Defense Maritime Industry In Malaysia : just how bad is the situation ?

Defence Industry

In dialogue and survey session by KPMG involving more than 20 MIDES and VDP companies in February 2021, the most number of complaints submitted was the dire state of the ecosystem. This is as a result of the postponement of the LCS Project and nearly 3 -year -old debts that have not yet paid by BNS. Many of the vendors are in a danger zone due to pressure to clear outstanding payments from suppliers, banks, and government authorities.

MASTRA calls upon the Ministry of Defence Malaysia and the ministry of Entrepreneurs and Cooperatives Development to look into the plight of the entrepreneurs, vendors, and SME's affected by the alleged non-payment. While the government’s efforts in reviving the LCS project are commendable the sustainability of the SME’s must be included in the equation. MASTRA proposes that direct payment to the SMEs be made a precondition of the revival plan.

STRIDE ought to be  under Markas BERSAMA , looking after the interest of all services of MAF , with representative from APMM and Marine Police. Restructure and Reassign STRIDE  for a wider scope of responsibility and accountability. Perhaps jointly with BIP . It must be properly organised with separate  Divisions taking care of Aeronotics, Marine and Automotive. include a 'Proactive' Division for Defence Industry . 

Participations headed by Veteran Senior Officer from Engineering Branch of the  TD, TLDM or TUDM, with council members representing the industry in  Automotive, Marine and Aeronautical Services. 

According to internal sources, STRIDE has no fund to do R&D, past develop project management and events led to loss of confidence in STRIDE's capability in managing innovations , hence sceptics to provide funding.

STRIDE should not continue as the old Defence Research Centre (PSTP) - more for fuel oil and material test labs!

 

Maritime Industry

MiGHT ought to Review and Audit their Maritime Strategy for 2020 that was published in 2011. They should identify  progress and more importantly shortcomings of the strategy up to this date and propose viable solution through Direct Interaction with in-country marine  technology practioners , and ONLY move forward from there  with  more practical and achievable steps . There were too much Way Forward ! yet if still sluggish to 'MOVE FORWARD' ,  it will not take our National Marine Technology Competencies and Sustainability to ANYWHERE ! So much were left out or ignored, at least over the last decade!

MASTRA suggest there a must change the KPI mentality to PDCA mentality in these agencies, besides Improve Governance. Their role is also governance , Tighten requirements for made in Malaysia and Malaysian products. This must Reflect in tender specification, Encourage integration and systems production.

Maintenance contracts should be given to 100% locally owned companies to promote and strengthen self-reliance. Clean up licensing and registrations. Clean up GLCs. Close the non-strategic collaboration. 

At a time when our ecosystem in bad shape we need to do the needful.

 If OEM still required, they must go through local 'technologically related and competent' companies.

We are aware of the problems exist, so how do we counter this or manoeuvre ourselves in this ecosystem ?

For more almost 15 years since our involvement in the industry in AMIM in 2006, we keep seeing plans after plans being launched by VVIP and yet our industry remains almost as 40 years ago. All these seminar, conference and workshop nicely done and presented documents are just for KPI or show only.

Perhaps the Ministry taking care of Technology. Development and Sustenance , such as MOSTI, and Ministry responsible for survival and progress of SMEs , perhaps MITI, are not fully aware, or indifferent,  on the plight of  Malaysian Marine  Industry ?

from defence industry brain storming group

Significant changes with higher risk led to Boustead privatisation lapsing, says LTAT

 5 Feb 2021

theedgemarkets.com

KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 5): Uncertainties stemming from Covid-19, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) project, leadership changes at Lembaga Tabung Angkatan Tentera (LTAT) and clarity of Boustead Holdings Bhd’s (BHB) rejuvenation plan led to the armed forces fund aborting its takeover plan of Boustead after eight months of consideration.

In a statement, LTAT said that upon the latest deadline to announced a plan to privatise Boustead on Feb 2, a conscious decision was made to allow the deadline to lapse.

It said this was after considering the changing circumstances surrounding the privatisation plan, which presented heightened risk towards ensuring the successful completion of the privatisation.

“We were conscious to do this in the best interest of our key stakeholders, particularly our contributors, the armed forces personnel,” LTAT said.

These changes included potential uncertainties as a result of the prolonged Covid-19 measures that could further delay the diversified conglomerate’s privatisation. Additionally, there were also further uncertainties over the key businesses of Boustead, namely banking, hotel, property and retail petroleum, LTAT explained.

LTAT also highlighted leadership changes on its side and at Boustead, which require sufficient time to review ongoing projects and initiatives.

Moreover, there was also the question of Boustead’s rejuvenation plan, which included a plan to address its debt levels, it highlighted.

As such, LTAT’s current focus is on the execution of its strategic asset allocation (SAA) framework, which was completed towards end-2020. The framework establishes the objective of better diversification of investments in its portfolio, it noted.

LTAT said that it intends to rebalance its portfolio by increasing fixed income instruments (20%), reducing real estate and private equity exposure (10% respectively), and increase the diversification of its public equity portfolio (50%) and the remaining portion in other asset classes, including money market instruments.

The fund also noted that at a later stage, it plans to diversify its investments in the international arena, like other funds in the country.

“While full implementation of the initiatives as part of the strategic transformation plan would take a few years and continues to be a work in progress, LTAT will continue to assess its options in respect of creating value from its existing key investments, including reviewing the merits of any potential value creation exercise, subject to 4/4 commercial viability to LTAT and BHB, within the boundaries of the takeover rules and relevant regulations.

"At this juncture, LTAT will continue to work closely with BHB in terms of providing support towards its 'Rejuvenating Boustead’ plan and future growth strategies,” LTAT noted.

The fund also explained that it had previously engaged in the privatisation of Boustead to protect the value of its investments, as well as to pave the way to support the potential restructuring of Boustead that was being planned.

This, it argued, would help accelerate its own strategic transformation plan, which involves capitalising on immediate high-impact initiatives as catalysts to address immediate gaps and creating value in achieving longer-term sustainability.

To recap, LTAT announced that it was considering taking Boustead private at 80 sen in May. On Feb 2, the fund announced that it was aborting the exercise.

Earnings-wise, for the nine months ended Sept 30, 2020 (9MFY20), Boustead reported a wider net loss of RM153.1 million, compared with RM14.2 million a year prior. Revenue for the nine months was 6.16% higher at RM7.79 billion, compared with RM7.33 billion previously.

As of Sept 30, 2020, its borrowings stood at RM7.7 billion.

Boustead is the main dividend income contributor to LTAT. The conglomerate was financially stressed in recent years and that affected its affordability to declare generous dividends.

Boustead has several listed entities under its belt. It holds a 20.73% stake in Affin Bank Bhd, a 57.42% stake in Boustead Plantations Bhd, a 65% stake in Boustead Heavy Industries Corp Bhd and 56.09% of Pharmaniaga Bhd.

Shares in Boustead were 2.5% or 1.5 sen lower at 58.5 sen as of 11.56am today, translating into a market capitalisation of RM1.19 billion. It had seen 2.28 million shares done.

by Surin Murugiah

Navy buys RM601 mil worth of missiles from Norway-based company

The Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) has bought €125 million (RM601 million) worth of Naval Strike Missile (NSM) rounds from Norway.

According to British-based military magazine, IHS Jane’s 360, Kongsberg Defence Systems (KDS), one of four wholly-owned subsidies of Norway’s Kongsberg Gruppen (KOG), confirmed the receipt for the rounds.

KOG is an international technology group that supplies high-technology systems and solutions to customers in the merchant marine, defence, aerospace, and offshore oil and gas industries.

The report said KDS announced the sale at the Defence Services Asia (DSA) 2018 exhibition in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

The announcement comes three years after Kongsberg received a letter of award from Boustead Naval Shipyard Sdn Bhd in Lumut, Perak, to provide NSM shipboard equipment for the RNM’s six-ship Littoral Combat Ship programme.

NSM was originally developed by Kongsberg to meet the Royal Norwegian Navy’s (RNoN) requirements for a highly discriminative, low-observable surface-to-surface guided weapon able to penetrate shipboard defences and operate effectively in both blue water and littoral environments.

Kongsberg entered service with the RNoN in October 2012.

LCS Can Too Fight Russia, China: USN breaking Defence Leaders

Breaking Defence
By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on January 20, 2016 at 2:30 PM

WASHINGTON: Is the Littoral Combat Ship a real warship? That question has bedeviled the small, sleek, lightly armed ships for years. Now it’s taken on new urgency as the Defense Department and the Navy both refocus on high-intensity, high-tech warfighting against “great powers” — i.e. China and Russia.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter wants to cut the program by a quarter to invest in heavier warships, submarines, aircraft, and missiles. LCS critics charge the ship is only useful forpeacetime patrols and presence missions in low-threat areas. Navy leadership insist it can fight with the battle fleet — especially once it gets a high-powered sonar for hunting subs and long-range missiles for killing ships.

“LCS fits right in the middle of the modern warfight, great powers or not,” said the Navy’s outspoken director of surface warfare, Rear Adm. Peter Fanta, at last week’s Surface Navy Association conference.

Adm. John Richardson

“It is not necessarily as vulnerable [as people think],” said the more reserved Adm. John Richardson, the new Chief of Naval Operations, at a media roundtable during SNA. “It’s got survivability and lethality…. and it has a terrific role to play across that entire spectrum of operations” from humanitarian relief to major war.

“Would you want to send it solo against a high-end threat? Certainly not, but it’s not alone in that world,” said Richardson. His predecessor, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, spoke of heavy-duty Aegis destroyers providing anti-aircraft coverage and missile defense for LCS in high-threat areas — just as they do for aircraft carriers and other vessels.

“We fight as a team, and the Littoral Combat Ship has an important place in that team,” Richardson said. “It is our small surface combatant right now [for] mine hunting, anti-submarine warfare, and… surface warfare.”

Those three roles correspond to the three interchangeable “mission modules” being developed (with much delay) for LCS, which can carry any one of them at a given time. All three are arguably auxiliary missions, at least by comparison to the airstrikes, Tomahawk missile barrages, Marine landings and missile defense provided by capital ships. But all three have the potential to be pivotal in a major war:

• Mine hunting is a long-neglected role in the US Navy, currently relegated to aging MH-53 helicopters and Avenger minesweepers, even though mines have sunk or crippled more US Navy ships since World War II than all other causes combined. Ourpotential adversaries are well aware of the damage mines can do: Iran has at least a thousand, North Korea an estimated 50,000, China 100,000, Russia 250,000. “Minesweeping alone in my opinion justifies a big chunk of the country’s commitment in the Littoral Combat Ship program,” Rep. Joe Courtney, top Democrat on the House seapower subcommittee, told SNA.
• Submarines are another rising threat, with Chinese and Russian fleets growing larger and more advanced. Aegis destroyers have significant anti-submarine warfare capacity, but both the baseline LCS (with the ASW module) and the future LCS frigate(when configured for ASW) will have something destroyers don’t: a “continuous active sonar” with a range in the tens of miles and a “variable depth” feature for finding deep-diving subs. Of course, you could theoretically retrofit these same sensors on a destroyer. But you can buy four LCS for the price of one Arleigh Burke, and when sub-hunting you want to be looking in as many places as possible at once.
• Finally, and perhaps most problematically, the Littoral Combat Ship has its “surface warfare” module. This was originally optimized to fight small boats — “fast attack craft” and “fast inshore attack craft” — of the fast-moving, hard-hitting, but painfully fragile kind favored by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. That put a premium on relatively short-ranged, quick-firing weapons like 57 millimeter and 30 millimeter cannon.

The LCS Coronado test-fires a new anti-ship missile from Norway’s Kongsberg.

By contrast, the Navy is still struggling to find an anti-ship missile for the LCS, with stopgaps like the Griffin and Longbowhaving only about a five-mile range. Compare the Russian frigate and corvettes — mostly smaller than LCS — which fired missiles from the Caspian Sea a thousandmiles overland into Syria. LCS will probably never achieve that range because the Navydecided against installing its standard multi-purpose missile launcher, the versatile but bulky Vertical Launch System. Instead, the Navy is seeking a mid-range “over the horizon” missile. “We are pushing forward to install over the horizon missiles on LCS this year,” said Fanta.

Rear Adm. Peter Fanta

Once the three modules and the new missile are in service, “LCS fits right in the middle of the modern warfight, great powers or not,” Fanta said.” LCS is perfectly capable of adding the anti-submarine capability, the missile capability, the counter-surface capability, the countermine capability,” Fanta said. “All those missions are part of the warfight. They’re not just part of skirmishes someplace.”

In fact, Fanta frequently says that LCS with medium-range missiles can “put entire enemy fleets on the bottom of the ocean.” Being smaller and less robust than destroyers, the Littoral Combat Ships do take losses along the way, Fanta admits, but in wargames the small warships converge on the enemy in overwhelming numbers, like piranhas.

In a 2014 Navy wargame where LCS was upgraded with medium-range missiles, participantBryan McGrath told Congress, “those ships were no more capable of taking a punch than they previously were; they were capable only of delivering a punch.” But that alone radically changed the adversary’s “risk calculus,” he said.

Once the Littoral Combat Ships got upgunned, the enemy commander could no longer afford to ignore them, explained McGrath, a naval expert and former destroyer commander himself. As a result, enemy intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets were stretched trying to track all the little but lethal LCS. Enemy decision-makers had to confront an additional danger on every mission, potentially deterring them from aggression altogether. Turning LCS from an auxiliary to a ship-killer literally multiplied the enemy’s problems.

That said, this concept — part of what the Navy calls “distributed lethality” — is very much a work in progress. And there are limits to what even a future LCS can do.

The LCS will never be able to do significant air defense, let alone missile defense, unless the Navy reconsiders its decision not to add a Vertical Launch System. (Interestingly, Lockheed has designed a VLS-equipped variant of LCS that got serious consideration from Saudi Arabia). Nor will it ever be as survivable in the face of battle damage as a destroyer more than twice its tonnage and four times its cost. And the LCS will always have less room for weapons, sensors, and other mission systems than foreign ships its size because of its massive engines, which allow a 40-plus-knot top speed for which tacticians have never fully figured out a use.

All that said, the LCS is still a young ship with both teething troubles and potential for growth. “Our CONOPS will continue to evolve as we send this ship to sea. Every single time we build a new ship we discover new things we can do with it,” Fanta told the Surface Navy Association.

Then, to applause, the admiral quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

The Case For LCS: Searching For The AirAsia Plane

The Littoral Combat Ship Fort Worth joined the search for the remains of Air Asia Flight QZ8501. This grim mission marked more than a real-world test of a new and controversial class of ship. It also shows why the Navy needs something like LCS at all.

The Fort Worth started working this weekend with the USS Sampson, an Aegis guided missile destroyer. The two vessels are very different. The LCS is small and lightly armed — so much so, in fact, that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has ordered a redesign — with a length of 388 feet, a displacement of 3,400 tons, and a crew of only 50 sailors. The destroyer (designated DDG-102) boasts almost 100 missile launchers, a length of 509 feet, 9,300 tons displacement, and a crew of over 350. Many naval experts sneer at LCS’s inability to do what destroyers can, from protecting other ships against enemy aircraft to surviving a cruise missile hit. But in operations like this recovery mission, which occupy a great deal of the Navy’s time, LCS can do as well as the big ship or better at a fraction of the cost — freeing up those high-powered vessels for high-threat missions.

A sailor on the Fort Worth searches for Air Asia debris

LCS lacks a destroyer’s high-end Aegis radar system, for example, but in the search for floating debris, both ships are relying primarily on sailors’ eyes. Aircraft are crucial to the wide-area search as well, and each ship has about the same airpower. Specifically, the destroyer has two MH-60 Sea Hawks, which are manned aircraft, while the LCS has a single Sea Hawk and two robotic MQ-8B Fire Scouts, which don’t have the advantage of a human brain onboard but which can also stay out longer than a human crew. In this mission, where endurance matters more than adaptability, the unmanned aircraft arguably give LCS an edge. Now, an Aegis destroyer could swap out a Sea Hawk so it could carry unmanned aircraft too; indeed, an upgraded Fire Scout dronewas recently tested aboard the destroyer Dunham.

An MQ-8B Fire Scout drone aboard LCS-3 Fort Worth

But LCS has one advantage in this search a destroyer can’t replicate: Precisely because it’s a smaller ship with much less draft — 14 feet instead of 31 — the Fort Worth can better navigate reefs and shallows around South Asia’s innumerable islands. That’s the environment LCS is built for, in fact: The technical term for these shallow waters, “the littorals,” is what gives the Littoral Combat Ship its name.

LCS’s many critics charge it doesn’t live up to the second word in its name, “combat.” LCS is nowhere near the warship that a destroyer is. But the Navy designed it primarily for supporting roles on the margins of the main battle, like minesweeping, sub-hunting, and fending off small attack craft — not slugging it out with other ships or launching missiles.

And in peacetime — which is most of the time — the Navy fleet’s main mission is what Navy officers call “presence.” That means showing the flag, visiting foreign ports, training with allies, reminding adversaries that the America is on patrol — and, when necessary, responding to disasters to help search for the dead or care for the living. Those are missions a small, lightly armed ship with shallow draft can do as easily as a bigger, more heavily armed one. Whether you’re the US Navy or Woody Allen, 80 percent of success is still just showing up.

https://static.dvidshub.net/media/thumbs/frames/video/1501/385272/486x274_q75.jpg

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on January 05, 2015 at 12:36 PMBreaking Defence

McCain, Reed Push To Replace LCS Mine Drone

An unmanned mine-hunting mini-sub, the Remote Multi-Mission Vehicle (RMMV)

WASHINGTON: In a letter obtained by Breaking Defense, senators John McCain and Jack Reed slam a key component of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship as unreliable and urge the Pentagon to explore alternatives to the Remote Mine-Hunting System.

In their Aug. 31 letter to the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, Frank Kendall, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, and outgoing Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the Senate Armed Services Committee leaders warn against a “rush to failure” and strongly suggest a “delay,” especially since key decisions on the LCS Mine Countermeasures (MCM) module are set for October and February,

The Littoral Combat Ship has been the Navy’s most hated program since its inception, andMcCain has been a persistent critic. The core concept — a lightweight warship that could switch missions by loading different mission packages of equipment — remains controversial with naval traditionalists who see LCS as fragile and under-gunned. The ships themselves have largely overcome their early problems with cost overruns and quality control. But LCS can’t do much without its mission packages, none of which is completely finished.

The two Littoral Combat Ship variants, LCS-1 Freedom (far) and LCS-2 Independence (near).

The most complex module — and arguably the most important given the Navy’s long neglect of the massive mine threat worldwide — is the Mine Counter-Measures (MCM) mission package. It’s currently undergoing a series of technical tests, already extended due to mechanical problems. That narrow technical evaluation will determine whether MCM is ready for a full-up operational evaluation, which in turn will determine whether MCM is ready for production. The Pentagon will decide whether to go ahead with Initial Operational Test & Evaluation in October.

The crux of the problem is an underwater drone meant to seek out submerged mines. The official names are the Remote Multi-Mission Vehicle (RMMV) — if you’re just talking about the unmanned vessel, made by Lockheed Martin — and the Remote Mine-Hunting System — if you’re talking about it fully kitted with a Raytheon sonar. It’s a “semi-submersible” system that projects slightly above the water, neither a submarine nor a boat but something in between. The Navy will decide in February whether to award a production contract for more RMMVs.

So what’s the problem? The drone’s supposed to go for 75 hours, on average, between failures. According to the Pentagon’s top tester, it manages just 25. (The Navy says itstesting shows 200 hours between failures). That’s despite years of work to make it work better. “Recent developmental testing provides no statistical evidence that the system is demonstrating improved reliability, and instead indicates that reliability plateaued nearly a decade ago,” wrote the director of operational test and evaluation, Michael Gilmore, in an August 3 memo.

So maybe it’s time to cut bait, the senators suggest, none too gently,

With the mine threat especially urgent in the Persian Gulf, the Navy hasn’t waited for MCM-equipped Littoral Combat Ships to show up. Instead, it’s fielded mine warfare systems piecemeal and found out what works. McCain and Reed recommend three in particular for the Pentagon to review:

• Northrop Grumman’s Minehunting Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MHU), which are drones like the balky RMMV but go on the surface of the water instead of partially submerging. It also uses a different sonar (AN/AQS-24 rather than AN/AQS-20). TheBahrain-based 5th Fleet already has four MHUs in service.
• Textron’s Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle (C-USV), another robo-boat, which is already under contract as part of the LCS MCM package. Its current role is to tow an Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS) that detonates mines at a distance, but, the senators say, it could tow various sonars as well. “The C-USV appears to present both a cheaper and more effective alternative,” they write.
• AUVAC’s Mark 18 unmanned underwater vehicle, in both its Mod 1 Swordfish andMod 2 Kingfish variants. Both have served with 5th Fleet, and one of the Navy’s nuclear-powered attack submarines has used them as well.

“The decisions made over the next six months will set the course for our nation’s maritime [mine warfare] capabilities for decades to come,” the senators write. “Too much is at stake to accept the status quo and permit systems with long documented cost, schedule, performance, and reliability shortfalls to get a free pass into the fleet.”

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on September 01, 2015 at 11:13 PM
Breaking Defence 

US NAVY LCS UPGRADE : Better Armed and Production Surges, Price Drops,

Once, the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship was a nightmare of cost overruns, schedule slips, and design flaws. That was especially true of Lockheed Martin’s LCS-1, the Freedom, with its hull cracks and electrical failures. Eight ships later, the design is fixed and the price has dropped by a third .

Production is moving at such a pace and has become so routine that Lockheed’s vice-president for LCS, Joe North, sometimes forgets which ship comes next.

“We’re up here this week [for] the launch of LCS-11, which is the future USS Sioux City — I’m sorry, LCS-9, which is the USS Little Rock,” North said, chagrined, in a conference call from Marinette. “Later this year, we will be launching LCS-11, which is Sioux City.”

Losing track is understandable. “We currently have seven ships in production up here,” North told reporters. LCS-9 will launch this Saturday and LCS-11 later this year. Work is well underway on LCS-13 and -15, while it has just started on LCS-17 is under production. LCS-19 and -21 are under contract, and Lockheed expects a contract for LCS-23 soon. (Even-numbered LCS are built by Austal in Alabama, which uses a completely different design).

The cost is currently about $358 million for the Freedom version and headed down to a low of $348.5 million. (Note these figures are for the ship itself and don’t include military equipment, such as weapons, that the government purchases separately, which can add over $100 million). The price has dropped steeply since the mismanaged early days of the program, when the Navy changed the design of LCS-1 and -2 midway through construction. Now the price is starting to level out. Costs will eventually climb back up slightly: After years of making LCS manufacture more efficient, the shipyard is reaching diminishing returns, while inflation in labor and materials is beginning to catch up.

So what’s unique about LCS-9? The future Little Rock is the first Lockheed LCS to be built entirely in Marinette’s revamped facilities. When Marinette was bought in 2008 by Fincantieri — on whose civilian designs the Lockheed LCS is based — the Italian company committed to a $73.5 million investment in the shipyard, parts of which dated to World War II. The more streamlined manufactured process reduces the distance ship components travel through the yard by eight miles, North said.

LCS-5 and LCS-7 were built as the yard was renovated around them, which some work done in the old facilities and some in the new. LCS-9 was built entirely in the new.

“The one thing we will not to do is…break production,” said North, “because we’ve already bid these ships and we already have contracts in place for them.” That means keeping the design the same — and resisting any urges to “improve” it that might increase cost or impose delay.

That said, the Navy is looking at an upgunned, upgraded, and more expensive variant of the LCS, designated a frigate. The current plan is for 32 of the existing LCS designs and 20 LCS frigates, but there’s considerable interest in cherry-picking some of the frigate’s improvements and adding them to the original-model LCS.

North made clear, however, that such upgrades would not be allowed to interfere with ongoing production: They “would probably be [done] in a backfit mode once we’re done and delivered here,” he said.

Lockheed is already looking at how to modify its LCS into the frigate design — but the details of what weapons and other equipment it has to carry are still being decided by the Navy. “We’re working…on cost and weight reductions to account for the fact that you’re going to get rid of large open module areas and fill them in” with new systems, North said. “They’re supposed to have final definition later this year [and] tell us what their final selection of systems is.”

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on July 16, 2015 at 4:00 PM

McCain Warns Navy On LCS Upgrade

CAPITOL HILL: The war over the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship is far from over. This morning, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain warned Navy leaders that their drive towards an upgraded LCS frigate may be repeating the mistakes that resulted in the original, much-criticized LCS design.

“Without a clear capabilities-based assessment, it is not clear what operational requirementsthe upgraded LCS is designed to meet,” McCain said. “The Navy must demonstrate what problem the upgraded LCS is trying to solve. We must not make this mistake again.”

The biggest controversy over the Littoral Combat Ship has been its inability to survive in combat. At this morning’s hearing, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus acknowledged a small ship would never be as tough as a full-size destroyer but that “survivability — for a small surface combatant, particularly with the upgrades — meets our fleet requirements.”

That sounds okay, but it begs the crucial question: Are the requirements right? Meeting the standard doesn’t help if the standard is set too low. Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi reactor was designed with the requirement to survive anything short of a once-in-a-century storm, for example, but it turned out that 100-year-storm occurred a lot earlier than anticipated.

For another example, both the current and upgraded LCS designs have radically unorthodox hulls and disproportionately massive powerplants — with a complex combination of both diesel and turbine engines — because the Navy wants the ships to go faster than 40 knots. That’s staggeringly fast for a warship, about 30 percent faster than an Aegis destroyer. But no one in the Navy seems to have ever figured out quite what to dowith all that expensive speed in a real-world tactical situation. It’s a solution searching for a problem.

Skeptics argue that launching helicopters, drones, and missiles provides far faster response at far less cost than trying to accelerate the whole ship. A requirement that sounded intuitively awesome to the admirals might have proven excessive if subjected to rigorous analysis, but that analysis wasn’t done.

The Navy did conduct a great deal of analysis before settling on the upgraded LCS designs — but much of that analysis was based on naval officers’ intuition and experience. A Small Surface Combatant Task Force conducted extensive focus groups with experienced officers across the fleet, asking them to rate the value of different capabilities and make tradeoffs among them to determine the highest priorities. The SSCTF then used computer modeling to work through thousands of alternative designs, from all-new warships to foreign designs to modifications of the existing LCS, ultimately choosing a modified LCS to absolutely no one’s surprise.

That was work worth doing, but it can’t replace the traditional process of formal analysis, Congressional Research Service analyst Ron O’Rourke argues in a recent study. O’Rourke takes issue not with the Small Surface Combatant Task Force itself, but with then-Secretary Chuck Hagel’s February 2014 memorandum that rebooted LCS in the first place.

“[There are] two formal, rigorous analyses that do not appear to have been conducted prior to the announcement of the program’s restructuring,” O’Rourke writes. Before you commit taxpayer dollars to a weapons program, you traditionally take three steps, he writes: “[1] identify capability gaps and mission needs; [2] compare potential general approaches for filling those capability gaps or mission needs…and [3] refine the approach selected as the best or most promising.” In short, you figure out what problem you’re trying to solve, then how to solve it, then how best to implement that solution. The upgraded LCS skipped the first two steps.

Specifically, the Small Surface Ship Combatant Task Force did Step No. 3. The SSCTF was created to examine existing, all-new, and modified designs for “a more lethal and survivable small surface combatant, with capabilities generally consistent with those of a frigate.” After extensive analysis, the task force came up with the ship that met those criteria best. But it was Hagel’s memo that set those criteria. It did so with no evident analysis of what specific problem the frigate was supposed to solve. Nor was there analysis of whether a frigate was the best solution, as opposed to some other kind of ship or something else altogether — for example a larger ship, an aircraft, or new tactics.

“Having refined the design concept for [the upgraded LCS], the Navy will now define and seek approval for the operational requirements for the ship,” O’Rourke writes. “Skeptics might argue that definition and approval of operational requirements should come first, and conceptual design should follow, not the other way around.”

For an expert like O’Rourke to pose the question is itself significant: He’s one of the most respected naval analysts around, and his job at CRS is specifically about advising Congress. For a bulldog like McCain to promise oversight on the issue raises it to a higher level — one the Pentagon needs to deal with.

What’s In A Name? Making The LCS ‘Frigate’ Reality

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on January 16, 2015 at 6:45 PM

CRYSTAL CITY: What’s in a frigate? That which we call a Littoral Combat Ship by any other name would smell as sweet — or stink as bad, according to LCS’s many critics. While LCS is being redesigned and renamed, there’s a lot of hard work and hard choices required to make the improvements real.

Yesterday, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced the new upgunned, uparmored, and as yet unbuilt version of LCS would be formally redesignated as a “frigate.” (From heaviest to lightest, the traditional classification runs: battleship, cruiser, destroyer, frigate, corvette). One of the major criticisms of the original LCS design was its lack of firepower andprotection compared to the Perry-class frigates it would replace. The improved design will be worthy of the frigate designation, Mabus insisted.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus

“If you list the attributes of a frigate and then list the attributes of [an improved LCS], we’re actually more capable than a normal frigate is,” Mabus told reporters after his remarks to the Surface Navy Associationconference. “They don’t look like traditional Navy ships sometimes, and I think that’s one of the issues that traditionalists have, but if you look at missions, if you look at what a frigate is supposed to be able to do, that’s what this ship does.”

The basic plan set forth a year ago is to buy 32 Littoral Combat Ships of the current design, the last of them in the fiscal 2018 budget. Then the Navy will buy 20 of the upgunned version — what’s now the frigate — starting in fiscal 2019. The exact package of upgrades that will actually make the frigate a frigate won’t be finalized until ’19, but it will include more weapons, armor, and sensors.

The Navy wants to add at least some of these improvements to at least some the Littoral Combat Ships being built before 2019. “We’re going to try to fold in these new capabilities earlier than [LCS] 32,” Mabus said.

How many of them? “All of them,” Mabus hopes. “If we fold in some, we’re going to fold in all [the improvements]. It’ll add about $75 million a ship but, as we said, that’s still under the congressional cost cap. We’re not going to piecemeal it, we’re going to do the entire upgrade.”

The Secretary’s subordinates sounded somewhat less sanguine. “We’re going to want to do that [upgrade] across the board as best as possible,” said Sean Stackley, assistant secretary for acquisition. But “this isn’t exactly a binary thing,” Stackley told reporters: It’s not an either/or where you either have to add the entire upgrade package envisioned for the frigate or do nothing.

Sean Stackley, Assistant Secretary of the Navy

“[Upgrades] to improve the survivability, we want to do those on all the ships,” Stackley said: extra armor around weapons magazines, for example, shock hardeningaround vital equipment, or degaussing the hull to reduce its magnetic field. But the details of more complicated upgrades — such as missiles and electronics — will take a few years to figure out. In the meantime, he said, you might have to build ships with places for the systems-to-be-determined to plug in later.

Some of the Littoral Combat Ships already in the water may never get all the upgrades. Internal armor, for example, is such an integral part of a ship’s construction that it might be impractical or impossible to retrofit. “For ships that are already delivered, it may be such a large charge that we may only be able to do partial [upgrades],” said the Navy’s Program Executive Officer (PEO) for LCS, Rear Adm. Brian Antonio.

There’s also the constraint of time, Antonio told reporters. “LCS-1 was commissioned in ’08, and with a 25-year service life, that takes her to 2023,” when she retires — which would be just four years after the upgrade design is finalized in 2019. Littoral Combat Ships come in for major maintenance every 32 to 36 months. So with the earlier ships, said Antonio, “there’s a mathematical possibility that we wouldn’t be able to get everything in.” (It’s also inefficient to invest in upgrading a ship about to retire).

Rear Adm. Brian Antonio

“We’ll catch as many as we’re funded [for] and can do,” the admiral said.

For every upgrade to the ship, there’s a delicate balance between how much combat capability it would add and how much time, cost, and complexity it would require. It’s worth remembering that the epic overruns and delays on the first two Littoral Combat Ships were caused primarily by a decision halfway through construction to change basic features of the design. Since then, the program has made only modest improvements from ship to ship, and it’s made remarkable progress controlling both cost and schedule.

“What I like is stability in the shipbuilding plan,” said Antonio. “Worst thing in the world would be, ‘hey, we’ve got this great new thing, we’ve got to go [add] it,’ and ship deliveries get delayed by six months, a year, two years, and all of a sudden everything’s out of whack.”

“It’s already going to be a sporty timeline,” Antonio said. What the Navy has to work from is the current LCS design — actually two designs, the Lockheed-built Freedom class and theGeneral Dynamics Independence — and a detailed concept for the upgraded frigate version, developed over six months by the Small Surface Combatant Task Force. That concept calls for such improvements as new electronic warfare gear and a new “over the horizon” anti-ship missile with a 100-150 nautical mile range. It doesn’t specify such things as whether the minimum acceptable is 100 or 150 or something in between, what specific targets the weapon must be able to hit, what kind of seeker the warhead should have, let alone which missile to buy.

“The task force identified capability,” said Antonio. “We’ve got to identify the systems; then we have to identify how those systems integrate or interface with the current systems; and then there’s a whole development and testing [process] that has to happen.”

The upgraded version of the LCS-2 Independence.

How far along are we? Antonio has hired three former Small Surface Combatant Task Force staff to form a “concept development team” with full access to all the task force’s analysis: “That kind of gives me a jump start,” he said. He’ll soon be able to show both shipbuilders a “sanitized” version of the task force materials as well.

The Navy needs to take all the task force’s concepts for capabilities and translate them into specific, formal requirements, Stackley explained. Those requirements then need approval by a Resources and Requirements Review Board (R3B). Then, for each requirement, the Navy needs to decide if it can meet it with equipment already in service — which may require buying more items off existing contracts — or if it must hold a competition for something new. A Request for Proposals will go out to industry in 2018, with award and procurement in 2019.

Then it’s up to the winners from industry to deliver the goods and to the government to integrate everything into a working warship. (The Navy is acting as its own “lead systems integrator” here rather than contracting that function out). Only then will the world be able to judge whether the final product is worthy of the name of “frigate,” an honorable heritage going back to the USS Constitution.

LCS Lives: Hagel Approves Better Armed Upgrade

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on December 11, 2014 at 9:35 PM

PENTAGON: The controversial Littoral Combat Ship dodged a big torpedo today, whenoutgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel approved the Navy’s plan for a larger, better armed and better protected version of the ship. Critics had called for a radical redesign or an entirely new ship. The “modified LCS” simply adds new weapons, electronics, and armor to the two existing LCS variants for an additional $60-$75 million per ship.

“After rigorous review and analysis, today I accepted the Navy’s recommendation to build a new small surface combatant (SSC) ship based on upgraded variants of the LCS,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a statement early this evening. “The new SSC will offer improvements in ship lethality and survivability, delivering enhanced naval combat performance at an affordable price.”

Arguably the biggest change: the new version will not be able to serve as a minesweeper, focusing instead on fighting enemy surface vessels and submarines.

The upgraded version of the LCS-1 Freedom class

The Navy remains committed to buying both the speedboat-likeFreedom hull, built by Lockheed Martin and Marinette Marine in Wisconsin, and the space-age-catamaran Independence, built byGeneral Dynamics and Austal in Alabama. Between them, the two teams will build 52 Littoral Combat Ships, as was the plan before Sec. Hagel ordered a review of LCS in February. Today’s announcement simply means 32 of those will be the original LCS design and 20 will be the upgraded version. (At least some of the original 32 will eventually receive at least some of the upgrades, but the current design can’t accommodate all the changes).

The split between the teams and terms of competition remains to be determined: The Navy will submit an acquisition strategy to the secretary by May and work out detailed cost estimates as part of the budget process for 2017. While the shipbuilders themselves will remain the same, there may be multiple opportunities to compete on specific components of the upgrade package, such as new missiles and sensors.

The upgraded version of the LCS-2 Independence.

So what’s the difference between the “modified LCS” and the current design (bizarrely designated “Flight Zero Plus”)? The new version gets a lot more combat power for not much more cost, insisted the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. JonathanGreenert, and the Navy’s top procurement official, Assistant Secretary Sean Stackley, at a hastily convened roundtable with reporters this evening.

“Are you going to need an Aegis ship to protect this ship? The answer is no,” said Stackley. One major criticism of the original LCS was that it lacked the anti-aircraft and anti-missile defenses to survive on its own against any serious threat, requiring escort by expensive cruisers and destroyers equipped with the Aegis defense system. While threat environments vary, Stackley said, “we have given this multi-mission [LCS] the degree of self-defense that it needs so it does not have to be operating underneath the umbrella of an Aegis ship.”

Unlike an Aegis ship, however, the new LCS design does not have the Navy’s standard multi-purpose missile-launcher, the Vertical Launch System. Used on larger craft from cruisers to attack submarines, VLS can fire different kinds of rounds to shoot down incoming aircraft and missiles, strike land targets, or — once the Navy finishes developing a new long-range anti-ship missile — sink enemy warships. Outsiders, including one of Greenert’s former aides, argued an LCS with VLS would be much more able to attack a wide range of targets and defend itself or even other ships against a wide range of threats.

Adm. Jonathan Greenert briefs reporters on the new LCS

“They did evaluate a Vertical Launch System,” Adm. Greenert said. But it was “kind of heavy, kind of big, a major change [adding] cost, time. It was all part of the evaluation, Sydney, so it was considered.” But ultimately the Small Surface Combatant Task Force charged to review alternatives to the current LCS found adding a Vertical Launch System cost too much in terms of money, production delays, and weight for what it added, Greenert said.

What the new LCS will have, and the current one does not, is an over-the-horizon anti-ship missile: The Navy will probably hold a competition for the exact system, but Stackley said it would be at least comparable to the Harpoon Block II, which has about a 70-mile range.

For self defense, the new LCS will have an upgraded version of the current model’s SeaRAMmissile launcher. It will also add new 25 millimeter heavy machineguns. (The Navy decided against adding a 5-inch cannon, though, to traditionalists’ dismay). It have new decoy launchers and anti-torpedo defenses. An advanced degaussing system will make the hull’s magnetic field less detectable by naval mines.

To detect threats, the new LCS will have an upgraded radar and a “multifunction towed array” to detect torpedoes and submarines. When configured for all-out sub hunts, it will replace some of its anti-ship weapons with a variable-depth sonar — making it, said Stackley, “the most effective ASW [anti-submarine warfare] platform in the Navy.”

A Vertical Launch System (VLS) firing.

From Adm. Greenert’s perspective, though, the most exciting new addition “would be the upgraded EW [electronic warfare] system,” he said. While the new LCS won’t get the full Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP) Block II being developed for larger warships, it will get what Greenert called “SEWIP-light.” That allows for a “soft-kill” of incoming missiles, not by shooting them down but by scrambling their electronics.

Finally, if the enemy does manage to land a blow, the new LCS will be much better able to survive and recover, Stackley said. Crucial compartments on the ship will have additional armor and key systems will be hardened against shock. While the Navy doesn’t use its traditional Level 1/2/3 system of survivability ratings anymore, Stackley said the new LCS’s robustness “matches what we would have for a frigate” — a significantly larger class of vessel that Hagel himself ordered the Navy to consider as a replacement for LCS.

So how can the Navy cram all this new stuff into the existing hull designs? The current LCS is built as a “modular” design that can configured as a minesweeper, sub-hunter, or anti-ship combatant — but not all three at once. The new LCS, by contrast, will need some plug-and-play systems for specific missions, but it will always carry both its over-the-horizon missile launcher — an anti-ship weapon — and its towed array — anti-submarine — in addition to the new defenses.

Sean Stackley, Assistant Secretary of the Navy

That’s possible because the task force scoured the LCS design for places to cut weight. “We’ve looked at every item on the ship,” Stackley said. Every pound nipped and tucked from non-essential systems was more for weapons, sensors, and armor. That process will continue as designs get more detailed. It’s likely the new LCS will end up somewhat heavier than the current design, Stackley said, but that will only slow the ship by a few knots. That’s not a major sacrifice given that the Navy designed the LCS for a blisteringly fast 40-plus knots and thenstruggled to figure out what, tactically, all that speed was for.

The one real sacrifice in the new LCS design is the ability to clear mines. That mission will be left to the 32 original-model Littoral Combat Ships — which, Greenert insisted, was enough to handle “the most stressing” possible scenarios. What the theater commanders around the world wanted most, Stackley said, was not minesweeping but the ability to combat both surface craft and submarines. That is the mission against which the new LCS will be measured.