Virtually nothing of the LCS’s original operational concept, acquisition strategy and approach to manning and sustainment remains.
No major acquisition program has gone through the multiple perturbations in so short a time as experienced by the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) and not only survived but seemingly flourished. What was originally conceived of as a small, extremely fast, maneuverable, expendable and, therefore, relatively inexpensive light warship for operations such as mine countermeasures and countering fast attack craft in inshore or littoral waters has morphed into a multi-mission frigate intended to fight and survive in high-end battles. Gone are the original ideas of a low cost vessel built to commercial standards, survivability based on speed, rapidly reconfigurable operations based on plug and play mission modules, small crew size and limited suite of weapons, electronic warfare systems and sensors. Virtually nothing of the LCS’s original operational concept, acquisition strategy and approach to manning and sustainment remains.
The fact that the program continues to progress even while undergoing such turbulent change is a testament to the ingenuity and innovativeness of the two shipbuilder/integrator teams, one led by Lockheed Martin with Marinette Marine and the other by Austal and General Dynamics. In just the past two years, these teams have had to deal with decisions by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the Navy that truncated the total number of LCS at 32 and the overall class size to 40 vice the original plan for 52, radically changed the weapons and sensor suites on the last LCS, turned the final eight ships of the planned total into a larger and more capable variant of the LCS design, and down selected from two to one contractor team by 2019. The teams responded to all these demands while simultaneously delivering vessels at an exceptionally low price. In addition, both shipbuilders, Marinette and Austal invested significant corporate resources to improve the way they built the LCS. On top of these major changes, the Navy last week announced that it was radically altering its plan for assigning missions, modules and crews, abandoning modularity in favor of single missions and larger, dedicated crews.
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