The first upgunned frigate version of the Littoral Combat Ship is slated to have an over-the-horizon missile, but the Navy’s director of surface warfare wants to demonstrate at least one such missile—and preferably more than that—on the ship by the end of the year.
“My intention is [to test] as many missiles as I can in 2016. If someone has a missile, bring it,” Rear Adm. Peter Fanta, director of surface warfare division (N96), said during a speech Tuesday at the Surface Navy Association national symposium. “If I can bolt it on, I will. If I can get a ship out there, if you’ve got a better missile, let’s go try it.”
As the director of surface warfare, Fanta is not responsible for the acquisition of the over-the-horizon missile, but the Navy still plans to proceed with an open competition for the missile and has identified five potential contenders, he said.
Capt. Dan Brintzinghoffer, the Navy’s frigate program manager, has said a competition must start in 2016 to ensure that the frigate is equipped with an over-the-horizon capability when it’s delivered to the service (Defense Daily, Oct. 15). But with the first two frigates scheduled to be procured in fiscal year 2019 and delivered years after that, Fanta thinks the service would benefit from gaining experience with as many potential contenders as possible.
“Instead of waiting to get a perfect system sometime in the future, I think we need a system out there now,” he said. “Let’s learn how to operate with it, let’s get multiple systems out there, figure out which one is the best. Why not have a shootoff? The one that sinks the most surface targets wins.”
The simultaneous procurement, development and testing is emblematic of the distributed lethality concept Navy officials unveiled last year. Aimed at increasing the offensive punch of the fleet, distributed lethality calls for up-arming ships with mature weapons capable of hitting an enemy at extended ranges and nondevelopmental shipboard systems that greatly increase the capability of a vessel.
This past year, Fanta was informed of a need for a missile defense capability on destroyers situated in Rota, Spain. Within seven months, the Navy integrated Raytheon’s [RTN] SeaRAM Anti-Ship Missile Defense System on four destroyers for the first time. That endeavor required a lot of concurrent work: Congressional staff reprogrammed $15 million for the systems, the Navy procured systems and engineers figured out how to install it on ships.
After a year of analyzing the distributed lethality concept, Vice Adm. Tom Rowden, commander of naval surface forces, said the Navy is ready to start operating its platforms differently. This spring, three Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers will deploy as a “surface action group” united under a single “command element,” he said.
The deployment will help the Navy answer questions about it can use different groupings of ships.
“How can we operate them differently? How can we think differently about their operations, about they way they execute mission control, about how they work together to know and to understand to create lethality in our adversary’s mind?” Rowden said.
Since service leaders unveiled the distributed lethality concept last year, the Navy has put together a task force—which included officials from the fleet, OPNAV, naval war college and post graduate schools—to evaluate the effectiveness of distributed lethality through analysis and 10 wargames.
“It works. It delivers value,” Rowden said. “How much? We need to continue to work that, but I can tell you it is significant.”