Navy Plans to Develop LCS Fleet with 'Lightning Speed'

By SCOTT C. TRUVER

The Navy is moving with "lightning speed" to design and build a fleet of up to 65 Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs), said Rear Adm. Charles S. Hamilton, deputy program executive officer for ships. He intends to get the baseline LCS in the water about six years after initial concept studies. The lead ship of the Arleigh Burke class of destroyers was commissioned in July 1991, 13 years after initial concept studies.

Speedy development is indicative of the Navy's innovative approach to the development of the LCS. For example, its design may incorporate hull shapes and materials rarely used in U.S. warships. The ships will be built using an evolutionary approach called spiral development, meaning that the technology of, for instance, the ships' communications and fire-control systems, will be gradually upgraded as ships are built. Finally, the LCS fleet is the fulcrum for efforts by the Navy and Coast Guard to share systems and platforms.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark said that LCS is "our most transformational effort and my number-one budget priority." During a mid-March interview, Clark said, "the LCS is key to enhancing our ability to establish sea superiority, not just for our carrier strike groups and expeditionary strike group but for future joint logistics, command and control, and prepositioned ships moving to support forces ashore."

LCS is a member of a family of ships being developed for the Navy of the future. Rear Adm. Donald P. Loren, deputy director, Surface Ships, Surface Warfare Division, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, said that in 2001, "the Navy concluded that only by turning to a 'family' of surface warships will it be able to satisfy future operational demands with affordable platforms" that could be purchased and deployed in sufficient numbers to meet the needs of combat commanders. The family comprises "three basic designs," he said "We need a multimission destroyer DD(X) both to support the land battle and the wars at sea and in the littoral against anti-access forces." There also will be a multimission cruiser CG(X) and "a relatively small littoral combat ship capable of performing focused or special missions in inshore waters where it would be impractical or unwise to commit larger, more high-value forces."

Among the missions intended for LCS are to launch and sustain precision strikes from the sea and to provide assured access to sea lanes and land areas in the face of unpredictable and asymmetrical threats, such as small speed boats loaded with explosives.

Mines Cheap and Easy to Deploy

In addition to attacks by small surface craft, the anti-access threats capable of challenging U.S. naval forces in the littorals include quiet diesel submarines armed with a variety of antiship weapons and mines. Even highly sophisticated mines are cheap to acquire and easy to deploy from a variety of platforms. Iraqi mines were not a significant factor in Operation Iraqi Freedom, though coalition forces under Australian command intercepted an Iraqi tugboat loaded with about 60 mines as it emerged from the Khawr Abd 'Allah waterway. In the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi mines had a dramatic impact on coalition operations when a planned amphibious assault was frustrated by mines and two warships were taken out of action.

Loren said, "We need enhanced capabilities to counter the littoral submarine threat, means to detect and neutralize naval mines, and the ability to defeat attacks by small surface warships and craft." The U.S. Navy Warfare Development Command in January outlined the LCS concept of operations, which identified additional desired capabilities for the LCS in sea basing, logistical support, non-combatant humanitarian evacuations, maritime interception operations, medical support, force protection, and support to special-forces operations.

With the goal to be completely self-deployable and capable of sustained underway operations from homeports to any part of the world, the LCS will have the speed, endurance, and underway replenishment capabilities to transit with the Navy's varied strike groups. LCS performance requirements include sprint speeds of 50 knots if not greater, 5,000-miles endurance, good seakeeping and low-speed stability, stealth and signature management, and the capability to accommodate manned and unmanned aircraft, and unmanned surface and undersea vehicles.

Navy Changes Classic Methods

Early versions of the LCS will profit from the lessons learned from several Navy experimental ships, such as the High-Speed Vehicle Joint Venture, the Office of Naval Research's X-Craft, and others, including small combatants of foreign navies and coast guards.

As the LCS fleet moves closer to reality, the Navy is changing its classic methods of ship development. The basic idea of spiral development is continuous improvement from the outset as each unit is built. However, managers of LCS fleet production will introduce technology incrementally in a series of "flights," or groups of ships, as technologies mature. The underlying philosophy of the LCS program is to get combat-capable ships into the fleet as fast as possible, and to provide lessons in construction and operations to enhance the capabilities of each succeeding flight.

Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, stated in an October 2002 memo that one element of spiral development is that "a desired capability is identified, but the end-state requirements are not known at program initiation. Those requirements are refined through demonstration and risk management; there is continuous user feedback; and each increment provides the user the best possible capability."

Hamilton said, "This is a truly revolutionary, transformational approach to the way the Navy designs and acquires warships. We have embraced the 'build-a-little, test-a-little, learn-a-lot' approach that made our Aegis cruisers and destroyers so successful, and are taking it to the next level to sharpen our focus on risk mitigation and transformational technologies for the LCS and the DD(X) and, in the longer-term, the CG(X)."

Coast Guard Eyes LCS Variant

Elements of the LCS could be adapted by the Coast Guard. Rear Adm. Patrick Stillman, program executive officer of the Coast Guard's Deepwater program to acquire a variety of ships and aircraft, said his service's future Offshore Patrol Cutter "could well be a variant of the LCS." Stillman and Hamilton in April 2002 "signed an MOU [memorandum of understanding] for sharing technologies, systems, platforms, and approaches to solving mutual challenges and meeting our needs," Stillman said.

Hamilton said the Navy's "dialog with the Deepwater Program is the best cross-departmental conversation that I know of in the government."

Later this year, the Navy will award up to three contracts valued at $10 million each to different shipbuilders to perform preliminary design studies. Acquisition officials then will pick one or two designs with different hull forms and award contracts for the first flight of ships. "Our reliance on new acquisition methods to streamline the acquisition process will enable us to begin construction of the first LCS by 2005," Clark told the Senate Armed Service Committee in February.

The LCS program received a $33 million appropriation in FY 2003 and the Navy seeks $158 million in FY 2004. An additional $4 billion will be requested through FY 2009, by which time nine of a projected force of around 65 LCSs would be funded. The threshold unit cost, or upper cost limit per ship, is $220 million. However, the service wants to drive the objective cost down to $160 million in FY 2005 dollars. That target, too, is challenging.

Best Laid Plans

The Navy has put in place an aggressive and innovative program to acquire perhaps as many as 65 LCS variants. These small warships will be key factors in the future Navy of approximately 375 ships outlined by Clark.

What is perplexing, during a time of record defense budget increases and heightened awareness of security needs at home and abroad, is that the CNO's number-one budget priority lacks the necessary funding to go forward with the development of the weapons and sensor modules that will enable the Navy's LCS fleet to do all the jobs envisioned for them. Perhaps the Navy's link with the Coast Guard's cutter program and the acceleration of the Deepwater systems will prompt Congress to find the resources necessary for these two key elements of the nation's fleet. A highly capable ship without a similarly capable payload is a curious thing, indeed. *

Dr. Scott C. Truver is group vice president, National Security Programs, Anteon Corporation, Arlington, Va.

Navy Explores Exotic Shapes, Materials For LCS

By HUNTER KEETER

The Navy's design criteria for its Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) are pushing contractors to consider hull forms and materials rarely used in U.S. warships. Time will tell if the Navy will end up with a trimaran or a hull made of sandwiched composites. But these are among the options being assessed.

The Navy has asked firms bidding for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program to develop a class of fast, stealthy surface warships, and to consider the advantages of high-tech materials in their hull designs.

The new class of ships is to have a draft of 20 feet or less, an innovative hull form and propulsion system that will enable LCS to operate at economical loiter speeds and to conduct high speed sprints 50 knots or more.

Rear Adm. Charles S. Hamilton II, deputy program executive officer for ships, told Sea Power that the task of developing a ship that will remain stable in variable conditions at up to 60 knots speed presents "interesting trade space" for the designers in the selection of their materials. For example, the Navy wants the basic LCS hull to accommodate "modular" payloads and meet its core criteria for speed, self-defense, and stability. This may lead to designs and manufacturing processes more akin to the production of aircraft than traditional shipbuilding.

"Structural strength, sea-keeping and stability at higher and lower speeds ... are all factors affected variously by choices in hull form, such as catamarans, trimarans, and mono-hulls, [as well as in] materials, such as steel, honeycombed aluminum, solid and sandwiched composites [and so on,]" Hamilton said during an interview at his Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) office at the Washington Navy Yard.

Navy Looks to Aviation Industry for New Ideas

Many of the advanced concepts in hull form and materials the Navy and the LCS contractors are assessing come from commercial industry where high-speed ferries, for example, have pointed the way to new design options for fast logistics craft. "We are also interested in what the commercial aviation community has that may be relevant to this [LCS effort]," Hamilton said.

Many of the larger defense firms, such as General Dynamics (GD), Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon, also are involved in the manufacture of advanced tactical, training, or transport aircraft. The designs of many modern planes incorporate the use of composites and specialized aluminum structures to reduce weight and increase strength.

While the Navy has not ruled out traditional steel hull concepts for LCS, the power to speed and weight ratios associated with the costly steels used for modern warship development may not offer acceptable solutions for the LCS fleet, Hamilton said.

Driven Away from Traditional Hull Types

"That has driven us away from building the traditional ship hull type," he said. "And it has forced many of the traditional shipbuilders to find other partners." The challenge of selecting the material and the hull form that provides the capability the Navy wants for LCS is a "multivariable equation," Hamilton added.

Balancing the factors of strength, weight, and cost in the context of hull form has presented complex challenges for the Navy and for the commercial sector. In addition to pursuing an advanced functional sea frame, NAVSEA has also raised expectations for affordable repair and life-cycle management costs.

These are among the requirements that prompted the competitors to generate leading-edge designs and concepts for the LCS or precursor technology demonstration programs. The initial contracts for LCS, expected to be awarded in July 2003, are limited to $10 million. The real inducement for shipbuilders is the potential to build a class of up to 65 such vessels.

GD's Bath Iron Works and Electric Boat Corporation head one LCS team that includes Austal, BAE Systems, and the British advanced concept development firm QinetiQ. Bath's team based its hull design for Focused Mission High-Speed Ship, a technology precursor to LCS, on an advanced trimaran hull form, GD vice president and LCS program manager Jim Baskerville told Sea Power.

"The strength of the General Dynamics-led LCS team is built upon the selection of an advanced trimaran hull form that is affordable, low risk, and flexible," Baskerville said.

One Team Proposes a 'Sea Blade' Concept

Lockheed Martin recently created a new partnership for LCS including Bollinger Shipyards, Gibbs & Cox, and Manitowoc Corporation's Marinette Marine. In addition, Lockheed Martin already had partnered with Germany's Blohm+Voss for LCS and other programs, setting the tone for what Lockheed Martin program manager Carol Hulgus said could be further international partnerships.

"In addition to the principal team members, core team support includes high-speed ship expertise from Donald L. Blount and Associates, FastShip, Fincantieri, and NAVATEK; modularity expertise from Blohm+Voss; functional expertise from Angle Inc., ABS, BBN Technologies, Charters Technical Services, DRS Technologies, and Micro Analysis and Design," Lockheed Martin spokesman Kenneth Ross told Sea Power.

Lockheed Martin experimented in 2002 with the Navy's Sea SLICE advanced technology demonstration craft, as a surrogate for LCS-like capability. Likewise, the Bollinger-Incat USA Joint Venture (HSV-X1) and sister vessels were built for experimentation by the Navy, to vet the impact of high-speed maneuvers in the littorals.

The team's LCS entry, called a Sea Blade concept, is based on a semiplaning monohull made of aluminum.

Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman also has been building a range of business relationships to form a technical base for its LCS bid. For example, Northrop Grumman Ship Systems and Raytheon, with GD and Lockheed Martin, comprise the "National Team" developing the Navy's $2.9 billion DD(X) surface combatant. DD(X) predated LCS but is now viewed as one of three related classes of new ships, including the cruiser-scaled CG(X), a future air and missile defense platform.

Northrop Grumman Ship Systems (NGSS), together with Lockheed Martin also is developing the Coast Guard's $10 billion Deepwater modernization program, which includes up to a dozen 425-foot, 3,700-ton National Security Cutters. The Navy and the Coast Guard have a memorandum of understanding to encourage cooperation among programs like Deepwater and the LCS effort.

NGSS, building on 10 years of Swedish Navy research, is proposing an LCS based on the agile Kockums Visby-class corvette, built with a carbon-fiber composite material monohull that planes slightly at high speeds. NGSS envisions a 45-50 knot, 2,600-2,800-ton ship with a length of 105 meters, the maximum length of a vessel that could be feasibly built with carbon fiber material. NGSS president Philip S. Dur said that hull maintenance would be 80 percent less costly than a comparable sized metal hull, and that monohulls are inherently stronger than trimarans or surface-effects ships. Kevlar armor can be embedded in the hull to protect certain areas. Dur said that the NGSS design--with 40 percent of its deck area dedicated to interchangeable modular mission systems--includes provision for hangars for three vertical takeoff UAVs and two armed helicopters such as Bell AH-58Ds.

Raytheon's "Team LCS" includes its Integrated Defense Systems unit, Atlantic Marine, John J. McMullen Associates, Goodrich, and Norway's Umoe Mandal.

Mary Petryszyn, Raytheon vice president of Warfare and Ship Systems Integration, told Sea Power her firm's LCS concept included a composite material surface-effects hull, drawing upon skills inherent in team members Goodrich and Umoe Mandal, and Raytheon's aero-structures background.

Textron's New Orleans-based Marine & Land sector, developer of the Navy's Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) vehicles, is teamed with Textron's Bell Helicopter subsidiary and EDO Combat Systems, Chesapeake, Va. Other members are M. Rosenblatt & Son, Maritime Dynamics, BBN Technologies, propulsion specialist Vorus and Associates, and boat yard VT Halter.

Textron has proposed a hybrid catamaran air cushion ship with an aluminum hull. Textron described its entry as "a new and unique hybrid" that can cruise on an air cushion at speeds above 55 knots. The ship can be converted to a catamaran for "an efficient cruise speed" of about 20 knots. Ken Maloney, Textron's LCS program director, told Sea Power the ship would be "fundamentally optimal" at both ends of the LCS operational spectrum.

Bell Helicopter is to be responsible for the teams' aircraft interfaces and flight deck. EDO Combat Systems will design and produce the total-ship computing environment. *

Hunter Keeter is a reporter for Defense Daily.