US Navy’s ‘Klingon Bird Of Prey’ Passes Key Tests: LCS Trimaran

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on June 15, 2016 at 4:24 PM

LCS-2, USS Independence, shows off its unique “trimaran” design.

 The strangest-looking ship in the Navy is conducting two crucial tests. A broad, triple-hulled “trimaran” design likened to a villain’s vessel from Star Trek, theIndependence-class Littoral Combat Ship completed its Initial Operational Test & Evaluation on June 3rd. What’s more, the Navy Sea Systems Command announced yesterday, the USSCoronado (LCS 4) wrapped up IOT&E with its second successful test-firing of SeaRAM, a self-defense system designed to shoot down enemy drones and cruise missiles.

Just days later, sister ship USS Jackson (LCS 6) completed the first of three “full ship shock trials” June 10th, with live explosives going off underwater near the ship. Both shooting down incoming missiles and riding out explosions are critical capabilities for relatively small and inexpensive ships often derided as too fragile to take a hit.

USS Jackson (LCS 6) rides out a nearby explosion during its full-ship shock trials.

So completing these tests is a significant step for the more obscure of the two LCS variants. The Independence ships have been overshadowed by the better-known Freedomclass. (The Freedom-class ship Fort Worth, LCS-3, completed IOT&E back in 2014). WhileFreedom-class LCS have conducteddeployments to Singapore — and suffered high-profile problems like hull cracks andbreakdowns at sea — the Independence ships have largely stuck to home waters, serving as test platforms for the minesweeping equipmentand other “mission modules” that will go on both types.

Indeed, it’s easy to forget that the Littoral Combat Ship is really two distinct designs, each making half of the production run. Odd-numbered ships, starting with LCS-1 Freedom, are built by Lockheed Martin and Wisconsin’s Marinette Marine. Their steel hull and aluminum superstructure that look like a conventional warship’s, albeit with touches inspired by an Italian racing yacht to help it reach high speeds. Even-numbered ships, starting with LCS-2Independence, are built at Austal’s Gulf Coast shipyard. Evolved from Australian high-speed ferries, they’re all-aluminum and they look weird.

LCS-2, USS Independence, followed by LCS-1, USS Freedom, showing the different designs.

“When that thing comes in port, everyone says, ‘What the hell is that?'” Work once said. “It looks like the Klingon Bird of Prey.”

Work has backed the LCS since his time as Navy undersecretary. Back then, he argued that the Navy needed to build both variants because of the different strengths of each design:

• The sporty Freedoms would be ideal for the tight confines of the Persian Gulf, Work said, where they could nimbly play cat-and-mouse with swarms of Iranian fast attack boats. The Freedom‘s traditional hull also makes it easy to launch and recover inflatable boats — for boarding actions or security sweeps — and unmanned craft off the stern ramp. Finally, Freedom‘s steel hull is also more damage-resistant than theIndependence‘s aluminum.
• The Independence is much higher off the water, so it must launch and recover subordinate craft with a crane, a much more awkward arrangement. But it’s also much broader, giving it a larger flight deck for helicopters and drones, plus more room for mission equipment, supplies, and fuel below. Work suggested these traits might make the trimarans better suited for the vast reaches of the Pacific.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has also insisted on buying both versions, although his argument has focused on cost. The rival shipyards slashed their prices when the Navy threatened to “downselect” to one, and as long as each yard knows it’s not the Navy’s only option, they’ll keep their bids low. While it’s more logistically efficient to maintain and supply a fleet of identical ships rather than multiple types, the Navy acknowledges, they’re buying so many LCS of each variant that they’ll still get economies of scale.

Both Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and his predecessor Chuck Hagel, however, have ordered the Navy to buy fewer Littoral Combat Ships and select just one shipyard to buildthe upgraded “frigate” version. So while both Austal and Marinette are preparing frigate designs, based on their existing ships, by 2019 the Navy will have to choose between the conventional hull and the Bird of Prey.

Chinese Scarborough Shoal Base

WASHINGTON: If China builds an artificial island on the disputed Scarborough Shoal, Sen. Dan Sullivan warned today, it will complete a “strategic triangle” of bases that can dominate the South China Sea. At this morning’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Sullivan displayed a map (above) of the region overlaid with the ranges of Chinese fighters striking from a triangle of bases on (1) the Chinese island of Hainan, (2) the disputed Spratly Islands, and (3) Scarborough Shoal (as yet unbuilt). The overlapping rings would cover not only almost all the South China Sea, but much of the Philippines and Vietnam.


“Your map’s absolutely accurate,” responded Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. China’s actions are “deeply disturbing to countries in region, which has them all coming to us….We are being increasingly invited to work with countries,” from old allies like Australia, Japan, and the Philippines to new partners like India and Vietnam.
Vietnam has agreed to allow the US Army to preposition equipment for humanitarian responses, in itself a major shift by Hanoi, which has fought multiple wars and skirmishes with its giant neighbor, China. As Sullivan’s diagram shows, almost all of Vietnam is in range of existing Chinese bases.
The US has also expanded its long-standing but often-strained relationship with the Philippines. Under a new Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), the two countries announced in March that US forces would have access to five military bases across the country. But as Sullivan’s map makes clear, two of those five bases would be in range of Scarborough-based Chinese fighter-bombers, as would the capital city of Manila.
“Senator Sullivan is right,” said Greg Poling, director of the much-cited Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “If China built an artificial island and military base at Scarborough, as it has in the Spratlys and Paracels, it would bring the entire South China Sea within Chinese radar, air, and eventually missile coverage. It would also bing much of the Philippines, including Manila, Clark (air base), Subic (Bay), and at least two of the bases the US is getting access to under EDCA within that Chinese umbrella.”
So far, China hasn’t started work on Scarborough, Poling and his CSIS colleague Bonnie Glaser agreed. “In the (satellite) imagery that we have obtained from DigitalGlobe, we have not seen anything,” Glaser told me. That said, given the limits of commercial imagery, she added, “we are not monitoring this 24-7, of course.”

The Chinese are allegedly more active in the region. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Richardson has described “survey type of activity,” there are rumors of dredging vessels in the area (though not at the Shoal itself), and Philippine papers reporting more Chinese Coast Guard vessels, historically far more aggressive than their Chinese navy counterparts. In response, US aircraft have stepped up patrols of the area, including land-based A-10 attack planes flying from the Philippines.
There are also strong signals from unnamed sources and websites associated with Beijing that China will begin reclamation. Glaser, however, is skeptical. One People’s Liberation Army officer “with stars on their shoulders” told her island-building on Scarborough is “very, very unlikely,” because Beijing is well aware how badly the region would react. Such action would blatantly violate both China’s 2015 pledge to cease island-building and its 2002 Declaration of Conduct with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). China has broken both promises before, but never so egregiously as building on Scarborough would be.
“A resumption of land reclamation after stating they would stop would make the rest of the region very, very nervous,” Glaser said. “It would also be a signal, not only to the region, but also to the rest of the world that China is going to flout international law.”
Dean Cheng, of the conservative Heritage Foundation, is much more pessimistic. The “strategic triangle” is practically enshrined in Chinese law, he noted: In 2012, Beijing created the prefecture of Sansha, or “Three Sands,” to administer its claimed territories in the “South Sands,” i.e. the Spratlys; the “West Sands,” i.e. the Paracels; and the “Middle Sands,” i.e. Scarborough Reef, Mischief Reef, and other areas off the Philippines.
“The Chinese were telegraphing this years ago,” Cheng told me, and the US has put up only feeble resistance to Chinese land-grabs so far, so why would they stop? “Given how quickly the Chinese built the Spratlys, I say we’ve got maybe less than a year before the first runway gets built” on Scarborough, Cheng said.

Chinese HQ-9 anti-aircraft missile launcher

If China did build an island, the second question would be what it built on the island. So far, high-end military capabilities like bomb-proof aircraft hangars and HQ-9 anti-aircraft batteries are restricted to the Paracel Islands, which are natural features off Vietnam, said Glaser. The artificial islands in the Spratlys have received advanced radar and runways, Poling said.
Long-range anti-aircraft missiles like the HQ-9 or the Russian-made S-400, combined with fighter jets, would dominate the airspace over the South China Sea, putting unarmed American P-3 and P-8 patrol aircraft at risk. Such missiles on Scarborough could fire right over Philippine territory into airspace off Taiwan. The Chinese will likely declare an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the South China Sea as they did over the East China Sea, Cheng said. Long-range anti-ship missiles could hold at risk the vast volume of commercial maritime trade that passes to and from the Strait of Malacca.
Putting offensive capabilities like long-range missiles on the islands would be “a very destabilizing move,” said Andrew Krepinevich, former president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Such assets would be intimidating in a crisis, but so vulnerable in an actual shooting war that China would face the temptation to “use it or lose it.”
“Given the small size of the islands, the missiles would be highly vulnerable, as they could not rely on mobility or hardening to provide passive defense against attack,” said Krepinevich. “They are high-value assets that are also soft targets tethered to a very small area—the island they are on.”
“The deployment makes the most sense if you have a military doctrine that calls for striking first,” Krepinevich continued, “or if your principal purpose is not to fight, but to intimidate your much weaker neighbors in the absence of a serious effort by the United States.”
Certainly Senate Armed Services chairman John McCain doesn’t think the administration is sufficiently serious about taking a public stand against excessive Chinese claims. Frustrated with Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s repeated refusal to acknowledge recent South China Sea patrols, on the grounds they might be classified, McCain declared that “the fact that we are sending our ships and airplanes into international waters (is) classified, when it should be magnified throughout the world…is confusing and befuddling.”


by

 Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on April 28, 2016 at 4:43 PM
Breaking defence