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The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) was born of controversy and is likely to remain one of the most hotly debated ships in the Navy inventory.

The LCS originated in the “Streetfighter” debate of the late 1990s, when Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, then-president of the Naval War College, launched an open assault on the Navy’s all-capital-ship fleet. He believed that the Navy’s bulky, aircraft carrier-centric force structure was unable to maintain a continuous network of sensors, concentrate effects while dispersing risk or control contested littoral waters.

Cebrowski’s solution to this dilemma was a new ship class that would weigh in at a mere 400 tons and could serve as either a littoral anti-mine or anti-submarine platform. He argued that this lean, mean Streetfighter would better “baby-sit the petri dish of festering problems we have around the world” than the Navy’s fleet of aircraft carrier battle groups, which were designed to control the oceans in pursuit of World War II-style decisive battles.

When he was appointed the first director of the Office of Force Transformation by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in late 2001, Cebrowski found himself with the bureaucratic clout to push through the Streetfighter concept, now redubbed the Littoral Combat Ship.

The final LCS designs carried significant changes from the Streetfighter — at 3,000 tons, significantly smaller than the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate but still incomparable to Cebrowski’s initial 400-ton concept. But the LCS is unlike any other ship in the Navy. It is designed to dabble in fields that would usually be the responsibility of more focused ships, such as mine countermeasures (MCM), anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and anti-surface warfare (ASuW) against small, swarming boats.

From its inception, the LCS received a harsh welcome. One Congressional Research Service analyst described the ship as the result of an “analytical virgin birth” in which the Navy conducted a rigorous analysis of the LCS design only after the program was approved. Opponents in the fleet were less politic when they dubbed the vessel the “Little Crappy Ship.”

Although the LCS’s controversial genesis broke with the long-standing preferences of the Navy hierarchy — indeed, largely because it did — the ship has unique potential to both fill voids within the Navy force structure and upgrade the navies of our security partners, especially in Asia.

THE EMERGING THREAT IN THE ASIA PACIFIC

The essential maritime challenge in Asia is the dual tyranny of space and time. The Pacific Ocean is vast, and the vital interests of all Asian countries now follow their sea lanes all the way to the Middle East. Japan, Taiwan and the countries of maritime Southeast Asia have a combined land mass of less than a third of the U.S. but a total coastline that is six times longer.

The inherent challenge of dealing with such long shorelines was tragically displayed in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami disaster, when the navies and coast guards of the afflicted nations were overwhelmed and many areas were not reached for weeks, and then with the naval assistance of only the U.S., Japan, Australia and India.

The havoc wreaked on the shorelines of Southeast Asia in 2004 indicates the regular instability that plagues the region. Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand all face militant separatist movements and jihadi terrorists. Smugglers hide in the shadows of the large share of global trade that passes through the region. And the Malacca Strait is the haunt of pirates who are so confident as to regularly steal entire container ships.

And these threats are central to the global war on terrorism. Threats to the territorial integrity of U.S. security partners inevitably imperil those governments’ stability. Likewise, although few of the separatist movements in the region have a tradition of Islamic radicalism, the rise of Jammat al-Islamiyah demonstrates how radical Islam could infect them. Run-of-the-mill criminal smuggling masks terrorist movement, North Korea’s counterfeiting activities and, even more dangerous, the possible proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

This anarchy on the seas breeds an additional fear: that the trade-dependent nations of Asia will have their sea lines of communication disrupted by natural disaster, terrorist attack or international conflict.

The rise of China factors heavily into that fear. China is engaged in territorial disputes with almost all of its maritime neighbors, and nervousness about the susceptibility of its own energy and mineral imports to disruption has inspired Beijing to invest in a fleet of submarines and advanced mines that it hopes will hold sea lanes hostage to its strategic druthers.

And the countries of Southeast Asia know that persistent instability along their coasts ultimately invites foreign intervention. With China’s rise as a great power and its long-term commitment to extending its naval sphere of influence beyond the first island chain that runs from Sakhalin through Indonesia, Beijing will grow increasingly tempted to enforce regional order unilaterally. Needless to say, such an outcome would severely diminish the ability of maritime Asia to determine its own strategic fate.

These developments have created a unique set of requirements for Southeast Asian navies. They must patrol huge spans of the sea against widespread, low-level instability, much of it in shallow waters where smugglers, rebels and terrorists operate freely in small vessels. They must hedge against growing submarine and mine warfare threats in the region, especially in light of China’s uncertain strategic future.

modular SOLUTION

If the Littoral Combat Ship attains the ambitious capabilities imagined by Cebrowski and its other designers, it may well be the ship best-suited to defeating the threats that face U.S. security partners along the Asia littoral. The ship was designed, after all, to fight in what U.S. planners call the littoral, anti-access environment against the very challenges Asian countries face.

The envisioned flexibility of the LCS is encapsulated in what naval analyst Bob Work has dubbed “mission modularity” — the ability to configure the LCS sea frame with shipping-containerlike plug-and-play command modules that can be loaded or unloaded depending on the mission. The missions include ASW, MCM and ASuW for the foreseeable future, and perhaps special operations and other missions later on.

For a rich country like the U.S., the most important consequence of so-called mission modularity is that a single ship can be quickly reconfigured to undertake new missions as they are required, as long as the modules that are not in place have crews trained to use them. There is even talk about sea-basing modules so LCS mission profiles can be switched while away from home ports.

For U.S. security partners who cannot afford multiple mission modules per ship, modularity means the LCS platform is easily upgradeable as new technologies emerge or naval priorities change over time, without replacing the base platform. For example, although the ASuW role is the mission package that most closely meets the needs of Southeast Asian countries today, the LCS would provide a platform for upgrading to an ASW ship if that requirement takes precedence in the future.

How should the LCS be able to do this? The plan is that its mission capabilities are not integral to the LCS sea frame but are based on off-board weapons systems that are controlled from its reconfigurable mission modules. Switching mission modules allows the ship to deploy different sets of off-board systems, the key to undertaking completely different roles. For example, the LCS’s suitability for the littoral ASW mission is largely to be based on its use of the off-board Advanced Deployable System (ADS), a maritime sonar array that can be rapidly deployed to search for diesel submarines or mine-laying activity. If deployed from multiple ships in cooperation, the ADS can cover larger areas than other available ASW monitoring systems, even in contested waters.

Off-board vehicles are also intended to allow the LCS to play an anti-mine role — a seemingly suicidal mission for a ship without a fiberglass hull. By using a combination of the unmanned AN/WLD-1 remote underwater mine-hunting system, Spartan unmanned surface vehicles, and manned and unmanned aircraft, the LCS is anticipated to be able to perform the MCM mission from a safe distance. If the technology works, these vehicles will allow the LCS to overcome a major vulnerability of warships.

But that potential also contains the biggest risk of the LCS: Its transformational ambitions are so great that it is almost entirely dependent upon as-yet-unproven technologies. For example, the RQ-8A Fire Scout is a vertical-takeoff unmanned aerial vehicle that can be configured for any LCS mission, including targeting surface vessels with a laser-guided version of the 70mm Hydra pod-launched rocket, or dipping a sonar buoy to support anti-submarine or MCM operations. The Fire Scout is a stunning technological achievement, but many countries will be cautious about investing in such an expensive, potentially unreliable aircraft.

Indeed, the uncertainties surrounding the LCS are symbolized by the simultaneous production of two very different sea frames. A Lockheed Martin-led design team is producing a steel monohull ship that is 377 feet long and 42 feet wide at the waterline. A General Dynamics-led team is producing an aluminum-hulled trimaran that is 417 feet long and 103.7 feet wide. The two designs have quite different capabilities, with the former being a more survivable war fighter and the latter’s ferrylike design more suitable for carrying large payloads. But the U.S. has not decided whether it will chose one line in favor of the other, a good cause for caution in overseas navies thinking about whether to invest in the LCS.

If its capabilities are developed successfully, the LCS will possess a unique aptitude to patrol the Asian Pacific littoral. But any advantages that accrue from the ability of the LCS to operate as a single ship may be overwhelmed by its potential contributions to a networked force.

THE LCS AS A FORCE INTEGRATOR

The Navy has moved in recent years toward the model of what Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen calls the “Thousand-Ship Navy.” Mullen’s ambition is that by increasing interoperability between the U.S. and its security partners, the capacity for coalition operations will not be a question of negotiating detailed agreements but simply a matter of networking ships that already share the necessary technologies to work together.

One goal post for this vision is to create a shared command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) infrastructure in the Pacific. Gathering and sharing information is the basis for enhanced interoperability between the U.S. and its security partners — it permits basic coordination over long distances and allows the U.S. and its security partners to act as sensors for the force’s best shooters.

Of course, the nonwartime value of an interoperable coalition force cannot be overestimated. The 2004 tsunami disaster response was an impressive display of cooperation among the U.S. and other major regional navies, although it too often depended upon deconflicting rather coordinating efforts. The Proliferation Security Initiative is another case where a common operational picture would allow Washington and regional actors to coordinate action.

It is in the context of this requirement for highly networked multinational coalition forces that the LCS holds its greatest potential. The LCS has been designed to use the COMBATTS-21 combat management system, a part of the Navy Open Architecture suite of combat management programs designed to be interoperable among systems types and generations.

The practical meaning of the LCS’s integration within the Navy Open Architecture is that it should permit the ship to uplink directly to Aegis-equipped destroyers, allowing U.S. and coalition forces to share a highly detailed operating picture over a broad geographic area.

Moreover, one of the defining aspects of Aegis is that it’s not just about cooperation with the U.S. Major U.S. allies such as Japan, South Korea and Australia all sail Aegis-equipped destroyers, giving them the ability to create a shared C4ISR network among several Asian security partners of the U.S., even when U.S. ships are not directly in the picture. The example of a tsunamilike disaster response is again a perfect example of where this capability could be brought online with little effort and to great effect.

This informal coalition-forming capability is especially valuable in light of the political dilemma that China’s rise poses for U.S. security partners in Asia. Even though they view the Chinese government’s growing ambitions and capabilities with concern, few countries are willing to risk their relationship with China today by advocating or even visibly joining a balancing coalition against Beijing. Traditional alliance management falls short in this mark, even in light of Washington’s strategy of managing relations with China through hedged engagement rather than outright balancing.

Developing interoperable platforms allows the U.S. and its security partners to overcome this dilemma by developing the ability to form ad hoc coalitions with relative ease, thus creating the diplomatic flexibility to manage a cooperative relationship with Beijing while maintaining effective defensive options should China’s rise turn more confrontational over time. There is only one obvious problem with this optimal outcome: The LCS is still in very early phases of development, and it is not clear that any U.S. allies are interested in sailing it.

If future U.S. naval operations are contingent upon operations in contested littoral waters and developing ever greater interoperability with our security partners, the domestic ship-building industry is in poor form to realize that goal. As Work has observed, the U.S. simply does not produce ships in the 4,000-ton frigate/corvette class range that serves as the capital ship for many smaller navies.

The LCS thus appears to be the platform most likely not only to fill a vital gap in the U.S. force structure but is also the only major class of U.S.-produced ship that many security partners are likely to purchase in the foreseeable future. Although some navies are still purchasing used U.S. ships, the market has been almost entirely ceded to foreign producers.

Selling abroad would deliver a major economic advantage for the entire LCS program, which has run into early cost trouble. The average price of the ship has already leapt from a congressionally capped $220 million to $260 per ship, and the Navy is predicting a final price tag of $316 million. Foreign acquisition could play a major role in lowering the costs of the LCS. The most appealing means to accomplish these gains would be to invite foreign partners to play a larger role in the development of some of its technologies. Australian ship maker Austral is manufacturing the trimaran hull for the General Dynamics-designed ship, and firms in Europe, Israel and Japan have advanced UAV technologies that could be employed in LCS module design.

The foreign market for the LCS is also showing some early motion. Lockheed Martin is conducting a feasibility study to sell the ship to Israel and, according to Jane’s Navy International, two additional, undisclosed U.S. security partners have joined the LCS program as partners with an intention to purchase 10 to 16 ships.

The next challenge for the U.S. will be to create early successes for the LCS to show that the ship can execute its required missions despite its unconventional origins. This should lead to bringing in additional foreign partners and purchasers, and a gradual reduction in the ship’s average cost, it is hoped.

Although born of controversy and initially widely disparaged in the Navy, the LCS appears as though it may yet rise to the challenge as a force integrator for the U.S. and its security partners in Asia, and a key component of Washington’s strategic vision for the Asia Pacific.