I kn ow what they are. The comparison is the threat, and the defence against it, not the hull. Why do you think the Israeli’s came up with the SAAR 5 in the first place?

To get into a fight with, and overmatch, the Syrian and Egyptian fast missile boat flotilla’s. Essentially refight Latakia better.

Most definitely not the same brief as the US has set for LCS. LCS is pure asymmetric threat and more optimised for battlespace monitoring/preparation in an entirely different threat scenario. If, through offboard assets, it detects a small flotilla of FAC(M)’s inbound it will be running from them at the rush screaming rape whilst trying to get an MQ-8/MH-60 to pot a couple with APKWS/Hellfire or at least guide in a Harpoon strike from the attendant fleet unit over the horizon.

Its probably this kind of scenario thats driving the renewed interest in a multimode-seeker ‘TASM-NG’ thats being touted off the back of TACTOM.

They where not fleet units and never intended to be. The Spraunces where the fleet ASW units. OHPs and Knox where both hindered by thewir lack of speed. It’s tough to sprint and drift when the battle fleet is moving at 25 knots and you can only do 29 (less for Knox) max. Not much of a sprint.

Fleet capable designs. You think a semi-planing hull is going to beat 29knts anywhere above Sea State 4?.

The LCS can launch and recover helos in sea state 4/5, ten foot waves. Frankly no one is doing ASW in SS5 since you can’t hear your target over the noise of the ocean action in those conditions.

Towed arrays can be trailed several hundred feet below the surface and modern arrays can be deployed and recovered even at SS6.

As for handling big heavy waves the OHPs had problems with them as well in fact they had problems with deck cracks due to heavy seas. At any rate you keep getting fixated on heavy seas but you fail to realize that the frigates of yore had their own set of significant problems and compromises due to their size and lack of speed.

Hull cracks???. Metal fatigue happens to most ships to some extent. It has got nothing, whatsoever, to do with what we are talking about here which is seakeeping.

How you get not including blue water from that is beyond me. In fact it specifically says in company of CSGs, ESGs (those comprise fleet units) and pose a threat to any freindly units. Note, nothing about friendly units only sailing in littoral.

Nowhere does that state that it involves blue water operations either….which isnt suprising as the hull isnt equipped for it.

Funny you should bring up the Leanders. They are about the same size as the LCS and they performed ocean escort well enough to have survived for 35 years.

Displacement hull. Optimised for open ocean operations. Actual hull displacement and ‘size’ as you put it is largely irrelevent. Get yourself out into decent waves on a 20ft+ Bayliner or Sealine style sports boat and see how you enjoy the experience….then try and do 30knts and see what happens. It will be an instructive experience for you.

On the other hand no sub is going to be able to track a target in a heavy sea either. Too much ocean noise.

The crew of HNoMS Utvaer would seem to have missed that wisdom as they were sinking HMS Albion!.

BTW the Iowa class BBs where extremely wet ships in a heavy sea. No one ever said they where unsuited for blue water operations.

Iowa’s were wet ships in a heavy sea, but, not unstable ships in a heavy sea. The magnitude of difference is such to make the purpose of the attempted comparison vague?.

The OHPs and the Knoxs where not fleet units either but that never stopped the Navy from having them deploy with carrier battle groups.

What were they if not fleet units?. They are/were hulls optimised for blue water ASW in every operational sense. Even if they were intended to be cheap convoy escorts both had the potential for fleet tasking by nature of the fact that they were designed to handle the big waves. LCS doesnt have that inherent operational ability owing to its design.

Both LCCs can operate two H-60s in sea state 4/5, both LCCs can carry a tail. So they don’t have a hull mounted sonar, big deal.

We’ll see how well the LM design operates choppers in SS5. If its rolling in modest conditions SS5 should be real fun. Planing hulls and big waves do not go well together!. Which tail are they rated to carry and deploy and under what towing conditions?. Usually if you are going to tow something you want a displacement hull. Not too many planing trawlers knocking about out there!.

The LCS must achieve a mission abort or sink a threat submarine, if the submarine target of interest is transiting through a designated key choke point or operating (e.g., patrolling) in a designated search/surveillance area

So its chokepoints and ‘designated search areas’ then. Not blue water on transit with a battlegroup?. Which is whats been said all along. its a littoral combat vessel with little to no ability to do blue water.

They can sprint and drift much better than either the OHP or DE-1052s, they carry one more helo than the DE-1052s could (they where limited to carrying Sea Sprites), and they have a degree of networking capability that an OHP skipper would envy. No they are not Spruance replacements, but they certainly are OHP replacements.

No long range radar. No tail that I am aware of?. Rolls in fairly benign chop and its sprint capability is on provided you are at SS3 or better?. Not an FFG replacement!.

LCS may in fact form the basis of the next high endurance coast guard cutter, but I suspect it will be a much slower, austere version.

I thought that was the other way around. The NSC was the next gen of coastguard deepwater vessel and that a variant of NSC was bieing looked at as an alternative to LCS?.

I agree, the hull form on the LM unit is not ideal for blue water ops but its good enough to get the job done. They are not going to accompany the CSGs into the arctic ocean in winter to bomb the USSR, but neither where the Perrys. They are however able to deploy to the South China Sea, the Med, the Baltic, the Arabian sea, and the Indian Ocean and it’s approaches.

But the Perry’s were going to cross the Atlantic back and forth and that little pond gets plenty rough. By the sounds of things LCS-1 isnt going to like the English Channel in winter or Biscay. SCS can get a bit lively too!. The ship is going to be okay on transit through those waters for a short interval, but, actually engaging in routine ops is not going to be practical. Nor is it meant to of course – thats what the Burkes and Tico’s are for.

According to the LM presentation LCS can herald the arrival of the main body by 48 hours.

Thats not the issue. The issue is ‘sprint ahead’ and scout out. This boat sprints and it empties the tanks and you dont want that to happen too close to the oponents littoral without the rest of the fleet handy!.

I’m sure it can deploy ahead of the main group. Why it would when thats largely an SSN’s job – to be there weeks in advance of a surface group, where possible, developing operational data – who knows but, for those circumstances where its not viable to send a sub, sure rotary UAV’s and the ASW UUV’s would be useful recce tools. IF the threat scenario is modest enough.

I don’t know why you keep getting hung up on this. You fly more than 1 C-5 in and you use tractor trailers to get the TEUs from airbase to port if necessary. They carry them all the time.

The illustration is the difference between Stanflex/Meko ‘drop a module in’ and 9 TEU’s of kit. It is one that is worth stressing.

The LCS is clearly the Perry replacement. Just because they can perform in the littoral does not mean that they cannot perform blue water operations as well.

LCS cannot perform blue water operations. Its not a Fleet unit – its a patrol unit just one that has a rather extravagant propulsion fit and is a bit bigger than most. You would not deploy it in circumstances where you would deploy a proper FFG. Outside of its specialist taskings in support of littoral ops you’d deploy it in scenarios where you might otherwise send a WHEC etc.

FFG-7 was developed for convoy duty across the Atlantic and as a cheap platform for carrying a pair of ASW choppers to bolster numbers in the battlegroup as adjunct to the Spru’s. That was a blue water hull designed to ride out Atlantic swells – deep-V hull with fin stabs IIRC. It had a blue water sensor fit to match – VLF passive tail, L-band LR air search set etc.

Look at the difference in hull design between the LCS-1 and the FFG-7. Even the link you posted stated that it was ‘flat-bottomed’ even though its actually a very shallow-V. The semi-planing hull design it uses is not one that is tremendous in a heavy sea. The design calls for aircraft recovery at Sea State 5 – I’d be much happier trying that with the GD hull than the LM one!.

The sensors again come into the picture. LCS’s warfighting systems are anything but bluewater. The sensors are on robots that cannot keep pace with an underway fleet. They are optimised for perisistence in the shallows. Completely inappropriate for blue water.

*LCS squadron will detach from battle force and “sprint ahead” to scout/prepare the area of operations.

Would the Tender ‘sprint ahead’ with the LCS’s you wonder?!. If not where is the value as the sprinting is the LCS’s problem it would seem. A high persistence unit able to drain its bunkers in 1000nm if it uses its sprint speed?. The mind boggles on that one.

*Mission packages are air transportable and can be swapped out in a matter of hours not days.

Once again we come back to the earler point on the MCMW module being 9 TEU’s worth of kit. A full TEU is limited, container included, to about 25tons if memory serves. 9 TEU’s worth of kit would therefore be a push even for a C-5!. The logistics of moving that from an airport to the port where the ship would link up with it could also be challenging. Certainly this is not the simple plug and play issue that its trying to be painted as!.

Well, actually, that is the idea of mission modules, that they CAN be swapped in hours rather than days and that they are plug and play.

Illustrative: A month in the life of LCS

I’d argue that to say that the idea of the Stanflex is to swap and change as necessary, but, that the LCS concept is that modules can be changed if necessary.

Lets not forget that if the 55 hull order goes through there is little need to re-role a hull when there is always another to deploy. In the Stanflex case this is obviously different as there are a modest number of hulls that the different modules are necessary to get maximum utilisation out of.

The point about there being 1.xx modules per hull with LCS is that once fitted, save for windows when the hull is in for deep refit etc, the module will stay with that specific ship. Really you want this anyway as it means you get a nice specialised crew driving a specialist hull. Its not ‘fashionable’ but by crikey its the absolute best way to deploy a capability to theatre.

Fiat G.91 – looks like a Dachshund smacked in the nose with a cricket bat (well, any kind of bat I guess!).

Really, the versatility and flexibility of the LCS Tender is undeniable……IMO

No not really Scot. Apart from the module change element there is nothing in what you write that is not already accomplished by traditional, conventional, RAS. RAS that would naturally need to be present to support the larger USN presence in theatre already. These RAS’s happen in close proximity to the OpArea and are well programmed so as not to take a ship off the line for ‘long periods’.

In fact the only need to go in to port would be to accept a new module – if it were to be determined that re-roling a deployed LCS was the most efficient method of bringing a required capability to the threatre. More likely would be the dispatch of a suitably configured, and crewed, LCS to take over station while the first rotated out.

While, I agree with most of what you said. I do see cases that modules would need to be swapped out and on the spur of the moment.

Did you perhaps miss the part where it said that the MCM mission package was 9 TEU’s of kit?.