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Crew confusion for LCS

DAHLGREN, Va. — In a ceremony here July 11, with all the trappings of a trade show — exhibit booths, computer demos and take-home tchotchkes — the Navy unveiled the surface warfare package for its littoral combat ship, the second of three “plug-in” modules for the new generation of multipurpose vessels.

But even as acquisition officials and defense contractors reeled off details about how the advanced new sensors and weapons will work, they had little new information about another key component of the warship: its crew. This is despite the fact that both LCS 1 and 2 could be commissioned as early as this year.

At displays for the LCS’ 30mm gun, missile system and console suite, Navy officials and contractors said they weren’t quite sure yet how many sailors would be needed to maintain each system, or exactly what jobs they would do once the packages are installed on the ships. For example, although officials want LCS to be able to change mission modules in no more than three days, they didn’t know yet who will do the changing — waterfront sailors, contractors or the ship’s crew.

Also unclear is how the core crew of an LCS will work with the mission modules: Which sailors will “own” and maintain the multi-use spaces that will carry the mission packages? The Navy’s plan for LCS is for sailors to be fully qualified when they report to the ship because there won’t be many chances to learn at sea with a core crew of 40 sailors. But what happens if sailors are injured, fall ill or get killed during a mission?

Top shipbuilding officials, including Vice Adm. Paul Sullivan, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command, and Capt. Michael Good, program manager for the ships’ mission modules, said they were confident the crew details would be worked out.

They said the important thing for now is that the mission modules are being delivered on time and on cost — about $16.4 million, in the case of the surface warfare gear. Moreover, they said, each LCS will have the Navy’s highest degree of automation in existence, meaning that whatever the manning details become, many of sailors’ old jobs will be eliminated or computerized. Planners also are counting on support from the dock.

“It is a challenge to operate a ship this size with a smaller crew,” Sullivan said. “However, the maintenance concept is that for there to be a lot of off-ship help to maintain the ship. Secondly, with the ship itself, the systems are designed for simplicity and modular change-out.”

Good said LCS’ novel crewing would work because of good “human-system integration” and the ability of today’s sailors to adapt to computer gear. “I don’t want to trivialize it as ‘the video game generation,’ but it’s very impressive what some of our sailors are able to do,” he said.

The plan for LCS all along has been to task crew members with multiple jobs, meaning that “hybrid sailors” will both operate and maintain their equipment.

One example is the LCS anti-submarine warfare mission package, which debuts in August in San Diego, and will carry an unmanned surface vehicle as a main sensor platform. The same sonar technicians who handle the lines to put the USV in the water will be at the consoles to operate it, said Michelle Clark, who is helping develop the ASW module for Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command.

In addition to mastering the computer gear that Good described, Clark said the sonar techs will need to attend coxswain school to learn how to maneuver their USV in and out of the ocean, as well as pilot it, if necessary.

The blue and gold crews for LCS 1 and 2 have trained since February 2007 at the LCS Class Squadron in San Diego. Each crew has 40 sailors. The ships also are expected to take on aviation detachments of about 20 sailors, plus about 15 sailors with the different mission modules.

Skeptics online and elsewhere doubt the Navy will be able to make LCS work with crews that size.

“Who’s going to be a mess cook? Who’s going to sweep the passageway? When you start to operate this ship, when you’ve got these guys who have so many other jobs, you have to start figuring that out,” said retired Capt. Rick Hoffman, a former skipper of the cruiser Hue City. “They’ll put it out there, they’ll mish-mash the guys together and see how it all works, but that’s not the way to do business.”

“They’ll start adding sailors, quietly,” said A.D. Baker III, a retired Office of Naval Intelligence analyst and author of several editions of “Combat Fleets of the World.” The ships’ complex internal design, which includes a crane for moving modules and vehicles and multiple doors that open out to sea, will need high levels of attention, Baker said.

“All of that stuff requires constant maintenance by an onboard crew,” he said, no matter how the Navy decides to set up the shore-support network. “Kellogg Brown and Root, or whoever gets the contract, isn’t going to drop out of the sky and oil the door.”

The new module

The LCS surface warfare package is the Navy’s first weapons system designed to strike small, fast attacking boats, as opposed to other warships or targets ashore. To do that, engineers designed “a multi-layered defense,” as program officials call it, starting about 25 miles out. If a swarm of small boats attacks at that distance, an LCS captain can attack with Non-Line-Of-Site missiles, guided by the ship’s Fire Scout UAV. If the boats are closer, the LCS can fire its 57mm gun, carried on the forecastle. If the boats are closer still, the ship can attack with its 30mm gun, which can fire three rounds per second.

The ship’s guns are a known quantity — the 57mm gun also is carried aboard the Coast Guard’s new national security cutters, and program officials said the 30mm gun “is 97 percent identical” to the weapon carried on the Marine Corps’ expeditionary fighting vehicle and San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks.

The ship’s missiles, however, are new. Borrowed from the Army’s Future Combat Systems, the NLOS is a self-contained box that includes 60 small missiles — about 120 pounds each — originally designed to be air-dropped to soldiers in the field. An LCS can carry up to three boxes, for a potential maximum load of 180 weapons.

“There is no ‘Navy version’ of this missile,” said Allan Ashley, the Army’s NLOS liaison to the Navy. Other than small software differences and adjustments to resist saltwater corrosion, the NLOS’ ability to hit small targets should work as well on water as it does on land, Ashley said, although it has yet to be tested aboard a ship.

None of the LCS mission packages has been tested aboard their ships, either, although Sullivan said he was confident that the speed of experimenting with those systems would pick up this year.

Navy officials acknowledged the complexity of the systems, both in the mission modules and the ship itself, create a significant challenge in integrating hardware and personnel.

Good acknowledged that the Navy has to get a lot of things right before the first LCS can deploy, but he said that once the ships and gear are ready for their crews to come aboard, planners expect “some great feedback” from sailors about what works and what doesn’t.

“We expect to do some learning,” Good said. “There’s no doubt about it.”