The Navy now wants to introduce all of the newly planned capabilities for more lethal firepower and survivability on the Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) sooner than previously stated and will re-designate them as frigates, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said Thursday.
The Navy planned to build 32 LCSs in their current configuration then transition to the fully upgraded version for the final 20 to meet the 52-ship requirement for the small surface combatants, while keeping open the possibility of incrementally adding some of the new capabilities to other LCSs. But Mabus said now the objective is to introduce the full complement of upgrades and capabilities as soon as possible and call the ships frigates.
“We are going to try to fold in these new capabilities earlier than 32. All of them. If we fold in some we’re going to fold in all,” he told reporters after addressing the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium.
“We’re not going to piecemeal it. We will do the entire upgrade,” he said.
Mabus told the symposium that the Pentagon has gotten away from Navy tradition in recent names for ship classes, citing the LCS as an example. In switching to the frigate, or FF, terminology, Mabus said, he was looking to restore the more “appropriate and traditional” custom for ship class designations.
Sean Stackley, the Navy’s acquisition chief, told reporters at SNA that some of the earlier iterations of the LCSs could also get some of the upgrades on an incremental basis, and in other cases, the upgrades could be designed into them so they are fitted to receive the new capabilities at a later time.
“What you decide along the way is how much of this do we want to go ahead and pull forward,” Stackley said. “In certain cases, we might pull the whole thing forward, in other cases it might be, well, we know enough to build the ship for but not necessarily with that capability…but then the ultimate system…would come later.”
It was not said whether the ships that receive only partial upgrades would be re-designated as frigates.
Mabus said the goal of the task force set up last year under orders from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was to make the LCS more lethal and survivable with capabilities more consistent to a frigate. With the upgrades, the LCS will now have “frigate-like capabilities,” he said.
“It’s a frigate and we’re going to call it one,” Mabus said. Mabus did not say on which hull number the transition to the frigate would begin. For now, the Navy is keeping the LCS designation for the ones that don’t get the upgrades, but the service is reconsidering that as well, Mabus told reporters. He said dropping “littoral” from the name was not a step back from the ship’s designed capability to operate in coastal waters but instead to emphasize an ability in “blue waters–that it’s not just brown waters.”
A year ago Hagel questioned the effectiveness of the LCS and truncated the buys of it to 32, instructing the service to come up with something better. In December Hagel approved the Navy’s plan to upgrade the monohull Freedom and trimaran Independence, the former built by Lockheed Martin [LMT] and the latter by Austal USA.
Key aspects of the modified LCSs will be an over-the-horizon missile absent on the current ones, and adding a multi-function towed array for submarine hunting. The Navy wants to add 25mm guns and torpedo defense, increased electronic warfare capabilities, and better air radar and decoy systems. The ships will also get more armor to improve survivability.
Stackley told reporters earlier this month that the service is moving quickly to set up a separate program office for the new frigates that will be under the LCS program executive office. Until Mabus’ frigate announcement Thursday, the Navy had been referring to the upgraded version as the “modified LCS.”
Mabus said it was “wrong” to suggest he was changing the name to frigate for political rather than historic reasons, as a cynical way to pre-empt long standing critics of the LCS program who view the ships as lacking the punch of a customary Navy warship. Some have referred to it as the “little crappy ship.”
Mabus acknowledged that critics may not like it because it does not look like a traditional Navy ship, but he insisted they the newly designated frigates will be just as, if not more capable than, any other class of frigates.
“If you look at what a frigate is supposed to be able to do, that is what this ship does,” he said.
Mabus said he will be coming up with new designations for the Afloat Forward Staging Base and Joint High Speed Vessel in the weeks ahead, two other classes whose names he believes are out of line with tradition.