LCS program delivers no combat capability

Littoral Combat ship: the U.S. Navy now withholds information from Congress...


Via CDR Salamander

Want to know how bad and undefendable the program is? Simple, they start making stuff up.

I let it pass last month - but no longer.

— Yesterday, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the task force review had been “thorough and exhaustive,” but declined to say anything more about the findings, according to POLITICO’s Philip Ewing. He also praised the overall situation with the LCS, noting recent accomplishments including the USS Coronado successful test firing of the Norwegian-built Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile.

Here is the ground truth, and in some ways is a mash-up of a few conversations I've been part of the last few weeks SEPCOR: this was nothing but a PR stunt.

All that happened was they loaded a missile on a truck. They drove it to the pier. They put it on the flightdeck of the LCS and utilizing a laptop disconnected from the ship's combat systems and launched it. All the guidance and tracking was done off-board.

Look at the pic. That setup is not ready for shipboard use, isn't designed for it, and this really has nowhere else to go.

What does this demonstrate? That LCS can be used to fire the NSM? No - this could have been done from almost anything that floats that has the square footage. That NSM is a good missile? No. All this proves is that you can bolt on a NSM on anything. NSM is a nice, proven weapon - and it would be outstanding if we could find a way to have 4-8 NSM installed on our LCS.

Is there a plan to do this? No. Is there money to do this? No. Is there anyone in the Navy trying to make this happen? Perhaps ... but generally speaking, no.

The fact that they did it off a LCS shows you just how desperate they are to put some positive spin on this plague ship. The fact the SECNAV said what he said? I'll let you figure it out.