NLOS was cancelled due to the simple expedient that it didnt work!. There was a similar, though much shorter ranged, Israeli system (IAI’s Jumper) that was being considered as a replacement, last I heard, to keep the surface warfare module viable.

Thanks Jonesy, would you have any details on the failures?

with regards to labour costs I am comparing to other US ships, which makes perfect sense as we are talking of the survival of the LCS within the USN and then thereafter the purchase of LCS by other navies.

matt
Satyameva jayate Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: UK
Posts: 4,118

I do not understand the link between the heading the news reported. Also if gates was really interested in making the US NAVY lean you would think he would go for something like the LCS and all it tries to offer in terms of man power reduction.

What is a standard crew of a destroyer? What are the overheads? If you use 246 as the number of people x 60 dollars an hour (for over head) x 356 days x 8 hours a day you end up with $31,527360 per year.

Assuming the overheads in running a ship with the level of technology a destroyer has is very high.

Or you could do it the other way around, which would be lets assume a sailor would get something similar to a graduate engineer which would be somewhere around £25,000 or $25,000 x 246 which is the complement of the ship 6,150000 not considering the other over heads.

Times either figure by 50 and you start talking scary numbers.

Does the US Navy publish figures as to how much it costs to operate and sail a destroyer or submarine?

It is better that the LCS carry on with its reduced crew and be used as a new wave and model to restructure the US NAVY.

I am suprised that lean has not been taken up by the NAVY.

After thought, just because the NAVY kills of the LCS does not mean that littoral combat itself is redundant or not required.
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Wrinkles wrinkles my kingdom fallen to a wrinkle

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Last edited by matt; 19th May 2010 at 07:01.

I have done a simple costs of these ships in labour terms over a term of 30 years. please see below. i need information for MEKO A100 and A200 (significant manning difference apparently between 96 people and 120 people). Does anyone have the capital cost of those ships?

I did a capex comparison and over a 100 ships you are all correct MEKO’s come out cheaper, soon as you spend the money on the ships you have to right it off. as you cant sell the ships to make the money back. Obviously you are not going to get the 100 ships in one year so you are looking at manufacturing improvements which would offset inflation and also at those numbers of ships you could look at some kind of positive effect due to the high rates of production required.

One thing that is very very difficult to do in a balanced manner is to put a cost/price on the benifits of having a faster ship and the cost associated with lost of life if one of those ships is lost as apposed to a MEKO A200.

Things also become difficult if you assume that all of the LCS have the same setup that Israel wanted (reported cost of $600m).

Also the shipyards that are building the MEKO are now owned by UAE arent they?

The biggest downside of the LCS. Is the cost of the platform, especially given how basic it is without Mission modules fitted.

Because the modules are not exactly cheap either.

What is the projected production cost of the LCS hull and then thereafter the individual module costs?

Everyone keeps saying it is very expensive but I have only seen the costs of the original R&D vessels…Along with a comment in the same reports which say that the LCS is key to the USN getting a 316 fleet navy in the future.

Were not really that rich at the moment, and Id rather have a pension, less cuts in transport and make sure trident is not dumped than have a private smooze molpane for mr cameron and the expensis rich, grabbers that would fly in a ministrial plane.

Unless offcourse it happens to be an AC-130 in which case I will do the fund raising for them myself. What better way to save money than having ministers fight from the front and be brave about going to war by having a one on one.. 🙂

this will probably be a dull point but why during this scenario were all of the L.C.S.’s armed with the same module? would it not be more realistic to mix these modules within the fleet so that they don’t have to run away tp re-equip in the event of a change of threat?

B.T.W. I have no clue about these modules, could you explain how they work

Maybe it was a dry run of the ever so inevitable “OH SH$$” moment where a commander has 316 ship fleet with around 56-100 LCS and decides it would be a good idea to fit all the LCS with the same module…

Who are the people who did the test? are they an accountancy firm? auditors? where are they from what is the background?

Littoral Combat Ship: It’s The Mission Packages, Stupid

(Source: Lexington Institute; issued September 7, 2010)

(© Lexington Institute; reproduced by permission)

One might argue that the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program has had more than its fair share of challenges. First there was the difficulty of carrying along two very different ship designs, one by a Lockheed Martin-led team (LCS 1 and 3) and another by a General Dynamics led team (LCS 2 and 4). Then there was the effort to qualify two relatively small commercial shipyards to build vessels to Navy standards. Finally, there was the “sticker shock” caused by rising costs and the repeated program slippages.

More recently, the Navy seemed to have the LCS program under control. LCS 1 and 2 have been to sea, demonstrating some remarkable capabilities. LCS 1 also participated in a drug interdiction operation and in the RIMPAC 2010 international naval exercises. LCS 3 and 4 are being built.

While the planned down-select to one ship type and an initial contract for ten LCSs has been delayed for unknown reasons, the Navy is still expected to make an award soon. The planned buy of 55 LCSs is vital to attainment of the goal of a 316 ship Navy.

SNIP______________ read the whole article from here http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/117891/lcs-problem-is-in-mission-packages%2C-not-design.html

Yet, the three initial mission packages for anti-surface, anti-submarine and mine countermeasures are all experiencing difficulties. Development of the highly-classified anti-submarine warfare mission package essentially has been halted. Progress on the surface warfare mission package has been slowed by problems with the unmanned surface vessel and the cancellation of the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System which was intended to provide a high volume, precision-guided rocket capability for the LCS.

Out of all the modules you would want to cancel why would you cancel Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System? I presume this was putting something like ATACM Block A onto an LCS so that it can be effective in fire support from the “littoral” combat ships?

I have always wondered why the state heads aircraft arent something a bit more substantial..

I mean unless you are flying in a MC-130 or a AC-130 what is the point?

I mean you could get a bunch of them in the air during Kyoto or some such meeting and “negotiations” and when you have gun ho prime ministers ready to go to war what better way to “slog out” the small print.

What aircraft where they going to use out of interest?

The first half of the Red Arrows display at farborough on saturday was pretty boring, but that might be to do with the news about HAWKs being grounded and a new pilot joining. Second half started to be more fun.

Best display I have seen them do is over water where they seem to fly a lot lower and closer to the public.

Eitherway I still like a lot of the stunts they did at the later half of the farnborough display.

Have we been spoilt as spectators with the displays of Mig-29’s, Su-30’s and the recent F-22? Is that why people thing the red arrows have lost the excitement?

The blades were amazing! and from start to finish they did put on more of a show then the red arrows this year.

Brahmos range easily extendable by other countries

If other countries can do it I am sure India could easily extend it. I am sure that fact is not advertised as it would run afoul of MTCR.

I do not think MTCR is a restriction for the Bhramos, its payload is not large enough for Brahmos to be put under MTCR. MTCR requires a payload of 500Kg I think and a range over 300Km.. it needs both for a missile to fall within this regime.

Otherwise you would not have EU countries trying to buy things like JASSM.

Its a good way to keep a secure job! baki sab chalta hai..

But seriously Misraji I googled to get a source to show how comman 90Ti 6Al 4V is.. I know that to be a fact! however for it to be valid on this forum i needed an external source.

With regards to coming up with a better quality alloy the Russian suppliers would have provided that! That would or should not have caused any delay to Kaveri! as for the beta alloy again it is difficult to think that the Russians would not supply us this material. And again the way that it is described or written in the artical it is as if a student with no work experience or knowledge of engineering wrote it not something from a technical person.

You could argue that for strategic reasons you would want to develop materials your self (consider that India does have raw material to make titanium although not in its best form), however prudence would say that you do that in parrallel and kick of the Kaveri work using what is available on the market!

With regards to tweaking 6al4v at most you are looking at a research project which is at most maned by 2 Engineers and 3-5 operators for 2 years with materials database requiring possibly upto a year! Also out of all the great things claimed about GTRE this alloy issue is a claimed by DMRL.

Also this harping on about not getting BLISK right seems like a left hook to distract from some other main problem. You can make compressor and turbine stages without blade in disks. Yes a BLISK will reduce weight and mean you may be able to reduce manufacturing costs but if you cant get BLISK to work thats not an Issue the engine should still not suffer greatly for it…

I would not compare the Kaveri to the Eurojet or any other modern Jet as it is unfair, but it should meet its own design targets and criterion.

Again this may be down to how the artical is written and formatted (i.e. it is in the form of an interview and not a technical document)