The Littoral Combat Ship: From Concept to Program

Abstract

After the end of the Cold War, the United States faced a sharply diminished threat in the ocean commons. The Navy moved to refocus itself to meet the post-Cold War environment in September 1992, when the Secretary of the Navy signed "...From the Sea." This white paper outlined a "fundamental shift away from open-ocean warfighting on the sea toward joint operations conducted from the sea." It was followed in November 1994 by "Forward...From the Sea," another Navy-Marine Corps paper that elaborated on the importance of peacetime forward presence operations. While retaining its ability to maintain strategic dominance in the ocean commons, the Navy was adopting a new, interventionist outlook that focused strongly on what was taking place on shore. This focus on influencing operations ashore drew the Navy into the littoral. The littoral is the area through which an expeditionary military force must pass and in which supporting Naval forces must operate. Operating in the littoral presents a complex collection of challenges. These threats include mines, sea-skimming cruise missiles, and tactical ballistic missiles as well as swarming small boats (armed with short-range missiles or explosives) and diesel submarines. Such systems enable even relatively unsophisticated adversaries to adopt a strategy of anti-access and area denial. The strategic need to gain access and operate in and around the littorals was taken up by the Chief of Naval Operations' Strategic Studies Group (SSG). From 1998 to 2000, the SSG focused on how the Navy should operate in and dominate the littoral. This monograph reviews the evolution of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) from the Streetfighter concept to the LCS Program. The Streetfighter concept called for a family of small ships that would be fast, networked, and modular and would make extensive use of unmanned vehicles and off-board sensors. They would also be austerely manned and cheap enough to afford in large numbers.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA466777

Entities

People

  • Duncan Long
  • Stuart Johnson

Organizations

  • National Defense University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Sensors
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Boats
  • Littoral Combat Ships
  • Littoral Warfare
  • Military Organizations
  • National Security
  • Naval Architecture
  • Naval Operations
  • Naval Warfare
  • Navy
  • Procurement
  • Ships
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Unmanned Underwater Vehicles
  • Unmanned Vehicles
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Maritime Combat Support and Expeditionary Logistics.
  • Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering.
  • Strategic Security Studies

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - UAVs