Littoral Combat Ship sensors pose integration 'challenges'.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

Officials in charge of developing the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship express confidence that they can deliver a first prototype by 2007. They appear less certain, however, that they can seamlessly integrate the first generation of LCS into a network of ships, unmanned vehicles and offboard sensors, each equipped with dissimilar communications, command and control systems.

The LCS is a new warship being designed specifically for coastal operations, in particular anti-submarine warfare, maritime patrol, and mine detection and clearance.

The Navy expects to select next summer one or two LCS designs, out of three currently in competition. Navy officials said the ship concepts proposed are promising and innovative, but they see rough waters ahead when it comes to the C4I portion of the program. C4I is military parlance for command, control and communications networks that allow weapon systems to share information, such as battlefield intelligence and targeting data.

In fiscal year 2004, the Navy will spend $41 million--out of $168 million appropriated for LCS--on systems integration. A key requirement of the program is to connect LCS with other ships, unmanned vehicles and off-board sensors, none of which was designed to be compatible with LCS. The Navy's goal is to deploy a "dispersed force of smaller networked platforms with distributed unmanned sensors," explained Rear Adm. (S) Raymond Spicer, Navy deputy director for surface ships. Each LCS would be configured with one or more sensor packages, depending on the mission needs.

The initial version of LCS, which the Navy plans to introduce in 2007, is called Flight 0. No matter which hull-form the Navy selects, Flight 0 will need to be interoperable with three types of unmanned vehicles: the Fire Scout vertical takeoff drone, the RMS underwater remote mine-hunting system and an unmanned surface craft. Each of the three systems already was in various stages of development before LCS was conceived.

That presents a "huge challenge" in the program, said Arthur Divens, Navy deputy program executive officer for ships. The unmanned vehicles and sensors that now must operate with LCS never were designed as a "system of systems," Divens said. In comments to the Expeditionary Warfare conference of the National Defense Industrial Association, he said the LCS will operate "within a squadron of ships." The squadron will be networked with off-board sensors (unmanned vehides), with the larger surface force, and...