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Editorial: The case to keep LCS

The hot topics for armchair admirals are whether the Navy should adopt the Coast Guard’s National Security Cutter instead of its planned Littoral Combat Ship and whether it should trade the DDG 1000-class destroyer for more DDG 51 destroyers.

Such questions are reasonable. The Navy is struggling to pay for the ships it wants, but neither choice solves its problems.

Regardless of whether the cutters Northrop Grumman is building for the Coast Guard have naval applications, the Navy must stick with its LCS program, or what’s left of it, instead of changing horses.

The Navy is planning sea trials this year of Lockheed Martin’s first LCS, Freedom, and General Dynamics’ Independence. While both are over budget, due in part to the Navy’s myriad design changes, Lockheed’s monohull and GD’s trimaran combine critical attributes for an uncertain future.

They can speed at 45 knots to capture pirates for interrogation or during combatant maneuvers, cruise for 8,000 miles at 10 knots, and accommodate mission modules for surface or anti-submarine warfare and countermine operations that promise unprecedented flexibility.

With the lead ships near completion — and to the Navy’s stringent specifications — the service has the option to pump either design, or both, in volume as needed.

The relatively high cost of each lead ship, more than $400 million, shouldn’t be a driving consideration. First-of-type ships are always over budget.

The DDG 51, arguably the most powerful surface combatant ever built, debuted 17 months late and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. Costs dropped as volume rose; LCS will be no different.

The key is to get both ships to the fleet.

There, sailors can test them rigorously to determine the merits of speed in littoral operations; the practicality and efficacy of the mission module concept; the relative ride, handling and payload attributes of the two designs; and the potential perils of ultralean manning.

Sadly, the Navy’s 2007 decisions to cut one LCS from each builder will prolong the experimentation process, and handicap it as well. For one thing, it will be tougher to see how the ships perform in groups.

If the LCS flunks or needs a future complement, then the NSC is a ready option.

As for the DDG 1000, the program is ambitious to the extreme, with the first of type to debut 10 major new technologies, including electric propulsion and systems, a new hull design, radar and materials. According to experts, that’s unprecedented and risky, raising the question of whether it makes sense to build one or two of the ships, at up to $5 billion apiece, as mere technology demonstrators. Critics rightly argue it may be best to slow production and build more DDG 51s that incrementally adopt DDG 1000’s electric drive, radar and other new technologies to refine them through fleet testing.

These two programs offer important lessons.

First, Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, is right: The Navy must better control its appetite for requirements. Second, only experimentation can answer the Navy’s questions about its future. Third, don’t cut steel unless you complete the design of what you want to build and have enough in the bank to pay for it.