Opponents denigrate LCS as weakly armed and undermanned for damage control. Budget being over-run. Supporters highlight mission flexibility. Undermanning a symptom of basic flaws in LCS modular operational payload concept depending on high integration and automation.
Surface Forces: Automation Fatigue On LCS Class Ships
Normally, an LCS
would have another 35 crew manning its "mission package". The LCS is
designed for a variety of interchangeable modules, which will allow the
ships to be quickly reconfigured for various specialized missions. Crews
will also be modularized, so that specialized teams can be swapped in
to operate specific modules. Thus about 40 percent of the ship is empty,
with a large cargo hold into which the mission package gear is inserted
(and then removed, along with the package crew, when it is no longer
assigned to that ship.) Thus the LCS has two crews when underway, the
"ship" crew and the mission package crew. The captain of the ship crew
is in charge, and the officer commanding the mission package is simply
the officer in charge of the largest equipment system on board. In
addition, the core crew of 40 is actually two crews ("blue" and "gold")
who take turns running the ship. This makes it possible to keep an LCS
at a distant posting for years, by simply flying in a relief crew every
six months.
So far, the heavy
workload
has not hurt morale. The small crew means that everyone knows everyone,
and its standard for people to handle a number of different jobs. Even
officers pitch in for any task that needs to be done. This kind of
overworked enthusiasm is actually typical of smaller naval craft. These
included World War II era PT boats, with crews of up to 17, and current
minesweepers (with crews similar to an LCS) and larger patrol boats.
There's also the "new" factor. In addition to being new ships, there is a
new design and lots of new tech. This gets people pumped. But the
experience of using the LCS has to be used to develop changes that will
make these ships viable for the long haul.
Top Weapons Tester Finds More Navy LCS Problems | Military.com
The Director, Operational Test and Evaluation report released
Wednesday specifies a host of concerns about the Navy's Littoral Combat
Ship program, claiming problems with the platform's seaframes, mission
packages, and weapons.
In particular, the report says that the LCS Freedom variant's 57mm
and 30mm guns revealed performance, reliability and operator training
deficiencies.
The $37 billion LCS program, in development since 2002, is a
next-generation surface-ship aimed at delivering a fast, agile, littoral
vessel equipped with technologically advanced mission packages.
The Jan. 27 report by the Pentagon's top testing agency also cited
problems with the LCS' mine-countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare
systems and surface warfare capabilities. The findings about the weapons
were attributed to the Navy's own Quick Reaction Assessment report,
which also examined the ship's Surface Warfare Package, or SUW.
Problems the LCS program, such as the ship's survivability in combat,
have been highlighted multiple times in the past and Navy officials
have said the LCS teams are working to correct them.
Sleepless In Singapore: LCS Is Undermanned & Overworked, Says GAO « Breaking Defense - Defense industry news, analysis and commentary
WASHINGTON: Some
spectacular glitches marred the first overseas deployment of
the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship, including an electrical failure that left the USS
Freedom “briefly” dead in the water. Now
Breaking Defense has obtained an unpublished Government Accountability Office study of
Freedom‘s Singapore deployment
that raises more serious questions about a long-standing worry: whether
the small and highly automated LCS has enough sailors aboard to do up
all the work needed, from routine maintenance to remedial training.
Navy Engineers LCS Changes | DoD Buzz
The Navy is implementing specific design and engineering improvements to its
Littoral Combat Ship following the construction of the first two vessels, the Freedom and the Independence.
The changes to
LCS span
a range of areas from adjustments to water jets to efforts to fight
corrosion and improve the ships elevators, deck extensions and
inflatable rafts.
40 Years In The Desert: The Navy's Mania for Reducing Crewing Bears Bitter Fruit
The US Navy has discovered that
the limits of human endurance have been reached, and surpassed, in the Littoral Combat Ship:
LCS Wargame Reveals New Tactics Amid Controversy | DoD Buzz
Navy leaders are refining their concepts of operations for the
Littoral Combat Ship on the heels of wide ranging criticism that led to
the decision to cut the ship’s fleet size from 52 to 32, Navy leaders
said. At the same time, Navy leaders are exploring new mission
possibilities for the controversial vessel in light of insights gained
during a recent war game at the Naval War College, Newport, R.I.
FUTURESHIP | Armed with Science
The LCS, or littoral combat ship, is a fast, agile, focused-mission platform designed for operation in near-shore environments yet capable of open-ocean operation. Check out the FUTURESHIP of the Navy.
DepSecDef
Visits, Criticizes Littoral Combat Ship; Fox Replacement Is LCS Backer «
Breaking Defense - Defense industry news, analysis and commentary
Her natural conclusion, therefore, was, “we need more ships with the protection and
firepower
to survive against a more advanced military adversary.” Her prepared
remarks didn’t mention LCS specifically, but they didn’t have to.
LCS has long taken intense criticism
for its limited firepower and, even more so, its fragility compared to
larger and more expensive warships. The Pentagon’s head of Operational
Test and Evaluation has said repeatedly the ship is not survivable.
Littoral Combat Ship’s Survival in an Attack Questioned | Navy & Maritime Security News at DefenceTalk
▶ MQ-8 Firescout takeoff & landing on USS Freedom (LCS-1) - YouTube
This story is factually incorrect. The text they claim was late was not addressed to anyone, so was "thrown away". We dug into our system and provided them the contents of it after they requested it, and we received appropriate legal approvals - we take privacy seriously for our customers and don't release texts without the customer's approval or something like a subpoena. Of course, the loss of this boat and it's passengers is tragic, but Iridium tried to help every way we could. They are also surprised that we don't give precise locations - they weren't sending GPS locations through our network (seems like they were relying on SPOT), so we had to geolocated them by roughly where our spot beam was on the ground, which is inprecise at best.
The "independent" report about the Nina is misleading or just wrong. The Iridium network worked correctly. The passengers sent the text described with no valid address, so our system threw it away. Only after they contacted us and asked us if we could help did we search, find and provide the text message described. Yes, we needed to get approvals to do so - we take our customer's privacy seriously and only give out information from their devices by court order or other official and legal request. They also seem to be implying there are problems with our position locations, but they were not sending GPS positions through Iridium - they seemed to be relying on SPOT for that. When requested, we gave them our best guess based on the position the satellite beam was over the earth when the message was sent, but they are not precise - and the rescue agencies know that. Not sure what we could have done differently - these are tragic circumstances, but Iridium provided help as we always try to do.