Sigh. We have no idea if it can meet the mission or not. If the mission is to create enough CDR-Commanders so you can mint more SWO-CAPT, then sure it meets that mission.
We are commissioning these things left and right and yet don't even have one that has deployed and operated with a single fully mission capable mission module. It can't fight any surface ship half its size even. That one 57-mm; who are you going to seduce into range for that? MIW, ASW, etc. All PPT and still in development.
CDR Salamander: Must have been the tiddledeewinks of wargames
This is the kind of criticism I mentioned. I'm just going to clip and paste the whole thing.
Good googly moogly, where does one start.
First of all, "nearly unobserved" is like being "nearly pregnant." LCS is not a small ship by any measure. "Smaller" yes, but small? No. Depending on which version you are talking about, that huge wake is visible from space. While being part of the glorious "Battle Network" and controlling its drones, it is leaking enough stuff in to the electromagnetic spectrum that a 1980s RadioShack fuzz-buster could detect it.
You don't need LCS to do a multi-axis attack. That whole paragraph is straight from the "teenager thinks he's discovered s3x" category of innovation.
That isn't even the funny part.
The funny part is,
... attack with missiles that can hit a target 120 to 130 nautical miles away. There are missiles now, he says, available or in development, that the Navy is confident will work with the ships.
Notional missiles do not count. We aspire to have such a missile, but we don't have it, and won't for quite awhile in any appreciable number. We aspire to have any post-NLOS ASUW missile on LCS, but we don't even have one with a longer range than the, ahem, primary gun. "Fairy Dust" is not a program of record. Yes, a new ASCM is in the works, but let's let it make it to the Fleet before we declare victory in WestPac and come home.
"...confident will work." Weren't we confident NLOS would work on LCS? You know, in 1987 I was fairly confident that the University of Georgia cheerleader would stick with me as I went to get a pitcher refill, but that didn't quite work out for me either - though at least I had a fresh pitcher of beer for my troubles.
LCS could be tasked to do some destroyer-type missions to free up the DDGs for other jobs.
Ouch, that whiplash hurts! Didn't we spend almost a decade telling everyone that LCS was transformational and didn't need to do the work that frigates do, because, well, we don't need frigates? We knew that it couldn't function as a multi-mission frigate anyway ... now we're going to jump an entire class of ships and say it can perform as a DDG? You and what spare displacement?
Or ... could it be that it is going to do some of the frigate missions that we have DDG doing right now because we don't have frigates in the numbers we need? OK, I will buy that. LCS will do some of the frigate missions that DDG are doing because we don't have frigates because we don't need frigates because we have LCS; and that LCS will do the DDG's frigate missions so our DDG can do CG missions as we aren't building CG anymore. Did I get that right?
...they can take a punch and deliver one.
“Are they lethal and survivable? Absolutely.”
OK, I'll take the whiplash from the other direction. I thought the LCS speed was its greatest weapon so it could run away and let its wake do the killing for it? I thought it isn't designed to take a hit, it isn't manned to take a hit, as a matter of fact - the CNO has even discussed the need to keep it out of the fight because ... it can't take a hit? What happened?
Other thing that’s also supposed to be interchangeable are the mission module packages and he says the gaming proves that out as well. But now the Navy is looking at making even quicker changes by swapping out whole crew sets – that is to move one module crew onto another ship with that module already in place.
“Say you have a crack ASW crew,” he says. In that case, it may be better to swap out crews instead of modules.
Now we're moving in to unicorn poop'n skittles territory.
All those who have actually done ASW, non-permissive ASW, I want you to ponder that a bit. Take awhile longer. Feel free to ponder equipment, crew coordination, crew fatigue ... go ahead; take your time ...
This gets kind of embarrassing to read.
And, despite concerns to the contrary, he says the ships are up to the job. The naysayers, he says, are just being unrealistic.
But the naysaying has had an impact on the program. The Navy had planned for an LCS fleet of 52. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, though, has told the service to halt contract negotiations at 32 ships because of concerns over survivability and lethality and he directed the Navy to look at a more frigate-like vessel for future small surface combatant needs.
Even a Frigate can be vulnerable, though.
“You put a missile into any ship, that ship is going to have a bad day,” Rowden says. “In any open-ocean fight, any ship – alone and unafraid – is vulnerable.”
Given the right conops, LCS will be a force to be reckoned with, he says.
“I see no issue with the survivability of these ships. The idea is to reach out and touch someone before they reach out touch you. With a destroyer, the LCS becomes very lethal.”
Unrealistic? What is unrealistic is to be this far in to a program and still not have one that can do anything more than permissive surface search with the reach of a patrol gun boat. What is unrealistic is to ask the taxpayer to trust a program that from NLOS, to manning, to not-even-IOC mission modules are at, "trust us, they're great on PPT" stage. What is unrealistic to run best-case-enemy-doesn't-get-a-vote wargames using notional weapons and then declaring victory. Can we ask LtGen Van Riper to play OPFOR at least?
A level-1 ship, optimally manned, and as thin skinned as it is - and you have "no issue with the survivability." I'm sorry, that beggars belief.
Wait, what? That quote again, "With a destroyer, the LCS becomes very lethal."
That when the LCS will, "...swing out from the group, nearly unobserved, and deliver a sneak attack with missiles that can hit a target 120 to 130 nautical miles away."
Anyone can click the LCS tab below and go back almost a decade - we don't need to rehash it all. This spin is a textbook example of when the customer (Navy) starts to speak like an industry spokesman.
It not only hurts the credibility of the person saying it, it hurts the credibility of the Navy.
"Anyone who has been through a few wargames knows how it works. We play "what if" with imaginary weapons with assumed capabilities all the time, but we don't pretend they reflect revealed truth. To use it in this way ... sad. Might as well use the magazine capacity of Harpoon 1.0 as your benchmark.
