Ahoy mates,

This weeks installment of "MSW's 1:1 Naval Technology" focuses on the U.S. Navy and the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).

Link to Item

If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!
~Gunny

Certainly is stylist.

But as we use to say in my day,
"Can it fight or just look pretty?

If they can keep the costs of those ships under control they will be a nice ship to add to the fleet.

What I find strange is the two different designs for the class.

Gents,
Interesting concept on these ships. Reminds me of the Corvettes or original fast Frigates, but size wise they get pushed out of the Corvette class. Might be interesting to follow for our modeling purposes, definitely have to watch for good plans in the future. Take it easy....Bruce

Gentlemen,
I think I just answered my own question. Checking the weights, both designs are under 3500 tons. If I'm not mistaken, that is the cutoff for Corvette vessels. Of course, in today's political speak the LCS title sounds sexier. Oh well, sound like a Corvette to me....Bruce

hello Mark,
i wonder if they will use fuel-cells instead for normal fuel.this class also could be used for SEAL teams also.thanks for the review.
cheers,
Bruce

The LCS ships will run on regular fuel just like other ships in the Navy that use gas turbines. The fuel is pretty much just a clean diesel fuel believe it or not. They will be able to run at 45 knots and operate in up to sea state 5, which is about medium rough.

Each ship will have pretty much the same layout and will carry the same type of equipment, but they will all have the ability to swap out with different modules, Mine & In Shore Warfare, ASW, Anti Surface Warfare, Special Ops(SEAL’s) Intel, Homeland Defense, Anti-Terrorism/Force Projection, and Maritime intercepts.

They pretty much jam as much as they can into a smaller faster ship that can operate in blue water as well as green water. One key area which is being studied for these ships is automation so the crew can be reduced and the people can be used in other areas of the Navy. With reduced budgets and increased hardware costs one cost saving measure will be cutting personnel. Which in my mind it totally WRONG. (Sorry for the political statement)

All in all these will be nice ships whether we call them LCS or Corvettes.


This link has all sorts of good info on the LCS class ships.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/lcs.htm

Interesting. In some of the artist's renderings, I'm reminded more of a yacht rather than a warship.

I thought LCS-3 (Lockheed) & LSC-4 (General Dynamics) had been canceled on 12 APR & 1 NOV 07 respectively due to cost over runs? LCS-1 is scheduled to be commissioned in 2008 & LCS-2 in 2009.

Also, on 25 APR 07 USS Freedon LCS-1 was significantly damaged by fire.

Jim