Pity the Navy's LCS surface combatants — derided everywhere as "Little Crappy Ships" — but do not pity the Navy for commissioning vessels that are unreliable, overpriced, and under-armed. On the other hand, maybe give the Navy a single cheer for almost-kinda-sorta-maybe finding a mission they can perform.
But I have to warn you: like the ships themselves, it ain't pretty.
Before we get to that, a brief history of those crappy little ships.
Back when the Global War on Terror was the hot new thing, Navy brass decided they were getting left out of the fun. What good are multibillion-dollar guided-missile cruisers and aircraft carriers against two-bit jihadis, they wondered. Or as President George W. Bush so artfully put it in 2002, "I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt."
The result was two classes of Littoral Combat Ships. There is the Independence class, built by General Dynamics, and the Freedom class courtesy of Lockheed Martin. It would be fair to conclude that of the two, the Independence class sucks slightly less. That's because the Navy has only retired two of Independence LCS (out of 17 built) as opposed to five of the Freedom-class ships (out of 13).
These retirements are at least a decade ahead of schedule.
LCS was meant to fight in the coastal brown waters as opposed to the blue waters of the deep ocean. They are smaller warships, ostensibly stealthy enough to get close to shore and agile enough to take on "asymmetrical threats" in the form of terrorists in fast-moving rubber boats.
But there were problems. So many problems. Too many problems to detail in today's column. I'll just sum it up by telling you that neither class is very good at any of their missions; they keep breaking down, the platforms were never as flexible as promised, and wargaming has shown they'd just get sunk in combat against Chinese destroyers — or even against little corvettes.
There are other issues at hand, such as Congress' criminal neglect of our naval yards — and thus our ability to construct, maintain, and repair the warships our Navy requires. But in its ill-considered rush to find a GWOT mission, the Navy forgot its eternal mission. The Navy exists to sink other navies, when necessary, to protect our military communications and our civilian commerce. The result of the Navy's two-decade-long experiment with LCS is that we have too few blue-water surface combatants like destroyers and cruisers and all these LCS ships that nobody knows what to do with.
Until now. Almost-kinda-sorta-maybe.
ALSO FOR OUR VIPs: Why Is the Air Force Spending Billions to Buy 50-Year-Old Fighters?
It's almost obscene, but the Navy just tested a strap-on missile container. Popular Mechanics revealed earlier this week that in September, the Navy literally strapped a four-missile launch container on the helicopter deck of the Independence-class LCS, Savannah, and took her out for a spin.
Using a borrowed Army counter-battery radar, Savannah was able to locate a test target, elevate the missile launch tubes, fire its SM-6 supersonic missiles, and destroy the target at up to 150 miles away.
The result is that, in a pinch, Savannah and other LCSs can give up their helicopters in exchange for four additional long-range missiles able to take out targets on land, sea, and air. That's a very nice augmentation to the ship's standard complement of eight smaller and less capable Naval Strike Missiles that we have to buy from Norway. While not much compared to a modern Arleigh Burke destroyer's 96 integrated missile cells, at least the strap-on could give LCS something more to do between now and their well-deserved early retirement.
At a time when our Navy is struggling to generate enough seapower to take on Communist China's growing and increasingly aggressive navy, every missile counts.
One last thing.
Nerdy “explainer” articles like this one don’t generate much ad revenue, which is why I put them behind the VIP paywall. But they do help keep PJ Media readers much more informed about national defense issues than readers of most other news and opinion sites.
If you’d like to help keep your friends and family informed, you could let them know about our terrific VIP content and my lovely 25% off VODKAPUNDIT promo code.
Cheers!
