Streetfighter

[lastdingo]

I found nowhere a proper illustration for the "Streetfighter" concept of Cebrowski and Hughes (from about 1999-2001)

Searches for "Cebrowski" and "Streetfighter" were total fails even in this forum.


Here's what I mean:

https://www.mar.mil.br/caaml/Revista/2007/Ingles/09-Pag34.pdf

Streetfighter

www.globalsecurity.org

I hope that we can udig a bit more about this concept that eventually led to the LCS.

 

[TomS]

The November 1999 USNI Proceedings with the "Rebalancing the Fleet" article by Cebrowski and Hughes that kicked off the Streetfighter concept include another article in the same vein, called "a COmbatant for the Littorals" by Lieutenant Commander Dave Weeks. THat article describved the vessel that Cebrowski et al clearly considered to be their first cut on the Streetfighter concept. The article is online to Institute members, here: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/archive/story.asp?STORY_ID=1103. The article describes mission capabilities but doesn't include an actual line drawing or similarly detailed design.

There were several somewhat later design studies that were done in response to the Streetfighter concept. For example, the Naval postgraduate School's Total Ship Systems Engineering program did a design study of a "Sea Lance" combatant clearly driven by the Streetfighter concept. (Not surprising given that Wayne Hughes was the head of the TSSE program at the time) That study can be found here: http://www.nps.edu/Academics/GSEAS/TSSE/subPages/2000Project.html

I can think of two ships actually built that are related to Streetfighter:

1) Sea Fighter, aka X-Craft, FSF-1, and LSC(X). This actually predates Streetfighter as an inshore logistics platform for the Marines but was "reimagined" as a testbed of Streetfighter type modular systems

Sea Fighter - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

2) M80 Stiletto, funded by Cebrowski's Office of Force Transformation as basically the last gasp for his concept of extremely small combatant type vessels

M80 Stiletto - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Triton]

"Streetfighter" concept painting of a corvette-sized littoral combatant that appeared in The Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet (Seventeenth Edition, 2001) by Norman Polmar. From a painting by Jim Stilphen.

http://books.google.com/books?id=VO8BAdZJ7SsC&pg=PA206&dq=Streetfighter+Navy

 

[Firefly 2]

Hmmm, looks a lot like civil war ironclad in the vain of the Virginia.

I thought the Stiletto was still an ongoing project for SF insertion / extraction?

 

[royabulgaf]

Looks like a Sdkfz 251 that tried to ford a deep river.

 

[Grey Havoc]

Via Naval-Technology.com, here's a promotional video on the M80, this one aimed primarily at the USCG/Homeland Security:
http://www.naval-technology.com/videos/1452181734001.html

 

[Grey Havoc]

Navy Playing with the Stiletto (EagleSpeak blog)​

[IMAGE CREDIT: US NAVY]​

 

[Grey Havoc]

From the Fifth Column: http://www.w54.biz/showthread.php?1...her-such-matters&p=35817&viewfull=1#post35817

 

[Grey Havoc]

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?233658-The-quot-Streetfighter-quot-concept-by-Admiral-Cebrowski-the-individual-Streetfighter-vessels

 

[Triton]

Uploaded on Mar 7, 2010

The M80 Stiletto is a prototype naval ship manufactured by the M Ship Company as an operational experiment for the Pentagons Office of Force Transformation. It is an example of the next generation of military vessels that combines new materials (carbon fiber) with a networked architecture and a breakthrough hull design.

The M80 Stiletto is now under the command of the Department of Defense and has participated in Trident Warrior joint-force exercises as well as tests conducted by the U.S. Navy SEALs off the California coast.

Although not intended to become operational, the Stiletto was deployed to Colombia to help fight the U.S. war on drugs and made a high-speed, shallow-water drug interdiction that resulted in the capture of 1,800 lbs. of cocaine.

The Stiletto is a radical new hull platform that was developed for high-speed military missions in the shallow water areas of the littoral, near-shore waters in support of USN (ret) Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowskis vision of a brown-water navy for expeditionary combat in the 21st century. No other hull compares to its speed, ride quality, payload capability and unmanned vehicle support.

The Stiletto, a twin M-hull vessel, is 88 ft in length with a 40 ft beam, providing a rectangular deck area equivalent to a conventional displacement craft 160 ft in length. The vessel's draft fully loaded is 3 feet and is designed for a speed of 50-60 knots.

Its superior performance is based on M Ship Co.'s proprietary, globally patented M-hull® technology, recapturing the bow wave and using its energy to create an air cushion for more efficient planing. This is critical for the Navy SEALS and other Special Operations Forces, because it reduces the G-forces and related injuries these personnel are subjected to during training and on missions.

M Ship Co. designed and constructed the vessel, which is made solely of carbon fiber for reduced weight and increased stiffness, the largest vessel ever built in the U.S. of this advanced material. It was delivered to the Office of Force Transformation to establish scalability of the M-hull® technology.

The M80 Stiletto and similar designs may be purchased by government and military agencies from M Ship Co. under a no-bid, sole-source acquisition contract.

http://youtu.be/PuJ-TyhaC7s

 

[Triton]

View: http://youtu.be/GbUN_8rBfjM

 

[Jemiba]

If such a ship is used operationally, I can only think of tactics similar to those of nuclear submarines,
"speed and drift". even if stealthy, that wake and fountain of spray certainly isn't !

 

[Matt R.]

"Streetfighter" concept painting of a corvette-sized littoral combatant that appeared in The Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet (Seventeenth Edition, 2001) by Norman Polmar. From a painting by Jim Stilphen.

http://books.google.com/books?id=VO8BAdZJ7SsC&pg=PA206&dq=Streetfighter+Navy

Another view (via Military Stories) :

 

[apparition13]

Since it hasn't been posted, from the 1999 article,

Hull form is a semi-submersible SWATH or catamaran,

CODAG propulsion, with 60 knot sprints,

"Design considerations would include the ability to dock a fully loaded vessel into the well deck of an LPD-17 Whidbey Island (LSD-41)-, Harpers Ferry (LSD-49)-, Anchorage (LSD-36)-, Tarawa (LHA-1)-, or Wasp (LHD-1)-class amphibious ship. To ensure this fit, the craft's displacement would be less than 600 tons, length less than 200 feet, beam less than 47 feet, and draft in the hull-up position would be approximately 5 feet."

Roughly 60x14x1.7 meters. A Skjold that's 10 meters longer and that has twice the displacement. Or a wider Flyvefisken with twice the speed. Maybe a combination of both, only in semi-submersible SWATH form. Fixed weapons are a pair of guns, one 105 (naval versions of which don't exist right now so far as I know, 76mm would make more sense) and one 25-30mm. SUW, ASW, AAW, MW, seal delivery, etc. would be modules. So maybe a semi-submersible Flyve-Skjold hybrid with room for 3 or so Stanflex modules. With a 21 day endurance.

The CONOPS is to loiter in a hull down semi-submerged very low emissions state, using passive sensors and drones to surveil the area. They could then perform a mission, rise up and sprint to a new location, and go hull down again.

-----

I can see why it expanded into LCS sized. That's quite the wishlist. Leaving the helicopter deck and hanger off would save room and displacement, but not by a factor of five or six. Even if you could get all that into a 600 ton hull, at that length I don't think any of the named amphibious dock ships could carry more than one internally. You'd need something more like a LASH ship to ferry them, and that would be extremely vulnerable in transit.

 

[TomS]

Fixed weapons are a pair of guns, one 105 (naval versions of which don't exist right now so far as I know, 76mm would make more sense) and one 25-30mm.

The 105mm was to be essentially a tank gun in a navalized mount. First approximation would by the Teledyne Low-Profile Turret or more recently the Cockerill 30105, as seen in a prototype of the Indonesian X18 combat boat.

 

[Yellow Palace]

You'd need something more like a LASH ship to ferry them, and that would be extremely vulnerable in transit.

I'd expect (hope) that the idea was for the dock ships to ferry them over long distances rather than self-deploying, in a similar way to how France used its TCDs to deploy light craft to its overseas territories.

 

[apparition13]

I'd expect (hope) that the idea was for the dock ships to ferry them over long distances rather than self-deploying, in a similar way to how France used its TCDs to deploy light craft to its overseas territories.

LCACs are around 27m in length, this is 60. Only the Whidbey Island class has a long enough dock to hold two, the rest can only carry one. You can't shift large groups of them that way. If you forward deployed them in squadrons you could use Whidbey's to shuttle them to their ports in peacetime, but in a crisis you'd need the amphibs for amphibious operations, not as tenders and shuttles.

I don't really see the point in forward deploying them though. It makes more sense to let your allies deal with regional matters while you focus on global, which means you'd need dedicated tenders/transports as motherships. Now 600 tons is what the RN put as the lower bound of seakeeping for corvettes on transatlantic convoys, so they might be able to self-deploy, but then you lose the modularity since they couldn't carry spare modules (I'm thinking stanflex type modules) with them and you'd still need a tender to swap modules.

 

[Yellow Palace]

I don't really see the point in forward deploying them though

If you start with the principle that they're about 600 tonnes, on the grounds that you want them small and cheap, forward deployment is baked in. They might be able to cross oceans in favourable conditions, but they can't sustain themselves once there.

Give up forward deployment and you need a much bigger, more expensive, ship – which is precisely why the folks behind Streetfighter wanted to avoid. I'm sure they're still spitting feathers about how the USN ruined LCS by turning it into a big, slow ship.

Whether the concept was a good one is an entirely different matter.

 

[jsport]

Some to contravening issues for a Neo SF would be for a start how optionally/manned, the need for a full VLS barge capability as well as deep torpedo magazine not to mention if or or any gun/DEW (magazine) , and ability to maneuver 'awash' or even semi submersed while having the speed of a catamaran.. head exploding, an unenviable thought exercise.