Littoral Combat Ship: From the $90M Street Fighter to Early Retirements

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The Littoral Combat Ship began with the Street Fighter, a concept from Navy strategists Wayne Hughes and Arthur Cebrowski for a 1,000-ton, heavily armed coastal ship costing about $90 million in 2001 dollars, cheap enough that its crew could abandon it if badly hit. After the Cold War, threats had moved into shallow coastal waters crowded with quiet submarines, cheap mines and fast attack boats. When Donald Rumsfeld became Defense Secretary in 2001 and pushed transformational approaches, the DD-21 was canceled, and by 2003 the LCS was the top budget priority. The Navy rejected an expendable crewed ship, and the push for survivability and a 40-knot top speed grew the design to 3,000 to 3,500 tons and $220 million per ship.

The Navy kept two designs in production: the steel monohull Freedom class from Lockheed Martin and Marinette Marine, and the aluminum trimaran Independence class from General Dynamics and Austal USA. Each was meant to swap mission modules for anti-submarine warfare, mine countermeasures and surface warfare, but a 2012 report found a swap could take weeks, and a core crew of 50 to 70 left sailors exhausted and reliant on contractors. A 2010 Pentagon test report said neither design was expected to survive a hostile combat environment. In 2016 the Navy assigned each ship a single mission and cut the program from its original 55 ships, later turning to the FREMM-based Constellation-class frigate, while USS Independence, USS Freedom and USS Coronado retired early.

• The LCS was rated at survivability Level 1+, below the Level 2 of the frigates it replaced.
• The official plan for a badly hit ship was an orderly abandon ship or a limp away from the fight.
• After the NLOS-LS missile was canceled, the Navy bolted on Army Hellfire missiles and later the Norwegian Naval Strike Missile.
• In 2012 Rear Admiral Samuel Perez reported the ships lacked the manpower and firepower commanders needed.
• The 3-2-1 crew rotation was replaced by blue and gold crews, the model used on nuclear submarines.