The U.S. Navy is pulling the plug on its Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program?

[Onkel Neal]

The U.S. Navy is pulling the plug on its Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program.

That's not the official storyline, of course. Officially, the Navy still supports the LCS, of which 14 ships have been christened, 10 of which have actually entered service (granted, half of those subsequently broke down -- but that's another story), and another 14 are under contract and/or under construction today.

But after those first 28 ships have been delivered, it's not entirely clear what will happen next.

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[Bilge_Rat]

The LCS program always struck me as a boondogle project pushed by the Navy to remain relevant against terrorist threat in the wake of 9\11. There are cheaper and more effective ways to combat terrorists without spending billions to develop a class of ships that have no clear role.

You see this all the time. Some officer pushes a particular program to advance his career, manufacturers get on board to boost their profits, politicians get on board to boost business in their districts and once the project is rolling, it is very hard to stop.

That is how you get projects like the Zumwalt class DDGs.

Every military has the same problem, but it is more evident in the US because the military budget is so huge.

[ikalugin]

LCS sort of followed the patern described in the "Pentagon wars" comedy film for Bradley - they were warping the original desighn with features and grew a monster. The original desighn may have been sensible, but not after changes that were contradicting it's core intent were introduced.

Now they are trying to turn it into a working Frigate.

In my opinion USN may be interested in getting conventional FFGs instead.

[em2nought]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

The LCS program always struck me as a boondogle project pushed by the Navy to remain relevant against terrorist threat in the wake of 9\11. There are cheaper and more effective ways to combat terrorists without spending billions to develop a class of ships that have no clear role.

Such a waste, particularly when the USN had the perfect class of vessel, SSBN, that could have dealt terrorism a fatal and decisive blow on the day after 9/11 with no additional expenditure by any service whatsoever. Too bad there weren't any admirals that weren't too _____ whooped to advocate that.

[ikalugin]

Nuclear weapons are a bit terminal.

Plus, if you were actually trying to deal with the problem you would be better off starting by cutting support to Saudi Arabia.

To derail the topic back, closer to the original topic. What do you think about European cruise missile strike capability into the 2020s? For example it appears that both UK and France have a shortage of CM capable platforms, and I am not sure if there isnt a shortage of munitions as well.
Russia may also have munitions shortage to accumulate proper munition reserves for the launcher capacity we are building up.

To illustrate my point, let us look at the RN (RAF and FAA wise the limit would probably be the number of munitions availiable and not the number of launchers/platforms), it appears that in terms of CM capable platforms RN plans to have:
- 6 Astute class, 36 TTs, up to approx. 108 TLAM patern weapons.*
- 8 T26 class, 192 mk.41 cells, up to 192 TLAM patern weapons.**
which gives us approx 300 LAMs in the RN's capacity.***

Historic experience shows that typical expenditures are above that number significantly and while some of that expenditure can be attributed to the airpower (RAF and FAA) it does make one wonder if RN would benefit from a dedicated LAM platform, for example and SSGN, for example based on the SSBN desighn with the US patern payload modules.

*I assume approx. 1/2 load of LAMs per SSN the rest - torpedoes, AShMs, self propelled decoys, etc.
**Because of how RN does not operate and appears to be unwilling to operate in the future SAMs or ASROC out of the mk.41 I assume that it would be filled with LAMs.
***I am not aware of any real plans to fit T45s with the mk.41 or any other full strike length VLS nor about installation of such a VLS to any other future ship class.