The LCS’ chief attributes - speed, small size, low cost, modularity, and minimal manning - were designed to deliver the quantity, geographic range, and flexibility in roles that distributed maritime operations demanded. Networked together, these vessels can exploit common information streams and synchronize maneuver and fires. This entails dispersing numerous vessels - large and small, manned and unmanned - across an operating area to act as sensors, defensive pickets, and strike platforms. The LCS was designed for what the Navy calls “distributed maritime operations” (then called “ Global Concept of Operations”), its principal operational concept for achieving sea control in a high-end fight. The program had a clear plan, but it required vast technical leaps to build a ship with a core crew of only 40 sailors, compared to the 176 on the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates that the LCS was intended to replace. Work has shown that the LCS was far from a “ship without a mission,” as critics have sometimes contended. We argue that these two challenges are as - if not more - likely to occur on unmanned ships as they did on minimally manned ones.Īll the Problems of the LCS and Then Someįormer Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Hence, if fielded in anything approximating combat conditions, the LCS would not remain effective for long. Fewer sailors meant fewer problems spotted, and less capacity to fix them while underway. Second, minimal manning made platforms less resilient. This raised costs overall, meaning fewer platforms could be purchased. First, replacing sailors with technology reduced maintenance at the operator level, but increased it at the regional maintenance center and original equipment manufacturer levels. In the case of the LCS, this promise was a fallacy for two reasons. In fact, the central argument for zero-manning - that removing sailors from ships will save money, allowing the Navy to purchase and field large quantities of vessels for distributed maritime operations - is exactly what the LCS program promised. Navy vessel in operational use, making it the closest real-world test case for future surface fleet architecture. This is unfortunate because, while the LCS is not unmanned, it is further on the unmanned spectrum than any other U.S. Very little commentary, however, explicitly connects the two subjects.
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