US Navy - Problems with Freedom Class Littoral Combat Ships

[NavyShooter]

So has "Sub Brief".

Personal thought - the Navy should make the Sub Brief videos available to all SONAR Ops to watch...make it part of their QSP at the DP2/QL5 level.

 

[KevinB]

This little gem needs mass distribution amongst all services of all of NATO…

 

[Kirkhill]

CDR Salamander has been ringing the bell on the LCS shortcomings for years.

LCS's Long, Sad, and Early Goodbye

...we can still celebrate and gloat though...

cdrsalamander.substack.com

Marinette Marine's Freedom's was to Austal's Independence as Avis was to Hertz.

Austal impressed the Marines with their West Pac and the Army liked it too. That resulted in the Joint High Speed Vessel, now known as the Spearhead class Expeditionary Fast Transport.

The EPF program combines the Army's Theater Support Vessel (TSV) program (dating from 2004) with the Navy and Marine Corps High Speed Connector (HSC) (requirement dating from 2004).[35][36] The EPF program received Milestone A approval in May 2006. The Navy awarded Phase One preliminary design contracts in early 2008, and a detail design and construction contract in the 4th Quarter of FY08.

Planning for a class of smaller, agile, multipurpose warships to operate in the littoral zone began in the early 2000s. In July 2003, a proposal by General Dynamics (partnering with Austal USA, the American subsidiary of Australian shipbuilder Austal) was approved by the Navy, with a contract for two vessels.[24] These would then be compared to two ships built by Lockheed Martin to determine which design would be taken up by the Navy for a production run of up to 55 ships.

The first ship, Independence was laid down at the Austal USA shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, on 19 January 2006.

The Freedom class was proposed by a consortium formed by Lockheed Martin as "prime contractor" and by Fincantieri (project) through the subsidiary Marinette Marine (manufacturer) as a contender for a fleet of small, multipurpose warships to operate in the littoral zone.

Despite plans in 2004 to only accept two each of the Freedom and Independence variants, in December 2010 the U.S. Navy announced plans to order up to 10 additional ships of each class, for a total 12 ships per class

As far as I'm concerned the issue is that the Navy wanted Blue Water ships and these strange Australian boats were not real ships. On the other hand the Wisconsin boat looked like a real boat with its single hull and it could go really fast.


The Australian boats that were born on the First Island Chain and are in regular commercial service there will probably serve the USMC and the US Army well enough in the region. Even if there is no crew on board at all..

Navy deploys autonomous ship designed to run without humans

Maybe one day war will just be machines fighting machines

www.theregister.com

 

[dimsum]

So has "Sub Brief".

Personal thought - the Navy should make the Sub Brief videos available to all SONAR Ops to watch...make it part of their QSP at the DP2/QL5 level.

Is he the guy who puts ASW in layman’s terms? If so, it should be part of AES Op, TACCO, and MH / LRP Pilots’ QSPs too.

 

[NavyShooter]

 

[Kirkhill]

Give them to the Independence fleet to the Marines or to MSC then. Let them use them as armed transports. Or maybe give them to USVDIV-1 for field experimentation.

Unmanned Surface Vessel Division One (USVDIV-1)

Just keep them away from the real navy.

 

[Kirkhill]

The LCS and Autonomous Weapons (anything fitted with a MMW Radar seeker) Hellfire and Brimstone for example.

Littoral Combat Ship Can Now Rapidly Shoot Down Aerial Drones With Hellfire Missiles

Houthi attacks in the Red Sea prompted the Navy to rush the counter-drone Hellfire capability for the Freedom class into service.

www.twz.com

The U.S. Navy carried out a crash program last year to enable Freedom class littoral combat ships (LCS) armed with radar-guided AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire missiles to fire those weapons against uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) — in other words, drones. This came in direct response to concerns about Houthi drone threats to American warships operating in and around the Red Sea.

The USS Indianapolis is the first Freedom class LCS to get this counter-drone upgrade, which it received in the course of operations in the Middle East last fall. Indianapolis was deployed between March and November 2024, during which time it also operated in the Atlantic Ocean and around Europe. Indianapolis is also the first LCS from either the Freedom or Independence classes to receive a Combat Action Ribbon, which we will come back to later on.

The main element of the SSMM (Surface to Surface Missile Module) s are launchers that can be loaded with up to 24 AGM-114Ls at a time. Unlike many other Hellfire variants, the Longbow Hellfire features millimeter wave radar rather than laser guidance. On LCSs, the ship’s radar cues the missiles to their targets and the seekers on the missile lock on and destroy their assigned targets autonomously. The SSMM reached initial operational capability on Freedom class LCSs in 2019. The same year, the Navy began testing the module on Independence class LCSs.

The main purpose of the SSMM initially was to give Freedom or Independence-class LCSs additional capacity to counter swarms of small boats, crewed and uncrewed, something that remains a real threat. Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen have been particular pioneers in the use of explosive-laden uncrewed kamikaze boats. However, Ukraine’s employment of a still-expanding array of uncrewed surface vessels, including kamikaze types, in and around the Black Sea has been responsible for fully thrusting the dangers they pose into the mainstream consciousness. In 2022, the Navy also showed that the SSMM could be used to fire Longbow Hellfires at targets on land.

The idea, broadly, of employing AGM-114s, especially the radar-guided Longbow variant, against aerial threats is also not new. Israeli AH-64 attack helicopters have used Hellfires to down drones, and the U.S. Army is increasingly training to do the same with its Apaches. Other U.S. military helicopters might be able to employ Hellfires in the air-to-air role, as well. The Army has also explored employing AGM-114Ls as surface-to-air interceptors in the past.

 

[Kirkhill]

Disparaged, discontinued...and indispensable? Littoral combat ships take on real-world ops

The battle-tested LCS has moved past its reliability problems, surface-forces leaders said.

www.defenseone.com

The Navy may have capped its fleet of much-anticipated—and much-maligned—littoral combat ships at 28 for now, but their commanders haven’t stopped trying to squeeze every last ounce of capability out of them.

LCSs deployed to the Persian Gulf and the waters off of South America in the past year, the commodore of Littoral Combat Ship Squadron 2 told an audience at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium on Wednesday, including a 22-month deployment executed by two crews assigned to the Indianapolis.

“You don’t think you can maintain these ships and operate long periods of time?” Capt. Mark Haney said. “Indianapolis proved them wrong.”

The ship also received a Combat Action Ribbon, the first for an LCS, as Houthi drones and missiles flew overhead in the Red Sea.

For the record Indianapolis is NOT an Austal Trimaran. It is the Monohull variant that experienced most of the development problems and was curtailed.

Meanwhile, the St. Louis traveled south, doing anti-submarine operations with its helicopter detachment and helping to interdict $111 million worth of marijuana and cocaine headed for North America.

“LCS is ideally suited for this type of interdiction operation,” Haney said.

St Louis is a sister monohull.

“The decommissionings, at this point, have halted. And those are decisions that are made above my level. We inform those,” LeClair said. “The ships did have reliability challenges four to five years ago” but “the reliability issues are really a thing of the past.”

And with an “insatiable need” for surface combatants, LeClair added, the Navy can’t afford to let LCS go completely by the wayside.

To that point, Haney mentioned in his remarks that Indianapolis was at times the only surface combatant in the Red Sea when Houthi attacks terrorized commercial ships.

“These 28 ships are workhorses, and they're important, and we're going to need them. We need them now,” he said. “But we're really going to need them if we get into it in the next year or two.”

Navy Has Fixed the Gears of Nearly Half of Its Freedom-Class Littoral Combat Ships

Eight ships have yet to get the combining-gear fix, including three the Navy wants to retire in two years.

www.defenseone.com

....

US Navy version of Rumsfeld's Law.

“You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”​

― Donald Rumsfeld

 

[Kirkhill]

And the Independence Class is being focused on MCM apparently.

The US Navy is turning its war trimarans into minehunters. It’s not before time

Robot boat and laser-eye copter gets the USN some MCM at last

www.telegraph.co.uk

The US Navy is turning its war trimarans into minehunters. It’s not before time​

Robot boat and laser-eye copter gets the USN some MCM at last

It took a lot longer than it should have, but the US Navy is finally ready to deploy its first new minesweepers in decades.

In December, the crew of the Littoral Combat Ship USS Santa Barbara, homeported in San Diego, completed training with a suite of mine-clearing equipment including a 33-foot, sonar-equipped robotic boat and a Sikorsky MH-60S helicopter fitted with lasers for detecting underwater mines – and miniature torpedoes for blowing them up.

Santa Barbara is the third of the 20-foot (Sic) Independence-class LCSs to get the mine-countermeasures (MCM) suite but the first planned for deployment, later this year. In all, the Navy plans to add the robotic boat and mine-blasting helicopter to 15 of the 17 LCSs it plans to retain over the long term.

All the trimaran Independences are based in San Diego, but expect to see them in two eastern theatres: the western Pacific and the Persian Gulf. That’s where the Navy stations its eight existing Avenger-class minesweepers, which date from the 1980s and are scheduled to decommission no later than 2027. A smaller class of coastal minesweepers left the fleet more than a decade ago, initiating a long period of elevated risk for the Navy as it arguably deployed fewer minesweepers than it needed.

 

[Kirkhill]

More on upgunning the LCSs - Mk70 PDS.

I am guessing this means helos and UAVs sharing the flight deck with seacans.

‘LCS is Back’ with Firepower Upgrades Including New Missile Launchers - USNI News

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Navy is planning a lethality upgrade on both classes of the Littoral Combat Ship that includes the ability to launch larger missiles like the SM-6, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said on Wednesday. “Today, the Littoral Combat Ship is equipped with the Naval Strike...

news.usni.org

The Independence class has a beam of 30-32m with a full width flight deck. The PDS has a width of 2.44 m. Adding a pair of seacans, port and starboard, would leave a landing area of about 25 m. The MH60R has a rotor diameter of 16 m. The Firescout MQ-8C has a rotor diameter of 11.2 m. Both aircraft are due for retirement. One replacement for the Firescout could be the VBat-120 with a wing span of only 3 m.

Seacans on the flight deck? Back to 1982. Atlantic Conveyor had a beam of 28m. A little bit narrower than the LCS but still had room for a CH-47 with an 18.29 m rotor diameter.