USS Freedom LCS-1 soon and very soon

[fatty]

Originally Posted by Oberon

No onboard Sonar? That's an interesting development. Makes sense though but you'd have thought she'd have some form of active sonar, unless it's a Greenpeace related issue. Good to see that she's making full use of Fire Scouts too. She should be quite the ship in littoral deployments. Good luck to her

Sonar may not have a place in the 'core' capabilities of the ship to cut down on costs and crew requirements, but as mentioned above, both LCS classes are built on the premise of modularity, a concept probably best pioneered by the Danes. So you can be sure that an anti-submarine warfare mission module, air-transportable in a neatly packed TEU, would enable an LCS to embark some kind of more specialized underwater sensor systems. Here is a pretty simple diagram that sums up the modularity concept:



A littoral fighting ship is a sensible role for the world's navies to fill but I think both of these ships - Freedom and Independence - are unfortunately overengineered and overpriced solutions. The logistics runaround that the USN will need to contend with when shuttling around the TEUs containing the mission modules also does not sit well with me.