Navy warship to trade some speed in firepower, heavier armor
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this Sept. 17, 2012, file photo, the littoral combat ship USS Forth Worth arrives at the port of Galveston, Texas, to prepare for its formal commissioning ceremony. The Navy spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to fulfill its need for speed with fast and agile warships like the Fort Worth.
BATH, Maine >> The Navy spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to fulfill its need for speed with a new class of fast and agile warships capable of zipping along at highway speeds.
It turns out speed is overrated.
The Navy has learned lessons from the light-and-speedy littoral combat ships: Upcoming ships will trade some speed in favor of more weapons and heavier armor.
Rear Adm. Peter Fanta, director of surface warfare, said the goal is to increase the offensive punch of all warships from the biggest to the smallest. For the littoral combat ship, that’ll begin with the installation of over-the-horizon missiles this summer.
“Each ship that I now have — I have to make more lethal because I cannot build ships fast enough, or enough of them,” Fanta told The Associated Press.
Two versions of the warships were sped into production to meet the Navy’s goal of an affordable, fast ship to operate in shallow coastal — or littoral — waters.
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The ships, which are capable of topping 50 mph, utilize steerable waterjets instead of propellers and rudders to operate in shallow water.
They also are built to be equipped with swappable mission modules for surface warfare, anti-submarine duty or mine removal. That’s in contrast to larger, multi-mission ships like the 610-foot Michael Monsoor, a Zumwalt-class destroyer christened Saturday at Bath Iron Works.
But the gee-whiz factor was overshadowed by concerns over growing costs — the latest versions cost $482 million to $563 million apiece — along with criticism by the General Accounting Office that the warships were too lightly armed and too lightly armored.
Two high-profile breakdowns, in December and January, raised additional questions about reliability: The USS Milwaukee had to be towed 40 miles to a naval base in Virginia, while the USS Fort Worth was sidelined in Singapore.
Fanta said the Navy is learning from the initial deployments and incorporating changes into a new version which will be called a frigate. The Navy also intends to zero in on one design either next year or the following year, leading to cost savings.
The Freedom class with a steel monohull is built in Marinette, Wisconsin, while the tri-hulled, aluminum Independence class is built in Mobile, Alabama.
Both were rushed into production to deal with unconventional post-Cold War threats including swarm boats and pirates. But the threats have changed again with China flexing its muscle in the South China Sea and Russia reasserting its naval presence.
Despite growing pains, Fanta sees the warships as being made more capable through heavier armor plating and shock mounting to make them sturdier, along with additional weapons.
The first over-the-horizon missile capable of hitting targets more than 50 miles away is to be installed this summer and it will be followed by tests of a second missile variant this fall, he said. Some of the capabilities will be fitted onto existing ships, about two dozen of which are either in the fleet, under construction or under contract. Eventually, the Navy plans to build 40 of them.
The resulting ship will be slightly slower and heavier, but the weapons will make enemies keep their distance, he said.
It’s unclear how much speed will be lost because of the added weight.
“We acknowledge that there will be trade-offs in speed based on additional weight to support increased capabilities. That number will be defined further as the ship’s design continues to mature,” said Ensign Marc Rockwellpate, a Navy spokesman.
Loren Thompson from the Lexington Institute said it makes sense to place less emphasis on speed. “You can’t outrun a missile,” he said.
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Follow David Sharp on Twitter at https://twitter.com/David—Sharp—AP. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/david-sharp.
4 responses to “Navy warship to trade some speed in firepower, heavier armor”
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These ships represent everything that is wrong with the US Navy’s shipbuilding program. The process the Admirals have used historically is broken. Navy vessel acquisition is driven by politics and serves the needs of congressmen first, shipbuilders second, various Admirals getting their legacy affirmed third, and finally, last on the list…the men and women who must sail aboard these ships. The littoral combat ship represent the most stellar example of all the decisions that go wrong as these ships were brought from inception to failed deployment. Not once, but several times. What is worse? The Admirals continue to tweek the design as the ships are being created and built, never committing to a single unit that is reproduced multiple times. That process would allow the builder to reduce costs. But given the Admiral’s inclination to continuously CHANGE what is being built, the series of ships being built end up being a “custom built” ship, with nearly every one being slightly different than the last. Sometimes the changes are dramatic, as this article points out. The littoral class ship was originally intended to be a rapid response class, with various mission objectives that could be changed while alongside the dock, in just a few days, with relative ease by the ship’s crew. That never happened and proved to be a miserable failure in practice. The class was conceived to be up to 50+ hulls, stationed all over the world where rapid deployment was needed. That was quickly slashed to half the number of hulls when the price per hull was nearly doubled for the whole program. At the outset, after initial design comparison’s, congress forced the pentagon to build two completely different kinds of ships. This was obviously am effort to “give in” to congressmen from two different states that had shipyards bidding for the construction program. Congress withheld funding for the class entirely until the pentagon agreed to “go along” with the congressional desire for two different ships…something the Admirals, in fairness to them, did not want. But congress force upon them. Let us all hope that someday (SOON!!) the President will force all these players to stop meddling in the process to get warships built the right way, on time, within budget, to accomplish the missions for which they are intended, and most of all, give this country the proper tools for the military to use when the need them. The Admirals at the Pentagon need to grow a spine, step up and discuss this problem openly with the public, because congress will not listen to any criticism directed at them. Only then, will we begin to fix one of the singularly worst weapon acquisition programs in Washington DC today.
Similar problem which happened to the Comanche Attack Helicopter program which got cancelled due to huge cost overruns because wanted it to do everything.
The Shah of Iran benefited from US Navy warships that “could not stop a bullet”. The US “gave” the Shah the first four Spruance class Destroyers because they did NOT “work”. The Shah was glad to get ’em!. Except? The ships had no central air-conditioning! Iran gets hot! The US Navy ballistic tests used 30.06 and NOT the NATO 308/7.62.
“The Navy spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to fulfill its need for speed with a new class of fast and agile warships capable of zipping along at highway speeds.”
Why is it we never see “…of taxpayer dollars” when referring to His Majesty’s junkets and “Christmas Vacations” ?