Littoral Combat Ship - Freedom/Independence

Jimmo952 said:
What I find interesting is the LCS is being kept away from the very scenario for which it was designed.
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Why would we keep the LCSs in the Persian Gulf…?

There’s no carriers to escort, there’s no Aegis umbrella to hide under, there’s no reason to expose the ships to fire.

If for some reason we were sending a CSG through the Strait of Hormuz, then you’d see LCSs being deployed
 
that_person said:
Why would we keep the LCSs in the Persian Gulf…?

There’s no carriers to escort, there’s no Aegis umbrella to hide under, there’s no reason to expose the ships to fire.

If for some reason we were sending a CSG through the Strait of Hormuz, then you’d see LCSs being deployed
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Given that the Indys are now supposed to be dedicated to MCM, it makes a good deal of sense to forward-base them in the region. And that appears to be the plan.
 
TomS said:
As noted, the 8 surviving MCMs are all forward-deployed, four in Sasebo, Japan, and four in Manamah, Bahrain.

There are supposed to be three Indy-type LCS with MCM packages in Bahrain by the end of the year, at which point the MCMs there will probably decommission in place.

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The MCMs will not be forward deployed to Bahrain, they will be rotating out. There’s no current plans to decom the avengers in the near future.
 
that_person said:
Why would we keep the LCSs in the Persian Gulf…?

There’s no carriers to escort, there’s no Aegis umbrella to hide under, there’s no reason to expose the ships to fire.

If for some reason we were sending a CSG through the Strait of Hormuz, then you’d see LCSs being deployed
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Considering that’s exactly where the were designed and envisioned to operate it would make sense for them to be there
 
johnpjones1775 said:
The MCMs will not be forward deployed to Bahrain, they will be rotating out. There’s no current plans to decom the avengers in the near future.
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I misread something USNI News published, but it's kind of mixed. It says Tulsa will be stationed there while Coronado and Santa Barbara are currently making a rotational deployment.

It does say the Avengers will be decommissioned as the MCM packages became available.

 
johnpjones1775 said:
Well considering my source is the CO of an avenger, I’ll trust my source over USNI.
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Tell it to COMNAVSURFOR:

seapowermagazine.org

Navy Admiral Selects Three Littoral Combat Ships for 2025 Basing with 5th Fleet - Seapower

Navy Admiral Selects Three Littoral Combat Ships for 2025 Basing with 5th Fleet Front Page
seapowermagazine.org seapowermagazine.org

ARLINGTON, Va. — The admiral in charge of U. S. Navy surface forces has named the three Independence-class littoral combat ships (LCS) slated to be forward-deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet to replace the Avenger-class mine-countermeasures ships (MCMs).

“MCMs are reaching their end-of-service-lives, and we have to replace them, as great as they are,” said Vice Admiral Brendan McLane, commander, U.S. Naval Surface Forces, speaking May 23 at the International Mine Warfare Technology Symposium in San Diego. “Secretary of the Navy [Carlos] Del Toro has approved the strategic laydown which confirmed the deployment of LCS 2 variants — including [USS] Tulsa [LCS 16], Santa Barbara [LCS 32], and Canberra [LCS 30] — to deploy to Bahrain in 2025, and four more to Sasebo [Japan] in 2027.
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TomS said:
Tell it to COMNAVSURFOR:

seapowermagazine.org

Navy Admiral Selects Three Littoral Combat Ships for 2025 Basing with 5th Fleet - Seapower

Navy Admiral Selects Three Littoral Combat Ships for 2025 Basing with 5th Fleet Front Page
seapowermagazine.org seapowermagazine.org
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Just going off the part you chose to quote, there’s nothing about decommissioning dates, specific or general…

Avengers have supposedly been getting ready to decom for like the last decade to the point they never made school houses for some of the new high tech equipment they got, because the navy didn’t think it would be worth it at the time.

Edit
After reading the whole article not a single mention of when they’re planning to decom them. Just that it will happen at some point in the future. Which I never argued against.
The avenger wiki page lists several as proposed 2025, but their source being cited is 3 years old, and I’m pretty sure the captain would know if his ship was going to be decommed within the next 5 months. Things change over the course of 3 years after all.
 
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Firefinder said:
Likely, Austal design the Independences to be able to carry the Ch53 Stallions around so they could use the Minesleds which can be loaded and launch the mission bay.


That alone puts them miles above the Avengers and like.
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I thought they retired all that gear.
 
johnpjones1775 said:
I thought they retired all that gear.
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Nope wrong again.

The Navy literally just got done refublrbimg the sleds and other copter base mine clearing gear to allow them to last until the MCM gear is fully set up in all aspects.

It was plan on retirement last year but that was canned to pad out the mine warfare abilities of the fleet for the short term since the Usual Mine happy suspects are making noises again.
 
Firefinder said:
Likely, Austal design the Independences to be able to carry the Ch53 Stallions around so they could use the Minesleds which can be loaded and launch the mission bay.


That alone puts them miles above the Avengers and like.
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Ah, yeah, that'd do it.

I do love that huge helo deck...
 
Firefinder said:
Nope wrong again.

The Navy literally just got done refublrbimg the sleds and other copter base mine clearing gear to allow them to last until the MCM gear is fully set up in all aspects.

It was plan on retirement last year but that was canned to pad out the mine warfare abilities of the fleet for the short term since the Usual Mine happy suspects are making noises again.
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The FY26 President's Budget still anticipates retiring the Sea Dragons in 2027.
 
Firefinder said:
Nope wrong again.

The Navy literally just got done refublrbimg the sleds and other copter base mine clearing gear to allow them to last until the MCM gear is fully set up in all aspects.

It was plan on retirement last year but that was canned to pad out the mine warfare abilities of the fleet for the short term since the Usual Mine happy suspects are making noises again.
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Considering they’re planning to decom them in 2 years or so seems like a big waste of money.
 
It's still insane to me that the Freedom-class LCS was unable to use the Mk 49 launcher, due to an inability to integrate the radar with the launcher, and had to be retrofitted later with the SeaRAM launcher. I'd love to learn more about how that came to be. Seems like a fairly obvious thing to be overlooked during the design and contracting.

In June 2016, the Navy responded to DOT&E’s August 2015 memorandum that advised the Navy to adopt an alternative test strategy for air defense testing given the Navy’s inability to obtain the intellectual property necessary to develop high-fidelity models of the ships’ radars. In its response, the Navy indicated that it does not plan to test the current configuration of the Freedom variant’s air defense system. Instead, the Navy plans to replace the Freedom variant’s Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) system with the SeaRAM system starting on LCS 17 and follow-on ships of that variant and will conduct the appropriate testing of that system at the appropriate time. The Navy plans to backfit SeaRAM onto the earlier ships of that variant (LCS 1 through 15) in the 2020-2025 time period. Thus, there will be a 5-10 year gap during which the effectiveness of the deployed Freedom variants’ air defense system will remain unknown and untested, leaving sailors without knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of their systems should they come under attack.

- Also in June 2016, the Navy postponed indefinitely its plans to conduct the first of four live fire test events aboard the self-defense test ship to examine the effectiveness of the Independence variant’s SeaRAM air defense system, citing initial modeling predictions that predicted poor performance in the planned test event scenario. In July 2016, the LCS Program Executive Officer sent a letter to the Navy’s Surface Warfare Director (N96) stating that the Independence variant’s air warfare testing directed by the extant TEMP cannot be executed at current funding levels. DOT&E expects that the Independence variant will have been in service nearly 10 years by the time that air defense testing is complete, which at the time of this report, is not anticipated before FY20.
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navy-matters.blogspot.com

LCS RAM Untested

The LCS program problems are many and, generally, well known. Still, there are aspects that are surprising even for this troubled progra...
navy-matters.blogspot.com navy-matters.blogspot.com
 
With the cancellation of the Constellation class Frigates does the USN have another look at the LCS, if only because the hulls actually exist? Or are they too far gone?
 
Rule of cool said:
With the cancellation of the Constellation class Frigates does the USN have another look at the LCS, if only because the hulls actually exist? Or are they too far gone?
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There’s 27 commissioned hulls with 2 deployable mission module types. But I guess you’re right, they’re “too far gone.”
 
that_person said:
There’s 27 commissioned hulls with 2 deployable mission module types. But I guess you’re right, they’re “too far gone.”
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I'm not all over it, but I thought the single hull version had a bunch decommissioned because its not much good. The trimaran is doing ok as a mine warfare vessel, but not awesome.
 
Rule of cool said:
I'm not all over it, but I thought the single hull version had a bunch decommissioned because its not much good. The trimaran is doing ok as a mine warfare vessel, but not awesome.
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Early ones, yes, but the rest seems to be hanging on.

They might revisit the SSC upgrade package for the Freedom (LCS-1) monohulls, at least. But the amount of refitting required to achieve an acceptable air self-defense capacity would be rather huge.
 
TomS said:
Early ones, yes, but the rest seems to be hanging on.

They might revisit the SSC upgrade package for the Freedom (LCS-1) monohulls, at least. But the amount of refitting required to achieve an acceptable air self-defense capacity would be rather huge.
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IIUC the huge cost was an impediment last week, but now the Constellation class isn't coming, and any new ship class will take a few years to start building is that cost now bearable?
 
A few things I want to point out.

A) There are still 10 Freedom-class variants on the NVR. They are expected to serve their full 25 year service lives, meaning they will last until ~2050.

B) The combing gear issue was way overblown, fixed on new construction hulls, and retrofitted onto select existing ones.
news.usni.org

CNO: First Combining Gear Fix Completed on Freedom-Class LCS Minneapolis-Saint Paul - USNI News

The Navy has completed and tested the first fix for the complicated gearing system that has plagued the Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday told reporters on Wednesday. In January, the Navy announced it would not take deliveries of the Lockheed...
news.usni.org news.usni.org

C) The early decommissionings of the LCS were not because the ships didn't work (combining gear issues, hull cracking), rather because they weren't needed with DMO. Navy Undersecretary Erik Raven said the following in March 2024;

"The Navy performed a “hull-by-hull analysis” of each ship to determine which ones to retire early, Navy Under Secretary Erik Raven told reporters Friday ahead of the budget rollout."
“On [the] Littoral Combat Ship, very consistent with prior year’s message that we look at the requirements for LCS and we find we have hulls excess to the validated requirements,” Raven said. “So the divestments proposed in this year’s budget are very consistent with that analysis.”

The most poorly articulated part of the entire LCS, Zumwalt, and MPF(F) saga is the doctrinal change from Forward… From the Sea to Distributed Maritime Operation starting during the first Obama Administration.
This, not the cost overruns or teething issues, is what prompted the Burke Flight IIA restart and halving of LCS orders from 50+ to ~32(?).
In my mind, the above quote articulates that the early LCS retirements were not a result of the ships “failing,” but reorientation of naval strategy towards confronting the PRC.
The hulls were not sold off because of the structural deficiencies, rather they determined which LCSs would be sold off. Had there been sufficient interest to fix the issues, they could (and would) be fixed.

Rule of cool said:
The trimaran is doing ok as a mine warfare vessel, but not awesome.
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The trimarans are doing great. They’re halfway through their Lethality & Survivability Upgrade, and have seen numerous trans-oceanic deployments.
Additionally, their MCM module reached IOC in 2023 and been forward deployed to Bahrain. The navy apparently believes it’s functional enough to decommission the legacy Avenger-class MCMs, leaving the trimarans the only mine hunters based out off Bahrain.

But returning to your original question, how does the FFG cancellation affect the LCS, and where do we go from here?
Given the current Administration’s emphasis on restoring “lethality” and “warfighting,” there’s several things that can be done with the LCS program.
We’ll continue to see procurement of ASuW and MCM mission modules. The schedule and final totals can be found in the Executive Summary reports. Example: https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading Room/Selected_Acquisition_Reports/FY_2023_SARS/LCS MM MSAR Dec 2023.pdf
Additionally, we may see budgetary requests to fund the Lethality & Survivability Upgrades for the Freedom-class. I found something from earlier this year saying it’s an unfunded wishlist item the DoN is interested in.
Looking beyond that, we could begin looking at Phase II of the upgrades, permanent VLS installation with ESSM and SM-2, and potentially DEWs. There’s been several unsolicited industry proposals for this in the past that may finally garner attention.
One thing I’d be interested in is containerized stored energy for DEWs. Having spoken to a former machinist mate aboard a Freedom, power generation for ship service power is spotty at best, and there’s not a whole lot of available power for high draw systems. Note this is also a problem with the LSC fleet, so much so that DDG(X) is being fitted with stored energy systems (from a NSWC Philly engineer working on the land-based prototype factory plant said 30-40MW of “reserve power”), and DDG-1001 will be trialing some sort of battery system.
Containerizing these systems to fit in the mission bay would allow much greater flexibility for these systems, although at the cost of added weight.

Edit 1: would love other thoughts
Edit 2: The previous administration would likely handle LCS development the same way.
 
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Let's see here...

24x MCM sets
10x ASuW sets
1x ASW set (bought in the 2020-21 budget), not sure how effective that will be.

5x Surface-to-Surface Missile modules purchased. Surprised it's only 5x, but sometimes budgets say unprintable things.

These include:
· 24 Mine Countermeasures (MCM) MPs – 15 for LCS and 9 for Vessels Of Opportunity (VOOs)
· 10 Surface Warfare (SUW) MPs
· 1 Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) MP – previously procured with FY 2020 and FY 2021 funds.
The 24 deployable MCM MPs will support 15 Independence variant LCS and the Chief of Naval
Operations direction to use other Navy platforms (VOOs). The 10 deployable SUW MPs procured
from FY 2010 to FY 2018 will support 8 LCS.
SUW MP
• Surface-to-Surface Missile Module (SSMM) supporting deployments on USS Indianapolis
(LCS 17).
• All five SSMM production units delivered in FY 2024.
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Jimmo952 said:
NSM vs Hellfire????
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Nope, just did some googling, we have our terminology wrong.
The larger ASuW Mission Package (MP) is the fully completed modularized ASuW set up. The SSMM Mission Module is just the Hellfire portion, there’s a MM for the Mk46, the MH-60, and another for the RHIBs.

The USN website says the following

Mission Package = Mission Modules + Aircraft and aviation crew detachments

Mission Module = Mission Systems + Support Equipment + Standard Interfaces

Mission Systems = Vehicles, Sensors, and Weapons

NSM integration is a permanent fixture installed during the Lethality & Survivability Upgrades.
 
If more ASW modules can be procured, adding an ASW module + 2x 4 pack VLS modules for ESSM/ASROC on the side or replace the 57mm with more VLS. They could turn into a passable ASW/convoy escort.
 
cccgong said:
What was the reason for cancellation?
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There's 4 that come to mind.
A) Problems containerizing the towed array
B) The SQS-62 VDS was underperforming, and ultimately a foreign model (CAPTAS-IV) was procured for FFG-62.
C) The LCSs have virtually no quieting (apparently as loud as a CVN), so that makes ASW operations from the platform difficult, and deafens the sensors.
D) The waterjets kept sucking in the towed array.

At a bare minimum you could still fly MH-60s from the ship, but I've heard rumors the avaition magazine did not recieve torpedo handling equipment as a cost saving measure. Have not been able to find any support evidence for thsi though, and even if it's true, it's not exactly a hard fix.

Edit: I can't count.
 
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That's much worse than expected. I had thought ASW would be an ideal role for these ships. Basically makes these ships almost useless beyond minesweeping. As they are also an expensive and very limited missile carrier. Drone boats that move with the fleet would be better suited.
Beyond mine sweeping what's the conops for these ships going forward?
 
cccgong said:
Drone boats that move with the fleet would be better suited.
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Well that's the thing, the LCS isn't a fleet boat in the traditional sense. It's very good for the Middle East and operations in contested littorals, but it will struggle in blue water environments. But when the fleet does deploy to said environment, LCSs will deploy with it.

cccgong said:
Beyond mine sweeping what's the conops for these ships going forward?
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The trimarans are being forward deployed to Bahrain and Singapore, and will be used to take pressure off Burkes. People will complain about them not being able to fight in the First Island Chain, but they don't have too, they just need to keep the Persian Gulf open so INDOPACOM can amass assets.
The Freedoms are being stationed in the CONUS for counter-narcotics. They're yet to receive the Lethality & Survivability Upgrades so they're less capable, but I expect that to change soon.
So they're mostly being used for stationkeeping and forward presence.
 
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So the Trimarans are doing MCM?

I guess that works, they have a helo deck big enough for an H53 if any of the Sea Dragons are still in service.

======================

It's really frustrating that the USN can't seem to get small ASW ships to work. We are down 100-120 Frigates compared to the end of the First Cold War, which meant that the USN could keep 30-40 Perry, Knox, Garcia, and Brooke-class ships AT SEA 24/7.

For what it's worth, using dual crewing would get us down to 40-60 ships needed to keep 30-40 at sea. Let's call it 50 frigates that the US desperately needs and that we cannot snag any LCS to help make up numbers.
 

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