By Geoff Fein
Even though the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) will not be delivered to the fleet as soon as originally intended, the Navy has no plan to fill the gap in capability with modernizing its aging fleet of frigates, according to a top admiral.
Additionally, the Navy is conducting a study to examine the best approach for the Future Surface Combatant (FSC)–the potential follow-on to DDG-51 and DDG-1000.
The Navy had proposed LCS to be an relatively inexpensive ship that the Navy would be able to get in a hurry to meet the projected threats in the littorals, Sen. Carl Levin (D- Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), said during yesterday’s subcommittee on seapower hearing.
“[We] find we won’t get these ships in a hurry and they won’t be as inexpensive as we had expected,” he said. “What is the Navy doing to meet the urgent threat LCS was intended to address?”
Vice Adm. Barry McCullough, deputy chief of naval operations for integration of capabilities and resources (N8), told committee members that the three mission areas LCS is currently planned for: Mine Warfare (MIW), Anti Surface Warfare (SuW) and Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) can be covered with existing assets.
“We currently have dedicated mine ships that provide us mine warfare capability in the mine counter measures arena. LCS will replace those ships as they phase out,” he said. As well as the airborne anti mine counter [measures] that are provided by the MH-60R. So we have capability in that arena now.”
In ASW in the littorals, the Navy has capability, but not to the degree that it would like to have with LCS, McCullough added.
“But we do have some systems…[that the] Navy is working on to address that threat–both sonobouys and non-acoustic prosecutions and other such assets,” he said.
In area of SuW, the Navy is taking great strides to upgrade the capability of its current combatant fleet with the addition of the Mk 38 Mod 2 stabilized 25mm chain gun, resident in most of the service’s surface combatants, McCullough said. “I think we make the 100th install next month.”
“We’ve also modified the ammunition that our 5-inch gun shoots to have more of a dispersed ammunition that can take out swarming small boats and we can mitigate the risk posed by those threats,” he added. “We’d like to have those ships to pursue other activities and that’s what we need the LCS for. But we can mitigate the threat for the near-term.”
Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) questioned whether the Navy’s frigates would be able to be a gap filler until LCS is deployed.
McCullough noted the frigates are nearing the end of their service life and any attempt to extend them beyond that would not bring a good return on the investment for the Navy.
“Currently, decommissioning of frigates takes those ships out to the end of their estimated service life of 30 years. We have modernized those ships with the addition of reverse osmosis water distillation units, single arm boat davits and improvements or replacements of diesel electric generators,” McCullough said. “We did mid-life those ships to give them capability to get to end of their service life.”
The problem, McCullough said, is that some of the frigates are experiencing hull thinning that the service never anticipated. Additionally, all but about three of the ships the Navy currently has are critically weight limited.
“We’d be unable to add any additional capability to those ships, from a displacement standpoint,” McCullough said. “And the very few not critically weight limited are high- addition weight limited, so they’re center of gravity limited, so the ability to put other things high in the ships is very limited.”
The Navy took the missile systems off the frigates because they were unique with the SM-1 Medium Range missile and didn’t adequately address the threat, McCullough added.
“Also, the SH-60B helicopters are sun-downing in 2016, 2017. These ships are not upgraded to take the MH-60R,” he said
McCullough told lawmakers he has looked at the modernization effort Australia is doing with their frigates to extend the service life.
“The Australian program is estimated at about $300 million per unit, and that depends on the conversion of the Australian dollar at the given time. And their current program is four years behind schedule,” McCullough said.
“These ships have been great ships, and served a useful purpose but they are at the end of their service life,” he said of the U.S. Navy’s frigates. “Upgrading them would [bring] very little return on investment to extend them until we get LCS on board.”
McCullough told the committee that the Future Surface Combatant (FSC) was an agreement the Navy reached with the Office of the Secretary of Defense as the service restarted the DDG-51 program.
“It was to look at ships in FY ’12 and out…to look at applicability of improved combat systems and which hull forms they best fit in whether that be the [DDG-] 51 or [DDG-] 1000 hull form, and what size radar capacity we could put in those ships,” he said.
“We have embarked on a study being led by Johns Hopkins University addressing that right now. From that study, we will see what capability is achievable to get at the heart of the threat with limited technical risk and where that best fits in respect to the hull form and what’s the best path for the replacement cruiser to come out of that study,” McCullough added.