It is hard to think of any class of warship that created such debate over such a long time than LCS. The reaction to last week’s post here fell in to the normal pattern of responses and lining up of tribal positions. With remarkable consistency, these defined arguments about the program have changed little since I started throwing shade at it in 2005.
You have the military-industrial complex apologists, the transformationalist dead-enders, & the hope-burns-eternal types forming the core tribes on one side, vs the reactionary anti-transformationalists, neo-luddite navalists, and jaded cynics who form the core of the other tribe.
You can see those tribes in almost every argument, and not just with LCS. In 2017 you aren’t going to change their minds, but there is the large mass of well-meaning navalists in the middle who are trying to be fair as possible in light of political, financial, programmatic, and fleet realities of needing a “good enough” until a “better” can come along.
The LCS battles have gone on so long, and the pro-LCS tribe has played Lucy to the well-meaning Charlie Brown so many times, that the account of professional capital has been drawn down to the point that overdraft protection has kicked in. At varying points in time, with each turn the well-meaning middle are converting in to cynics.
In response to the RFI, a fair number of anti-LCS types find themselves in alignment with the pro-LCS groups in thinking that at the end of the day, some modified version of the LCS will come out in response to the RFI. It isn’t that they are all of a sudden fans of the ship, they just have no faith that the RFI is anything but window dressing for a forgone conclusion. They see the “claw marks” I mentioned in last week’s post as the framework for keeping the LCS production going longer under a new excuse.
That is strong cynicism. Why does LCS bring that out in people in 2017?
It is really rather simple. The claw marks put in the RFI to open the door to LCS are right out there in the open and clear to see, but other parts of the RFI – the ones that make most sense for a fleet FFG – seem to exclude any possibility that a modified LCS would be satisfactory. Why would an open and well thought out RFI have such contradictions?
Over at The Diplomat, Steven Stashwick outlines those points;
The RFI lists accommodations for a maximum 200 crewmembers, which is more than twice the crew capacity of the LCS hulls. Despite the promise of innovative work design and crewing practices to reduce crew size, early hulls were plagued by extreme fatigue issues and the current capacity for 93 crewmembers was only achieved after design modifications to add berthing for 20 more people.
…
… the problem with the existing LCS hulls is that it is unclear whether they are large enough to effectively accommodate these additional weapons systems. This is why the analysts behind one of the most talked-about proposals for the Navy’s future fleet design from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments advocated a frigate of 4000-5000 tons, significantly larger than the 3000 ton LCSs.
There are, of course, other issues with both LCS hulls, range being just one of them, but let’s look back at that CBSA assessment;
In the proposed architecture, the LCS/FF program would be truncated as soon as the design of a new FFG is ready to build. This would ideally be in FY19, but may be FY20 or FY21. The 4000- to 5000-ton FFG would be designed with the endurance to accompany the Manuver Force or for convoy escort; an active and passive EW suite; an ASW suite including a VDS sonar and passive towed array; and a 16- to 32-cell VLS magazine with ESSM for medium range area air defense, long-range surface-to-surface missiles, and a standoff ASW weapon capable of quickly putting a submarine on the defensive more than 50 nm away.
If you stripped out the LCS claw marks, that is what the FFG-(X) RFI is looking for.
If at the end of the day the answer to the FFG(X) RFI is just some modified LCS, the cynics will have won – as they were right after all – this exercise was for nothing. The pro-LCS people will have won as well, as their support will be validated.
If LCS is not the answer, then we have a good datapoint that we are a learning institution capable of self-reflection and correction.
This possibility will be the most entertaining if nothing else. The pro-LCS tribe will be out of sorts as their precious was thrown to the side, yet the anti-LCS crowd will be in a funky lather of smug “I told you so” rolled in with a little disappointment that their cynicism was unfounded.
In a strange way, perhaps what is best for our navy is to upset everyone … except of course for those Sailors who will be asked to go to war at sea with the ships we provide. I think they’d like a nice, capable, multi-mission FFG.
