We Need a Clean Break from LCS to FFG-62

I wish I made the observation first, but last week I noted another's spot on commentary on LCS that was simply damning in its simplicity; LCS-1 will be decommissioned before any of the mission modules it were to carry are FMC.

All that being said, LCS will be with us for awhile, and good people in hard jobs are doing their best to squeeze some utility out of them. 

That is great ... but we have so little actual experience with LCS besides a few bespoke deployments that we need to be very careful thinking we can transfer "lessons" to new classes, like FFG-62, that will be used in very different ways ... like useful ways ... but I digress.

That won't stop some people, it seems;

 “When we started building frigate, we looked at lot at LCS and what we can learn – for example, the way we train on LCS, train to qualify, is a really good model and we’re going to leverage that for FFG-62,” Kitchener said during the media call ahead of this week’s Surface Navy Association annual symposiums.

I'm open to that, I guess. If it were so great - and I don't know if it is - why aren't we doing this with already existing classes of warships? Are we?

“And then the manning, we just looked at what we’ve done on LCS, the blue/gold concept, and how we’re going to fit them out. And we think that is probably the way to get the most presence” out of the frigate hulls.

Bullshit. Blue/Gold only works in the submarine world. If you want to copy their program, then great. All experience we have with Blue/Gold in surface ships doing surface ship business - and LCS has never done that - has always been, what is the world, "suboptimal."

It appears that this may be soaking in. Perhaps we are mature enough as an organization to admit that we can say, "No, this was a mistake." Close ... so close ... but perhaps we are allowing some to save face. We'll see.

“The ink’s not dry yet – we’re looking at, as the SWO Boss said, there’s some lessons learned from blue/gold crewing, I think there’s some ability to potentially deploy the ships for longer with a rotational crew model, and we are still learning about how to do that and what that right rotation is. So it’s a little bit pre-decisional still with Connie,” he said.

Let's pour bleach on that ink before it is dry and toss what remains in the shredder. 

“The crew on a frigate will be larger, so there’s kind of inherently more capability in that crew. It’s not a minimally manned platform as the LCS was. … That means that the frigate, the Connie-class crew size, will support being able to do more multi-mission sorts of things, whereas the LCS is more single-mission, one mission at a time platform,” he said.

“And there’s some more ability for the crew to do its own maintenance; planned maintenance will be done much more so by the ship’s force crew on a frigate, on the Connie class, than on the LCS.”

So close, so close to sounding like a customer of the military industrial complex as opposed to a PR spokesman ... so close. 

That being said, nice that Big Navy is starting to accept the critique from the Front Porch about LCS here well over a decade and a half old. I like how we are finally calling LCS's manning CONOPS not "optimally manned" but "minimally manned." Also admitting that - shocking I know - a ship needs the ability to do some of its own repairs ... and hey, multi-mission is a thing again. Good. Potential enemies were being a bit persnickity about signaling what the PMA of the Quarter was going to be in time for us to get the non-existent mission modules installed. 

Maybe soon we can say, "Little to nothing from LCS can be adopted by FFG-62. We learned a lot from LCS and will continue to, but the manning and deployment CONOPS for FFG-62 will be better aligned to a multi-mission frigate as we understand it in our and allied navies."

LCS Manning Reality: Oops

Of course, none of this is new - those of us in the "Statler and Waldorf LCS Appreciation Association" have been saying these things for years.

1. We have exquisitely manned an exquisitely designed ship to an almost aerospace engineering level of tolerances (i.e. no wiggle room). The thing is - the wide range of requirements of a warship demands more civil engineering tolerances.

2. Any sea manning savings will be eaten up by shore support trying to make the low manning at sea possible.

3. Training expenses and personnel churn will eat of the rest, if any, money left.

4. Those who are deployed will burn out quickly or will be so physically and emotionally drained (even more than a normal Surface crew) - that accidents and suboptimal performance will manifest itself in unpleasant ways from denting hulls to retention.

Don't listen to my repeats; Aviation Week will help you figure it out.

Operating the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) will force the service to re-evaluate its traditional staffing paradigm, according to the LCS Concept of Operations (conops), which was obtained by the Aviation Week Intelligence Network.

“Many existing Navy policies and regulations must be revised to accommodate LCS for various reasons, principally seaframe design and/or minimum manning,” says the current LCS “Platform Wholeness” conops, Revision C, dated September 2009.
...
LCS crews are “similar to aircraft squadrons and small-craft detachments as far as makeup . . . and their workloads,” the conops says. “The unprecedented method of manning LCS presents new challenges but is essential to the operation of these ships.”

There is that word again "unprecedented." The most overused word of the last half-decade. There is nothing unprecedented, unless you don't know your own history and are making it up as you go along ... which ...

“The small crew represents a major departure from traditional manning concepts,” the conops says. A core crew of 40 and a module-mission package detachment of 15 “are only possible by relying on extensive cross-training, resulting in a crew of hybrid sailors, each with multiple skills,” the conops says.

“The crew has no surplus capacity to absorb additional duties,” the conops says, noting that the mission-module “crews are organized, trained and certified using a process similar to seaframe core crews.

Ummmmm .... 40+15=55. From the discussions I have had, we are already north of the baseline 75 for a deployment when you add 20 for the air-det - a number ID'd as lowball over half a decade ago. Right hand, meet left hand.

As part of the ever fun roll-out of LCS we have talked a lot about the cost per hull, the cost for mission modules that don't even exist ... but not enough about the bill for this,

“The minimally manned crew concept relies upon a condition-based system to allow cost-effective and efficient planning and scheduling of maintenance by a shore maintenance team that will increase system and ship operational availability,” the conops says.

LCS: the gift that will keep on giving.

LCS: an Unending, Floating PSYOPS Own Goal

A navy ship represents her nation. That is why throughout history, nations use their navy as diplomatic mediums to show the flag around the world as representatives of the nations they serve.

There is a reason why the phrase "ship shape" means clean and orderly. It is what navy ships are supposed to be. Why? Because they represent the pride of their nation. A ship that is manned properly to maintain herself is also an indication that a ship is manned properly to fight and win at war. 

A nation's warship is often the only thing foreigners see of that nation. The condition, size, seamanship, and the behavior of the crew in peace and war are seen as indicators of their host nation nature and status.

This is fair and it is usually accurate.

But ... again ... we have to revisit this simple concept in light of the dog's breakfast that is LCS. In Monday's comments you sure looked like you were ready for an old school LCS post, so you're going to get it.

The unstoppable rolling failure of LCS must be drawn out from under the pier and gibbetted for all to see on a regular basis. If Big Navy is going to tee up the ball, we might as well take a swing at it. Over and over and over. Unending until the last LCS is sunk towards the end of this century in a SINKEX. Let the entire class be examples to future naval professionals what not to do.

Good googly moogly, just look at her!

Your monthly reminder that the Little Crappy Ship really isn't that little, is quite crappy, and is one nasty looking ship.

The even-hulls are bad in their own right, but here is your newly commissioned odd-hull, USS LITTLE ROCK (LCS 9) - most recently of ice princess fame, at last trying to escape the grip of the Dominion of Canada.

Our friend Chris Cavas has a nice series of pics on her cruising through the mostly ice free St. Lawrence,

More photos of USS #LITTLE ROCK #LCS9 coming down the St Lawrence Sat after lvng #Montreal. Note virtually complete absence of ice - the reason the ship was "trapped" in LesHabsVille for 3 mos. Seen at Sorel (R Beauchamp), Trois Rivieres (J Gauthier), Lotbiniere (L Morissette), pic.twitter.com/lnVXUZxwvS

— Chris Cavas (@CavasShips) April 2, 2018

I want to draw your attention to this one though;

A decade after the commissioning of Hull-1, not only can we not decide what frack'n shade of grey we want to get underway with - we can't stick with the simple "dazzle" paint job that hides the horrible design of the exhausts.

Again, just look at her.

This tramp steamer sure sends a message about the USA to every port she sails in to, and it isn't what you want.

What is there in this picture for any nation to take pride in? The poor officers and enlisted personnel assigned to these ships. This is not their fault.

The design almost demands neglect. The manning concept is based on no one having time to do anything but their job and a bit of another person's job instead of sleeping. The Navy is so ossified that it cannot to this day ensure that what we know is going to be up front in the face of the world is something our friends can be proud of and our enemies see with respect.

Stop kidding yourself. Enlarge the picture. Look at the soot. Relish the rust. Bask in the poorly patched seems in the superstructure. Zoom in and find them yourself.

Behold the mighty superpower's Navy!

"I met a photographer from the Great White North,
Who said—“Three vast and dank smears of soot
Stand in the St. Lawrence. . . . Near them, on the water,
Half sunk in rust lies, whose anchor,
And ill-shaded fiberglass, and sneer of the minimally manned,
Tell that its program manager well those passions showed
Which yet survive, stamped on these dented things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the quarterdeck, these words appear:
My name is LCS, Princess of Ice;
Look on my Hull, ye PLAN, and despair!
Nothing beside can be made FMC. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level water stretch far away.”

Apologies to Shelley. 

Accessing Salamander's Archive

Come on guys ... I've been tracking your IPs since early 2005. You Congressional staffers are getting slow to the game.

A key congressional subcommittee has questioned the manning plan for the Navy’s newest class of warships and signaled that it will force the Navy to keep three of seven selected cruisers from an early retirement.

The subcommittee took issue with the manpower plan for littoral combat ships, in particular asking why the Navy has decided to send ensigns and first-term sailors to these smaller crews, after previously saying they didn’t plan to do so. Lawmakers are concerned that junior sailors and ensigns assigned to LCSs won’t get the training they need on a ship with minimal manning and limited opportunities for training.

“The committee is concerned that the current LCS manning model is unrealistic and that relying on temporary solutions such as berthing modules to accommodate additional crewmembers is both impractical and detrimental to the quality of life of the entire crew,” the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee wrote in a report obtained by Navy Times. The report, which has not yet been publicly released, is to be considered at a markup Thursday.

You could have asked this, I don't know ... five years ago, eight years ago - but you're right. The Navy was telling a different story then than they are now.

That's OK - better late than never. Here is the fun part if you have time to pass this around - get hold of the NPS thesis of then LT now CDR Thaveepho Douangaphaivong, USN, presently the XO of NRD Minneapolis.

Wait ... silly me - here it is for you.

The Littoral Combat Ship’s (LCS) minimally manned core crew goal is 15 to 50 manpower requirements and the threshold, for both core and mission-package crews, is 75 to 110.

This dramatically smaller crew size will require more than current technologies and past lessons learned from reduced manning initiatives. Its feasibility depends upon changes in policy and operations, leveraging of future technologies and increased Workload Transfer from sea to shore along with an increased acceptance of risk.

Read it all - then give CDR Douangaphaivong an Operational Command for speaking truth before it became popular.

You want to reward "against the grain" thinking and intellectual courage? Start with him.

Let's see - you paid for him to go to NPS. No variable cost. CDR Salamander is free. So, how much did you pay for all those PPT, consultants, vignettes, Fantasy Island CONOPS?

Just to be fair - we'll take just 10% of the cost you paid them. CDR D and I will split it 50/50; time value of money and all.

Yes, his thesis is from 2004. Two Thousand Frigg'n Four.