The SUW Mission Package provides the capability to detect, classify, track, and engage multiple groups of small boats, and it can be configured with the Maritime Security Module (MSM) for Maritime Interdiction Operations (MIO), Visit, Board, Search and Seizure (VBSS), drug and counter piracy operation. LCS is a modular, reconfigurable ship, with three types of Mission Packages: Surface Warfare (SUW) Mission Package, Mine Countermeasures (MCM) Mission Package, and Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Mission Package. With a shallow draft, LCS will be able to access a wider range of littoral water space than any other combatant. The 40+ knot sprint speed of LCS allows for quick, intra-theater positioning. Each LCS is aviation capable, allowing it to conduct search and rescue (SAR) and airborne logistics. Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Response (HA/DR)- The forward presence of LCS operating in theater ensures Geographic Combatant Commanders will always have several ships available to respond to HA/DR tasking. LCS is a cost effective means to fulfill maritime security missions as compared to larger, multi-mission surface combatants Maritime Security- LCS is ideally suited to conduct Maritime Security Operations (MSO) including countering piracy, terrorism, and drug trafficking.
Power Projection- LCS will defeat anti-access threats such as mines, small surface craft, and submarines, to gain and sustain maritime supremacy in the littorals.
Sea Control- LCS will use its modular mission packages to control Sea Lines of Communication by defeating swarming surface craft, enhancing the Fleet’s ASW capability, both in littoral waters and in concert with current ASW forces in the open ocean, and counter mine threats to sea lines of communication, particularly in global commerce chokepoints.
Operational commanders will have an ideal asset available for Theater Security Cooperation (TSC) tasking, freeing large surface combatants for other missions. LCS fulfills a crucial role in the six core areas of the Navy’s Maritime Defense Strategy, “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower.”įorward Presence- With half of the LCS fleet deployed at all times, the LCS Blue/Gold crew rotation provides more stability and ownership while also providing greater forward presence.ĭeterrence- LCS is suited to build and strengthen maritime partnerships by training and operating with smaller, regional navies, as well as entering previously inaccessible, shallow-water foreign ports. In addition to its primary mission areas of Surface Warfare (SUW), Mine Counter Measures (MCM) and Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) LCS can conduct freedom of navigation operations, theater security cooperation operations, maritime law enforcement operations, maritime counter-piracy operations, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, search and rescue operations, maritime domain awareness patrols, and maritime security operations. LCS uses an open architecture design, modular weapons, sensor systems, and a variety of manned and unmanned vehicles to gain and sustain maritime supremacy in the littorals, assuring access to critical areas of operation.
LCS was envisioned to be an independently deployable, theater-based ship, capable of changing primary missions through modular Mission Package.īoth LCS variants are capable of operating in a wide-range of environments, from the open ocean to coastal and littoral waters.
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The Littoral Combat Ship would be designed as a focused-mission, modular, surface combatant smaller than a FFG but larger and more capable than a PC or MCM ship. In response, the Navy announced it would build a new generation of small, fast, and agile ships designed to neutralize small boats, quiet diesel electric submarines and mine threats found in the littorals. Navy war games, fleet experiments and analytic studies conducted after the end of the Cold War and Operation DESERT STORM determined the need for a new class of small surface combatants designed to operate in the congested near-shore region.