Revamping US Navy Surface ships from now to 2025

In 2001, the Navy planned a new approach to surface warfare supported by a family of new ships: the CG(X) missile defense cruiser [cancelled], DD(X) land attack destroyer [only 3 Zumwalt destroyers], and sea control-focused littoral combat ship (LCS). This new family of ships was intended to conduct “network-centric warfare,” where the surface fleet would counter growing threats by having each ship specialize in a small set of missions. The fleet would maintain the ability to conduct a wide range of operations by connecting ships via a dense communications network. Each of those 2001 ships is now canceled or its program truncated, leaving the Navy without a coherent surface fleet architecture or a clear central concept for surface warfare.

The Navy should modify one of the LCS variants to be the follow-on SSC to leverage the learning curve already established with those ships and enable the new ship to promptly reach the fleet. Some of the modifications used in the follow-on SSC (such as a VLS magazine), should be back-fitted into selected “Flight 0” LCS.

The Navy chose to beef up the weapons, armor and sensors on its two existing classes of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) in an answer to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s call for a tougher Small Surface Combatant (SSC), the Navy announced in a late Thursday briefing with reporters.

The two variants of the ship will replace the last 20 ships in the initial plan for 52 Flight 0 Lockheed Martin Freedom-class and Austal USA Independence-class LCS hulls as part of the SSC directive the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) outlined to the Navy in a January memo.