We clearly won't be buying the full amount of LCS we once thought we'd build:
U.S. Navy officers in the Pacific fleet say the service’s Littoral Combat Ship may lack the speed, range and electronic warfare capabilities needed to operate in Asian waters, according to a congressional audit.
“Several 7th Fleet officials told us they thought the LCS in general might be better suited to operations” in the smaller Persian Gulf, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a 56-page report, labeled “For Official Use Only,” obtained by Bloomberg News.
The Navy should consider buying fewer of the ships if its limitations prevent effective use in the Pacific, according to the report by GAO, Congress’s watchdog agency. The report follows others that have questioned the cost, mission and survivability in combat of the ship that’s designed to operate in shallow coastal waters.
You have to love 7th Fleet: We don't want it--give it to 5th Fleet.
But put in the Gulf? I don't think so. If LCS lacks the capabilities for blue water open ocean operations against a peer foe, the LCS also lacks the vital quality of cheapness to justify putting them in shallow, constricted waters close to land-based small craft, missiles, and aircraft:
We need a cheaper ship to provide numbers in the fleet. The LCS, despite cost overruns, will be cheaper than our other larger ships and still reasonably capable and flexible because of mission modules that can reorient the ship's capabilities.
But look at this ship. It is nearly 400 feet long and 3,000 tons. They are larger than our World War II destroyers. This is not a small, coastal combatant. And I have little doubt that these ships will suffer damage and loss if put into coastal waters against masses of cheap enemy ships that will include suicide boats.
This is quite the concept fail. We hoped to have a cheap vessel that we could afford to build in large numbers to use in littoral waters and--with additional mission packages installed--take their place in a task force to control the seas against peer naval foes.
But we seem to have hit the sweet spot of a ship too expensive to risk in the Persian Gulf and not capable enough of fighting a peer foe. And even if we work out glitches so that the ships work with those mission packages as intended, we still haven't solved the basic problems. We'll just have working ships too expensive to risk in littorals and too lightly armed to participate in the blue water battles.
Bravo. Really. Just outstanding.
