Littoral Combat Ships (LCS)

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dtulsa

Junior Member
cWouldn't the lcs as is be very good @ drug interdiction and the new thing of refugee aid from the middle east also have read very recent artile about placing doctors and medical staff on board for surg. seems perfect to me sort of jack of all trades master of none theory
 
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Jura The idiot

Jura The idiot

General
dtulsa said:
cWouldn't the lcs as is be very good @ drug interdiction and the new thing of refugee aid from the middle east also have read very recent artile about placing doctors and medical staff on board for surg. seems perfect to me sort of jack of all trades master of none theory
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Sep 20, 2014
(2014, not 2015)
Jura said:
yeah but
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cost just about $20m :) according to
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but an LCS ...
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S

Scratch

Captain
The one thing I would like to see for a light (patrol) FF would be something like Spike NLOS, a 25km, precision, OTH, light strike option. Extending the reach of the 57mm gun and ship-launched Hellfire.
Then, having SeaRAM and the Mk38 for close in defense will be enough. To not again overload a design that should be an affoardable low-end vessel.
For supporting missions further inland, maybe the Spike module can be swapped for four Harpoon II / NSM units. Even those don't need to come as standard I think.

Some dedicated Indepandance minehunters can still chase pirates.

And perhaps later an evolved (ASW) escort FFG can emerge. With four NSM, 16x ESSM, 2x (Sea)RAM, 12x ASROC, 76mm gun and VDS.
 
Jeff Head

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
dtulsa said:
just thinking that 11 aaw weapons is short of what is needed and they should have a layered defense for aaw
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If the vessels were meant to provide coverage to any other ship, you would be right.

But the LCS is not meant to go into high intensity conflict situations alone.

It is meant to provide for its own AAW defense, and then in lower intensity situations.

If it is being used to escort other high value vessels for ASW, then there are going to be Burkes and/or Ticos around for area coverage and its system will be for leakers targeting it.

I'd love to see them even add one four cell Mk-141 VLS with Quad packed ESSMs. That would give it 16 ESSMs...but they have not decided to do that. Perhaps a new congress and new administration after 2016 will do so...but it is not in the cards right now.

dtulsa said:
According to defense news Saudis are zeroing on freedom class for their eastern fleet very recent article deal apparently to signed by first of the year 4-6 total ships
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Well, the Defense News article indicates that "un-named sources," say that inside people "reportedly" believe this.

That's 2-3 places removed from anything actual.

I know they initially wants AEGIS and dropped that as too expensive.

I also know that the Saudis want to be able to operate an MH-60R Seahawk off of these vessels, they want to have a 76mm gun, they want 16 VLS cells with MK-41, they ant to missile controllers/illuminators. They are talking to the US (Lockheed) the Spanish (Navantia), and the French (DCNS) about this.

Any of those companies can satisfy those requirements.

The one other requirement that they mention...if they stick with it as a hard requirement...which would swing it definitely towards the Freedom class vessel, is the desire for the ship to maintain 37+ knots. Navantia and DCNS do not have 2.500+ ton frigate designs that can do that. The Freedom can do that.

Still, until I hear something more than an un-named source speaking about another source "reportedly" saying something...I would not hold my breath.

We will find out more towards the end of the year.
 
Jeff Head

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
strehl said:
In the future everything will be a game. I wonder how well this actually works.

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It can work well if the game is realistic and not just something pretty looking.

The US Navy used the game Harpoon years ago to train officers at the Naval War College in modern war at sea strategy because the game was so realistically modeled with platforms whose features and capabilities had been modeled on real world capabilities that performed as they would in real life...and it had weather components and other programmable features that would add real world events to the game.

.
 
D

dtulsa

Junior Member
Jura said:
so why

dtulsa?
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yep its me again needed a vacation after the decsicion about the ssc. time to study that it does seem their headed in the right direction still a long ways to go it may be in future a sea ram block 3 or 4 adds the range needed for independent ops still think they need more than 11 of them though and whos to say that they wont end up in a high intensity fight best have the equip for the task @ hand when needed might ask the brits how well the sea dart worked in the falklands about that a simple 2-4 cell mk41 would work as would a mk29 along with essm capability
 
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TerraN_EmpirE

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
dtulsa said:
cWouldn't the lcs as is be very good @ drug interdiction and the new thing of refugee aid from the middle east also have read very recent artile about placing doctors and medical staff on board for surg. seems perfect to me sort of jack of all trades master of none theory
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The original concept of the LCS was to serve as a dual successor to the USN's Frigates and Ocean Patrol ships which act in some overlap with USCG cutters. There mission aim in the Littorals included introduction of foreign water craft. Mostly threat types. Now in the Drug interdiction it is possible that it may serve. Especially in cases of smuggling, but I find it unlikely to be chasing down cigarette boats running the gulf. It could potentially be used to aid the coast guard in a near ASW situation as the Narcos have on occasion used semisubmersibles and are suspected to be looking at there own conventional diesel subs. However against conventional Drug smugglers the coast guards cutters are excellent, yet limited in number due to age and resources. The Navy has proposed using not LCS but JHSV which is even cheaper then most cutters, and since most smugglers are unarmed is enough when combined with a good security detachment to carry through the mission.
More likely than anti narcotics is Piracy interdiction. Where the fast LCS is more then a impressive asset.
That said the aim of retiring the USNs patrol ships in favor of LCS classes seems to have been scrapped as LCS transitions into a more Multifunction Frigate.

As to the refugee and humanitarian assistance, LCS is a combat ship. It would be great to escort or turn away unwanted shipping but its not suited for picking up refugees or rendering mass humanitarian missions. That said there is another ship I think is and it entered service around the same time as the LCS and even has similar genealogy. The Joint High Speed Vessel. Like both the Freedom and Independence classes the Spearhead class JHSV is based of a fast ferry hull in this case that of the Austal marine Swaths super ferry. It has a shallow draft high sea speed and a massive capacity. One of the JHSV has also recently configured with a medical suite and considering how all of the class (save the one testing the Rail gun) are unarmed (well they can be armed but with 4x.50BMG on a ship of that size it might as well be considered unarmed.) One could see a small run of them serving as full time high speed hospital ships deploying when needed a head of slower more traditional hospital ships.
 
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