The U.S. Navy is considering a program review of the Littoral Combat Ship, a vessel that many argue is too lightly armed for sea warfare, but some experts say the sea service could arm LCS with more punch without a costly redesign/.../
But some in the Pentagon doubt that light-weight LCS design can survive in a real combat situation, J. Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department's director of operational test and evaluation, wrote in a January report.
This concern puzzles Jan van Tol, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
The Navy has always maintained a "mantra of no losses. … Well if you are ever in a war, that's nonsense. There is going to be attrition; you are going to lose things," van Tol, a retired Navy captain, said. He added that even if a ship is knocked out, most or all of the crew can still survive.
"It's not like an anti-ship missile or a cruise missile would hit a smaller ship like LCS and it would simply vaporize," van Tol said. "That's not going to happen/.../"
"One of the things I was surprised about was that they weren't equipped with a couple of two packs of Harpoon missiles," van Tol said. "They don't take up much space … and each one of those platforms represents an ASM threat to the other side. … They could strike other warships such as destroyers."
To van Tol, the Navy should give LCS more time in the fleet before embarking on rethinking the entire program.
"They are not frigates; they are not destroyers," van Tol said. "As you get these things out into the fleet – these new types of platforms – people will try different things with them, and in that way the concepts of operations will be worked out."