The Littoral Combat Ship:

How We Got Here, and Why

Robert O. Work
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i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Robert O. Work

Undersecretary of the Navy

I would like to express my deep appreciation to several people who have 

contributed to this work. 

Ms. Allison Stiller, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Ships, and Rear 

Admiral (lower half) James Murdoch, Program Executive Officer for Littoral Combat 

Ships (LCS), provided me with a wealth of LCS program documents, information 

about the LCS program’s history, and a good understanding of characteristics of the 

two LCS variants. They represent the hundreds of people, uniformed military and 

government civilians and contractors, who work hard every day to make the Littoral 

Combat Ship the absolute best ship it can be.

Several colleagues were kind enough to take the time to review early drafts. They 

include Captain Henry “Jerry” Hendrix, Director of the Naval History and Heritage 

Command; Randy Papadopoulos, Secretariat historian; Captain Ronald “Robby” 

Harris, U.S. Navy, retired; Commander John Patch, U.S. Navy, retired; Commander Al 

Elkins, U.S. Navy, retired; Ronald O’Rourke, naval analyst at the Congressional 

Research Service; and Dr. Eric Labs, naval analyst at the Congressional Budget 

Office. Among them include proponents, critics, and skeptics of the LCS; 

accomplished naval historians; and the two of the finest naval analysts in America. 

Their keen insights and recommendations helped make this paper stronger, more 

complete and better balanced. I am indebted to all of them.

Of course, any inaccuracies or shortcomings in this paper are mine alone.
ii

FOREWORD

Robert C. (Barney) Rubel 

Dean, Center for Naval Warfare Studies

 

The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) has been a controversial program from its inception, 

experiencing delays and cost overruns, not to mention severe criticism from 

elements of the national security community. Despite all this, every Chief of Naval 

Operations since Admiral Vern Clark has supported the program. To date, Navy 

attempts to defend the program have not succeeded in quieting the criticism, and 

the various technical and operational difficulties experienced by the first two 

examples have not helped matters. Perhaps the most serious objection to LCS is that 

the Navy charged into series production without having a clear idea of how the ship 

would be used.

Undersecretary of the Navy Robert Work is known in Defense circles as a 

meticulous researcher who has a comprehensive grasp of Navy force structure and 

fleet architecture issues, stemming from his years as an analyst at the Center for 

Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Secretary Work brings those same traits to 

bear in the preparation of this Newport Paper. In it he forthrightly chronicles the 

development of the LCS; not attempting to shy away from reporting on the 

program's vicissitudes nor trying to put a positive spin on Navy decisions along the 

way. Instead, he offers an informed view of how the logic behind LCS developed and 

evolved as the program progressed. As he so lucidly points out, LCS does not fit 

easily into the existing framework of Navy thought, and thus it is vulnerable to 

criticism by those who attempt to judge it by existing criteria. Secretary Work 

provides us with a better understanding of how LCS is to function in a networked 

battle force. While this explanation may not quiet all criticism, it at least brings 

much needed clarity to the story of how and why the LCS came to be.

More than simply a history of the LCS program, this Newport Paper provides 

important insights into the dynamics of Navy programmatics and is therefore highly 

useful reading for anyone interested in understanding the Navy's acquisition 

process. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, if the reader pays attention to 

Secretary Work's discussion of how LCS might be used in "associated support" of a 

battle group, and thinks about it for a while, he or she will be rewarded with a 

glimpse of something that has been missing from the Navy's intellectual structure 

for a long time: naval operational art.

Since at least the end of the Cold War, the Navy has organized its fighting capability 

into autonomous battle groups centered around aircraft carriers or amphibious 

ships. These "bubbles" of combat capability could be aggregated as they were in the 

three Middle East wars since 1990, but their aggregate capability was cumulative 

and did not propel the Navy into a qualitatively different mindset. Thus, as has been 

the case for most of its history, save World War II, the Navy has focused on tactics 

and on strategy, both of which it does rather well. The operational level, something 
iii

that has been integral to Army doctrine since the 1980s, has been largely missing 

despite the efforts of the Naval War College to advocate its adoption. Introduction 

of the LCS, assuming the surface warfare community opens its mind to the full range 

of potential roles for smaller combatants, provides a practical basis for the 

development of a new naval operational art, oriented on combined arms.

It is hoped that this Newport Paper will stimulate more informed debate on the LCS 

and act as a catalyst for a renaissance in Navy combined arms thinking.
1

The Littoral Combat Ship:

How We Got Here, and Why

LCS will contribute to Sea Shield through its unique capability to respond

quickly, to operate in the littoral environment, and to conduct focused 

missions with a variety of networked off-board systems. The antisubmarine 

warfare, mine countermeasures, and surface warfare missions associated 

with Sea Shield will be enhanced through the employment of a distributed 

LCS force. Conduct of these missions, along with persistent surveillance and 

reconnaissance, will be the LCS contribution toward assuring access for the 

Joint Force.

1

Perhaps no ship in recent memory has been subject to more criticism than the 

Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). Many think LCS is the “wrong ship at the wrong time.”2

Some compare the ship to a guided missile frigate, and find it wanting. Some 

complain there are better, longer-legged ships for forward presence and maritime 

security missions. Others think the Navy would be better served with fast-attack 

craft or small corvettes festooned with antiship missiles. Still others believe a 

purpose-built, single-mission vessel is the best choice for the mine-warfare mission. 

All of these alternatives would be potentially attractive choices—provided the 

Navy’s future fleet had a need for such ships. Instead, the U.S. Navy needs a different 

component for its battle force: an affordable, self-deployable and reconfigurable 

multirole warship designed for naval battle network operations in contested 

littorals. 

The premise of this paper is that much of the current discourse on LCS tends to 

ignore the critical point that the ship was conceived as an integral part of a new 

battle force architecture that continues to evolve. Discussions instead focus too 

narrowly on the ship’s design features, characteristics, and concept of employment 

without considering its intended supporting role in this new fleet architecture or the 

design choices that sprung from it. Compounding the problem, the Navy’s LCS 

narrative over the last decade has been marked by constant change, and in some 

instances strayed away from the original principles that guided the ship’s 

development. This helped obscure what the Navy wanted the new warship to do, 

opening the entire concept to question and criticism. 

Accordingly, rather than attempt a tit-for-tat response to every contemporary 

complaint about LCS itself, this paper will instead explain the genesis of the current 

fleet’s operational construct and architecture, the role LCS was originally expected 

to play in it, and the initial design choices stemming from its planned role. It will 

then explore subsequent modifications to the LCS program and to the ship’s design 

and planned concept of operations—some made to accommodate changes in initial 

assumptions and plans and others to respond to thoughtful critiques of the ship and 

its intended mission. After doing so, it becomes clear the Navy is getting very nearly 

the exact ship it asked for—and in some key aspects a better ship than expected. 

Assuming its planned battle force architecture has not radically changed and there 
2

remains a valid need for a small battle network combatant like LCS, it is past time 

for the Navy to focus on the ship’s transition to fleet service, which has been too 

long ignored. 

An Idea is Born

On November 1, 2001, the Navy announced it would build a small, fast, and stealthy 

Littoral Combat Ship as part of its new DD(X) surface combatant family of ships 

(SCFOS).3 Some assert LCS was forced on the Navy. There is some truth to this view. 

U.S. Navy support for small warships declined steadily after World War II. By the 

time of the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the Navy finally decided to get 

out of the small combatant business entirely. It planned to retire all of its remaining 

guided missile frigates (FFGs) and patrol coastal ships (PCs) without replacement, 

leaving only twenty-six dedicated mine warfare vessels (with up to ten or eleven of 

them maintained in low Mobilization Category B readiness) to operate alongside a 

force of 116 cruisers and destroyers (CGs, DDGs, and DDs), the smallest having a full 

load displacement (FLD) greater than 8,900 tons.4 This force of large, multimission 

warships was consistent with a fleet design optimized for high volume theater air 

and missile defense (TAMD) and littoral strike in support of Joint campaigns ashore. 

The decision to exclude small combatants from future fleet plans was not 

universally applauded. War games, fleet experiments, and analyses conducted 

throughout the 1990s suggested the need for a new generation of small combatants 

able to penetrate a contested littoral and scout for and eliminate threats hidden in 

coastal clutter.5 Two distinct concepts emerged from this work. The first was a 

heavily armed 2,200 to 2,600-ton “multi-warfare capable ship” with a composite 

superstructure, medium caliber gun, medium-range air defense and antiship 

missiles, armed helicopters (preferably two), armed unmanned aerial systems, and 

land attack missiles to strike shore based missile batteries.6 The second, more 

widely publicized concept was a family of small, fast, and stealthy littoral 

combatants known as Streetfighters, championed by the Naval War College.7

Between 1999 and 2001, proponents for small combatants used these concepts to 

openly question the wisdom of building a surface fleet composed entirely of large, 

multimission warships.8

Throughout this public debate, senior Navy leaders remained resolute in their 

defense of large combatants. Neither of the small warships mentioned above was 

included in the Cost and Operational Evaluation and Analysis (COEA) for the Navy’s 

path finding twenty-first century Surface Combatant (SC-21) Study, completed in 

the late 1990s.9 Indeed, the affordable “littoral combatant” ultimately considered in 

the COEA was the 17,500-ton DD-21 land attack destroyer, which was to be followed 

by an even more capable CG-21 multimission cruiser.10 Using the SC-21 COEA as 

their guide, Navy officials reflexively denigrated any analysis or argument that 

suggested small warships should be included in the future battle force.11
3

Despite its seemingly determined resistance to small combatants, however, the 

Navy suddenly reversed course. During the 2001 QDR, the Office of the Secretary of 

Defense (OSD) directed the Joint Force to improve its ability to defeat antiaccess/

area-denial (A2/AD) threats in order to maintain America’s ability to project and 

sustain power in contested theaters.12 At the same time, OSD quietly told Navy 

leaders it would not support their prized DD-21 program unless they included a 

small combatant in their future plans. Galvanized by these developments, less than 

four months after assuming his post as the 27th Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), 

Admiral Vern Clark announced a new surface combatant family of ships that would 

replace the SC-21 model. This new SCFOS included a large, multimission DD(X) 

destroyer optimized for land attack (an updated DD-21), a large, multimission CG(X) 

cruiser optimized for TAMD (an updated CG-21), and a small, “focused-mission” 

Littoral Combat Ship.13 At first blush, then, CNO Clark’s decision to pursue LCS 

appears less like an enthusiastic reembrace of small combatants and more like a 

ransom payment to OSD. 

If truth be told, however, for Admiral Clark OSD’s direction was pushing on an open 

door. He came to the job with a comprehensive vision for twenty-first century naval 

power called Sea Power 21. This vision was built around three key concepts: Sea 

Shield, Sea Strike, and Sea Base.14 And the glue that held these three concepts 

together was FORCEnet—“the operational construct and architectural framework for 

naval warfare in the information age, integrating warriors, sensors, command and 

control, platforms, and weapons into a networked, distributed combat force.” When 

fully implemented, the FORCEnet fleet architecture was expected to “transform 

situational awareness, accelerate speed of decision... greatly distribute combat 

power...and increase force survivability.”15

Admiral Clark’s initial FORCEnet fleet design included a 375-ship battle force, sized 

to execute a new Global Concept of Operations (ConOps) developed to support of 

the 2001 QDR’s “1-4-2-1 strategy.”16 The DD(X) SCFOS would be the surface 

combatant component of the new battle force. And, to get both a new DD(X) and 

CG(X) and grow the fleet to 375 ships, Admiral Clark knew the Global ConOps Navy 

would need an affordable, “relatively small” warship “capable of performing focused 

or special missions in inshore waters where it would be impractical or unwise to 

commit larger, more high-value forces.”17 That’s where the new Littoral Combat 

Ship fit in. 

When announcing the DD(X) SCFOS, Admiral Clark had only a strong inkling of what 

an LCS would look like and how it would ultimately contribute to fleet operations. 

Indeed, his seemingly abrupt adoption of the ship only four months after taking the 

reins of the Navy came without any of the supporting material typically associated 

with a new shipbuilding program, such as a formal, rigorous analysis of alternatives 

or analysis of alternative concepts. As a result, LCS’s sudden inclusion in the DD(X) 

SCFOS caught many inside and outside the department of the Navy (DoN) by 

surprise, causing some to question the justification for such a ship. 
4

However, Admiral Clark felt there was plenty of rationale and analysis to support 

the development of a new small warship. In the first place, on September 30, 2001, 

the Navy’s battle force numbered 316 ships.18 Around 2005, the Navy would begin 

retiring the twenty-four Spruance-class DDs and thirty long-hulled Perry-class FFGs 

remaining in fleet service.19 The planned thirty-two-ship class of DD-21s had 

already been cut to twenty-four new DD(X)s, and rising costs made even this 

number suspect. Admiral Clark didn’t need any analysis to tell him the Navy 

desperately needed an affordable ship it could build in numbers in order to 

maintain the size of the surface combatant fleet—and he was intent on growing it. 

LCS would be his answer.

Second, although it did not represent a formal analysis of multiple concepts, the 

aforementioned work on littoral combatants sponsored by the Navy throughout the 

1990s, and especially the Naval War College work on Streetfighter conducted 

between 1999 and 2001, established a strong analytical basis for small, multirole 

littoral combatants. Moreover, the 2001 QDR’s emphasis on a Joint Force prepared 

to operate in antiaccess and area-denial environments ultimately spurred OSD to 

issue specific guidance to the Navy to improve its performance in some specific 

warfare areas. In this regard, the supporting Defense Planning Guidance for Fiscal 

Years 2003-2007 directed the Navy to develop the "capability to maintain an Aircraft 

Carrier Operating Area clear of submarine-delivered and floating mines;" "improve 

the capability to destroy or evade large numbers of submarines operating in littoral 

areas;” and develop "the capability to destroy large numbers of small antiship cruise 

missile-armed combatants, or armed merchant vessels in littoral areas, without 

relying on carrier-based air.”20 The fleet’s stable of large, multimission warships was 

ill-suited to such tasks, which had long been the province of small combatants and 

mine warfare vessels. Admiral Clark hoped LCS could do the job of both types of 

warships. 

Third, Admiral Clark believed LCS answered the loud calls for defense 

“transformation” then being made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In a 

speech given in January 2002, Secretary Rumsfeld said, “Preparing for the future 

will require us to think differently and develop the kind of forces that can adapt 

quickly to new challenges and to unexpected circumstances.” 21 Moreover, in his

view, thinking differently included a willingness to skirt or bend long-established 

rules when pursuing “transformational” systems. As he explained:

...we must transform not only our armed forces, but also the department 

that serves them by encouraging a culture of creativity and intelligent risk 

taking. We must promote a more entrepreneurial approach to developing 

military capabilities, one that encourages people, all people, to be proactive 

and not reactive, to behave somewhat less like bureaucrats and more like 

venture capitalists; one that does not wait for threats to emerge and be 

"validated," but rather anticipates them before they emerge and develops 

new capabilities that can dissuade and deter those nascent threats.22
5

Based on these three considerations, CNO Clark confidently declared LCS his 

number one transformational program and budget priority, and requested authority 

for a new program start in the Navy’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 President’s Budget 

submission. Secretary Rumsfeld approved, including the request in the Defense 

Department’s FY 2003 President’s Budget submission, delivered to Congress in 

February 2002.23 By so doing, and consistent with his announced approach to 

defense transformation, the Secretary signaled he was not disturbed by the LCS’s 

lack of analytical pedigree. 

Congress was less sanguine with the idea authorizing a new warship without first 

validating the vessel’s mission through analysis. Although it ultimately gave the 

Navy new start authority for LCS in the FY 2003 National Defense Authorization Act, 

it expressed concern that “[t]here is no definition of the [LCS] requirement and no 

‘road map’ of how the Navy will achieve the system required.”24 Accordingly, it 

directed the Secretary of the Navy to submit a report that addressed “in detail the 

analytical process to examine alternatives [to the LCS], and establish relative 

priorities to meet valid requirements.”25 Then, the following year, after being 

presented only a brief, summary explanation of the Navy’s pre-start analysis for LCS 

(or lack thereof), an irate Congress pointedly demanded the Secretary of the Navy to 

“more completely address” its concerns.26

In response, the Navy admitted the LCS program represented “a departure from 

traditional analysis processes by conducting targeted analysis to support concurrent 

development of the capability documents, mission module definitions and integration 

requirements.”

27 This targeted approach included a three-phase “tailored analysis of 

alternatives” that would “fill in analysis gaps that previous studies had not 

covered”—a clear reference to the conceptual work and studies conducted in the 

1990s.28 Regardless of whether Congress fully agreed with this approach, by 

allowing a concept and development process that would follow rather than precede 

program start to continue, it implicitly endorsed Admiral Clark’s decision to pursue 

a small Littoral Combat Ship in a way distinctly different from normal programs.

To this day, critics continue to complain about the LCS’s “analytical virgin birth,” 

arguing that Admiral Clark first decided he needed a ship and only then turned to 

figuring out what the ship would do.29 Even if true, this is a moot argument. The 

Navy was clear in its thinking. There was a compelling programmatic need for an 

affordable warship that could be built in numbers, and a pressing battle force 

requirement to defeat mines, fast attack craft and boats, and diesel submarines in 

A2/AD environments—missions that had long been performed by small combat 

vessels. Moreover, OSD had already ordered the Service to include a small warship 

in its future fleet architecture or risk its DD-21/DD(X) destroyer. When taken 

together, it is hard to fault Admiral Clark’s decision to move the LCS forward. In any 

event, and with the explicit blessing of OSD and the implicit endorsement from 

Congress, CNO Clark jump-started the work necessary to transition his idea to a 

viable concept and program.30
6

From Idea to Concept

Between November 2001 and February 2003, Admiral Clark and senior Navy 

leaders developed the key conceptual principles and characteristics that would 

guide the subsequent development of the LCS program. The clearest picture of these 

principles and characteristics and how the LCS might fit within the FORCEnet 

architecture and operate as a part of the Global ConOps Navy comes from four 

documents or collections. The first is a series of articles explaining the overarching 

concepts of Sea Power 21, started off by “Sea Power 21: Projecting Decisive Joint 

Capabilities,” which appeared in the October 2002 edition of the U.S. Naval Institute

Proceedings under Admiral Clark’s own name.31 The second is the Draft Littoral 

Combat Ship Interim Requirements Document (IRD), also dated October 2002, 

outlining the initial thinking behind the ship’s concept of employment and design 

criteria.

32 The third is the initial LCS Concept of Operations, developed by the Naval 

Warfare Development Command (NWDC) throughout 2002 and approved in 

February 2003.33 And the fourth is a Memorandum for the Record detailing a 

February 2003 meeting of Admiral Clark and top Navy leadership “to resolve 

programmatic issues concerning LCS and to help refine and direct ship 

characteristics and operational concepts that will affect the LCS design.”34

After the February 2003 LCS offsite, the program passed from the concept 

development to the formal requirements determination phase. One cannot 

understand, much less judge, these requirements without knowing their conceptual 

underpinning. The present segment of this report therefore focuses on the thinking 

reflected in these early documents. After reading them, six key elements of the LCS 

concept stand out: the overriding emphasis placed on platform affordability; the 

degree to which LCS would rely on the broader FORCEnet architecture for its 

effectiveness and survivability; the vessel’s relatively mature concept of operations; 

the rationale behind a modular, reconfigurable, multirole platform; the ship’s 

envisioned contributions to the FORCEnet modernization strategy; and the high 

priority placed on getting the LCS into fleet service as fast as possible. Each of these 

elements will be discussed in turn.

Program Affordability

The thing that stands out over all others when reading early LCS program 

documents is the great emphasis placed on program affordability. Recall that in 

2001-2002, the Navy faced the impending block retirement of over fifty destroyers 

and frigates. Due to rising costs, the Navy would be lucky to replace half of these 

ships with new DD(X) multimission destroyers, the successor to the DD-21 land 

attack destroyer. The Navy literally could not afford a second costly warship 

program if it had any hope of maintaining a 300-ship battle force, much less 

expanding to a 375-ship fleet. 

Accordingly, both OSD and Navy leaders wanted LCS to be a low cost ship that could 

be built in the high numbers to “maintain desired surface combatant force levels.”35

OSD expected the DoN to buy no fewer than three missionized LCSs for the price of 

one Arleigh Burke DDG, equating to a threshold (minimally acceptable) target cost of 
7

$400 million per ship.36 However, in February 2003, with the program still in its 

infancy, Admiral Clark hoped to do much better. He wanted the threshold cost for an 

“entire” (i.e., missionized) LCS to be no more than $250 million (all costs in FY 2005

dollars).37 This would allow the Navy to buy five LCSs per Burke.

As Congressional Budget Office analyst Eric Labs often observes, the cost to build a 

ship in U.S. shipyards is most closely correlated with its light-ship displacement

(that is, without crew, fuel, ordnance stores, etc.).

38 However, not all ships are 

created equal. As shown in Table 1, a Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV)—a commercial 

design with some military features but no combat system to speak of—costs $174

million in FY 2005 dollars, equating to $115,000/ton. The U.S. Coast Guard’s 

National Security Cutter (NSC), a 3,206-ton ship with a commercial design, a modest 

combat system and a good core self-defense capability, costs approximately $529

million, or $165,003/ton. And an Oliver Hazard Perry-class FFG, a 3,150-ton ship 

with greater survivability standards and equipped with a much more capable 

combat system and local air defense capability, would have cost at least $617

million to build in FY 2005, or $196,000/ton. 

Table 1. Comparative Shipbuilding Costs

Ship Type Light-ship 

displacement

Cost to Build

(FY2005$)

Cost per Ton

JHSV 1,515 tons $174M $115,000/ton

NSC 3,206 tons $529M $165,003/ton

FFG 7 3,140 tons $617M $196,000/ton

Based on this data, one might thus expect an LCS of 2,700 tons (the light-ship 

displacement of USS Freedom (LCS 1)) built to commercial standards to come in 

around $310.5 million; one to NSC standards to cost around $445.5 million; and one 

with FFG standards to cost $529 million.

39 Conversely, achieving the $250 million

objective target for a missionized LCS would infer a 2,174-ton warship built to 

commercial standards, a 1,515-ton warship built to NSC standards, and a 1,275-ton 

warship built to frigate standards (again, all prices in FY 2005 dollars). Such small 

vessels might not have the space and payload to handle the manned or unmanned 

off-board systems expected to provide the ship’s “Sunday punch.” As these simple 

calculations suggest, building a missionized LCS for $400 million would be 

challenging enough; nailing the desired target of $250 million would be an amazing 

achievement. Needless to say, and as will soon be evident, hitting either of these 

aggressive cost targets would force extremely difficult trade-offs during the ship’s 

design process. 
8

Reliance on FORCEnet 

Next to program affordability, the next most striking element of the LCS concept was 

the degree to which its ultimate success would rely on the broader forcewide 

transition to the new FORCEnet architecture. This transition would occur in stages. 

The first would see the more thorough integration of existing networks, sensors,

and command and control systems, while subsequent stages would gradually allow 

the Navy to operate as a “fully netted force, engage with distributed combat power, 

and command with increased awareness and speed.”40 Accordingly, while the legacy 

Aegis ships that made up the bulk of the surface force would be modified to operate 

as part of a “dispersed, netted, and operationally agile fleet,” the LCS would be the 

very first combatant designed from the keel up as a FORCEnet platform.41 And, as 

FORCEnet’s first small battle network combatant, the ship’s effectiveness and 

survivability would depend on “reach back” to “networked force capability” to a 

degree unseen on any previous U.S. Navy warship.42 

Having LCS rely and depend so much on FORCEnet battle networks also contributed 

toward the key imperative to contain program costs. By conceptualizing LCS as an 

integral component of broader naval battle networks—and one more reliant on the 

network for its own effectiveness than previous U.S. Navy combat vessels—Admiral 

Clark hoped to avoid the high costs associated with the complex organic combat 

systems found on large, multimission warships.43

Interestingly, Admiral Clark also appears to have had another incentive to link LCS 

into powerful fleet battle networks. For the transition to FORCEnet and the 375-ship 

Global ConOps Navy to succeed, the Navy’s surface warfare community would 

necessarily have to accept the need for an affordable small combatant. As one who 

had served on small Asheville-class patrol gunboats and keenly appreciated the 

community’s general antipathy toward small warships, Admiral Clark believed 

linking LCS into FORCEnet battle networks would be key “to enhancing the value of 

LCS beyond those of past small Navy vessels.”44 In other words, he hoped LCS’s 

ability to call upon the supporting combat power of advanced naval battle networks 

would help overcome the prevalent fleet resistance against small warships of any 

type.

A Mature ConOps

A third striking element of the LCS program was its relatively mature concept of 

operations. The Navy may not have concluded any formal analysis of multiple 

concepts before program start, but it is very clear it drew upon a decade of rich 

work when conceiving and defining its intended role. In the broadest terms, this 

work suggested LCS could “fill a niche in the near-land battlespace dominance 

arena” by “deny[ing] the enemy cheap asymmetrical antiaccess kills against U.S. 

ships operating in that environment.”45 

This role was subtly but still significantly different from that first envisioned for 

littoral combat vessels in the decade after the Cold War ended. As mentioned 

previously, analysis suggested the need for a ship able to penetrate a contested 
9

littoral in advance of high value units to scout for and eliminate threats hidden in 

coastal clutter. Two concepts emerged to perform this role. One was a very heavily 

armed 2,200 to 2,600-ton “multi-warfare capable ship” capable of fighting its way 

into defended near-shore waters and sustaining combat operations once there. The 

second was a family of fast, stealthy, 400 to 1,200-ton littoral combatants called 

Streetfighters which would operate in distributed groups. While the Streetfighters 

themselves would be inexpensively built and considered expendable, by operating 

in large numbers the fleet could accept individual Streetfighter losses without losing 

significant aggregate combat power.46

Navy leaders knew there was no way to build a “multi-warfare capable ship” with 

the unconstrained capabilities desired by war game players for $400 million, much 

less $250 million.

47 Moreover, they were not comfortable with the idea of an 

expendable warship, knowing it would be a very hard sell in the surface warfare 

community (more on both these points later in the report). Consequently, the Naval 

Warfare Development Command, which had the lead for LCS ConOps development, 

shifted away from the idea of an offensive littoral penetrator and started thinking of 

LCS as a Sea Base screening platform.

48

In Sea Power 21 terms, NWDC envisioned LCS as a critical component of FORCEnet’s 

Sea Shield, operating under the protective wing of large battle network combatants

(e.g., multimission CGs, DDGs, and DDs) during major combat operations.49 Instead 

of venturing forth into a contested littoral looking for trouble, LCS would take care 

of threats coming out to attack the high value units operating in the Sea Base, such 

amphibious landing ships, combat logistics force vessels, and aircraft carriers. 50 In 

this regard, war games and campaign analysis suggested three asymmetrical threats 

would pose persistent problems to Sea Bases, particularly in future A2/AD 

environments: swarming boats armed with missiles, rockets, guns, torpedoes, and 

shaped charges (the latter the surface equivalent of kamikazes); diesel submarines; 

and mines. Accordingly, and as directed in Defense Planning Guidance, LCS would be 

designed and built first and foremost to counter these three threats. By doing so, 

LCS would “enable multimission platforms to perform higher order missions like 

missile defense and [naval surface fire support].”51

Although viewed primarily as a Sea Shield platform, by screening amphibious 

landing, combat logistics, and sealift ships from littoral threats and attacks, LCS 

would contribute to Sea Strike by enabling amphibious operations, Marine ship-toobjective maneuver, and coastal naval special warfare operations. And, as a Sea Base 

screening platform, LCS would underwrite the entire concept of Sea Basing, which 

served “as the foundation from which offensive and defensives fires are projected—

making Sea Strike and Sea Shield realities.”52 All in all, the important wartime role 

envisioned for LCS belied its small size and low desired price tag.

Of course, Navy leaders knew LCS would spend most of its service life conducting a 

variety of other surface force missions, particularly “long term situational 

awareness” and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems 
10

deployment and employment. Indeed, beyond simply operating in a designated 

littoral area over a long period of time to observe local activities and monitor 

changes to them, they believed LCSs could provide a “bonanza for Fleet 

Commanders” in peacetime. Properly equipped, LCSs could conduct undersea 

warfare bottom surveys and route mapping, plant unattended sensors to monitor 

littoral activity, and perform covert, clandestine, unmanned remote or autonomous 

reconnaissance. Such information would be especially valuable should a crisis erupt, 

as it would enable prompt planning based on reliable, up-to-date information.53

While performing this vital information-gathering role, the ship would also perform 

customary naval diplomacy/presence missions and routinely operate with both the 

U.S. Coast Guard and allied navies.54

In addition to performing their FORCEnet and Global ConOps theater situational 

awareness role, LCSs would also be expected to conduct special operations forces 

(SOF) support; maritime interception operations (MIO); antiterrorism and force 

protection (AT/FP) missions such as escorting high value units through maritime 

chokepoints; humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) missions; 

logistics or medical support missions; and non-combatant evacuation operations

(NEO). Navy planners calculated that between 1970 and 1999, almost sixty percent 

of all tasks assigned to U.S. Navy surface combatants involved one of these “long 

burn...mobility related missions.” Assigning relatively low cost LCSs to conduct 

these missions would “free up multimission platforms to continue robust 

preparations for potential power projection missions.”55

However, to paraphrase the words of Steve McQueen in the great movie, The 

Magnificent Seven, the U.S. Navy deals in lead, friend. Therefore, although its ships 

spend the bulk of their service lives operating forward to preserve the peace, they 

are first designed to perform specific wartime roles as part of coherent fleet 

warfighting architectures. Consistent with this view, and to avoid any mission creep, 

Admiral Clark wanted his top officers to continually highlight the ship’s focused 

mission capabilities that made it an affordable swarm killer, submarine hunter, and 

mine warfare ship, and only then tout its “other inherent and support capabilities” 

applicable to the Joint Force.

56 As this demonstrates, then, the top Navy leadership 

always thought of LCS first as a warship, and would willingly accept LCS design 

limitations when it was performing its secondary or inherent missions. 

A Reconfigurable, Multirole Platform

The LCS’s envisioned concept of operations called for ship to perform littoral antisurface warfare (ASuW) against small boats and craft, antisubmarine warfare (ASW) 

against diesel submarines lurking in shallow littoral waters, mine warfare (MIW), 

and a range of inherent “mobility related” missions in peacetime. Given the 

fundamentally different demands of these tasks, one plausible path forward would 

be to build three completely different purpose-built hulls, each optimized for a 

single wartime mission and with inherent capabilities for specific secondary 

missions. Another would be to build permanent mission variants using a common 

hull. However, Admiral Clark had another idea, one explored and developed by the 
11

Naval War College in the late 1990s. That was to exploit the “comparative 

advantage” provided by modular, reconfigurable ships each capable of performing 

mobility and littoral ASuW, ASW, and mine warfare missions, but not at the same 

time:

To develop access when needed (from peacetime through combat 

operations), to perform frequent non-combat related missions and to 

integrate in Joint planning and execution will require...an optimally balanced

battery of modular on and off-board systems....War games and field 

experimentation have demonstrated the value of distributing combat power 

among modular-mission platforms—small surface craft with reconfigurable 

on and off-board systems...networked to warfighters.57

Unlike previous Navy surface combatants, then, LCS was “envisioned to be a 

‘seaframe’ serving much the same purpose as an airframe for a reconfigurable 

aircraft or helicopter (or as an aircraft carrier with its reconfigurable air wing 

‘module’). It [would] serve as a platform for ‘plug and play’ mission packages that 

[could] be changed, modified, or removed in a short period of time.”58

FORCEnet Modernization Strategy

In addition to facilitating its envisioned battle network role(s), LCS’s modular, 

reconfigurable design would contribute to another of Admiral Clark’s overarching 

FORCEnet design objectives: a force architecture that was rapidly and affordably 

upgradable over time. Many commentators note that after the end of the Cold War, 

the Navy retired many ships with years of useful service life left. Aside from early 

retirements associated with the post-war fleet demobilization, the prime reason this 

was so can be attributed to the expensive midlife combat system upgrades 

necessary to pace evolving threats, as well as the need to keep new construction 

going to preserve a shrinking industrial base. When forced to make a choice 

between upgrading an older ship with an aging combat system and building a new 

ship with a modern combat system, fleet planners often opted to build the newer 

vessel and retire the older one—sometimes long before the end of their planned 

service lives. To reverse this trend, the FORCEnet SCFOS would consist of a high/low 

force mix of large multimission battle network combatants and small multirole battle 

network combatants, both conducive to affordable improvement over time. 

With regard to the Global ConOps Navy’s planned force of high-end, multimission 

CGs and DDGs, the eighty-eight Aegis combatants would all gradually receive open 

architecture, computer-off-the-shelf (COTS)-based combat systems and modular 

open architecture VLS main batteries, and the twenty-four DD(X)s) would be built 

with these features from the outset. Consequently, all 112 ships could accept a 

variety of new combat system software upgrades and weapons without redesign or 

modification. The upgrades would help keep the ships combat relevant over their 

full thirty-five to forty-year expected service lives (ESLs).59 Meanwhile, the open 

architecture combat systems and modular design found on the fifty-six planned 

LCSs would enable affordable “future technology refresh, technology insertion and 

mission capability changes,” thus keeping the ships combat capable over the course 
12

of shorter twenty to thirty-year ESLs.60 This overall modernization strategy was 

designed to give the U.S. Navy an important leg up in any future long-term naval 

competition. 

Rapid “Speed-to-Fleet” Strategy 

The final feature central to the LCS concept was its rapid design, build, and inservice development strategy. Admiral Clark stressed the LCS program “must not be 

‘business as usual.’” He wanted to dramatically reduce the long development and 

build times typically associated with a new ship program, and he was more than 

willing to accept the risks inherent by accelerated it in order to “quickly fill a 

capability gap” in FORCEnet’s Global ConOps Navy.61

However, in an effort to bound the risk associated with a rapid speed-to-fleet 

strategy, Admiral Clark endorsed a plan to award three concept and preliminary 

design contracts, followed by a down-select to two detailed versions. After a 

thorough review, the Navy had the option to build only one of the two designs, or 

build both to better assess their strengths and weaknesses. Early thinking called for 

the Navy to build one Flight 0 prototype of each design—the first in FY 2005 and the 

second in FY 2006—for delivery in FY 2007 and FY 2008. Fleet experience with the 

two Flight 0 seaframes would inform the design of the first two FY 2008 Flight I

production ships, planned for delivery in FY 2010.62 Although never explicitly 

addressed in early program documents, Navy leaders expected a down-select to 

only one LCS Flight I production version, informed by the results of fleet tests with 

the initial ships.63

From Concept to Requirements

While the foregoing section explains the key elements of the LCS concept, it only 

suggests the thinking behind the ship’s method of employment or the design choices 

made for its seaframes and mission packages. These were indelibly shaped by 

several key judgments and principles highlighted in the aforementioned Draft LCS 

IRD and LCS Concept of Operations, as discussed and modified by CNO Clark and the 

top leaders of the Navy staff and surface warfare community in their February 2003 

offsite. Their judgments were later affirmed and memorialized in the Preliminary 

Design IRD for the Flight 0 Littoral Combat Ship, signed on 13 February 2003, soon 

after the offsite, and validated in the Capabilities Development Document (CDD) for 

the Littoral Combat Ship, approved in April 2004.64 The following section highlights 

the most important of them.

A Self-Deployable, Theater-based Platform

As called for in the 1-4-2-1 strategy, the Global ConOps Navy would concentrate on 

the away game, providing global homeland defense in depth, while the Coast Guard 

would concentrate on the home game, manning the close-in defensive perimeter. As 

such, U.S. Navy warships would most often deploy and operate persistently in four 

forward theaters, either from the Continental United States (CONUS) or from 

forward operating bases and stations, supported by the Military Sealift Command’s 

global logistics network. The Navy would augment the Coast Guard for homeland 
13

defense missions, if required; conversely, the Coast Guard would bolster the Navy in 

forward theaters, when necessary.

Guided missile frigates, which would be replaced by LCS in the new FORCEnet fleet 

architecture, were built for transoceanic escort missions and could execute this 

general employment plan. However, they were too costly to buy and build in the 

numbers required for a 375-ship battle force and couldn’t perform all of the littoral 

counter-A2/AD missions envisioned for LCS. Meanwhile, less costly PCs and mine 

warfare ships—all to be ultimately replaced by LCSs—were single-purpose ships 

with useful littoral counter-A2/AD capabilities but very slow transit speeds; they 

usually got to theaters on the decks of plodding heavy lift ships. Their deployment 

model thus did not fit well with the Global ConOps, which demanded the ability to 

swing rapidly between theaters. 

The FORCEnet LCS would therefore represent a cost-conscious compromise: it 

would necessarily be smaller, less capable, and less expensive than an FFG, but 

larger, more capable, and more expensive than PCs, MCMs, and MHCs. As 

envisioned, it would be an affordable, self-deployable, and reconfigurable multirole 

warship optimized for operations in littoral waters, with onboard stores for 

fourteen (threshold) to twenty-one-day (objective) patrols.65 As explained in the 

LCS Concept of Operations, “Self-deployability (blue water endurance) is needed to 

allow the platforms to get to the contested area without the need for scarce open 

ocean transport or the support of an ever-present mothership.”66 Once in theater, 

LCS would routinely operate from forward bases, stations, and friendly ports or as 

an integral part of FORCEnet Sea Bases with integrated combat logistics force ships. 

In other words, LCS was conceived of primarily as a self-deployable, theater-based 

platform.67 Consistent with this thinking, while senior Navy leaders anticipated LCS 

might conduct routine deployments from CONUS up to six months in length, they 

expected the ships to more often be forward based or forward stationed, using 

multiple crews in rotation.68

Methods of Tactical Employment 

When in forward theaters, the specific method by which LCSs would be employed 

would depend on “the number of LCSs available, the specific scenarios in different 

theaters, the requirements of the Global Concept of Operations and other issues....”69

Nevertheless, senior Navy leaders envisioned the ship would be used in three basic 

ways:

 As an integrated part of a Carrier Strike Group (CSG) or Expeditionary Strike 

Group (ESG),70 several LCSs with tailored mission configurations would 

perform “vanguard scouting, pouncing support, and other tasks.” 

 As part of an LCS Division or a Littoral Action Group (LAG) with up to six 

ships, LCSs would be forward deployed in order to maintain a continuous 

presence in forward theaters in order to build FORCEnet situation 

awareness. In wartime the divisions/LAGs would integrate into FORCEnet
14

battle networks “to complement power projecting multimission ships.”

 Finally, LCSs could conduct limited independent (mobility) missions in low 

threat areas, such as SOF support, AT/FP, MIO, NEO, HA/DR, or logistics 

support.71

Despite these plans, given its cost-constrained design, Navy leaders were clearly 

uncertain if LCSs could deploy as an integral part of a strike group. For example, the 

2002 Draft LCS IRD stated that, to the maximum extent possible, “LCS operations 

should not slow the speed of advance (SOA) of either CSGs or ESGs.” It went on to 

say, “Operations with a CSG or ESG must be conducted with the Flight 0 ships and its 

benefit to CSG or ESG operations evaluated.”72 Perhaps these tests would show the 

better approach would be to attach LCSs already present in forward theaters to 

deployed CSGs and ESGs for enhanced protection when operating in constricted 

waters or near shore.

As this suggests, then, Navy leaders knew the final method of employment for 

independent LCS patrollers, squadrons or LAGs, and LCS strike group escorts would 

not be fully settled until after the surface warfare community had time to conduct 

experiments with Flight 0 prototypes. The LCS was so different from any ship the 

Navy had ever operated that past practices, war games, and analyses could only 

suggest its most effective operation. It would take actual fleet experience with the 

Flight 0 ships to show the best way forward.73 As will be seen, using the Flight 0 

LCSs to validate initial assumptions and explore alternative concepts of employment 

was an important recurring theme early in the program.

Regardless of the ultimate method of employment, however, Navy planners 

expected LCS to be a “complementary force multiplier” as “one element of a 

balanced force.” Its “distributed nature and integration with existing and planned 

multimission forces [would] help shift the fulcrum point to reduce risk and favor 

U.S. strategic, operational, and tactical combat power.”74

Sprint Speed

As called for in the 1-4-2-1 strategy, the Global ConOps Navy would spend most of 

its time providing situation awareness and maintaining the peace in four critical

theaters. However, it would remain postured and ready to concentrate quickly 

across intra/inter-theater ranges wherever a crisis was brewing. And, since the LCSs 

would screen large battle network combatants and high value units from littoral 

threats once a theater battle network was assembled, both independent deployers 

and forward deployed divisions or LAGs had to get to the scene of a crisis in a hurry. 

Consequently, Navy leadership always wanted LCS to have very high sprint speeds, 

and early thinking called for it to make between fifty and sixty knots.75 Many 

commentators believe the value of high sprint speed was oversold. Indeed, the 

Navy’s Analysis of Multiple Concepts conducted at the behest of Congress concluded 

that while speeds over thirty-five knots were useful for maritime interdiction 

operations and inter-theater transits, they were not needed in most tactical 
15

scenarios.76 Nevertheless, at the February 2003 LCS offsite, Admiral Clark and his 

staff came to a consensus that while achieving fifty knots “was not an issue,” a sprint 

speed of between forty and fifty knots in sea state 3 was highly desirable.77 As later 

explained in the later 2004 CDD for LCS, the desire for high sprint speed was 

motivated by three primary reasons: “responsive mobility” (to concentrate rapidly 

in forward theaters from a globally dispersed posture); “increased volume of 

search” (consistent with the LCS’s expected FORCEnet ISR function); and “threat 

evasion” (particularly against torpedoes).78 

Without question, such high sprint speeds would add cost to the seaframe and force 

trade-offs in other ship characteristics, such as endurance (see below). However, 

within the context of the broader FORCEnet fleet architecture and LCS’s envisioned 

theater-based operating model, these reasons were quite sensible.79

Endurance

Navy officers knew and accepted that any ship designed for high sprint speed would 

necessarily sacrifice unrefueled endurance. So, while they hoped an LCS with 

payload might ultimately boast a range of 4,300 nautical miles at 20 knots (the 

original design specification for a Perry-class FFG), they would accept an unrefueled 

range of 3,500 nautical miles at eighteen knots.80 This thinking was entirely 

consistent with the idea that the LCS was first and foremost a self-deployable 

theater platform operating most often over intra-theater ranges from forward bases 

and stations. And, as outlined in the LCS Concept of Operations, when combined with 

the LCS’s high sprint speeds, “A self-deployment range of at least 3,500 nautical 

miles would ensure a quick transfer to another theater.”81 On the other hand, Navy 

planners recognized the lower 3,500 nautical mile threshold unrefueled range might 

require the development of a “fuel bladder mission module” to support transoceanic 

crossings.82 

Navy leaders also knew well that LCS would be a gas hog when operating at sprint 

speeds. However, during an unexpected or escalating crisis, even unrefueled sprint 

ranges of 1,000 (threshold) to 1,500 (objective) nautical miles would often be good 

enough to allow the rapid concentration of LCSs from adjacent theaters.83 However, 

the officers expected the LCS would most often operate at much more economical 

patrol speeds and utilize its speed only when necessary. Consequently, they thought 

of LCS endurance as a function of both time and speed. As stated in the 2002 Draft 

LCS IRD, the ship would “operate at low speed for mission operations, transit at 

economical speeds, and be capable of high speed sprints...”84 And, while the officers 

considered unrefueled range an important characteristic, they considered time 

between underway replenishments, or UNREPs, to be the more critical factor for 

mission endurance. They decided that a “time between UNREPs” of three to five

days would support either peacetime or wartime LCS operations.85

As explained by Vice Admiral Rick Hunt, a former Commander, Naval Surface Forces 

and currently Director of the Navy Staff, while such frequent underway 

replenishments is unusual today, they were quite common in the 1980s, when CSG 

escorts often “topped off” every two or three days from strike group station ships. 
16

As a result, senior Navy leaders with experience from that era did not consider a 

three to five day UNREP rhythm to be a serious operational limitation. Indeed, it 

might provide an unexpected benefit: as Vice Admiral Hunt observed, frequent 

UNREP operations would help improve the basic seamanship of the LCS force and, 

by extension, the entire surface warfare community.86

Navigational Draft

As called for by its envisioned role and missions, LCS would routinely operate in 

waters close to a coast. As a result, in addition to high sprint speeds, planners 

wanted the ship to have a shallow navigational draft. Accordingly, they wanted LCS’s 

maximum navigational draft to fall between ten (objective) to twenty (threshold) 

feet when operating at full load displacement.87 In comparison, the maximum 

navigation draft for a Cyclone-class PC is eight feet; an Avenger-class MCM, fifteen

feet; and a Perry-class frigate, twenty-six feet.88

Manned Helicopter Capability

Navy leaders considered MH-60 helicopters absolutely critical to LCS’s combat 

capability in all three envisioned mission areas.89 However, their focus on 

affordability made the ship’s organic aviation capability part of the design trade 

space. While rejecting a simple lily pad capability offered by Flight I/II Burke DDGs, 

they weren’t sure they could hit their affordability targets if the LCS possessed the 

organic capability for a permanently embarked aviation detachment (det). The 

group thus decided the minimum acceptable aviation capability was a “hybrid 

concept” where the LCS could host an aviation det for days at a time. They also 

considered designating a single ship in each LCS division or LAG as a “primary 

helicopter carrier.” The leaders acknowledged these approaches might require both 

a “core manned aviation capability” for the LCS seaframe and a plug-in “aviation 

support module” for added personnel when a helicopter was actually embarked.90

This thinking demonstrates the difficult design trade-offs forced by the driving 

requirement for platform affordability. 

Unmanned Sensors, Systems and Vehicles

Next to helicopters, unmanned sensors, systems, and vehicles were considered most 

critical to LCS concept success. Since it was envisioned as a discrete “node” within a 

“dispersed, netted, and operationally agile fleet,” Navy leaders wanted LCS to be able 

to maintain “broad area situational awareness” during peacetime, and exert control 

over wide littoral areas during combat operations.91 Together, these requirements 

called for a ship capable of deploying and monitoring off-board sensors and 

employing second-stage “organic off-board vehicles (OOVs)”—like the planes in an 

air wing embarked aboard a fleet aircraft carrier.92 Small manned craft like rigidhull inflatable boats (RHIBs) would continue to be valuable for a variety of missions, 

such as maritime interdiction operations and special operations support.93 But, with 

a growing appreciation for the untapped potential of unmanned systems, Navy 

leaders expected all LCS mission packages to include—if not emphasize—

deployable, multi-phenomenology sensors, tactical unmanned aerial vehicles 
17

(TUAVs), unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) and unmanned underwater vehicles 

(UUVs).

Navy leaders recognized a ship able to “support the full spectrum of making offboard systems effective”94 was “incompatible with the design and employment 

concept of multimission ships.”95 To perform its envisioned role, LCS would 

therefore be specifically designed to deploy, manage, exploit, refuel, reposition, 

recover, replace, and redeploy off-board sensors, systems and vehicles, a mission 

requirement dubbed DMER5. As stated in the LCS Concept of Operations, “This full 

service DMER5 of off-board systems requires LCS to have launch, recovery, 

servicing, [command control, communications, and computers], crew, and 

seakeeping abilities” appropriate for performing these mission related tasks.”96 The 

picture that emerges is of Navy leadership viewing LCS as a pathfinder for a new 

type of combatant—a mothership for second-stage manned and unmanned OOVs, 

themselves expected to evolve and improve in capability over time. 

Once again, however, there was great uncertainty over exactly how far a first step 

the LCS would be able to take. For example, the stated, “There is limited experience 

in the use of modular mission packages including unmanned vehicles and systems 

as primary elements in the mission capability of surface ships, especially multiple 

systems being simultaneously deployed and controlled from a single ship.” Navy 

leaders therefore expected the Flight 0 LCSs to investigate the utility of OOVs in each 

mission area, as well as the ability of the LCS’s command and control suite to 

support them.97 

Persistent Presence and Operations

Navy leaders thought LCSs operating from forward bases and stations, with onboard 

stores to support fourteen to twenty-one-day patrols augmented by the ability to 

replenish at sea every three to five days, would be able to maintain the persistent 

theater presence called for in the Global ConOps. However, to be operationally 

effective, patrolling LCSs would often need to deploy helicopters, boats, sensors, 

TUAVs, USVs, and UUVs in rough weather. The officers therefore viewed platform 

stability as the most important characteristic for providing persistent FORCEnet 

operations in all weather conditions. Consequently, despite its relatively small size, 

Navy leadership expected LCS designs to launch manned and unmanned OOVs in at 

least sea state 4 (sea state 5 preferred), and manned and unmanned boats and craft 

in at least sea state 3 (sea state 4 preferred). 98 

Of course, this inherent level of stability would also help make LCS a very steady 

littoral weapons platform at both low and high speeds in all weather conditions.99

This would be a particularly useful trait in a swarm fight against small boats and 

craft, which would be much more prone to suffer from the effects of rough weather. 

Reduced/Optimal Crewing

To reduce life cycle costs, Navy leaders always wanted LCS, “to the maximum extent 

possible, [to] employ reduced/optimal manning concepts.”

100 However, achieving 
18

small crew sizes soon became another key driving design goal—so much so that 

CNO Clark expected LCS builders and designers “to justify each person” in the core 

and mission package crews and “push for the minimum manning possible.”101 This 

thinking mirrored that of the then long-running DD-21/DD(X) program, which 

aimed for a crew of no more than 175 officers and Sailors on a ship four to six times 

the size of LCS102. 

Admiral Clark endorsed an initial “core crew” manning target (those who operated 

the LCS seaframe) of thirty to fifty crew members, based on his expectation that LCS 

would set new standards in automation.103 Members of his staff pushed even harder, 

recommending a core crew in the range of fifteen to thirty officers and Sailors. In the 

end, Admiral Clark and his staff split the difference, agreeing to objective and 

threshold manning core crew targets of fifteen and fifty crew members, 

respectively.104 Importantly, however, they agreed that ship accommodations for 

the entire crew (core crew plus “mission package” crew) should not exceed seventyfive racks (i.e., installed bunks).

105 They felt this aggressive target would be a forcing 

function both to push industry design teams towards the greatest use of automation 

and increase chances the Navy would minimize crew size and manpower 

overhead—and overall LCS lifecycle costs.

The emphasis placed on limiting the total number of racks—and therefore total 

crew size—was also partly influenced by the Navy’s desire to pursue a “multicrewing, forward stationed” deployment model for LCS. By adopting a rotational 

crewing model along lines long practiced by the ballistic missile submarine force, 

Navy leaders hoped to achieve employment efficiencies of 75 percent (e.g., ships 

deployed for thirty-six months followed by a twelve months interdeployment 

maintenance and training cycle). While such high efficiencies would minimize LCS’s 

peacetime turn-around ratio, maximize the number of ships forward deployed and 

ready, and lead to “fewer transoceanic transits,” rotating very large core crews 

would create a substantial manpower overhead bill.106 Therefore, the leaders 

sought to keep the total crew size from exceeding seventy-five personnel. 

Of course, with such a small crew, the supporting off-board logistics, maintenance, 

and training construct would be absolutely critical to LCS’s ultimate success. 

However, in 2003 there was no substantive discussion about how this construct 

might work. The officers were content to let LCS Flight 0 ships “investigate 

alternative ...support concepts that...satisfy these requirements.”107

Mission Reconfigurability Timelines

As discussed, the LCS’s envisioned FORCEnet combat mission called for the basic 

seaframe to at times perform the roles of a twenty-first century torpedo boat 

destroyer (T.B.D.), submarine chaser (SC or PC), or fast destroyer minesweeper 

(DMS), whose missions could be “considered from a defensive or offensive 

viewpoint.”108 To perform all these disparate roles, the seaframe was designed to 

accept three distinct modular mission packages. Initial plans called for the mission 

packages to be installed and uninstalled on LCS seaframes depending on the needs 

of a campaign. For example, an LCS might first be configured to conduct battle 
19

network ISR or support SOF insertions, then shift to littoral ASuW, ASW, or MIW, 

and then shift to mobility missions in support of the Sea Base. Accordingly, the 

initial LCS operational concept called for a “rapid modular reconfiguration 

capability.”109

However, when senior Navy leaders discussed mission reconfiguration timelines in 

February 2003, they were far less interested in changing LCS mission packages 

during ongoing naval campaigns. While they assumed packages would often be 

flown to and from distant theaters in support of the forward-deployed LCS force, 

they did not want battle network combat capability to rely on the airlift of mission 

packages during a brewing crisis or major combat operations. Instead, their 

envisioned LCS concept of employment emphasized “come-as-you-are” ships from a 

globally distributed force posture, since they believed CONUS deployers “would 

most likely be configured and crewed with a single mission package for the duration 

of a deployment.”110 Consequently, they considered mission package swap-out times 

of “‘days’ vice ‘hours’” to be more than sufficient.

At first glance, this thinking seems incongruous with subsequent requirements 

documents, which stipulated that changing out one mission package for another and 

achieving full operational capability for the new mission should take between one 

(objective) and four (threshold) days, including system operational testing.111 

However, as explained in the LCS Concept of Operations, “With modularity and open 

architecture, LCS has an inherent capability to remove the MIW, [surface warfare], 

and ASW mission modules, freeing up space and weight capacity to support a host of 

other non-access missions.”

112 In other words, planners thought an LCS operating in 

theater might temporarily remove its mission package to conduct “inherent, 

mobility-related missions,” and reinstall the same package upon mission 

completion—thinking once again consistent with the idea of LCSs operating most 

frequently from forward bases or stations.113

Reinstalling a familiar mission package in one-to-four days would be far less 

stressing than changing out one mission package for a completely different one. The 

latter evolution would inevitably require the core crew to undergo refresher 

training and work-up time with the new mission package crew to achieve peak 

proficiency in the new mission, which would inevitably add time to the swap-out 

process. Once again, Admiral Clark and his staff expected the Flight 0 LCSs to point 

the best way forward. As stated in the 2002 Draft LCS IRD, “Modularity in support of 

focused missions and possibly sequential mission support will be explored by the 

Flight 0 ships...”114 As this wording clearly suggests, while the ability to swap-out 

one mission package for a different one in the midst of a naval campaign might 

perhaps prove useful, rapid swaps-outs of focused mission packages to allow LCSs 

to conduct emergent mobility missions was considered far more important.

Combat Survivability

During the 2001-2003 timeframe, when the Navy was first deciding what it 

expected LCS to be, retired Vice Admiral Art Cebrowski became Director of the 

OSD’s new Office of Force Transformation. A naval aviator by trade, Vice Admiral 
20

Cebrowski had championed small, modular Streetfighter combatants while serving 

as President of the Naval War College. And, as mentioned previously, he believed 

Streetfighters “must be designed to lose [that is, to be lost in combat]. If no risk or 

loss is contemplated, they are a poor design concept because they forego...

economies of scale that are a prominent advantage...”115 Consistent with his 

experience as a combat aviator, he therefore envisioned LCS crews would simply 

abandon their ship after taking a serious hit.

While Admiral Clark agreed with Admiral Cebrowski that the Navy needed small 

combatants in its future fleet design, he personally disagreed with the idea of an 

expendable warship and knew such a concept would never sell in the surface 

warfare community. The CNO therefore sought the most survivable ship possible 

within the program’s aggressive cost targets.116 In practical terms, this necessarily 

meant LCS seaframes could be built to no more than Level I survivability standards, 

the lowest of three levels then assigned to U.S. Navy warships.117

As explained in OPNAV (Office of the Chief of Naval Operations) instruction 9070.1, 

“Survivability Policy for Surface Ships of the U.S. Navy,” the governing U.S. Navy 

instruction on survivability in 2002-2003:

Level I represents the least severe environment anticipated and excludes the 

need for enhanced survivability for designated ship classes to sustain 

operations in the immediate area of an engaged Battle Group or in the 

general war-at-sea region.118

In other words, LCS would not be expected to continue fighting after taking a hit. 

This design approach was consistent with mine warfare and PCs, which were both 

built to Level I standards. However, it was not as robust as the Perry-class FFG, with 

its Level II standards, designed to allow the ship to “conduct sustained combat 

operations following weapons impact,” much less the Level III standards used for 

large multimission ships to give them “the ability to deal with the broad degrading 

effects of damage from antiship cruise missiles, torpedoes, and mines.”119

Although requirements documents stipulated LCS would be built to Level I 

standards, the Navy initially asked for ship designs using American Bureau of 

Shipping (ABS) High Speed Naval Craft Rules, which were essentially commercial 

standards.120 Designers simply did not believe they could hit the LCS cost targets 

with more stringent standards. Consequently, early program documents established 

“crew survivability” as the minimal design standard.121 These moves seemed more 

consistent with a ship “designed to lose” than a warship able to take a hit and 

survive. Therefore, the Navy began to address LCS survivability in a more proactive 

manner, talking less about Level I design standards and more in terms of a “a total 

ship approach to survivability that addresses susceptibility, vulnerability, and 

recoverability.”122 In the case of LCS, the ship would forego armor and extensive 

compartmentation in favor of “speed, agility, stealth and maneuver with organic 

sensors and weapons plus networked force capability.”123 These elements would 

unfold as follows:
21

 High speed and agility—defined as maintaining high speed in a variety of sea 

states—was viewed primarily in terms of skirting enemy aircraft search 

windows, improving antiship cruise missile (ASCM) countermeasures, and 

evading torpedo attacks.124

 Because LCSs would operate as the forward naval battle network screen, 

reduced magnetic, infrared, and radar ship signatures, together with good 

signature management, were highly desirable, as they would help disrupt 

every link in an enemy’s detect-identify-localize-target-engage kill chain. 

Nevertheless, as with both organic aviation capability and crew size, senior 

Navy officers well understood that the degree of stealthiness would be 

determined “within the Cost as an Independent Variable (CAIV) domain.” 

Therefore, while the officers hoped for better performance, LCS radar cross 

section levels “within the range of [an Arleigh Burke] DDG” was 

acceptable.”125

 The LCS’s organic sensors and core self-defense suite were expected “to 

enhance its capability to operate forward and in threat waters.” The key 

requirement here was a terminal missile defense system able to defeat a 

small surprise salvo of ASCMs when the ship was operating independently, 

or small numbers of ASCMs penetrating through both outer and inner 

FORCEnet defenses when LCS worked with large battle network combatants. 

An affordable radar “that would provide a surface search capability and a 

limited air picture” was considered a top priority, and the Phalanx Close-in 

Weapon System, Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) anti-missile system, and 

Nulka decoy were all on the list of candidate core defensive systems.126 Navy 

leadership also wanted the LCS to have a good anti-surface capability, 

including an over-the-horizon weapon “of some sort.” While adding the 

Harpoon antiship missile to the Flight 0 ships was never posed, a longer 

range, next generation cruise missile capability was considered “a highly 

desirable feature” for future LCSs.127

 In addition to its own organic sensors and weapons, LCS could also count on 

“powerful networking to power projection assets for increased awareness,” 

which would afford the ship air, missile, and undersea defense in depth. As 

stated in the LCS ConOps, “reach back assets provide an important 

component of LCS survivability.”128

As implied from the preceding discussion, then, LCS’s survivability would focus 

primarily on susceptibility—that is, its ability to avoid a hit altogether. LCS’s 

vulnerability to an actual weapon’s hit would be “commensurate with the ship’s size 

and hull displacement.” The ship would also be given an appropriate level of 

collective protection against chemical, biological, and radiological threats. Finally, 

given its small crew, recoverability would rely heavily upon automated damage 

control and firefighting equipment and applications.129 Consistent with its expected 

commercial design, less attention would be given to the ship’s recoverability, which 

remained a sore point for the surface warfare community.
22

The Importance of Flight 0 Prototypes

If not already evident, the two planned Flight 0 prototypes were absolutely 

instrumental to the LCS’s rapid development, design, and build strategy as well as its 

ultimate success in fleet service. As the 2002 Draft LCS IRD stated, “surface

combatants have historically been designed to operate principally with organic 

mission capability, and to rely on remotely generated information to enhance their 

organic capability.”130 In contrast, the LCS would rely on the power of FORCEnet for 

both situational awareness and survivability to a degree never seen before. This 

represented a big leap in battle force and ship design, as well as a major culture shift 

for a surface warfare community whose experiences were shaped predominately by 

operating large, expensive, multimission combatants. 

Therefore, although the two Flight 0 seaframes would ultimately become 

operational fleet units, their “initial contribution” would focus on “refining the 

design and employment architecture... of follow-on ships to best achieve the full 

operational capability of the LCS force.” Or, as stated later, “While intended to be a 

fully deployable and combat-ready asset, the Flight 0 also has a principal raison 

d’etre of refining concept development, modularity, employment of off-board 

vehicles and affecting risk mitigation in follow-on flights of the ship class.”131 And, as 

previously stated, they would also develop the best logistics, maintenance, and 

training support structure. Admiral Clark anticipated Flight 0 prototype testing 

would help overcome any skepticism of the LCS concept within the surface warfare 

community, as well as small warships in general.132

From Requirements to Program

The foregoing decisions and judgments reflect what the senior leadership of the 

Navy wanted the LCS to be and do. The next step was to translate these decisions 

and judgments into a concrete ship design and stable shipbuilding program. 

However, as in any program that stretches over a decade or more, circumstances 

and planning factors change, unforeseen problems arise, and original assumptions 

prove false or only partially correct. Consequently, the translation from desired 

requirements to a final ship design is always imperfect, requiring the Navy to adjust 

its expectations and plans. The following section details the most important 

subsequent changes to the LCS program and ship designs, in rough chronological 

order.

Function to Form: A Design for Employing OOVs

Navy leaders had a clear idea of the LCS’s FORCEnet function—a self-deployable, 

reconfigurable, multirole battle network node designed to employ a variety of 

organic off-board vehicles, including both manned helicopters and a variety of 

unmanned systems. However, they were content to let what ultimately turned out to 

be six competing design teams choose the best hull form to perform this function.133

To guide their choices, Navy planners established a threshold for mission package 

payload at 180 metric tons, with an objective of 210 tons.134 Importantly, however, 

they stipulated the total payload had to be apportioned among twenty different 

modular mission stations.135
23

Two of these mission stations would be devoted to aviation systems. Recall that 

early in the program, the minimum required LCS aviation capacity was to hangar 

and operate at least one MH-60 helicopter for days at a time. During the subsequent 

Analysis of Multiple Concepts, however, a manned helo was deemed so central to 

every LCS combat mission that it drove the minimum requirement toward hosting a 

permanent helicopter detachment.136 At the same time, however, Navy planners 

knew unmanned aerial systems would play an increasing role in naval warfare. 

Consequently, although the required aviation mix was ultimately set at one MH-60 

helicopter and one unmanned aerial vehicle, both of the two aviation stations had to 

be large enough to hangar either one MH-60 or three Fire Scout TUAVs.137

The eighteen remaining mission stations were to be devoted to carrying manned 

and unmanned boats or craft, unmanned underwater vehicles, deployable sensors, 

weapons, and supplies. Four of the stations supported RHIBs, UUVs, USVs, and other 

surface craft; two large sea stations had to be sized for an eleven-meter long system, 

while two small sea stations had to be sized for seven-meter long systems. An 

additional station would carry deployable off-board sensors, another would carry 

adjunct systems for off-board vehicles (e.g., a towed mine hunting sonar), and three 

more would support extra guns or missile systems. Finally, the nine remaining 

“support stations” had to be large enough to carry 8x8x20 foot containers stuffed 

with the parts, supplies, and maintenance equipment to service embarked OOVs, 

systems, and equipment.138

By asking the six design teams to build a fast, multirole combatant around these 

space and payload parameters, Navy leadership hoped to see innovative LCS hull 

shapes and systems. They got what they wished for. In the end, the two LCS hull 

forms surviving the competitive design process differed radically both from each 

other and any other ship in the fleet. The Lockheed Martin (LM)-led team offered a 

steel, semiplaning monohull, while the General Dynamics (GD)-led team opted for 

an aluminum trimaran.

139 Both had full load displacements of approximately 3,100 

tons. At this displacement, with their twenty modular mission stations the two ships 

would be the smallest in the world with such large aviation and unmanned OOV

capacities.

Function to Form: Improving Combat Survivability

As previously discussed, there was absolutely no way to build LCS seaframes to 

Level II or Level III survivability standards if they had to possess a top speed 

exceeding forty knots, the capacity to support MH-60s and manned and unmanned 

off-board systems, and cost between $250 and $400 million. Therefore, although the 

approach entailed some risks, top Navy leaders accepted that the LCS’s combat 

survivability would rely less on extensive armor and compartmentation and more 

on FORCEnet/TFBN defenses and the ship’s own speed, agility, passive stealth, and 

core defensive systems. As originally envisioned, its seaframe would be built to 

Level I standards with crew survivability being the primary design requirement. 

However, as the design progressed, LCS survivability started to rely less on avoiding 

a hit (e.g., susceptibility) and more on reducing ship vulnerability and improving 
24

recovery after taking a hit.140 This move was made partly in response to grumblings 

from the surface warfare community, which was highly skeptical of warship based 

on commercially derived designs. Accordingly, during the design and construction of 

the two Flight 0 prototypes, the Navy directed the two LCS design teams (LM and 

GD) to shift to ABS Naval Vessel Rules (NVR), which were more stringent than the 

earlier commercially-based ABS High Speed Naval Craft Rules. Naval Vessel Rules 

define a set of combatant standards applicable only to hull, machinery, and electrical 

passive survivability requirements (e.g., structural strength, redundancy and 

separation), and not to ship combat systems.141 Consequently, the move to NVR 

meant an LCS’s main propulsion plant and associated auxiliaries, electrical 

generation and distribution systems, navigation, internal communication and 

announcement systems, fire mains, and navigation and external communications 

systems all had to be shock hardened. A second result was the addition of extra 

watertight compartmentation to allow the ship to remain afloat even with three 

compartments and 15 percent of its overall length flooded—the same damage 

stability requirement for Level II and Level III combatants. Finally, the LCS was 

provided no less than three redundant firefighting systems. 142

The ships’ core defensive systems were also locked in, and both were consistent 

with the original desires of Navy leadership. In terms of air self-defense, the 

Lockheed Martin-led team adopted an integrated Aegis-based combat management 

system called COMBATSS-21, with a German TRS 3D air and surface search radar 

and a twenty-one-cell RAM launcher to defeat low-density ASCM attacks.143

Meanwhile, the General Dynamics-led team chose the Dutch TACTICOS combat 

management system, coupled with a Sea Giraffe 3D air and surface search radar and 

an eleven-cell SeaRAM anti-missile system.144 Both variants also received electronic 

warfare systems and Super Blooming Rapid Off-board Chaff launchers to spoof and 

decoy incoming antiship cruise missiles.145 With these systems, Navy leaders 

expected LCSs to be able to protect themselves from small salvos of ASCMs when 

operating independently, and against any “leakers” having made their way through 

battle network defenses. 

For their basic anti-surface warfare weapon, both ships received the same medium 

caliber automatic cannon. Two candidates were considered: the 76 mm Oto Melara 

found on the Navy’s FFGs, and a 57 mm cannon produced by Bofors. The 76 mm 

cannon offered range and punch, and could fire existing rounds in the Navy’s 

inventory, but came at the expense of magazine capacity, rate of fire, reliability, and 

added weight and cost to the seaframe.146 Given expectations that ASuW-equipped 

LCSs would have an armed helo and the non-line of sight (N-LOS) Precision Attack 

Missile to attack small boats operating over the horizon, the Navy opted for the 

Mark 110 57 mm cannon. With a rate of fire of 220 rounds per minute, and the 

ability to fire programmable, pre-fragmented, proximity-fuzed (3P) ammunition, 

the 57 mm was considered the better choice to counter any swarming boats able to

penetrate the ship’s longer range defenses. As an added bonus, its selection ensured 

system commonality with the U.S. Coast Guard’s new National Security Cutter, 

which was also armed with the Mark 110.

147 
25

As has been widely reported, despite these design improvements and features, 

DoD’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) still concluded, “LCS is 

not expected to be survivable” in littoral naval combat. While there were several 

technical reasons behind this conclusion, such as “knowledge gaps related to the 

vulnerability of an aluminum ship structure to weapon-induced ballast and fire 

damage,” key to DOT&E’s judgment was that the ship was “not expected to maintain

mission capability after taking a significant hit in a hostile combat environment.”148

In other words, DOT&E found fault with the Navy’s decision not to build LCS to at 

least Level II survivability standards—including “features necessary to conduct 

sustained operations.”149 However, this choice was fully in keeping with LCS’s 

ConOps, and was approved by the Joint Requirements Oversight Council. Moreover, 

DOT&E’s opinion is out of step with advances in both naval warfare and weaponry. 

A single under keel explosion from a heavyweight torpedo would likely sink a 

10,000-ton Level III Ticonderoga-class cruiser as easily as it would a “Level I+” LCS. 

Similarly, it would be hard for any U.S. combatant to sustain combat operations long 

after being hit by a single heavy, supersonic cruise missile with a terminal impact 

speed of Mach 2 to 3. Accordingly, the Navy recently revised its survivability policy 

and standards for U.S. Navy surface ships and craft states, opting to jettison the 

prescriptive trilevel Cold War survivability standards adopted in 1988. As stated in 

the updated instruction, dated 13 September 2012:

This revision recognizes the changing nature of naval ship design and 

system threats and eliminates the prescriptive survivability characteristics 

while establishing the new requirement to derive a minimum survivability 

baseline that is based on the programs' ICD and defined concept of 

operations (CONOPS)... Survivability shall be addressed on all new surface 

ship, combat systems and equipment designs, overhauls, conversions, and 

modernizations in order that the design is provided a balance of 

survivability performance, risk, and cost within program objectives.150

In other words, the approach taken on survivability for the LCS is now standard 

Navy policy for all its battle force ships.

Altogether, then, LCS is a tougher ship than expected and far better able to defend 

itself than the patrol combatants and mine countermeasure ships it replaces. 

Indeed, its defensive armament stacks up well against the legacy Perry-class frigates 

now operating with the fleet, with their single 76 mm cannon and one Phalanx 

Close-in Weapon System for missile defense.151 Although LCS does not have the 

more extensive internal subdivision necessary to allow the ship to continue fighting 

after taking a hit, because of its greatly improved structural strength, component 

hardening, and advanced damage control features, it is far tougher and more 

resilient than originally envisioned. Program managers now consider the LCS a 

“Level I+” design, with the ability to take a hit, recover, and return home under its 

own power (think the Israeli corvette Hanit).152
26

Increased Cost Projections

The shift to Naval Vessel Rules and other changes made in the middle of the detailed 

design and early production phase disrupted the LCS program schedule and 

contributed to spiraling costs for the first two Flight 0 ships. They also had an 

impact on the projected average cost of a missionized Flight I LCS. Recall that in 

early 2003, Admiral Clark wanted the threshold (minimally acceptable) cost for “an 

entire” (i.e., missionized) LCS to be $250 million. By mid-2004, however, the LCS 

Capabilities Development Document stipulated an objective (desired) cost of $225

million, divided between $150 million for the seaframe and $75 million for the 

mission packages, and a threshold cost target of $370 million, of which $220 million

was dedicated to the seaframe and $150 million to the mission packages.153 This 

adjusted threshold target, which established the new minimally acceptable cost for a 

missionized LCS, was very close to the $400 million threshold target established by 

OSD in 2002-2003, and subsequently endorsed by the House Armed Services 

Committee in 2006.154 It was also the first harbinger of continual “cost creep” which 

was ultimately to cause significant program disruption down the line (more on this 

point shortly). 

Changes to IRD Requirements

During any ship’s development, design requirements are often modified to constrain 

costs. The LCS program was no different in this regard, particularly once it became 

clear the basic seaframe would come in well above even the modified $220 million

threshold target. Of the cost avoidance decisions to the LCS seaframe made in the 

2005-2005 timeframe, three stand out:

 The Navy relaxed the threshold for unrefueled endurance to 3,500 nautical 

miles at fourteen knots, with an objective of 3,500 nautical miles at sixteen

knots.155 While this decision represented a further concession to the LCS’s 

emphasis on high sprint speed, it was consistent with the idea that the ship 

was first and foremost a self-deployable theater asset. Without question, 

however, since the average SOA of a strike group is about sixteen knots, this 

move will make it more difficult for an LCS to operate as an integral part of a 

deploying CSG, and perhaps for an ESG or amphibious ready group. Said 

differently, slower economical transit speeds make it more likely that LCSs 

will be attached to strike groups once they arrive in theater and are 

operating in littoral waters, rather than deploying with them. Of course, exact 

LCS operating procedures with strike groups will ultimately be worked out 

through fleet testing, as planned in 2003. 

 The Navy eliminated the requirement for a collective protective system (CPS) 

for airborne contaminants (nuclear, biological, or chemical), which originally 

had to be “of sufficient size and capacity to allow the operation of all core 

systems inside the CPS boundary.” The LCS will instead be equipped with less 

costly ship decontamination stations and carry sufficient individual 

protective suits and equipment for the entire ship’s company.156 This could 

be a regrettable loss in capability for a ship designed to operate inside 
27

contested littorals.

 Finally, the original LCS design called for a vertical replenishment 

(VERTREP) spot, a fueling at sea (FAS) station, and a connected 

replenishment (CONREP) station used to transfer bulk stores on pallets. To 

constrain costs, the Navy dropped the requirement for a CONREP station.157

Given the small size of the crew, the thinking was VERTREP replenishment 

would be sufficient, and losing bulk store transfer capability would have little 

to no impact on the LCS’s three-to-five-day UNREP frequency. 

Manning and Crewing Developments

Recall that the Preliminary Design IRD set the objective and threshold manning for 

the core crew to be fifteen and fifty crew members, respectively. In addition, 

maximum shipboard accommodations for a missionized LCS—that is, one operating 

with a combined core and mission package crew—were set at seventy-five racks. 

This requirement was based on the expectation that the core crew would contain 

forty crew members, the embarked aviation detachment would number twenty

personnel, and a mission package team would consist of no more than fifteen

people. However, Navy planners knew this manning target was quite aggressive, 

and past experience suggested additional Sailors and officers might be needed once 

the Flight 0 ships were in fleet service.158 Therefore, the April 2004 CDD for LCS

added a new seaframe attribute for “total platform manning,” with objective and 

threshold targets of seventy-five and 110 crew members, respectively.159 In other 

words, Navy planners recognized that final ship manning might easily exceed 

seventy-five personnel.

Subsequent events proved them right. Follow-on functional workload analyses 

suggested a core crew size of forty would be difficult, but possible, to achieve. 

However, in August 2007, in light of the requirement to carry and operate one MH60 and one to three TUAVs at all times, the LCS Flag Oversight Council approved an 

increase in the planned size of the aviation detachment to twenty-three pilots and 

maintainers, three above the originally approved number. In turn, this decision 

prompted the LCS program’s Configuration Change Board to add three additional 

racks to LCS 1 and 2 in post-delivery availabilities.160 Seventy-eight bunks thus 

became the new “total platform manning” objective.

As a hedge against further crew growth, the Navy wanted both builders to account 

for the possibility that total platform manning might exceed seventy-eight 

personnel. One hedge involved providing the capability to accept 8x8x20 foot 

habitability modules with bunks and showers that could be temporarily installed in 

one or more of the LCS’s nine support stations. A second hedge involved designing 

in the capability to increase the number of installed shipboard racks if manning 

requirements grew beyond seventy-eight crew members. Thus, while the Flight 0 

LCSs would start with a total of seventy-eight racks in a two-high bunk 

configuration, both designs could accommodate up to ninety-eight personnel in a 

three-high rack configuration without compromising Navy habitability standards. 
28

Assuming the combined aviation detachment and mission crew remained at the 

planned target of thirty-eight spaces (twenty-three plus fifteen), if subsequent 

experience showed the core crew to be too small, this second design hedge would 

allow the Navy to increase the planned forty-person core crew by up to 50 percent 

without significant problems. Alternatively, if the core and mission crews did not 

exceed seventy-eight personnel, the ship could easily be modified to carry up to 

twenty additional personnel without having to install habitability modules. Above 

that number of people, more substantive and costly changes to seaframe potable 

water, sewage and solid waste disposal systems and food/dry provision storage 

would have to be made.161 

This forward thinking proved to be prescient. Early data from LCS operations, 

particularly from USS Freedom’s early operational deployment and performance 

during major fleet exercises, suggests the core crews will likely have to be increased 

modestly in numbers to accommodate more maintainers and watch standers. 

Additionally, the surface warfare mission package now includes a maritime security 

module, which includes two eleven-meter RHIBs and two Visit, Board, Search, and 

Seizure (VBSS) teams. As a result, the mission package crew now numbers nineteen

personnel, four more than originally planned.162 The mine warfare mission package 

crew is also projected to grow to nineteen people. Moreover, fleet experience with 

embarked habitability modules has not been encouraging; the modules are cramped 

and have poor ventilation, and sound sleeping in the open mission bays is difficult 

due to high noise levels. Consequently, in preparation for her planned 2013 

deployment to Singapore, LCS 1 was provided the additional twenty “hedge bunks.” 

This move will accommodate the observed growth in the aviation detachment and 

mission package crews, and allow for further experimentation with larger core 

crews. The extra bunks will also be added to USS Independence (LCS 2) and all future 

ships of both classes.163 At the same time, the LCS Program Office is examining any 

changes to seaframe “hotel” services (e.g., fresh water and stores) needed to support 

ninety-eight personnel for twenty-one day patrols. The costs for these modifications 

are expected to be modest. 

As for the desired “multi-crewing, forward stationed” deployment model, analysis 

suggests the most efficient manning approach is to assign three core crews to every 

two LCS seaframes. Moreover, experience gained from USS Freedom’s first 

deployment indicates the seaframe’s relatively small core crew can operate 

effectively for up to four months. At that point, the crew would need a break from 

the demanding tempo of operations, even if augmented. Consequently, current plans 

have a thirty-two-month deployment cycle for each seaframe pairing, with both

hulls alternating between one sixteen-month period deployed or ready for tasking 

and a second sixteen-month period devoted to maintenance and local operations 

from home port. At the same time, the three assigned core crews would operate on a 

twelve-month rotational cycle, spending four months in training, four months in 

workup, and four months on deployment. In this way, over the course of the thirtytwo-month cycle, there will be—for every two crews and three seaframes—eight 

four-month crew deployments, four per hull, with no single crew spending more 
29

than twelve months deployed. 

As LCS program managers put it, three core crews and two seaframes will keep one 

ship deployed at all times. In other words, the “3-2-1” crewing scheme is expected to 

yield a forcewide availability rate of 50 percent. This means a force of 55 LCSs will 

be able to keep 27 or 28 ships continuously forward deployed. It would take a force 

of 103 to 124 single-crewed, CONUS-based FFGs to provide the same level of 

forward presence.164 Further fleet experimentation will identify the optimum LCS 

manning and settle whether the 3-2-1 rotational crewing model is the best and most 

sustainable approach.

Changes to Mission Packages and Systems

Early thinking called for each seaframe to have three dedicated mission packages—

one of each type (e.g., ASuW, ASW, and MIW), resulting in a requirement for 168 

total packages for the fifty-six seaframes called for in the 375-ship Global ConOps 

Navy. This was always a notional planning factor to establish estimated program 

costs, and was based on an assumption of frequent mission package swap-outs over 

the course of a naval campaign.

However, with the deemphasis on serial change-outs during campaigns in favor of a 

globally distributed mix of deployed seaframes and mission packages that could be 

concentrated in a wartime theater, thinking on the number of required packages per 

seaframe began to change. For example, after a detailed review of war plans during 

the Analysis of Multiple Concepts, planners concluded eighty-eight mission packages 

were needed to support fifty-six LCSs, for a mission package-to-seaframe ratio of 

1.6:1.165 A later study conducted for the Navy by the RAND Corporation called for a 

long term mission inventory of 126 packages for fifty-five LCSs, including twentyeight ASW, thirty-eight mine warfare, and sixty surface warfare packages—or about 

2.3 mission packages per seaframe.166

Ultimately, as the 3-2-1 crewing scheme was solidified and idea of basing more LCSs 

forward became more prominent, the Navy’s plans for mission packages ratcheted 

downward. With twenty-seven of fifty-five planned LCSs forward stationed, forward 

deployed, or ready for tasking, fleet planners concluded that an apt allocation of 

ready mission packages, coupled with LCS’s high operational transit speed (that, is, 

ability to reach the scene of action), would allow the quick concentration of 

sufficient mission packages to respond to almost any campaign. As a result, current 

plans now call for just sixty-four mission packages for fifty-five LCSs, including 

sixteen ASW, twenty-four MIW, and twenty-four ASuW versions—for a mission 

package-to-seaframe ratio of 1.2:1. This ratio is consistent with the idea that 

forward deployed LCSs might temporarily remove their mission packages to 

conduct a mobility mission, but would not often change their primary mission focus 

packages over the course of a deployment. Needless to say, if the number of planned 

LCS seaframes drops and campaign requirements stay constant, serial mission 

package changes might become more important and the ratio of packages to 

seaframes might need to rise. In any event, if fleet experience proves the seaframemission package balance to be incorrect, the Navy can always consider procuring 
30

more packages as needed.

There have been similar changes to planned mission package systems, as testing 

revealed some systems to be less effective or reliable than expected. For example, 

the Navy decided to completely skip the planned first ASW package, which relied on 

deployable off-board sensors, in favor of a hull-mounted mission package allowing 

for littoral and open ocean ASW escort of high value units. Similarly, some planned 

systems did not move to production, such as the aforementioned N-LOS surface-tosurface missile, developed jointly with the Army. None of these changes have caused 

major design changes to the LCS, demonstrating the wisdom of designing the LCS 

seaframe as a modular, reconfigurable, multirole system able to support a wide 

array of deployable sensors and second-stage OOVs and systems. This design 

approach takes the idea of “fitted for, not with” to a whole new level. Indeed, the 

LCS’s open architecture and modular design allows it to adapt to changes in its 

mission systems better and faster than any other ship in the fleet, if not the world.

The Demise of the Global ConOps Navy

Changes since the LCS was first conceived have not been limited to modifications to 

its seaframe, mission systems, or operational requirements. As implied above, one of 

the more obvious changes is the 375-ship Global ConOps Navy is no more. By late 

2004, the Bush Administration had jettisoned the 1-4-2-1 strategy/force sizing 

construct upon which it was based. In truth, however, the 375-ship battle force with 

its fifty-six Littoral Combat Ships (representing 15 percent of total battle force 

ships) was never endorsed by OSD. It instead represented Admiral Clark’s 

aspirational goal for a larger fleet. However, by early 2005, fiscal realities prompted 

him to start talking more realistically about a future Navy battle force ranging from 

260 to 325 ships, with the variation in number dependent upon assumptions about 

the degree of technological insertion, rotational crewing, and the number of ships 

forward stationed or based. Despite the dramatic drop in planned fleet size, 

however, the prominence of LCS in the projected future battle force only increased, 

with sixty-three ships included in the 260-ship fleet (or 24 percent of the force) and 

eighty-two in the 325-ship fleet (25 percent).167

The 2005-2006 Quadrennial Defense Review called for a battle force able to 

respond to irregular, traditional, catastrophic, and disruptive challenges. It had to be 

large enough to win two nearly simultaneous conventional campaigns (or just one if 

the Joint Force was already engaged in a long duration irregular conflict), and have 

the residual ability to deter the hostile actions of an opportunistic aggressor.168 The 

supporting Navy Force Structure Assessments (FSA) for this new strategy, 

published in February 2006, called for a battle force of some 313 ships, fifty-five of 

them Littoral Combat Ships (18 percent).169 While the subsequent 2009-2010 QDR 

retained its predecessor’s basic strategy, the Navy decided to update its Force 

Structure Assessment. To account for changes in assumptions and plans since 2006, 

this new FSA outlined a battle force of 313 to 323 ships, including fifty-five LCSs (17

to 18 percent).170

Before the 2010 FSA was formally approved by OSD, however, the dramatically 
31

reduced defense budgets associated with the Budget Control Act of 2012 triggered a 

thorough reappraisal of the 2009-2010 QDR strategy. This review concluded that 

the QDR strategy could not be executed on the reduced defense resources presaged

by the Act, meaning a new strategy and force-sizing construct were required. After 

the end of an intense, two-month long strategic review, the Defense Department’s 

updated strategy called for a Joint force large enough to provide for homeland 

defense, robust combat credible forward presence in two primary theaters (PACOM 

and CENTCOM), and innovative and lower cost presence in other regions (EUCOM, 

AFRICOM, and SOUTHCOM). From this global posture, the force had to be able to 

decisively defeat an aggressor in one theater while denying an opportunistic 

aggressor from achieving its objectives in another.171 The newest draft FSA for this 

strategy calls for a battle force of around 300 ships with around fifty-five LCSs (18 

percent).172

As these numbers suggest, then, demand for LCS has remained strong—between 15 

and 25 percent of planned battle force inventories—despite several adjustments to 

our national defense strategy. The reason is simple. The Navy’s twenty-first century 

operational construct and architectural framework is defined more by Admiral 

Clark’s vision of FORCEnet—a “globally distributed, fully netted force”—than the 

precise number of ships in commission. Consequently, the department of the Navy 

continues to link its vertically layered fleet sensor grids, command, control, 

communications, computers, cyber warfare, and intelligence (C5I) grids, and effects 

grids to form ever more powerful fleet battle networks. In these battle networks, 

every fleet platform is a potential sensor, payloads are as important, if not more so, 

than platforms, and network enabled weapons are the desired standard. As it 

implements this construct, the Navy is well on its way to transforming itself from a 

legacy Total Ship Battle Force to a true Total Force Battle Network (TFBN). 

In other words, if the term “FORCEnet” has fallen out of vogue, its key tenets very 

much live on in the form of the TFBN. Moreover, while the numbers of ships 

necessary to implement national military strategy may change, TFBN architectural 

principles are relatively independent of such changes. They remain in the 

background regardless of the battle force’s exact mix of ships. Therefore, even 

though current ship counts are smaller than those first envisioned for the FORCEnet 

375-ship Global ConOps Navy, the fundamental rationale for a small battle network 

combatant like LCS remains valid. 

The Demise of the DD(X) Surface Combatant Family of Ships

The requirement for LCS is also relatively insensitive to the numbers and types of 

large battle network combatants in the FORCEnet/TFBN fleet architecture—plans 

for which have changed repeatedly since the announcement of the DD(X) SCFOS. 

These changes can be attributed mainly to a big mismatch between the DD(X) 

SCFOS’s aspirational goals and fiscal reality. Its assumed legacy baseline structure 

included eighty-eight Aegis combatants, (twenty-seven Ticonderoga-class CGs and 

sixty-one Arleigh Burke-class DDGs) and twenty-four modernized Spruance-class 

DDs.173 However, by the end of FY 2001, just before the DD(X) program was 
32

announced, only thirty-two Burkes were in commission. Plans for the DD(X) SCFOS 

therefore envisioned the Navy building twenty-nine more Burke-class ships before 

replacing the “Spru-cans” with twenty-four new DD(X) land attack destroyers (later 

DDG 1000s), resulting in a steady state force of 112 large battle network 

combatants. At this point, production would then shift over to CG(X), which would 

replace the twenty-seven “Ticos” in the theater air and missile defense role. Once 

done, the Navy would then begin replacing the sixty-one Burkes with a new 

multimission warship. While all this was happening, the baseline small combatant 

force of thirty long-hulled Oliver Hazard Perry-class FFGs, fourteen Avenger-class 

MCMs, twelve Osprey-class MHCs, and thirteen Cyclone-class PCs would gradually be 

replaced by fifty-six LCSs. 

In other words, these plans assumed the Navy would replace all its multimission 

destroyers and guided missile cruisers on a one-for-one basis with vastly more 

capable (and expensive) ships—while at the same time replacing legacy escort, 

patrol, and mine warfare craft with new LCSs. This could only work if the 

department of the Navy received a substantial increase in its budget topline and 

maintained ruthless cost control on all of its new combatants. Neither happened. 

First, the long ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and then the 2012 Budget 

Control Act consumed any additional discretionary spending. And then, both the 

DD(X)/DDG 1000 and CG(X) programs foundered on the rocks of the uncontrolled 

requirements and cost growth. The former program ended after just three ships 

were authorized and the latter was canceled altogether. Making matters worse, to 

help balance its books the Navy chose to retire five Ticonderoga-class CGs and all 

twenty-four VLS-equipped Spruance-class destroyers long before the end of their 

expected service lives, resulting in a much smaller starting baseline of cruisers and 

destroyers. 

These changes inevitably meant the large battle network combatant force would 

shrink regardless of strategy. As fate would have it, however, the SCFOS needed for 

the new “win-hold strategy” numbers only about ninety large multimission battle 

network combatants, about twenty-two fewer than called for in the Global ConOps 

Navy. Given lower projected future budgets, however, meeting and sustaining even 

this lower requirement will be no easy task. The Navy in 2011 therefore opted to 

double down on its proven Arleigh Burke DDG design. It first restarted the 

production line of the most up-to-date Flight IIA Burke, which had halted after sixtytwo ships. Then, after ten or eleven additional Flight IIAs are built, the Navy plans to 

shift production to a new Flight III version of the ship. With a powerful new Air and 

Missile Defense Radar and long-range SM-6 surface-to-air missiles, the Flight IIIs 

will replace all remaining Ticonderoga CGs and an undetermined number of older 

Burke DDGs.174 The benefits of an all-Burke surface battle line in terms of training, 

logistics, maintenance, and easy fleetwide upgrades should be obvious.

Meanwhile, the department continues plans to replace the entire force of legacy 

FFGs, PCs, and mine warfare ships with approximately fifty-five Littoral Combat 

Ships. That LCS numbers remain relatively static despite major changes to plans for 

large combatants and the ships’ own well-publicized problems can be attributed to 
33

three interrelated things:

 Now more than ever, the Navy’s future SCFOS requires a multirole small 

battle network combatant to complement its ninety or so large multimission 

battle network warships and to maintain its overall numbers. The battle 

force missions now performed by the retiring or aging FFGs, mine warfare 

ships, and PCs are not going away; the original warfighting role envisioned 

for the LCS remains both valid and vital. 

 Second, the new defense strategy requires the Navy-Marine Corps Team to 

deploy its most combat capable forces in two forward theaters—PACOM and 

CENTCOM—and provide less capable and more affordable forces in EUCOM, 

AFRICOM, and SOUTHCOM. Low cost LCSs can provide affordable, tailored 

forward presence in such economy of force theaters, freeing up the large 

battle network combatants to concentrate on higher priority missions in 

higher priority theaters—just as envisioned a decade ago. 

 Finally, the basic idea of a “high/low mix” of battle network combatants, all 

featuring rapid FORCEnet/TFBN upgrades and improvements, remains 

sound, especially given the emerging strategic environment. While there is a 

budding naval arms race in the Western Pacific, U.S. discretionary defense 

spending is coming down, putting pressure on the Navy’s new ship 

construction budget.175 Under these circumstances, being able to affordably 

and quickly upgrade legacy platforms provides U.S. naval planners with a 

great competitive advantage.

In short, despite the demise of the Global ConOps Navy and its DD(X) family of ships, 

demand for an affordable small battle network combatant like the Littoral Combat 

Ship has remained remarkably and steadily high.

Shifting Program Plans

Recall that in 2002-2003, the Navy planned to award each of two winning LCS 

design teams a contract for one Flight 0 prototype. The first was to be built in FY

2005 and the second in FY 2006. After a period of fleet testing, the Navy would 

down-select to a single Flight I variant, with the first two production ships being 

requested in FY 2008 and delivered in FY 2010.176 

This plan proved unworkable for two reasons. First, the winning teams of the design 

competition—led by Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics—indicated that stickbuilding a single Flight 0 prototype and then keeping their design teams and 

production lines idle until the Navy decided on the eventual Flight I winner would 

be prohibitively expensive. Accordingly, the 2004 CDD for LCS indicated four Flight 0 

ships would be built between FYs 2005 and 2007. However, the CDD also made clear 

that the first Flight I LCS would still be delivered in FY 2010.177

While adding two more Flight 0 ships helped solve the idle production line problem, 

it did little to solve a second, more pressing issue. Based on the planned transition to 

Flight I production, the second builder would just be finishing its first Flight 0 
34

seaframe as the down-select decision was being made. In other words, the Navy’s 

plan allowed for little if any time for comparative testing between the two 

prototypes. The lack of testing was particularly troublesome for Admiral Clark. He 

was well aware that LCS concepts of employment and support would need testing 

and validation once the ships were in active service. He therefore wanted to keep 

both Flight 0 seaframes in production longer both to thoroughly understand their 

strengths and weaknesses and to refine LCS operations and support plans before 

committing to a single production design—or to keeping both versions in service. 

Indeed, CNO Clark believed no decision could responsibly be made until at least ten 

ships were in service, a number large enough to test them as individual deployers, 

with Carrier and Expeditionary Strike Groups, and as part of a Littoral Action Group 

or LCS division. The downside to this approach was that should the Navy ultimately 

down-select to a single Flight I production variant as expected, it would have to 

contend with at least five “orphans” of the losing design. However, given the need to 

fully explore assumptions and judgments about LCS, Admiral Clark felt the challenge 

of dealing with a small class of orphans was manageable.178

This new approach was reflected in the final FY 2005 National Defense 

Authorization Act, which called for LM to construct its first Flight 0 seaframes in FY

2005 and FY 2006, and GD to build its first two Flight 0 ships in FY 2006 and FY

2007. Nine more Flight 0 seaframes (for a total of thirteen ships, seven of one 

version, six of the other) would then be built in FY 2008 and FY 2009 before a downselect decision occurred in FY 2010.179 These plans changed slightly in subsequent 

budget submissions. For example, the final FY 2006 defense bill called for a total of 

fourteen Flight 0 ships (presumably seven of each variant) to be built between FY

2005 and FY 2009 before the Navy decided whether to move to one Flight I 

production version or to keep both variants in design. Despite these minor 

variations, all the plans were consistent with Admiral Clark’s desire to delay the 

final Flight I decision until the two designs could be thoroughly evaluated in fleet 

service. 

These plans came apart in early 2007, just as the Navy’s FY 2008 budget was being 

delivered to Congress. The problem was long in the making. Lured by the siren song 

of “transformation,” the department had forsaken long established defense 

acquisition rules and processes in favor of Secretary Rumsfeld’s “entrepreneurial 

approach to developing military capabilities”—an approach that encouraged all 

military departments to “be proactive,” “behave...less like bureaucrats and more like 

venture capitalists,” and not wait to validate threats or programs before developing 

the capabilities to respond to them.180 One consequence was the Navy tried to

control program costs by establishing utterly unrealistic “transformative” budget

targets for the LCS seaframe.181 Another was that in the midst of seaframe detailed 

design, the Navy dictated a change from commercial standards to Naval Vessel 

Rules, causing a major program disruption and increase in ship costs. And, in 

keeping with a rapid speed-to-fleet plan, the lead ships were placed into production 

well before their designs were stable. As a result, change orders became the 

program standard rather than the exception, further complicating and disrupting 
35

production and driving costs up. Worse, the overriding desire to get the LCS into 

fleet service as fast as possible inculcated an idea that schedule drove the program 

rather than letting measurable progress—or program budgets—set the pace, which 

incurred even more cost growth.
36

Predictably, all of these missteps caused a breakdown in internal controls in both 

the government and industry sides of the house, and by early 2007 the DoN lost any 

semblance of seaframe cost control. As suggested above, the original seaframe cost 

projections trumpeted by Navy officers and used in department of the Navy 

program budget documents reflected more of a hopeful forcing function than a 

realistic appraisal of likely costs. Sticking to such low, unrealistic estimates, even as 

the evidence mounted that they were faulty, simply made the subsequent surprise 

and furor over seaframe cost growth much worse than it should have been. In any 

event, with a cloud over the entire program, and with the Navy’s credibility severely 

damaged, the department and Congress moved to completely restructure the 

program.182

Ultimately, the Navy canceled or Congress rescinded funding for all seaframes 

authorized or appropriated from FY 2005 through FY 2008 except for USS Freedom

and USS Independence, the two first ships of each new version (authorized and 

appropriated in FY 2005 and FY 2006, respectively). Moreover, the two surviving 

ships suffered from successive delays, and their costs continued to rise, with each 

breaking the $750 million mark (in FY 2010 dollars).

183 In an effort to get costs 

under control and stabilize the program, Sean Stackley, Assistant Secretary of the 

Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition, bundled together two FY 2009 

LCSs with three FY 2010 LCSs into a single, five-ship, fixed price solicitation. Each 

builder (that is, LM and GD) would be awarded a contract for one “Flight 0+” ship in 

FY 2009, while the overall winner would get to build two of the three FY 2010 

ships.184 The hope was that competitive pressure would induce both builders to 

reduce their costs dramatically.

Unfortunately, when the department received the builders’ bids in the summer of 

2009, its leaders were dismayed to find the average ship costs for the five ships 

remained well above a Congressionally mandated cost cap of $480 million (FY 2010 

dollars).185 The bids therefore failed to meet the most basic and important 

requirement of the LCS program—affordability. Secretary Stackley therefore 

recommended a more radical step: moving to a single Flight 0+ variant through a 

winner-take-all, fixed price competition. This plan represented a final roll of the dice 

for LCS. If the DoN could not get ship costs down to somewhere between the 

threshold and objective target, it would be forced to sharply curtail the program or 

cancel it outright. A winner-take-all competition seemed the only plausible way to 

prod the builders to meet the department’s cost goals and keep the program alive. 

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary 

Roughead agreed to this new approach. Accordingly, in September 2009, Secretary 

Stackley canceled the earlier FY 2009/FY 2010 five-ship solicitation and entered 

into formal negotiations with LM and GD for each to build one of the two FY 2009 

ships. This would help keep their production lines hot while the department was 

pursuing its new acquisition strategy. At the same time, he directed each builder to 

resubmit a fixed-price bid for ten ships over FYs 2010 through 2014, at a rate of two 

ships per year, as well as for their technical data packages. To cut down overhead, 

he also stipulated the bids must assume the ships would be built in one shipyard.186
37

The building team with the best bid would be awarded a fixed price contract for ten 

ships. Armed with the winning team’s technical data package, the department would 

then compete the right to build five ships of the same design in another yard. 

Importantly, the losing bidder would not be the presumptive builder of the five 

ships; the competition would be open to any shipbuilding company. Upon 

completion of both production runs (fifteen total ships), the two building teams and 

yards would compete for the right to build additional ships.187

The downside of this plan was the fleet would never have the ships or time to 

conduct a thorough comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of each design, or 

the ability to work out many of the remaining LCS unknowns before committing to 

serial production. The final decision over which variant would ultimately serve in 

the fleet would be made solely on cost. However, given the need to maintain battle 

force numbers and for a ship able to address the LCS’s important missions, DoN 

leadership believed a competitive down-select based on affordability was the best 

way forward, even if it entailed some risk. 

Keeping Two Variants in Service

In the end, however, the Navy was able to have its cake, and eat it, too. The threat of 

losing the opportunity to build any ships, combined with the program stability 

offered by a guaranteed ten-ship production run prompted both LM and Austal

America—which replaced General Dynamics as the prime contractor for the 

aluminum trimaran—to submit extremely attractive fixed price bids. Indeed, 

because their bids were so competitive, Secretary Stackley judged the likelihood 

that the loser would protest an unfavorable award to be very high, stalling all 

progress on the program—a circumstance both civilian and uniformed leaders of 

the department wanted to avoid. Given these circumstances, DoN leadership 

reconsidered the merits of awarding two contracts—that is, for ten Flight 0 ships of 

each design. 

The advantages of keeping a small number of both designs in service before downselecting to a single design had not changed. As Admiral Clark had long argued, 

having a chance to compare the strengths and weaknesses of the two seaframes and 

using both to validate LCS concepts of employment and support was the most 

prudent way forward. The only reason the DoN moved away from this approach 

was to get costs under control. The downside of choosing a single variant—resulting 

in orphan ships—also remained the same, but now there would be twelve to 

contend with. Alternatively, should the department keep both variants in service, it 

would pay a price in terms of life-cycle costs, due to the resulting lack of 

commonality in the LCS fleet.

After thorough review and debate, Secretary Mabus and the senior civilian and 

uniformed leaders in the DoN unanimously decided the potential problems of LCS 

orphans or increased lifecycle costs were manageable. Indeed, the higher number of 

potential orphans could actually prove a blessing, should there be a future downselect to one version—a twelve-ship class would be easier to manage than one of 

only three to seven ships.

188 Moreover, analysis showed that the life cycle savings 
38

associated with down-selecting to a single ship class would never exceed the $2.9

billion in procurement savings gained by awarding both builders a ten-ship, fixed 

price production run. That money could help finance dual ten-ship awards to each 

builder (five more than originally expected), and fund an additional Burke DDG as 

well as the first Mobile Landing Platform. Finally, this approach would build up the 

LCS force more quickly, which was important because of the steady retirement from 

FY 2010 through FY 2019 of the thirty remaining legacy FFGs (the MCMs and PCs 

would begin retiring after FY2018). Based on these arguments, the department was 

able to convince Congress to approve the dual ten-ship block buys.189

Getting What We Asked For

The department of the Navy is well aware of the mistakes it made in the early stages 

of the LCS program. While getting the LCS into service quickly may have been a 

worthy goal, the mistakes made and problems encountered in building the ships,

and the department’s resulting inability to restrain program costs, tell a cautionary 

tale to all current and future DoN leaders. Simply put, the department should never 

again repeat the short cuts or questionable shipbuilding approaches taken in the 

LCS program. Objective cost targets and imposed cost caps are simply no substitute 

for reasonable performance requirements, detailed planning, a stable design at the 

start of production, a well-thought out production schedule, a ruthless attention to 

change orders and the impacts they have on costs, and good internal controls with 

strict monitoring of performance.190

But that was then. This is now: in essence, the decision to award two, 10-ship 

production contracts made LCS 1 (all odd numbered ships are built by Lockheed 

Martin) and LCS 2 (even numbered ships are Austal America-built) the Flight 0 

prototypes. LCS 3 and LCS 4, both authorized in FY 2009—three to four years after 

the first two ships of class—are now considered transitional production ships 

incorporating initial changes to the basic prototype designs.191 That makes LCS 5 

and LCS 6, the initial ships of each 10-ship buy, the first full “Flight 0+” production 

versions. 

Accordingly, there have been over 270 design changes from LCS 1 to LCS 3 and as 

many design changes from LCS 2 to LCS 4. For example, LCS 3 was lengthened by 

2.8 meters above the waterline and 4.5 meters below the waterline to improve 

stability margins for both service life and damage. As an added bonus, this 

modification increased the ship’s fuel capacity by over fifty tons (a 12.6 percent 

increase) and increased its constant speed on diesel alone to sixteen knots.192 Over 

sixty more design changes for the first Flight 0+ versions are anticipated. While both 

designs are now considered stable, and as is the case for all Navy ships, further 

changes will be made as necessary based on fleet experience and input. Given these 

improvements, the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) now judges 

both LCS seaframes to be “yellow trending green.”193 At this point, there is little 

reason to believe the seaframes won’t perform as expected.
39

Moreover, because of the changes made to the program, the Navy is confident it will 

hit its originally established LCS cost targets, if in a different way than expected. The 

projected average seaframe cost over both ten-ship production runs, including the 

basic construction cost, all government furnished equipment, and change orders 

(the costs included in the FY 2010 Congressional cost cap), is $383.2 million.

Moreover, benefiting from learning curve efficiencies, the average cost for the tenth 

seaframe of each variant is expected to come in at $358.1 million—which will 

become the starting price point for future LCS production flights (all cost figures in 

this and the following two paragraphs are in FY 2010 dollars).

194 While there still 

remains some cost and schedule risk, because these projected costs are derived 

from fixed price contracts and observed performance at both building yards is 

consistent with projections, there is every expectation the building teams will hit 

these goals. As a Bloomberg Government Study concluded:

After a rocky start, the Littoral Combat Ship program is meeting its 

cost and schedule goals. The service could get the prices it wanted 

only by halting failing cost-plus contracts and holding a true head-tohead competition between capable contractors with everything at 

stake.”195

Critics will likely point out that while the average cost for the seaframes are 20 

percent below the FY 2010 Congressional seaframe cost cap of $480 million, they 

are well above even the minimally acceptable threshold target of $270 million

established in the 2004 CDD for LCS ($220 million in FY 2005 dollars inflated to FY

2010 dollars). While true, this observation misses an important point. Even after 

factoring in costs for class design, program management, and engineering support 

costs, and adding in the average cost for all three LCS mission packages, the average 

projected cost of a “missionized” LCS over the current ten-ship production run is 

$500.8 million.

196 This is just 2 percent over the $490.4 million threshold target for 

a missionized LCS established by OSD a decade ago ($400 million in FY 2005 dollars, 

adjusted for inflation).

197 Moreover, the lower price for the tenth ship in the 

production run for each class means the baseline for future missioned LCSs will be 

$469.3 million—about 3.5 percent above the Navy’s 2004 threshold target of $453.5 

($370 million in FY 2005 dollars, adjusted for inflation).

198

In other words, while the Navy underestimated the costs for the LCS seaframe, it 

overestimated the costs for mission modules and associated program costs. These two 

estimates thus offset each other, allowing the Navy to very nearly hit its threshold cost 

targets for a missionized LCS. As a result, the Navy will achieve its key programmatic 

goal to buy three missionized LCSs for the price of one Burke-class DDG—currently 

$1.49 billion. This will allow the department to keep up the numbers of battle force 

combatants without breaking its budget.

199 As Eric Labs has observed, there is 

simply no more affordable TFBN warship option than the Littoral Combat Ship—

including off-cited alternatives such as the National Security Cutter, which already 

costs nearly $600 million to build and cannot perform any of the LCS’s wartime 

missions without substantial upgrades.200
40

And, most importantly, at this price the Navy is getting very nearly the exact ship it 

envisioned a decade ago. Both seaframes have full load displacements around 3,100 

tons—larger than PCs and mine warfare ships they replace in the battle fleet’s 

architecture, but smaller than the FFGs. They are built to operate independently in 

low threat environments and as part of a naval battle network in mid to high-threat 

environments. To make them less susceptible to being hit, they have relatively low 

radar, infrared, and magnetic signatures. And, although never intended or designed 

to continue fighting after taking a hit, the move to NVR construction standards 

makes LCS tougher and more resilient than originally envisioned. The ships now 

include additional shock hardening, selected fragmentation protection, extensive 

automated firefighting systems, and additional watertight compartmentation. These 

features allow them to remain afloat with 15 percent of their length and three 

compartments flooded—the same damage stability requirement as Level II and 

Level III combatants. These features are consistent with a “Level I+” survivability 

requirement for the ship to take a hit and to return to port under its own power.

Given its sturdier design and the nature of expected fleet ConOps, the Navy remains 

confident that both LCS variants will be fully capable of operating at the forward 

edge of a “globally distributed, fully netted force.” When doing so, LCS will perform 

low-cost ISR and forward presence influence operations and a variety of mobility 

missions in peacetime, and screen TFBN Sea Bases and high value fleet units from 

littoral threats in wartime. The ships will have a capable core defensive system 

allowing them to perform both roles. Based on their prescribed mission, they will 

also host and employ a variety of deployable sensors and organic off-board vehicles, 

including MH-60 helicopters, TUAVs, RHIBs, USVs or UUVs. Indeed, in terms of 

aviation and unmanned systems, the ships have more aviation and OOV capability 

and capacity than any surface combatant of comparable size in the world. 

The LCS’s Increment I surface warfare package, with an armed helicopter, Fire Scout 

VUAV, two 30 mm cannon supplementing its core 57 mm gun, and two eleven-meter 

RHIBs carrying VBSS teams, will have an initial operational capability in FY 2014. 

The Increment I mine warfare package will also be ready to go in FY 2014. With two 

UUVs towing mine hunting sonars and MH-60 helicopters employing mine 

neutralization weapons, this package is expected to provide greater sweep 

capability than legacy MCMs now in the fleet. The Increment I ASW package, 

following in FY 2016, will include variable depth sonar, a multifunction towed array, 

torpedo alertment and decoy systems, and MH-60R ASW helicopters. These systems 

will transform the LCS into an able ASW corvette, with capability equaling or 

exceeding the FFGs they will replace. 

All of these initial mission packages will be updated by increasingly capable 

increments over time. For example, in response to an urgent operational need for 

the U.S. Special Operations Command, the Navy decided to shift production to a 

larger, more capable MQ-8C Fire-X TUAV, with greater range and payload than the 

MQ-8B Fire Scout.201 The Navy is also working to develop and add a longer range, 

fire-and-forget missile to the surface warfare package for use against small boats 

and craft. Moreover, the Navy continues to study the best mix of mission packages, 
41

where they should be staged and maintained, and how often and in what 

circumstances packages should be changed. And, as has been discussed, the LCS’s 

modular design allows for continual evolutionary upgrades to capability over the 

life of the ship, making it far more likely they will serve to the very end of their 

expected service lives.

Both LCS 1 and LCS 2 will achieve the modified unrefueled endurance of 3,500 

nautical miles at 14-16 knots (LCS 2 gets 4,200 nautical miles 14 knots, while LCS 1

is closer to the threshold range)—adequate for both transoceanic transits and 

expected intra-theater range operations from forward bases or stations. In other 

words, LCS’s endurance is well matched to their envisioned role as a self-deployable, 

theater-based platform. Indeed, analysis shows the Navy’s planned globally 

distributed force of 17 oilers (T-AOs) and 12 new dry cargo/ammunition ships (TAKEs, which also carry useful amounts of transferrable fuel) will be sufficient to 

support all forward deployed forces, including LCSs and new Joint High Speed 

Vessels.202 Forward-deployed and stationed LCSs will therefore have the fuel they 

need, when they need it—and inside the desired three to five-day UNREP window. If 

this proves not to be the case, the department can choose to buy more oilers or 

make necessary adjustments to LCS employment plans.

Even at about 3,100 tons full load displacement, both LCSs can exceed forty knots, 

and meet or exceed the threshold requirement for unrefueled endurance when 

operating at these speeds.203 Fleet experience will reveal how best to exploit such 

high speeds in tactical situations. Planners expect it to show that high tactical speed 

will be a very good thing to have for maritime interdiction operations and in a fight 

against swarming boats, but less important for ASW or mine warfare operations. 

With a good torpedo alertment system, planners also think high sprint speed will 

also be useful for torpedo evasion. However, they expect the highest payoff will 

come from the ship’s high operational speed, which will facilitate the rapid 

concentration of naval power across inter/intra-theater ranges during times of 

crisis.

Despite their relatively large size, both ships have navigational drafts less than 

fourteen feet.204 The only U.S. Navy vessels currently in active service with 

shallower drafts are the diminutive Cyclone-class PCs. This characteristic will allow 

fleet LCSs to operate close to shore, where they can use their impressive 

maneuverability to best advantage. As a result, they will be able to interdict even 

small coast vessels hugging a coastline, escort ship-to-shore connectors very close to 

shore, and provide deadly close-in suppressive fires in support of special operations 

forces and Marine Corps units operating ashore. The ships are also extremely stable 

when operating at speed, even in relatively rough weather. The combination of 

shallow draft and platform stability will make LCSs formidable all-weather counterboat platforms in close-in coastal waters.

Indeed, with its unique combination of reconfigurable modular payload space,

tailored endurance, high operational speed and shallow draft, LCS will provide the 

TFBN with great operational flexibility—just as foreseen a decade ago. With a 3-2-1 
42

crewing scheme and both ships on a sixteen-month deployment cycle, 50 percent of 

the LCS fleet will always be forward stationed or deployed and ready for operational 

tasking. Plans now call for up to eight LCSs to be forward stationed within the 

CENTCOM area or responsibility in Bahrain, and eight in PACOM using rotational 

crews operating from Singapore and Sasebo. Up to eleven more will be deployed in 

SOUTHCOM, EUCOM, and AFRICOM, perhaps from new forward bases or stations. 

These deployed ships will have a mix of ASuW, MIW, and ASW modules. If a crisis 

erupts in any theater, high sprint speed will allow this globally distributed, ready 

force to concentrate quickly the exact mix of properly configured LCSs necessary to 

the job. Add to that the flexibility to rapidly swap-out mission packages to conduct 

emergent mobility missions, if needed, and you have a very agile operational and 

tactical employment construct. Fleet experimentation and experience will tweak 

and perfect it.

Regardless of what one might hear, then, the department is not revisiting the need 

for the Littoral Combat Ship, which fits nicely within the FORCEnet or TFBN’s 

“operational construct and architectural framework for naval warfare in the 

information age.” Nor is the department planning to truncate the program before it 

builds twenty-four ships, or to buy substantially fewer than fifty-five seaframes. 

What it is doing is discussing ways to make the seaframe designs better, by making 

required modifications to crew accommodations and hotel services as well as 

improving design features. The Program Office is also exploring moving to common 

combat and command, control, and communications systems as quickly as possible, 

and to improve all mission packages. 

Just as importantly, fleet operators are now looking beyond the first twenty-four

ships and contemplating further changes and improvements to the basic designs—

made possible by the ever-shrinking price for the seaframes over their ten-ship 

production runs. Perhaps a shipboard fire control radar might be added to make the 

57 mm cannon more effective in adverse weather (although improvements to the 

radar-combat system interface is making substantial improvements to 57 mm gun 

performance).

205 Perhaps the ship might receive longer-range antiship cruise 

missiles. Perhaps the ship will be given a more capable electronic warfare system. 

Even more significantly, perhaps the ship might evolve into a more capable ocean 

escort with a small VLS battery capable of firing short-range surface-to-air 

missiles.206 All one has to do is compare the early Spruance-class DDs with their two 

5-inch guns, one antisubmarine rocket launcher, and NATO Sea Sparrow Missile 

(NSSM) system with later versions of the ship armed with two 5-inch guns, a 61-cell 

VLS battery, eight Harpoon ASCMs, two Phalanx CIWSs, and NSSM system to get a 

sense for the future possibilities of the LCS design.207 Like the “Spru-can,” LCS is 

designed with an abundance of open payload space, which can be used in a number 

of ways to continually upgrade its combat capability. 

Transitioning to Fleet Service

A recent article describing LCS asserted that, “By all accounts this is not the ship the 

Navy—nor the nation—initially expected.”208 As argued above, however, nothing 
43

could be further from the truth. After a decade of twists and turns, the Navy is 

getting very nearly exactly the ship it asked for: an affordable, self-deployable, 

reconfigurable multirole warship designed to counter mines, diesel submarines, and 

swarming boats in contested littorals when operating as part of a naval battle 

network. True, the LCS’s lower economical transit speeds will likely make it more 

difficult to deploy with Carrier Strike Groups; its lack of a collective protective 

system could pose problems in some scenarios; and its lack of a CONREP capability 

will make the ship more dependent on vertical replenishment. Moreover, although 

the ships hit their threshold costs target, Navy planners were hoping for even less 

expensive ships. In trade, however, the Navy will be getting a much tougher and 

resilient ship with the organic capacity to hangar and operate an MH-60 helicopter 

and one or two UAVs throughout a deployment. Given LCS’s expected role, and the 

fact that the Navy can still buy three of the ships for the price of a guided missile 

destroyer, these trades appear well worth it.

Ironically, even though the Navy is in some respects getting a better ship than 

expected, it is so different in concept, mission, and design from past U.S. warships 

that much work remains to be done for the ship to survive as a program and thrive 

in fleet service. Despite the fact that twenty-four LCSs are either building, 

authorized, or on contract, program critics continue to outnumber supporters, and 

some call for the program’s truncation or cancelation. Many of these critics tend to 

focus on problems encountered early rather than the current state of the program. 

Others reject the idea for the ship, either not understanding or accepting its place in 

a Total Force Battle Network. These critics include some in OSD, who continually 

view the LCS as an attractive target in annual program budget reviews. And, since 

the program’s 2007 implosion, the department continues to respond to a steady 

stream of skeptical Congressional queries from both Members and staffers. 

In the long run, however, these outside critics will likely be silenced if the ship’s 

most important constituencies and potentially strongest champions—the active and 

retired surface warfare communities—come to fully embrace the ship after proving 

its value in the fleet service. Unfortunately, this is by no means a sure thing. The fact 

is these communities are still skeptical of small combatants of any kind. This 

attitude is quite striking given the U.S. Navy’s history, which, up until World War II, 

demonstrated a widespread appreciation for the contributions of small warships in 

fleet operations. Indeed, the World War II Navy included a wide array of “small 

boys,” including diminutive but well-armed patrol torpedo boats, gunboats of 

various kinds, armed yachts, both wooden and steel submarine chasers, and 

destroyer escorts. With the massive post-war demobilization, however, these ships 

were all scrapped in favor of smaller numbers of larger, multimission combatants. 

Moreover, with the post-war appearance of jets, guided missiles, and nuclearpowered attack submarines, attempts to build a new generation of small warships 

failed miserably. They either could not accept the larger and heavier electronics, 

sensors, and weapons needed to fight and survive in guided missile combat, or had 

too little margin to be affordably upgraded over time. Consequently, by 1960, the 

“smallest” combatants deemed worthy of being part of the battle force by surface 
44

warfare officers were ocean escorts or protection of shipping combatants (e.g., DEs, 

DEGs, FFs, and FFGs), and even these ships had full load displacements of 4,000 

tons—making them larger than World War II general purpose destroyers.209

Unsurprisingly, then, the only operational ships built after World War II that were 

smaller than ocean escorts—including seventeen Asheville-class patrol gunboats, six 

Pegasus-class patrol hydrofoils, and thirteen Cyclone-class patrol coastal ships—

were retired after only a few years of service (or were prepared for retirement;

plans to up the Cyclones were reversed after 9-11). Then, during its post-Cold War 

downsizing, the surface warfare community rejected even guided missile frigates in 

favor of large, multimission guided missile cruisers and destroyers. As a result, the 

bar for acceptance by contemporary surface warfare officers is set exceptionally 

high for any combatant much smaller than 8,900 tons full-load displacement—and 

particularly for any ship smaller than a modern guided missile frigate with multiwarfare capabilities. 

When serving as a young Lieutenant, Vern Clark commanded USS Grand Rapids (PG98), an Asheville-class patrol gunboat. As Chief of Naval Operations, therefore, 

Admiral Clark well recognized and appreciated that fleet acceptance would come 

even harder for a ship as small and unusual in concept and design as the Littoral 

Combat Ship. He hoped to overcome the surface warfare community’s general level 

of disdain for small combatants by defining LCS as a “node” in FORCEnet battle 

networks. However, it seems evident even CNO Clark underestimated just how 

difficult a road the LCS would have to travel. Indeed, the road was made even 

bumpier as the terms “network-centric warfare” and “FORCEnet” gradually fell out 

of favor and as senior leaders stopped emphasizing the Navy’s accelerating 

transition to and growing dependence on battle networks—or the changes these 

networks were causing in both naval warfare and fleet design and architecture. 

After all, it was these changes that provided the very foundation for a small battle 

network combat like the Littoral Combat Ship.

Moreover, while senior Navy leaders since Admiral Clark have steadfastly defended 

LCS since its conception over a decade ago, it is one thing to fight hard for the LCS 

program in the halls of the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, and quite another to fight 

hard for the ship within the fleet itself. While surface warfare officers might 

grudgingly accept a guided missile frigate’s less capable multi-warfare combat 

capabilities if forced to do so, it would take a lot to convince them that a ship only 

three-quarters the size of an FFG, and one so dependent on “the network,” would be 

wise addition to the battle force. And, in hindsight, there was never a concerted 

effort to sway them, one way or the other. As a result, the general lack of emphasis 

on socializing the LCS concept and design gradually had a pernicious influence on 

the fleet’s view and acceptance of the ship. 

The LCS’s struggle for acceptance was only compounded by the constantly changing 

nature of the program’s “narrative,” or declared vision and justification. Both 

Ronald O’Rourke and Eric Labs, respected naval analysts at the Congressional 

Research Service and Congressional Budget Office, respectively, have commented on 
45

this problem. They point out the ever-changing LCS story has helped undermine 

understanding of the ship’s role and mission both inside and outside the Navy. What 

makes this all so ironic is that while the LCS story has changed frequently over the 

past several years, the ship now entering service remains remarkably consistent 

with its original concept and design principles laid out a decade ago. Indeed, much 

of today’s confusion and misunderstanding over LCS can be explained by the fact 

that Navy leadership did not simply stick to these early, straightforward principles 

when explaining the program. Leaders instead constantly tinkered with the LCS 

story when selling it. 

This problem is not unique among long running ship programs. But it has proven to 

be especially problematic for a ship that “represents [such] significant departures 

from the normal shipbuilding path.”210 Over time, senior program leaders and 

managers inevitably rotated out of their positions to be replaced by new ones. 

Naturally, these new leaders tended to explain LCS in ways and in terms closely 

aligned to their own past experiences, rather than referring to the Navy’s different 

expectations for a small battle network combatant operating as part of Total Force 

Battle Network. And, as with all struggling programs, each also sought and tested 

new terms and concepts to help better sell it, often in ways inconsistent with 

original program intentions. For example, many emphasized LCS’s rapid mission 

package swap-out times, despite the fact that early in the program senior leaders 

did not consider this characteristic essential during naval campaigns. Worse, the 

Navy failed to consistently make the case that LCS’s three wartime missions were 

both important and enduring with the new ship the most affordable and effective 

way to accomplish them. Instead, too many touted the LCS’s inherent capabilities for 

battlespace awareness, joint littoral mobility, special operations support, combat 

search and rescue, maritime interdiction/interception, homeland defense, and 

antiterrorism/force protection. This helped give the impression the Navy was 

overselling LCS’s true capabilities. 

The lack of a simple, consistent, and coherent program story was underlined by the 

curious lack of preparation for the LCS’s transition to fleet service. Between 2005 

and 2009, although senior Navy leaders continued to argue strongly for the ship, 

little work was done on fleshing out the new training, logistics, and maintenance 

procedures necessary to support a minimally crewed, modular warship like LCS. 

Similarly, there was little effort expended to further game or test the notional 

concepts of employment and operation developed in the 2002-2005 timeframe. 

Moreover, responsibility for LCS mission packages was gradually spread over 

numerous sponsors and program offices, a trend that threatened LCS’s “death from 

a thousand cuts” in yearly budget drills.211

In fairness, after the program’s implosion in early 2007, there was great uncertainty 

over whether LCS would even survive, which focused Navy efforts on saving the 

program and moderated demand for a thorough look at early program judgments 

and assumptions. However, the apparent lack of departmental preparation for a 

new ship with such novel crewing, training, maintenance and logistics undoubtedly 

helped to muddy the LCS story and contributed to the skepticism about the ship 
46

both inside and outside the Navy. 

But once again, that was then. This is now: by word and deed, Navy leadership is 

now squarely focused on smoothing the LCS’s transition to fleet service. The first 

concrete step was then-CNO Admiral Gary Roughead’s (a surface warfare officer) 

bold decision to operationally deploy USS Freedom in 2010—two years ahead of 

schedule—to “incorporate lessons that can only be learned in a deployment setting 

more quickly and effectively in the LCS fleet integration process."212 While some 

critics think this deployment was nothing more than a publicity stunt to shore up 

support for a failing program, it was precisely the type of thing originally envisioned 

for the Flight 0 prototypes. The second concrete step was creating a single Program 

Executive Officer for LCS, responsible for all technical aspects of the seaframe, 

mission modules, and the ship’s transition to service.

213

The next steps were triggered by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ September 

2011 announcement that the Navy would station LCSs in Singapore beginning in 

FY2013.214 Soon thereafter, Admiral John Harvey, the Commander, US Fleet Forces 

Command, asked CNO Roughead’s successor, Admiral Jon Greenert, for permission 

to conduct a sustainment war game to assess the logistics, maintenance, and 

support plans to support this early deployment. Admiral Greenert agreed. Not 

surprisingly, the game showed there was much work to do. In response, Admiral 

Greenert initiated a broad series of efforts to make sure the Navy would be ready for 

the ship’s transition into fleet service as well as for Singapore deployments. He first 

ordered Admiral Mark Ferguson, his Vice Chief of Naval Operations, to oversee an 

in-depth review of the Navy’s readiness to receive, employ and deploy the “LCS 

Class Vessel.” This resulting “OPNAV Report,” prepared by Rear Admiral Sam Perez, 

was designed to identify all remaining barriers to the ship’s smooth introduction. He 

also tasked Rear Admiral Robert Wray, President of the Navy’s Board of Inspection 

and Survey, to conduct a similarly clear-eyed review of LCS material condition and 

maintainability, and directed Admiral Harvey to conduct a second CFFC war game 

focused on LCS concepts of employment and operations. 

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, CNO Greenert recently named Vice Admiral 

Rick Hunt, former Commander, Naval Surface Forces, as chairman of a new threestar (that is, vice admiral-level) LCS Council. As such, he will be the “primary Flag 

Officer responsible for coordinating all Navy administrative control responsibilities 

for the LCS class” and systematically addressing the findings of the above efforts. 

Admiral Hunt’s immediate tasking is to develop and implement an LCS transition 

Plan of Action and Milestones by 31 January 2013. In the meantime, he was to 

report his progress directly to Admiral Greenert in biweekly updates and meet in 

person with the CNO every month.215 

As is clear, then, the senior leadership of the department is now strongly and 

properly focused on taking the needed steps ensuring LCS’s smooth and successful 

transition from prototype to operational fleet platform. However, they are under no 

illusion that their work is done. As this report has argued, LCS is so different from 

any ship the Navy has operated that no matter how much preparatory work is done, 
47

senior leaders expect there to be further surprises once it is in the fleet, operating in 

numbers, and deployed overseas. As the draft IRD stated a decade ago:

There are substantial uncertainties as to the extent to which all of the 

[notional] Concepts of Employment can be achieved in a single ship design. A 

focus of the Flight 0 LCS is to investigate these uncertainties, resolve issues, 

and to determine practical and efficient design combinations...that will 

accommodate the [Concepts of Employment].216

In other words, ten years ago, Admiral Clark and his top leaders knew the surface 

warfare community’s long-established and trusted rules, along with widely accepted 

concepts of employment and operations would not necessarily apply to the LCS. The 

only way to change ingrained habits and views would be to build prototypes and let 

the community establish new LCS tactics, techniques, and procedures based on 

hands-on experience. Therefore, even though they knew they didn’t have all the 

answers, they were supremely confident that future surface warfare officers would 

work them out. 

This kind of thinking is hardly unique for a Navy long willing to build new types of 

ships and explore new operational concepts. For example, just over one hundred 

years ago, our Navy made the choice to invest in a new and exciting naval platform 

known as the torpedo boat. Much effort was expended to find the proper balance 

between speed and lethality in these small, swift craft that were expected to operate 

in shallow and confined waters, executing high speed runs against capital ships—

cruisers and battleships. Some of these ships experienced damage in high seas, 

leading critics to suggest limiting speed and adding more durability and 

survivability. Others suggested limiting the production of these ships until their 

future mission could be better defined and their designs adjusted to meet the 

mission. However, senior Navy leaders, including Assistant Secretary of the Navy 

Theodore Roosevelt, made the decision to build the ships, evolving the designs and 

maturing the mission as they went along.217 Variants of these ships remained 

torpedo boats, others became torpedo boat destroyers, and later the design evolved 

into larger, general purpose “destroyers.” Sometimes, trusting in the innovation of

Sailors just works.

As stated at the very start of this monograph, however, trust in the LCS concept and 

design remains low. It seems certain that this circumstance will not materially 

change until LCS is in the fleet and the concept and designs are proven sound. In the 

meantime, while endeavoring to do just that, the Navy needs to do a better job in 

explaining what it expects the ship to do, and how it fits within its planned fleet 

architecture. And critics of the ship would do better if they stopped complaining 

about specific ship characteristics without addressing the rationale for their 

selection, and tried making the case that the Navy’s planned fleet architecture, and 

the role LCS is expected to play in it, is faulty or no longer germane. Such discussion 

would help ensure the Navy continues to review and analyze its assumptions and 

conclusions about the ship, and increase the likelihood it will ultimately improve 

fleet combat capability.
48

In sum, then, despite a rocky program start, the Littoral Combat Ship will soon be in 

fleet service, and in large numbers. Designed to be a flexible, multirole component in 

future Navy battle networks, LCS’s reconfigurable modular design will be a first 

among Navy combatants. Indeed, because the ship is so different, much hard work 

and experimentation still needs to be done to unlock its full potential. But a solid 

foundation has been laid. The seaframes are steadily improving and the first 

increments of three mission packages are coming along, to be followed by evermore-capable increments over the life of the ship. Future variants of the LCS may 

evolve in ways not now anticipated or foreseen., just as happened with torpedo 

boats. The only thing standing in the way of success for LCS would be a lack of 

imagination and hard work. After fleet operators get their hands on the ships and

refine old operational and logistical support concepts and develop new ones, there 

is little reason to think the ship will not be an important contributor to twenty-first

century Total Force Battle Network operations. 
49

Notes

 

1 Naval Warfare Development Command, Littoral Combat Ship Concept of Operations, V3.1 (Newport, 

RI, February 2003), available at www.globalsecurity.org/ [hereafter as LCS ConOps V3.1].

2 See for example Cdr. John Patch, USN (Ret.), “The Wrong Ship at the Wrong Time,” U.S. Naval 

Institute Proceedings (January 2011).

3 U.S. Defense Dept., “Navy Announces DD(X) Program,” Department of Defense News Release 559-01, 

dated 1 November 2001.

4 The 1997 QDR called for a future surface combatant force of 116 cruisers and destroyers, including 

twenty-seven Ticonderoga-class CGs, fifty-seven Arleigh Burke-class DDGs, and thirty-two DD-21 land 

attack destroyers. Early-flight Burke DDGs had a full load displacement of 8,900 tons; all other ships 

had even greater displacements. Indeed, the initial designs of DD-21 had FLDs of approximately 

17,500 tons. The twenty-seven mine warfare ships included a Mine Countermeasures Support Ship 

(MCS, a converted Iwo Jima-class LPH), fourteen Avenger-class MCMs, and twelve Osprey-class MHCs. 

Descriptions of all these ships can be found in Norman Polmar, The Naval Institute Guide to the Ships 

and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, eighteenth edition (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005).

5 Among these were the Title X Global War game series conducted at the Naval War College; the Joint 

Multi-Warfare Analysis Game sponsored by the Chief of Naval Operations’ staff; the Capabilities for 

the Navy After Next (CNAN) games sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency 

(DARPA); Fleet Battle Experiments conducted by active Navy units; and other field and lab 

experiments. See LCS ConOps V3.1. 

6 See Capt. Robert Powers, USN (Ret.), “Birth of the Littoral Combat Ship,” U.S. Naval Institute 

Proceedings (September 2012). In this excellent article, Captain Powers describes the 

aforementioned mid-1990s war-gaming process called the Joint Multi-Warfare Analysis Game 

(JMAG). The JMAG looked at all aspects of future joint military campaigns. During excursions 

involving the closure of the Straits of Hormuz, game players conceived of a multi-warfare capable 

“Littoral Combat Ship” to conduct armed reconnaissance patrols into the gulf in advance of Aegis CGs 

and DDGs. 

7 “Streetfighter” was the generic name given by Vice Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Don Pilling to 

the small, fast, stealthy combatants cochampioned by Vice Admiral Art Cebrowski, President of the 

Naval War College, and retired Navy Captain. Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., USN (Ret.), who headed 

operational analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey. California. Initial concepts called 

for a fast, stealthy multirole, focused-mission ship with a 160-ton modular payload capable of 

performing littoral ASW and mine warfare, but not at the same time; second, a larger variant with a 

400-ton payload capable of operating as either a logistics support vessel or a remote missile 

magazine for theater air- and missile-defense ships. For a thorough discussion of the Streetfighter 

concept, see Robert O. Work, Naval Transformation and the Littoral Combat Ship (Washington, D.C.: 

Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, May 2004), pp. 45-64. 

8 Vice Admiral, Cebrowski and Captain Hughes believed a fleet consisting of nothing but large, 

expensive, multimission ships would be “tactically unstable,” with combat power vastly out of 

proportion to its survivability. As a result, they believed fleet commanders would be averse to risking 

these ships in dangerous littoral waters. See Work, Naval Transformation and the Littoral Combat 

Ship, pp. 50-54.

9 Wikipedia, s.v. “SC-21 (United States),” en.wikipedia.org. 

10 The DD-21 was originally envisioned as a relatively inexpensive replacement for Spruance-class 

DDs and Oliver Hazard Perry-class FFGs. Its objective (desired) and threshold (minimally acceptable) 

cost targets were $650 and $750 million, respectively, in FY 1996 dollars. See Federal of Atomic 

Scientists, “DD-21 Zumwalt,” www.fas.org/.

11 Senior Navy officials perceived the Naval War College’s call for small combatants to be a direct 

threat against its DD-21 land attack destroyer program. For a synopsis of the arguments Navy 

officers used against small warships, see Work, Naval Transformation and the Littoral Combat, pp. 67-

69. 

12 U.S. Defense Department, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, D.C.: 30 September 

2001), p. 30. 
50

 

13 The term “focused mission” conveyed the fact that LCS was expected to perform one primary 

mission at a time, as opposed to a multimission ship capable of performing several missions 

simultaneously (e.g., antiair warfare and antisubmarine warfare). For a full discussion of the DD(X) 

family of ships, see Ronald O’Rourke, Navy DD(X) Future Surface Combatant Program: Background 

and Issues for Congress, CRS Report RS21059 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 

updated 27 January 27, 2003). 

14 Sea Strike represented the ability of future naval forces to project precise and persistent offensive 

power from the sea; Sea Shield the ability to extend defensive assurance throughout the world; and 

Sea Basing the ability to enhance operational independence and support for the Joint Force. From 

Adm. Vern Clark, USN, “Sea Power 21: Projecting Decisive Joint Capabilities,” U.S. Naval Institute 

Proceedings (October 2002), www.navy.mil/ [hereafter Clark, “Sea Power 21]. For a full discussion of 

Admiral Clark’s vision, see Work, Naval Transformation and the Littoral Combat Ship.

15 Clark, “Sea Power 21.” [Emphasis added.]

16 Adm. Mike Mullen, USN, “Global Concept of Operations,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (April 

2002), available at www.military.com/. As described in this article, the new 1-4-2-1 strategy required 

the Joint Force to be prepared to provide for homeland defense (1); deter forward in four critical 

regions (4); swiftly defeat adversaries in two of the four regions (2); and, if necessary, defeat (1) of 

the two adversaries decisively (e.g., change the regime). Because this strategy drove the need for a 

375-ship battle force, it is also sometimes referred to as the “1-4-2-1 force sizing construct.” 

17 Scott C. Truver, “Navy Plans to Develop LCS Fleet with ‘Lightning Speed’,” Sea Power (May 2003), 

www.navyleague.org/sea_power/.

18 U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command, “U.S. Navy Active Ship Force Levels, 2000 – 2006,” 

www.history.navy.mil.

19 The Navy commissioned thirty-one Spruance-class DDs between 1975 and 1983, with expected 

service lives of thirty years. Of these, twenty-four were ultimately provided with the Mark 41 vertical 

launch system (VLS). Six ships retained two Armored Box Launchers (ABLs) for Tomahawk Land 

Attack Cruise Missiles, while one received neither VLS nor ABLs. The seven non-VLS ships were all 

decommissioned in FY 1998. The Navy commissioned a total of fifty-one Perry-class FFGs between 

1977 and 1989, with expected service lives of thirty years. Of these, twenty-one were short-hulled 

versions capable of operating LAMPS I antisubmarine helicopters; thirty were long-hulled versions 

able to hangar and employ the SH-60R LAMPS III multipurpose helicopter. The Navy decommissioned all short-hulled versions between FY 1995 and FY 2003. See the entries for “‘Spruance’ Class” 

and “‘Oliver Hazard Perry’ Class,” in Polmar, The Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the 

U.S. Fleet, eighteenth edition [hereafter Polmar, Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet].

20 U.S. Defense Department, Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) for Fiscal Years 2003-2007, as cited in 

LCS ConOps, V3.1.

21 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,“21st Century Transformation,” transcript of remarks given 

at the National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., on 31 January 2002, 

www.defense.gov/speeches/. 

22 Ibid.. 

23 Truver, “Navy Plans to Develop LCS Fleet with ‘Lightning Speed.’”

24 Dan Morgan, “Proposed Ship Speeds Into Gathering Storm,” Washington Post (6 July 2005), p. 5.

25 Section 218, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003, Public Law 107-314, as cited 

in “Littoral Combat Ship,” Title II (RDT&E), Other Matters of Interest, Navy, Senate Armed Services 

Committee Report (108-046), for the Fiscal Year 2004 Defense Authorization, S 1050, pp. 179-80.

26 “Littoral Combat Ship,” Title II (RDT&E), Other Matters of Interest, Navy, Senate Armed Services 

Committee Report (108-046), for the Fiscal Year 2004 Defense Authorization, S 1050, pp. 179-80.

27 Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), Capability Development Document for Littoral 

Combat Ship, Flight 0, Pre-MDAP (Washington, D.C.: May 2004), p. 2-1 [hereafter 2004 CDD for LCS]. 

[Emphasis added.]

28 “Tailored Analysis of Alternatives Under Way for Littoral Vessel,” Inside the Navy (2 September 

2003).
51

 

29 The term “analytical virgin birth” was first coined by Ronald O’Rourke, naval analyst at the 

Congressional Research Service, soon after the Navy announced the new ship. See Hunter Keeter, 

“O’Rourke: Lack of Pedigree May Haunt LCS Program,” Defense Daily (16 January 2003).

30 For a thorough discussion of the arguments for and against the LCS’s unusual program start, see 

Ronald O’Rourke, Navy DD(X) and LCS Ship Acquisition Programs: Oversight Issues and Options for 

Congress (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, Report RL32109, updated 28 October 

2004), p. 35-40. 

31 Clark, “Sea Power 21.”

32 U.S. Navy Dept., Draft Littoral Combat Ship Interim Requirements Document (IRD) (Washington, 

D.C.: 21 October 2002) [hereafter 2002 Draft LCS IRD]. The draft IRD contained detailed explanations 

of the thinking that went into developing the LCS requirements that was missing in the later, formal 

IRD. It therefore provides an especially clear view of what the LCS was originally conceived to be and 

do. 

33 LCS ConOps V3.1. Developed by the Naval Warfare Development Command, then hosted in 

Newport, RI, this early concept of operations drew heavily from the work done by Naval War College 

between 1999 and 2001.

34 Memorandum for the Record, Littoral Combat Ship Offsite Meeting held on 1 February 2003. This

5-page memorandum for the record (MFR), provided to the author by the LCS Program Office, 

recorded discussions on LCS requirements and concepts between Admiral Clark and his top 

leadership during a special LCS Offsite. Perhaps more than any other document, it illuminates 

precisely what Admiral Clark believed the LCS should be and do [hereafter February 2003 MFR].

35 2002 Draft LCS IRD, p. 9 and 20. 

36 As will soon be discussed in detail, the LCS system included the cost of its modular reconfigurable 

“seaframe” (i.e., hull plus “core” mission systems) and its embarked mission package. For the 

purposes of this paper, a “missionized LCS” includes the cost of the seaframe plus the average cost of 

all three mission packages. At the time the LCS was conceived, the department of the Navy was 

procuring Arleigh Burke DDGs per year for $1.2 billion per ship. OSD’s mandate to procure three LCSs 

per Burke was conveyed to the author in an interview in 2004 with Web Ewell, then a naval forces 

analyst with the Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation (PA&E), Office of the Secretary of Defense. 

37 February 2003 MFR, p. 1. 

38 See Eric Labs, An Analysis of the Navy’s Fiscal Year 2013 Shipbuilding Plan (Washington, D.C.: 

Congressional Budget Office, July 2012), p. 15.

39 Lightship displacements for the Joint High Speed Vessel and FFG-7 class come from U.S. Navy, 

“Naval Vessel Register,” available at www.nvr.navy.mil/. Lightship displacement for the National 

Security Cutter is taken from Polmar, Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, p. 576. Ship costs were 

provided by Ms. Allison Stiller, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Ships (DASN Ships). 

40 Clark, “Sea Power 21.”

41 Ibid. Although conceived of before FORCEnet, the DD(X)/DDG-1000 design was consistent with its 

principles.

42 LCS ConOps V3.1.

43 See Jim Wilson, “Stealth Strike Force,” Popular Mechanics (Nov 2003), p. 90. CNO Clark’s intent to 

avoid high combat systems costs was emphasized in a telephone conversation between the author 

and Admiral Clark on 12 September 2012.

44 February 2003 MFR, p. 2. The seventeen Asheville-class PGs commissioned between 1966 and 

1971 were built in response to lessons learned during the Cuban missile crisis. With a full load 

displacement of 240 tons, a draft of less than ten feet, and a top speed of thirty-five knots, they were 

designed for coastal patrol, blockade, and maritime interdiction operations. Many of the Ashevilles

participated in Operation Market Time, the coastal interdiction effort mounted along the coast of 

Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Others operated in the Mediterranean. However, like other classes 

of small combatants built by the U.S. Navy after World War II, they were never considered valuable 

battle force assets, and were retired or transferred to allied navies long before the end of their 

expected service lives. See Wikipedia, s.v. “Asheville Class Gunboat,” en.wikipedia.org. 

45 February 2003 MFR, p. 1. 
52

 

46 Capt. Wayne. P. Hughes, Jr., USN (Ret.), “22 Questions for Streetfighter,” U.S. Naval Institute 

Proceedings, (February 2000), pp. 46-50.

47 The notional, cost-unconstrained ship described by Capt. Powers in “Birth of the Littoral Combat 

Ship” was never endorsed by the Navy. It was not mentioned in the 21st Century Surface Combatant 

(SC-21) cost and operational effectiveness analysis (COEA) or the 1997 or 2001 Quadrennial Defense 

Reviews. Therefore, although JMAG game players wrestled with many of the same ship design issues 

later tackled by the designers of the DD(X) SCFOS LCS (e.g., platform speed, modularity, etc.), and 

some Navy officers undoubtedly were aware of the JMAG games in 2001, the JMAG LCS was not the 

model for the FORCEnet LCS.

48 Adm. Vern Clark, USN (Ret.), telephone conversation with author, 12 September 2012.

49 To clarify, the author coined the terms small and large battle network combatants, not NWDC.

50 See Clark, “Sea Power 21,” and LCS ConOps V3.1. 

51 February 2003 MFR, p. 1. 

52 LCS ConOps V3.1.

53 Ibid.

54 2002 Draft LCS IRD, pp. 1-2.

55 LCS ConOps V3.1.

56 February 2003 MFR, pp. 1-2, and Clark, telephone conversation. During the phone discussion, 

Admiral Clark commented that “people started coming out of the woodwork” to hang additional 

missions on LCS once it was announced. To avoid requirements creep, he wanted the LCS design 

focused squarely on the ship’s three designated wartime missions.

57 LCS ConOps V3.1.

58 Ibid.

59 The idea of pursuing open architecture combat systems (that is, avoiding proprietary specifications 

that would complicate future work by contractors not originally involved) to facilitate rapid 

fleetwide capability upgrades was first championed by the submarine community in the 1990s, with 

the Acoustic Rapid COTS Insertion, or A-RCI, program. Admiral Clark wanted to adopt the same 

model for all FORCEnet platforms. Therefore, in 2002, Admiral Clark established a new Program 

Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems (PEO IWS) “to help select common standards and 

products in the areas of frameworks, middleware, resource management, and operating systems, 

using both established and evolving industry standards to avoid proprietary solutions that might 

constrain rather than enhance interoperability, operational effectiveness, and future technology 

insertion.” Capt. Thomas J. Strei, USN, “Open Architecture in Naval Combat System Computing in the 

21st Century,” Command and Control Research Program, www.dodccrp.org/.

60 2002 Draft LCS IRD, p. 3. 

61 February 2003 MFR, p. 1.

62 2002 Draft LCS IRD, p. 20. 

63 Clark, telephone conversation. 

64 U.S. Navy Dept., Preliminary Design Interim Requirements Document for Littoral Combat Ship (LCS),

Flight 0, Pre-ACAT, Serial Number N763F-S03-026 (Washington, D.C.: 13 February 2003) [hereafter 

2003 Preliminary Design IRD for LCS; 2004 CDD for LCS.

65 “Critical Design Parameters,” 2003 Preliminary Design IRD for LCS, p. 4.

66 LCS ConOps V3.1.

67 In the section entitled “LCS” in Mullen, “Global Concept of Operations,” the Littoral Combat Ship 

was explicitly described as a “theater-based asset.” 

68 See 2002 Draft LCS IRD throughout, especially p. 6, and February 2003 MFR. 

69 LCS ConOps V3.1.

70 An ESG is a three-ship Amphibious Ready Group with an embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit 

escorted by several surface combatants.

71 LCS ConOps V3.1, and 2002 Draft LCS IRD, pp. 2-3.

72 2002 Draft LCS IRD, pp. 2-3, and 5.

73 Ibid., p. 21. 

74 LCS ConOps V3.1.
53

 

75 Rear Adm. Sam Perez, USN, who was a requirements officer in the LCS program in 2002-2003. The 

2002 Draft LCS IRD called for a speed of fifty knots (p. 7).

76 Jerry Gaston and Miguel Rivera, Analysis of Multiple Concepts—Littoral Combat Ship Study Phase II 

Report (Dahlgren, Virginia: Dahlgren Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center, May 2003), pp. 133-34.

77 February 2003 MFR, p. 2. 

78 2004 CDD for LCS, p. 6-2.

79 Even if sensible, given its inherent impact on both LCS designs, many continue to question whether 

high sprint speed was a cost effective program decision. However, Adm. Clark and his senior staff 

clearly felt any trade-offs necessitated by their demand for high speed were well worth it.

80 “Critical Design Parameters” in 2003 Preliminary Design IRD for LCS, p. 4; February 2003 MFR, p. 2. 

81LCS ConOps V3.1.

82 A 3,500-nautical mile range would theoretically allow an LCS to make an unrefueled transatlantic 

voyage to the Mediterranean (Gibraltar), or an unrefueled voyage from the West Coast to Hawaii. See 

2004 CDD for LCS, p. 2-2. In practice, however, commanders of Navy warships seldom want their fuel 

state to fall below 60 or 70 percent, in case they receive a tasking to transit to a brewing crisis or high 

priority mission. Navy planners thus derived several route choices that would allow LCS to top off its 

fuel bunkers during transits from CONUS to theater, and participants at the 2003 offsite discussed 

the idea of adding fuel bladders to increase LCS “transoceanic crossing ranges.” February 2003 MFR, 

p. 2.

83 “Critical Design Parameters” in 2003 Preliminary Design IRD for LCS, p. 4. 

84 2002 Draft LCS IRD, p. 7.

85 February 2003 MFR, pp. 2-3.

86 Vice Adm. Rick Hunt, USN, Chairman of the LCS Council, conversation with author, 4 September 

2012.

87 “Critical Design Parameters” in 2003 Preliminary Design IRD for LCS, p. 4.

88 All navigational drafts are drawn from “Naval Vessel Register.”

89 The Sikorsky MH-60S Knighthawk and the MH-60R Seahawk are marinized derivatives of the 

Army’s UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter and will form the backbone of the U.S. Navy helicopter fleet over 

the next two decades. For a description of the two helicopters, see Polmar, Ships and Aircraft of the 

U.S. Fleet, pp. 450-51. 

90 See February 2003 MFR, p. 3.

91 2002 Draft LCS IRD, p. 5. 

92 Ibid., p. 2. The idea of “second-stage” combat systems comes from George Root at the Naval 

Postgraduate School. He sees first-stage systems as being organic to and an integral part of a 

platform. Manned or unmanned second-stage systems perform their missions after being launched 

from a host platform. Third-stage systems are in turn launched from second-stage systems, such as 

autonomous sensors seeded by a second-stage system launched from the host platform.

93 The RHIB is a staple on all U.S. Navy ships and craft. Standard Navy RHIBs generally come in seven 

and eleven-meter versions. See Wikipedia, s.v. “Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat,” en.wikipedia.org/.

94 LCS ConOps V3.1.

95 2002 Draft LCS IRD, p. 9.

96 LCS ConOps V3.1.

97 2002 Draft LCS IRD, p. 7. 

98 Ibid., p. 7; February 2003 MFR, p. 3; “Critical Design Parameters” in 2003 Preliminary Design IRD

for LCS, p.4.

99 2002 Draft LCS IRD, p. 7.

100 Ibid., p. 11. [Emphasis added.]

101 February 2003 MFR, pp. 3-4.

102 The key performance parameter (KPP) for DD-21 manning was 95 (objective) and 150 

(threshold), for a ship with a design FLD of 17,500 long tons. The KPP for DD(X) manning was 125 

(objective) and 175 (threshold), for a ship with a design FLD of 14,500 tons. Figures from the DD-21 

Operational Requirements Document (ORD) dated 3 November 1997, and the DD(X) ORD of June 

2004. Ms. Allison Stiller, DASN Ships, e-mail to the author, 27 November 2012.
54

 

103 In a telephone conversation between the author on 12 September 2012, Adm. Clark emphasized 

his high expectations for LCS automation.

104 February 2003 MFR, p. 4. 

105 “Critical Design Parameters” in 2003 Preliminary Design IRD for LCS, p. 4.

106 From 2002 Draft LCS IRD, pp. 4-7.

107 Ibid., p. 7.

108 Ibid., p. 4. As their name suggests, torpedo boat destroyers (T.B.D) were small, fast craft designed 

to screen capital ships from torpedo boat attack. The first American torpedo boat destroyer was USS 

Farragut (T.B.D. No. 1) commissioned on 5 June 1899. By the end of World War I, these ships later 

evolved into larger, general purpose “destroyers.” See Global Security, “Torpedo Boat Destroyers,” 

www.globalsecurity.org/. Submarine chasers were craft first developed by the U.S. Navy in World 

War I to hunt and kill German submarines. The initial 110-foot versions carried the hull designations 

S; later 173-foot versions used a PC hull classification. Destroyer minesweepers were general 

purpose destroyers converted into high-speed, ocean-going minesweepers (DMS). See Wikipedia, s.v. 

“Submariner Chaser,” and “Destroyer Minesweeper,” en.wikipedia.com/.

109 LCS ConOps V3.1.

110 February 2003 MFR, p. 3.

111 “Critical Design Parameters” in 2003 Preliminary Design IRD for LCS, p. 4.

112 LCS ConOps V3.1. [Emphasis in the original.]

113 Ibid.

114 2002 Draft LCS IRD, p. 3. [Emphasis added].

115 Hughes, Jr., “22 Questions for Streetfighter,” pp. 46-50.

116 Clark, telephone conversation.

117 2003 Preliminary Design IRD for LCS, p. 10. 

118 U.S. Navy Dept., “Survivability Policy for Surface Ships of the US Navy,” OPNAV Instruction 9070.1, 

23 September 1988, enclosure (2) [Emphasis added.] 

119 Ibid.

120 The 2003 Preliminary Design Contracts awarded to Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics 

stated, “It is recognized that the unique nature of these vessels necessitate hull forms, material and 

some systems which incorporate features normally associated with ‘high speed naval craft.’ As a 

result, the applicable ABS Rules will include some parts of the ABS Guide for Building and Classing 

High Speed Naval Craft.” David C. Robinson, Acting Chief of Staff, Program Executive Officer for LCS, 

email to the author, 5 December 2012. 

121 2003 Preliminary Design IRD for LCS, p. 10.

122 Ibid., p. 9.

123 LCS ConOps V3.1.

124 Ibid.

125 February 2003 MFR, p. 4.

126 The radar-guided, rapid-firing Mark 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapons System (CIWS) can fire 

between 3,000-4,500 20 mm cannon rounds per minute, either autonomously or under manual 

command, as a last-ditch defense against incoming missiles and other targets. It has been a staple on 

U.S. warships since its fleet introduction in 1980. The RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile is a 

lightweight, quick-reaction, fire-and-forget missile with radio frequency or infrared guidance 

designed to destroy anti-ship cruise missiles and asymmetric air and surface threats. It is the Navy’s 

standard terminal defense missile, found on carriers and amphibious warships. It is a quick reaction, 

fire and forget missile with radio frequency or infrared guidance. See entries for “20 mm/76-Cal 

Close-in Weapon System Mk 16” and “RAM (Rolling Airframe Missile) RIM-116A” in Polmar, Ships 

and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet. The Mark 53 Decoy Launching System, known as Nulka, is a rapid 

response active expendable decoy system capable of providing highly effective soft-kills against 

modern Anti-Ship Missiles. Wikipedia, s.v. “Nulka,” en.wikipedia.org/.

127 February 2003 MFR, pp. 4-5. The Harpoon anti-ship cruise missile has been the standard U.S. 

Navy ASCM since its fleet introduction on surface ships in 1977. See “Harpoon AGM/RGM/UGM-84A,” 

in Polmar, Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, pp. 513-14.
55

 

128 LCS ConOps V3.1.

129 2003 Preliminary Design IRD for LCS, p. 10.

130 Ibid., p. 3.

131 2004 CDD for LCS, p. ii.

132 Clark, telephone conversation.

133 On 8 November 2002, after reviewing inputs from eighteen companies, the Navy awarded six 

companies $500,000 contracts for ninety-day ship concept studies for LCS. The six companies were 

General Dynamics; Gibbs and Cox; John J. McMullen Associates, Inc.; Lockheed Martin; Northrop 

Grumman; and Textron. On 17 July 2003, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon 

received seven-month contracts to develop preliminary designs. On 27 May 2004, Lockheed and 

General Dynamics were awarded contracts for final system design, with options for up to two Flight 0 

LCSs. solicited ideas from industry for the LCS seaframe. See Kevin Broncato, Ph.D, ‘Real Competition’ 

for the Littoral Combat Ship, a Bloomberg Government Study, Bloomberg L.P., 2012, p. 5.

134 “Critical Design Parameters,” in 2003 Preliminary Design IRD for LCS, p. 4.

135 Todd Tompkins, “Clarified Seaframe and Mission Package Definition,” PowerPoint presentation, 

Naval Sea Systems Command’s Third MSSIT-Industry Working Group Meeting, 6 November 2003.

136 Gaston and Rivera, Analysis of Multiple Concepts—Littoral Combat Ship Study Phase II Report, p. 12.

137 Tompkins, “Clarified Seaframe and Mission Package Definition.” The MQ-8B Fire Scout is a vertical 

takeoff and landing unmanned aerial vehicle based on the diminutive small Schweitzer 330 

helicopter. See “Fire Scout RQ-8A,” in Polmar, Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, p. 474.

138 Tompkins, “Clarified Seaframe and Mission Package Definition.”

139 The original LM offering was an all-aluminum design. During detailed design, LM shifted to a steel 

hull and aluminum deckhouse. For a good description of the LM LCS design, see “Lockheed Martin 

LCS Team,” Lockheed Martin LCS Team, www.lmlcsteam.com/. For a good description of the GD LCS 

design, see Wikipedia, s.v. “USS Independence (LCS 2),” en.wikipedia.org/.

140 2004 CDD for LCS.

141 Ms. Allison Stiller, DASN Ships , email to the author, 20 January 2012.

142 Rear Adm. (lower half) James Murdock, USN, LCS Program Manager, “LCS DOTE Report 

Response,” PowerPoint briefing, 4 March 2010. The three systems include watermist, aqueous film 

forming foam (AFFF), and heptafluoropropane (HFP). Watermist particles are many times smaller 

than water droplets from water sprinkler systems. When these particles enter a fire plume they are 

converted to steam, which displaces oxygen and extinguishes the fire. Securiplex, “High Pressure 

Water Mist Systems,” www.secuirplexic.com/. AFFF generates foam that smothers fuel fires. It is 

effective in large areas such as hangar or mission bays. See U.S. Navy, “Nimitz Tests AFFF Firefighting 

Systems,” www.navy.mil/. The Naval Research Laboratory developed HFP to provide the same fire 

extinguishing characteristics of Halon without the adverse environmental effects (e.g., damaging the 

stratospheric ozone layer). It is generally used in combination with watermist systems. Ronald S. 

Sheinson et al, “Heptafluoropropane With Water Spray Cooling System As a Total Flooding Halon 

1301 Replacement: System Implementation Parameters,” fire.nist.gov/.

143 COMBATTS-21 is an enhanced open architecture combat system derived from the Aegis open 

architecture system found on Ticonderoga-class CGs and Burke-class DDGs. The COMBATTS-21 

library shares 95 percent commonality with the Aegis system library. See Lockheed Martin, “Littoral 

Combat Ship’s Combat System Validated by U.S. Navy,” www.lockheed martin.com/. The TRS-3D 

multimode radar uses a phased array antenna for detection and tracking of multiple surface and air 

targets. It is very effective in clustered littoral environments. It is also installed on U.S. Coast Guard 

National Security Cutters. See EADS North America, “TRS-3D Mulitmode Radar,” 

www.eadsnorthamerica,com/.

144 TACTICOS is a combat management system comprising command and control, command support 

and fire-control facilities for anti-air, surface, anti-submarine and electronic warfare as well as naval 

gunfire support. Jane’s C4I Systems, “TACTICOS Combat Management System (Netherlands), 

Command Information Systems (Marine),” available at articles.janes.com/. The Sea Giraffe radar 

uses agile multi-beam technology to detect air and surface targets. It can simultaneously handle 

multiple threats approaching from different directions and altitudes, including diving anti-ship 

missiles. Like the TRS-3D radar, the Sea Giraffe is specialized for rapidly detecting small, fast moving 
56

 

targets at all altitudes and small surface targets in severe clutter. Wikipedia, s.v. “GIRAFFE Radar,” 

en.wikipedia.org/. The SeaRAM system combines the radar of the Phalanx Close-in Weapon System 

with an eleven round Rolling Airframe Missile launcher. 

145 The Mark 36 Super Rapid Blooming Off-board Chaff (SRBOC) is a short-range mortar that 

launches chaff or infrared decoys from naval vessels to foil anti-ship missiles. See Wikipedia, s.v. “Mk 

36 SRBOC,” en.wikipedia.org/.

146 The Mark 75 76 mm automatic cannon is suitable for installation on small combatants due to its 

light weight, and low manpower requirements. One gun mount is installed aboard U.S. Navy Oliver 

Hazard Perry-class frigates and older U.S. Coast Guard cutters. See “76 mm/62-caliber Gun Mk 75,” 

Polmar, Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, p. 494.

147 The 57 mm is considered a multi-purpose cannon effective against small boats, close in air targets, 

antiship missiles, and land targets. Its “3P” ammunition has six modes: proximity (air); gated 

proximity (air, anti-jamming); gate proximity with impact priority (air and large targets); precision 

time (surface); armor piercing (surface and shore); and impact (shore). It is possible to choose 

ammunition mode at the moment of firing, giving the gun the ability to switch rapidly between 

surface targets, air targets as well as ground targets. In a mode called Rapid Switchover for Maritime 

Intercept Operations (MIO), this all-target ammunition enables the gun to fire warning shots, step up 

to disabling fires, then instantly switch to lethal fires if required to slow, stop or destroy a vessel of 

interest. See “Mk-110 gun,” Seaforces-Online: Naval Information, www.seaforces.org/.

148 Spencer Ackerman, “Navy’s $670 Million Fighting Ship is ‘Not Expected to be Survivable,’ 

Pentagon Says, Wired, 15 January 2012, wired.com/dangerroom.

149 Malcolm Philips, “The U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships Compared,” Naval Forces 32, no. 5 (2012), 

p. 100. [Emphasis added.]

150 U.S. Navy Dept., “Survivability Policy and Standards for Surface Ships and Craft of the U.S. Navy,”

OPNAV Instruction 9070.1A, 13 September 2012, p. 4. 

151 When first introduced into fleet service, the Perry-class FFGs were armed with a Mark-13 single 

arm missile launcher, sitting atop a rotary magazine capable of carrying forty SM-1 surface-to-air 

missiles and Harpoon ASCMs. In the early 2000s, however, the Navy retired the SM-1 missile, and in 

2003 began removing the missile launcher and magazine from the ships. Since then, the Perrys have 

been armed with only a 76 mm cannon and a Phalanx Close-in Weapon System. See Polmar, Ships 

and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, p. 163.

152 LCS Branch, OPNAV N868, “LCS Survivability,” PowerPoint briefing, March 2011. During the 2006 

Lebanon War, while operating off the coast of Lebanon, the Israeli Navy corvette INS Hanit was hit by 

a suspected C-802 antiship cruise missile fired by Hezbollah forces. The ship caught fire; its 

propulsion plant was damaged, and four crew members were killed. Nevertheless, the corvette was 

able to sail back to Israel under her own power. See Wikipedia, s.v. “INS Hanit,” en.wikipedia.org/.

153 Mission module costs represent a “per seaframe average cost,” consistent with amortizing the 

costs of all mission packages for each seaframe in the LCS fleet. See paragraph 6.2.8 in “System 

Capabilities Required for the Current Increment,” in 2004 LCS CDD.

154 The $400M target was endorsed in both the Fiscal Year 2006 House Armed Services Committee 

(HASC) Report (109-62) Language, Section 124-Littoral Combat Ship Program, p. 121, and the Fiscal 

Year 2006 HASC Defense Authorization Bill (HR 1815), Section 124, Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) 

Program. 

155 Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), Capability Development Document for Littoral 

Combat Ship Flight 0+, Memorandum 126-08, Serial Number 757-86-08, dated 17 June 2008.

156 Ibid., (updated 19 August 2009).

157 Ibid.

158 The original threshold manning target for the Perry-class FFG was for 185 crew members. Once in 

service, however, it quickly became apparent that a crew of about 215 officers and Sailors were 

needed to operate the ship effectively. 

159 2004 CDD for LCS, p. 6-3.

160 Rear Adm. (lower half) James Murdoch, e-mail to the author, 12 October 2012. RDML Murdock 

pointed out that the original GD design had 76 bunks, while the LM design had 75. 

161 Ibid.
57

 

162 For a description of VBSS teams, see Wikipedia, s.v. “Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure,” 

en.wikipedia.org/.

163 Murdoch, e-mail, 12 October 2012.

164 Numbers are based either on one seven-month deployment per 27-month period, or one sevenmonth deployment per 32-month period.

165 Carol Weaver, Analysis of Multiple Concepts—Littoral Combat Ship Study Phase III Report 

(Dahlgren, Virginia: Dahlgren Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center, 30 January 2004), pp. 63-70.

166 Brian Alkire et al, Littoral Combat Ships: Relating Performance to Mission Package Inventories, 

Homeports, and Installation Sites (Washington, D.C.: RAND, 2007), p. xxiv, available at 

www.rand.org/.

167 For a thorough recap of the changing numbers and types of ships in Navy plans between 2001 and 

2005, see Ronald O’Rourke, Potential Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and 

Issues for Congress (Washington D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 25 October 2012).

168 U.S. Defense Dept., Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, D.C.: 6 February 2006), p. 38., 

available at www.defense.gov/.

169 O’Rourke, Potential Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans. 

170 Ibid. Mr. O’Rourke cites all the changes announced at various times since 2006, and concludes the 

2010 FSA called for 328 ships. The actual number, never publicly announced, was 323 ships. 

171 U.S. Defense Dept., Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense

(Washington, D.C.: January 2012), p. 4, available www.defense.gov/.

172 This FSA is now in staffing at OSD; once approved, it will be published with the FY 2014 

President’s Budget Submission.

173 While the existing program of record for Ticonderoga CGs and Burke DDGs was for twenty-seven 

and fifty-seven ships, respectively, the stated requirement for the Global ConOps Navy was eightyeight Aegis combatants. Planners assumed that the Burke would remain in production until the 

DD(X) was ready to go, which would lead to an additional four ships being built. 

174 As opposed to the SPY-1 passive phased array radar found on Aegis combatants, the new active 

phased array Air Missile Defense Radar, or AMDR, has the increased sensitivity needed to detect, 

react to, and engage stressing Very Low Observable/Very Low Flyer (VLO/VLF) threats in the 

presence of heavy land, sea, and rain clutter. See U.S. Navy, “Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR),” 

www.navy.mil/. The SM-6 Extended Range Active Missile, or ERAM, has the same active radar seeker 

found on the AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM). This allows its firing 

platform to engage targets at long range and below the ship’s own radar horizon. See Wikipedia, s.v. 

RIM-174 Standard ERAM,” en.wikipedia.org/.

175 For a thorough discussion of the budding naval arms race in Asia, see Geoffrey Till, Asia’s Naval 

Expansion: An Arms Race in the Making?” (London, UK: The International Institute for Strategic 

Studies, December 2012).

176 The plan outlined in the 2003 Preliminary LCS IRD was slightly modified in the Navy’s May 2003 

Report to Congress on Annual Long-Range Plan for the Construction of Naval Vessels. This report 

indicated the Navy planned to build three Flight I LCSs in FY 2008, followed by four in FY 2009 and 

five per year thereafter. See Ronald O’Rourke, Navy DD(X) and LCS Ship Acquisition Programs: 

Oversight Issues and Options for Congress, CRS Report RL32109, (Washington, D.C.: Congressional 

Research Service, updated 28 October 2004), p. 23.

177 2004 LCS CDD, pp. 5-1 to 5-2.

178 Clark, telephone conversation, 12 September 2012.

179 See O’Rourke, Navy DD(X) and LCS Ship Acquisition Programs, p. 23.

180 Rumsfeld,“21st Century Transformation.”

181 In 2003, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology project team concluded that no ship with the 

requirements for payload, range, and speed announced for LCS could be built for $220 million. The 

team concluded the cost for the seaframe would be at least $333 million. See Brancato, ‘Real 

Competition’ for the Littoral Combat Ship, p. 6.. Internal DoN studies conducted in 2004 projected the 

costs for each first-of-class seaframe to be somewhere in the $400-450 million range, which turned 

out to be much closer to the truth than Navy then-current budget numbers. Eric Labs, naval analyst at 
58

 

the Congressional Budget Office, email to the author, 9 November 2012. This cost projection was 

confirmed by Ms. Allison Stiller, DASN Ships.

182 For a good synopsis of problems encountered in the early years of the LCS program, see Ronald 

O’Rourke, Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program: Background, Oversight Issues, and Options for 

Congress, CRS Report RL33741 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, updated April 7, 

2008), pp. 9-17.

183 The end cost for LCS 1 was $750.9 million, while the end cost for LCS 2 was $864.5 million (both 

in FY 2010 dollars). Allison Stiller, DASN Ships, email to the author dated 17 January 2013.

184 For a good summary of Congressional actions and the FY2009 acquisition strategy, see O’Rourke, 

Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program (updated 5 June 2009), p. 6.

185 The cost cap for LCS has evolved over time. The FY 2006 National Defense Authorization Act 

established a cost cap of $220 million for the fifth and sixth ships of the class. The FY 2008 NDAA 

amended the cap to $460 million, with no adjustments for inflation, for all LCSs procured from FY 

2008 on. The FY 2009 NDAA deferred the implementation of the cap by two years, to FY 2010 and 

beyond. Finally, the FY 2010 NDAA established a new cap of $480 million per ship, which included 

the basic construction cost for the seaframe, government furnished equipment (GFE), and change 

orders. It excluded mission package costs, plans, the ship’s technical data package, class design 

services, post-delivery, outfitting, and program support costs. It also allowed the Navy to adjust the 

$480 million cap each year to take inflation and other events into account. See O’Rourke, Navy 

Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program (updated 10 August 2012), p. 6.

186 The Lockheed Martin led team planned to alternate production between Marinette Marine 

Corporation (in Marinette, Wisconsin) and Bollinger Shipyards (in Lockport, Louisiana). The General 

Dynamics-led team planned to concentrate building in the Austal America shipyard in Mobile, 

Alabama, but reserved the right to build the ships in either Bath Ironworks or NASSCO.

187 For a thorough explanation of the down-select acquisition strategy, see Appendix D in O’Rourke, 

Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program (updated 22 October 2012).

188 The Navy already operates eleven aircraft carriers (CVNs), fourteen fleet ballistic missile 

submarines (SSBNs), fourteen MCMs, thirteen PCs, and twelve LSDs without great difficulty, and will 

soon operate eleven large deck amphibious ships (LHDs and LHAs), eleven LPD-17s and fourteen TAKEs. In contrast, the three-ship Seawolf-class SSN presents a unique support challenge, as will the

three-ship Zumwalt-class DDGs. Moreover, recall that two LCS versions will ultimately replace FFGs, 

two different classes of mine warfare ships, and PCs. In comparison with the 2001 fleet, then, the 

move to LCS simplifies fleet maintenance.

189 For a discussion of the down-select acquisition strategy, see Appendix E in O’Rourke, Navy Littoral 

Combat Ship (LCS) Program (updated 22 October 2012).

190 Brancato, ‘Real Competition’ for the Littoral Combat Ship, p. 6.

191 The prime contractor for LCS 2 and LCS 4 was General Dynamics. The prime for LCS 6 and all 

subsequent even numbered ships in the 10-ship block buy is Austal America. 

192 Rear Adm. (lower half) James Murdoch, e-mail to the author, 2 January 2013.

193 Rear Adm. Robert Wray, USN, President of the U.S. Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey, 

conversation with the author, 2 August 2012.

194 All costs from “Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Information Paper for President’s Budget (PB) 2014 

Congressional Testimony,” prepared by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, 

Development, and Acquisition for the author, 14 January 2013. The costs in this paper are derived 

from the most recent 2012 Program Life Cycle Cost Estimate, which forms the basis for the LCS 

Service Cost Position.. 

195 Brancato, ‘Real Competition’ for the Littoral Combat Ship, p. 12

196 The projected average seaframe “end cost” which includes all cost cap costs (basic construction 

cost, government furnished equipment, and change orders) plus class design services and program 

management/engineering support costs. The cost of the MCM package is projected to be $107.5 

million; the cost of the surface warfare package, including the new maritime security (VBSS) and 

irregular warfare modules, is $35.9 million; and the ASW package is $23 million. In addition, every 

package has an average of $16.3 million in “common equipment costs,” which includes the mission 

package computing environment permanently installed on each seaframe and the mission module 
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containers, shipping containers, and support equipment associated with each mission package. Per 

Congressional direction, the cost of common equipment is broken out separately from the modulespecific equipment in each mission package. The average projected cost for a mission package is thus 

$76.8 million (all costs in FY 2010 dollars). . From “Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Information Paper for 

President’s Budget (PB) 2014 Congressional Testimony.”

197 Recall that OSD established the “threshold” cost target for a LCS with its associated mission 

modules at $400 million in FY 2005 dollars, which equates to $490.4 million in FY 2010 dollars.

198 Average projected seaframe end cost for the tenth ship of each buy is $392.5 million in FY 2010 

dollars. With average mission package costs of $76.8 million, the average cost for a missionized LCS is 

$469.3 million. Adjusted for inflation, the FY 2005 threshold cost of $370 million equates to $364 

million in FY 2005 dollars.

199 DDG 51 end cost, average of FY 2013 Flight IIA ships, in FY 2010 dollars. Allison Stiller, DASN 

Ships, email to the author, 18 January 2013.

200 Eric Labs, presentation on LCS at the CATO Institute, 21 May 2012.

201 Bill Carey, “Northrop Grumman Gets Go-Ahead for Larger Fire Scout,” AINonline, 

www.ainonline.com/.

202 See the entries for oilers and dry cargo/ammunition ships in Polmar, Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. 

Fleet, pp. 267-69.

203 LCS-1 has a full load displacement of 3,292 tons, while LCS-2 ‘s FLD is 3,104 tons. From “Naval 

Vessel Register.”

204 LCS-1 has a maximum navigational draft of thirteen feet; LCS-2’s draft is fourteen feet. Ibid.

205 The new QA-11 software upload on LCS 1 fixed several interface issues between its TRS 3D radar 

and COMBATSS-21 combat management system. This upload now allows the combat system to factor 

in the ship’s own velocity when determining surface track velocities and corrects several 

discrepancies observed in earlier gun firing tests. As a result, the ship can now engage surface targets 

using the TRS-3D radar. Vice Adm.Thomas Copeman, email to the author, 11 January 2013. 

206 Both the LM and GD LCS variants have the margins necessary to accept an array of additional 

combat systems and weapons. For example, LM is now marketing a Multi-Mission Surface Combatant 

family of ships based on the LCS 1 design, with the proven Aegis combat system, SPY-1F (V) radar, 

and Mark 41 VLS. See Lockheed Martin, “Multi-Mission Surface Combatant,” 

www.lockheedmartin.com/.

207 “‘Spruance’ class,” in Polmar, Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, pp. 154-55.

208 Michael Fabey, “Redeeming Freedom: U.S. Navy Seeks to Renew Faith in LCS Fleet,” Aviation Week 

(30 November 2012).

209 The Knox-class frigate and long-hull Perry-class FFGs had full load displacements of 4,163 tons 

and 4,100 tons, respectively. In contrast, the ultimate World War II destroyer, the Gearing-class DD, 

had a FLD of 3,460 tons. See “Naval Vessel Register,” and Wikipedia, s.v. “Gearing class Destroyer,” 

en.wikipedia.org/.

210 Chief of Naval Operations, “Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Council,” memorandum to Director, Navy 

Staff, 22 August 2012, p. 1.

211 The sponsors included the Deputy CNO (DCNO) and subordinates responsible for Information 

Dominance (N2/N6) Expeditionary Warfare (N8/95), Surface Warfare (N8/96), and Air Warfare 

(N8/98).

212 See Andy Yee, “US deployment of Littoral Combat Ships to Singapore,” East Asia Forum, 

www.eastasiaforum.org/.

213Acquisition and maintenance of the sea-frame and mission modules were previously overseen by 

two different program executive offices: PEO Ships and PEO Littoral and Mine Warfare (PEO LMW), 

respectively. With the creation of PEO LCS, PEO LMW was disestablished and resident LCS program 

functions were transitioned to the new PEO. The new PEO LCS subsumed the following program 

offices: LCS (PMS 501), Remote Minehunting System (PMS 403), Unmanned Maritime Systems (PMS 

406), LCS Mission Modules (PMS 420), Mine Warfare (PMS 495), and essential fleet-introduction 

program and functional offices, such as test and evaluation and aviation integration.

214 Adm. John Harvey, Commander, Fleet Forces Command, as cited in “LCS-1 Freedom to Deploy 2 

Years Early,” Pentagon Brief, pentagonbrief.blogspot.com/.
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215 See “Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Council.”

216 2002 Draft LCS IRD, p. 6.

217 Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, letter to John Davis Long, 18 February 1898, 

National Archives, provided to the author by Capt. Jerry Hendrix, USN, director of the Naval History 

and Heritage Command, 1 November 2012.