Their days often started off as early as 6 a.m., arriving at a nondescript building in Crystal City not far from the Pentagon. They’d grab some coffee and a little later sit down for a short meeting to review progress and the work ahead, and then go about their business.
The business at hand for the 40 or so people assigned to the Small Surface Combatant Task Force was to figure out how to make the much maligned Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) better, to make it more lethal and more capable of surviving in battle. And to do it quickly, as the Navy wanted to see options in a matter of months. The task force was headed up by John Burrow, the executive director of Marine Corps Systems Command.
The LCS program, a ship class consisting of two variants with three swappable mission modules for surface, anti-submarine and anti-mine warfare, had been the subject of public criticism. Members of Congress, close observers, and some even within the Navy thought the LCS strayed too far from traditional Navy ships, and did not have the firepower and survivability to deal with today’s threats.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel appeared to agree with those assessments when a year ago he instructed the Navy to come up with something else. The service would still be allowed to build up to 32 LCSs of the Freedom monohull and trimaran Independence variants, but would have to find a better option to fill out the remaining 20 ships needed to meet the small surface combatant requirement.
Weeks after Hagel’s announcement, the Navy chartered the Small Surface Combatant Task Force that was told to, in accordance with Hagel’s orders, come up with alternatives that could include using an existing design for a new type of ship, a new design all together, or beefing up the LCS. The task force’s mandate was to come up with possibilities to inform the Navy’s senior leaders toward reaching a final decision—not make it for them.
In December the Navy announced it was going with a stronger version of the LCS, one that would add armor and other technologies to make it more survivable, such as torpedo defense, and capabilities to make it more lethal, such as an over-the-horizon missile system. Earlier in January Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the LCS designation for the new iteration of the ships would be dropped in favor of calling them frigates.
Now that the task force is done, the Navy invited a handful of reporters into the task force’s “war room” to offer insight into how the process played out over nine months of 12-to 13-hour workdays to review thousands of options under a tight deadline to get the work done.
It involved compiling and analyzing hull and combat system data, assessing cost, risk and operational analysis, and integrating input from the fleet. The task force also received dozens of proposals from industry through two requests for information last year, one for hulls and another for combat systems.
“It was extremely intense,” said a Navy official who described the process to reporters on the condition of anonymity.
The midsized room’s walls were covered with pinned up papers, documents, and complicated charts, all lending to the lengthy and exhaustive process undertaken by the task force. The official referred to all of the information as a “density of options.” Some of the walls had blank areas where classified documents had been removed ahead of the media visit.
The task force started off by identifying what it called “concept capabilities” that would lead to the new missions to be added to the small surface combatant. An initial 192 concept capabilities were eventually whittled down to the eight that would form the basis of making the ship more defensible while adding more lethal, longer range strike capability and boosting surface and anti-submarine warfare.
“We started to walk through and methodically tried to come down to something that was manageable,” said the official. The official said outlining the concept capabilities first represented a “set-based design approach” to examine all possible options, rather than simply defining a requirement and getting a system to match it.
“You don’t eliminate everything from the beginning and you walk your way down to a representative set,” the official said.
Most of the 192 concept capabilities fell off the table because they too closely encroached on missions already being carried out by the Navy’s fleet, such as air warfare and defense conducted by Aegis cruisers and destroyers.
In total the task force reviewed more than 500,000 different possible combinations and configurations aimed at meeting the concept capabilities, the official said. The team looked at 23 existing ship designs and more than 2,300 different ways of configuring combat systems, the official said. More than 200 cost estimates were produced.
Ideas poured in from many companies and a handful of countries, including Lockheed Martin [LMT], the prime contractor for the Freedom variant, and Austal USA, the builder of the Independence version.
Eighteen of the existing ship designs other than the LCS that were reviewed were domestic offerings, while the task force also looked at numerous foreign designs, including five formally submitted under the RFI.
Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII] was the only company that made its proposal public, and it consisted of modifying the National Security Cutters it’s building for the Coast Guard into a frigate for the Navy.
The Navy did not want to discuss other companies or countries involved because their proposals had not been made public. Some of the foreign designs involved frigates or small destroyers. Of the designs reviewed, 10 aligned as viable choices, and only one of those was domestic. A Navy official refused to say whether that was Huntington Ingalls Industries’ offering.
As the task force was establishing concept capabilities, a parallel track to assess needs was set up using focus groups, half representing the Pacific fleet and the others representing the Atlantic fleet.
They were asked to game out the most desired capabilities by placing poker chips on a chart outlining multiple options. As the rounds went on, they were given fewer chips, effectively shrinking their budget to nudge them into prioritizing.
The Navy official said the discussion within the focus groups resulted in “very passionate and heated debates,” but “they would eventually get down to the point that they understood the value.”
The focus groups arrived at a conclusion that prioritized surface and submarine warfare, an outcome similar to the individuals working the concept capabilities, the official said.
One capability the working groups desired was air warfare, but as tradeoffs tightened, they ended up placing a greater emphasis on surface and submarine attack, said another official.
Some had anticipated that the Navy would add more air capability to the ship by adding a vertical launch system for missiles and by using a scaled down version of the Aegis Combat System. But the service decided against it, citing cost and space considerations.
In the end, the newly upgraded, multi-mission version of the small surface combatant, or frigate, features an over-the-horizon missile, adds a multi-function towed array for anti-submarine warfare, 25mm guns, and torpedo defense. It replaces the Rolling Airframe Missile Guided Weapon System (RAM) on LCS with the more capable SeaRAM. There will be increased electronic warfare capabilities, better air radar and decoy systems as well as steps to decrease the ship’s detectability.
The upgrades are estimated to add $75 million to the cost of each ship over the current LCSs.
There have been questions as to the significance of the changes, whether the new capabilities make the ship more of a frigate, “frigate like,” or whether it represents just a new flight of the LCS.
One of the Navy officials in the war room brushed off the debate, saying that whatever it’s called, the new ship is a significant improvement over its predecessor.
“The capabilities on this ship in terms of improved lethality, multi-mission capability, and the survivability improvements that we’ve had, it’s not an LCS that is out there today,” the official said. “The ship is capable, it’s survivable, and it has features that we have proven out in analysis that the operational community not only values, but loves.”