Littoral combat ships will help U.S. forces gain access.

• Author: Loren, Don
• Position: Commentary

The U.S. Navy is seeking to develop a new surface combatant family of ships, designed to expand the nation's warfighting capabilities. Among the concepts being considered for the future force is a mission-focused vessel called the Littoral Combat Ship.

The LCS concept focuses on operations in the littoral or coastal regions of the world. The ship will be small, fast and highly maneuverable. Operating within the larger construct of a naval network of distributed ships, the LCS will provide naval and Joint Force Commanders capabilities that will both complement and increase the combat effectiveness of the Navy's larger, multi-mission ships.

The U.S. national strategy will require the Navy to project dominant and decisive offensive power ashore and support List-moving ground forces. To do this, the Navy must assure access to all maritime regions and establish a presence in littoral environments characterized by a multitude of rapidly evolving and increasingly asymmetric threats.

The need for assured access for the U.S. armed forces in certain regions of the world has been long recognized. However, events of the last two years, including the ongoing war against terrorism, have brought a new sense of focus and energy.

The LCS, with its unique combat capabilities, is ideally suited to meet this need.

The Navy's fleet of the future will see a surface combatant family of ships. Today's in-service Aegis fleet of cruisers and destroyers will be joined by revolutionary new ships: DD(X), an advanced multimission destroyer with significant precision strike and volume fires capabilities, CG(X), an advanced multi-mission cruiser with sea-based theater air and ballistic missile defense suites, and the stealthy, small, highly maneuverable, focused-mission Littoral Combat Ship.

Without abandoning traditional core competencies, the family of surface combatants will distribute offensive firepower among a number of both large and small, multi-mission and focusedmission platforms operating in both deep-ocean and shallower, coastal waters.

This concept of a multi-mission family of ships acknowledges the continuing rapid maturation of technology. Traditional ship designs became outdated in the period between the initial requirements development phase and the time the class become operational in significant numbers.

The process for modernizing ship systems usually involved field changes to machinery and weapons systems. Although efffective in keeping installed...