of rapidly changing overseas commitments.

The Navy knows that terrorists can, and have, used our maneuver space at sea for their activities. In fact, the U.S. Navy has found ample evidence that terrorist organizations are helping to finance their activities through the sea-borne trafficking of drugs. U.S. Navy boarding teams operating from the destroyer USS Decatur and cruiser USS Philippine Sea, with significant coalition support, recently captured vessels in the Persian Gulf carrying narcotics worth an estimated $20 million. Some of the captured crewmembers have ties to the al Qaeda terrorist network.

Small Boats, Deadly Adversary

The Oct. 12, 2000, attack against the destroyer USS Cole was a harbinger of the ambiguous but deadly littoral threat. After the Cole docked in Aden, Yemen, for a routine refueling, two suicide bombers drove their small, explosives-packed boat into the warship and detonated their bomb, killing 17 sailors, injuring 39 and taking a vital warship out of action.

Two years later, also off the coast of Yemen, the French commercial tanker Limburg was attacked by an explosive-carrying suicide boat Oct. 6, 2002, ripping a hole in the ship’s hull and causing a huge fire, leaving one crewman dead and spilling nearly 4 million gallons of oil. The attack demonstrated what a determined foe can accomplish with limited means.

Six months later, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, the coastal patrol ship USS Chinook captured an Iraqi tug and barge laden with more than 100 mines, which it had intended to deploy against coalition naval forces. Mine countermeasures in those waters were a daily requirement to allow shipments of critical humanitarian aid into Iraq aboard supply ships, such as HMS Sir Galahad.

Iraq mined the waters off Kuwait during the first Gulf War and succeeded in damaging the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli and the cruiser USS Princeton on Feb. 18, 1991, removing the option of sending the Marines with that amphibious task force ashore.

After the war, 13,000 mines were removed from the Persian Gulf.

Many third world navies have, or are trying to obtain, submarines and advanced submarine technologies, including air-independent propulsion that permits extended periods of submerged operations. The difficulty of finding a submerged submarine increases in shallow water, and is compounded by the variety of sunken objects that clutter the littoral sea bottom. Additionally, the large amount of traffic in coastal sea lanes creates ambient noise that can help submarines hide. Pressure, salinity, temperature, biologics and reverberation are different, and a more difficult problem in waters closer to land.

Threat Moves Closer to Shore

While the news media focused on carrier strikes and Tomahawk cruise missile launches in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, U.S. naval forces were engaged in escorting merchant and prepositioning ships carrying tanks, munitions and provisions for our troops. Amphibious ships stood ready to move embarked Marines ashore to reinforce coalition ground forces. Aegis cruisers and destroyers patrolled offshore — in the Arabian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean — to provide a protective umbrella to ships and coastal installations. Underway replenishment ships ensured that the warships could remain at sea, armed and on station, as long as necessary.

The U.S. Navy still is unmatched in open-ocean capabilities. The Cold War threat has faded. But today we wage a war against terror that will not be fought in the middle of the ocean. Today’s threat lies principally in the littoral. Our joint forces need to be able to go anywhere, anytime, and must have assured access to the littoral.

U.S. military forces must be able to act quickly in response to emergencies. Expeditionary forces will require fire support while moving ashore or inland or upon reaching an objective. In many cases, these forces have their equipment prepositioned forward aboard Military Sealift Command ships. Thus, a safe haven is needed in-theater for the sealift ships to marry up with their personnel and critical cargo.

Even after a war has ended, important cargo will be arriving from the sea to provide humanitarian relief and support forces involved in restoration efforts and nation-building, such as in Iraq. All of this traffic represents a tempting target to an adversary.

To deal with these challenges, the Navy relies on its Sea Power 21 strategic vision that is derived from capstone national security documents such as the National Security Strategy and Joint Vision 2020 to guide development of a family of surface warships. Sea Power 21 defines three required capabilities — Sea Strike, Sea Shield and Sea Basing — that will be linked together by ForceNet to be a truly network-centric force.

¨ Sea Shield develops naval capabilities related to homeland defense, sea control, assured access and projecting defense overland.

¨ Sea Strike is a broadened concept for naval power projection that leverages enhanced command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; precision; stealth; and endurance to increase operational tempo, reach and the effectiveness of naval fires to support joint forces.

¨ Sea Basing projects U.S. sovereignty globally while providing Joint Force Commanders with vital command and control and logistics support from the sea, thereby minimizing vulnerable assets ashore and reducing our dependence on shore-based logistics nodes.

ForceNet is the architectural framework for naval warfare in the information age, integrating warriors, sensors, command and control, platforms and weapons into a networked, distributed combat force.

New ‘Family’ of Ships

The backbone of the 21st century fleet will be the next-generation surface combatants: the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), the DD(X) destroyer and the CG(X) cruiser. Together, these complementary and mutually supportive capabilities will result in what is being termed the “Surface Combatant Family of Ships” (SCFOS).

These effective and affordable warships will allow for connected and distributed operations with off board and unmanned systems. The SCFOS is a “family” because of similarities in their mission interoperability and complementary capabilities.

¨ Littoral Combat Ship: Considerable analysis demonstrated the need to dominate and assure access in the littoral. The LCS role is to provide that capability. LCS will include an enhanced mine warfare capability; an effective counter to small, fast, highly armed boats; and better antisubmarine warfare capability focused on quiet diesel and advanced air-independent propulsion submarines operating in shallow waters.

Essentially, the basic LCS ship platform is a “sea frame,” delivering its “payload” to the Naval or Joint Force Commander in the form of modularized combat capability. The main battery of LCS will be its manned and unmanned off-board systems including manned helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned surface vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles.

¨ DD(X): The 14,000-ton DD(X) will have 80 vertical-launch cells and two Advanced Gun Systems (AGS) with 600 Long-Range Land-Attack Projectile rounds. These rounds will be highly accurate, with a “reach” of some 100 nautical miles.

DD(X) also will have a revolutionary integrated electric drive propulsion and power distribution system, and look radically different from previous combatant designs, from its tumblehome — or inward sloping — hull to its wave-piercing bow.

¨ CG(X): The Navy plans to leverage the DD(X) technologies as the basis for the CG(X) cruiser. As U.S. naval forces approach the littoral, CG(X) will project an “umbrella” of air and missile defense, protecting carrier strike groups and other assets.

Each of these three ships will be part of a netted and distributed force. Further, their design will provide the Navy and our nation with a highly effective, affordable and long-serving force of surface warships.

With the SCFOS, our future fleet will provide our nation credible, persistent combat power to the far corners of this earth, anywhere, anytime, around the world, around the clock.

Rear Adm. Mark Edwards is director of surface warfare, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV). His command tours included commander, Logistics Group, Western Pacific Singapore/Task Force 73/Task Force 712. Before joining the OPNAV staff in November 2002, he was commander, Cruiser-Destroyer Group Five/Nimitz Battlegroup.