I will let CDR Salamander take it from here:
Just for fun, because I know the Church of the LCS can't stand them - let us look at the FFG-7 class of ships. There were, shocker, 55 of them built in the United States.
Would those who came before us have let FFG-7 (USS OHP actual commissioned in 1977) through FFG-31 (USS STARK commissioned in 1982) be bought and paid for without even knowing SM-1, Harpoon, MK-46, SLQ-32, or helicopters could even work? Wait .... oh that's right; they actually built ships based on sound practices with weapons systems that were known to work before putting them on a new class of warship. BTW, when did we decide that hope was a plan? I think I slept through that class; my bust.
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I copied this from Defense Industry Daily, you figure they must know a little about military equipment:
"...Present LCS designs don’t even carry torpedo tubes, or vertical-launch systems (VLS) that could accommodate present and future attack and/or defensive missiles. Even with the Surface Warfare module installed, LCS ships will carry a very light armament set for a major naval vessel: a 57-mm Mk 110 naval gun system; RIM-116 SeaRAM short range defensive missiles; 30mm cannons that would replace very short range Griffin launchers if installed; 12.7mm machine guns; plus any missiles or 70mm rockets carried by its accompanying helicopters (up to 2 H-60 slots or up to 4 MQ-8B Fire Scout UAV slots).
That armament is closer to a support vessel than a naval surface combatant, and larger high-speed support designs like the JHSV would offer far more mission module space for reconfigurable specialty support ships. Naval analyst Raymond Pritchett has pithily described the current compromise as:
”...3000 ton speedboat chasers with the endurance of a Swedish corvette, the weapon payload of a German logistics ship, and the cargo hold of a small North Korean arms smuggler.”
The LCS weapons array also compares unfavorably with comparable-sized frigates that can perform the full array of anti-submarine, fleet air defense, and naval combat roles. The new Franco-Italian FREMM Class, or even Britain’s much older Type 23/Duke Class, outclass it considerably. So do smaller corvettes like Israel’s US-built, $260 million Sa’ar 5 Eilat Class, and Sweden’s ultra-stealthy Visby Class. Even the tiny Danish Flyvefisken Class, whose swappable “flex ship” modules helped pave the way for the LCS idea, has a Mk 48 vertical launch system that can handle longer-range air defense missiles, and mounts launchers for Harpoon anti-ship missiles."
So we get a 57mm gun, SeaRAM and 2? .50cal as standard fit for $600 million bucks???? Forgot the helicopter. Wow, I'm impressed.
For crying out loud, why didn't the US Navy just buy a few Sa'ar 5s? Aren't they made in the USA for Israel? Shoot for money already wasted in development and slow build for LCS, we probably could have bought and put in service a couple of Sa'ar5's and maybe a few Visby's, learn from those ships and then move to full scale production, still likely to have cost less and it would have been faster.
FREMM and my personal favorite MEKO class are probably bigger and more expensive but you can't compare the weapons fit of those boats with the pittiful LCS.
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