In the 1980s when I was a young ensign, Navy Secretary John Lehman was fervently working to acquire a 600-ship Navy to confront our adversaries around the globe. With a desire to ensure the old maxim that “quantity has a quality all its own,” we came close to achieving this goal.
Yet those halcyon days have passed. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and the ensuing “peace dividend,” our Navy has been downsized to the point where we have effectively cut our fleet in half.
With only 308 ships now deployable, our Navy is in need of a makeover. We need more and newer designed ships with increased capabilities. Fortunately, Congress has recognized this problem and passed legislation to stop this hemorrhaging. “We are rejecting further budget cuts, bending the curve lines, and making a down payment on the 350-ship Navy we need for national defense,” Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., said in a recent statement.
One of these new types of ships is the littoral combat ship. It can be reconfigured for various roles by changing modular mission packages. It is envisioned to be a networked, agile, stealthy surface combatant that can provide sea denial and defeat asymmetrical threats in the littoral waters. With a shallow draft, the LCS emphasizes speed and maneuverability, and is designed to replace slower, more obsolete vessels such as minesweepers and larger assault ships. Additionally, the ability to attack in shallow waters provides an added potential to confront and confound our enemies in areas where major capital ships cannot maneuver (e.g. South China Sea, Fiery Cross Reef and in the Spratly Islands archipelagos).
Now, not only have we modernized our shipbuilding abilities, but we have also changed our procurement philosophy by looking to purchase off-the-shelf technology to minimize research and development expenses, lower procurement costs and ensure that a tried-and-true weapon system is available to be “bolted on” any ship. Using the concept of off-the-shelf technology to get the “biggest bang for the buck,” the Navy has facilitated a foreign competitive testing program to evaluate already proven weapons that can be used to increase the lethality of our ships. The Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile is well on its way to equip the LCS with an over-the-horizon anti-ship missile following successful rounds of testing.
Weighing in at 900 pounds and 13 feet in length with a range of approximately 115 nautical miles, the NSM navigates by GPS inertial and terrain reference systems and is said to be a generation beyond the U.S.’s GM-84 Harpoon. Currently used by the Norwegian and Polish navies, this missile is designed for littoral waters as well as for open sea scenarios. The NSM is able to travel in sea-skim mode, fly over and around landmasses and then make random maneuvers in the terminal phase, making it harder to be stopped by enemy countermeasures.
Using this type of weapon on smaller ships, U.S. Navy war games have shown that an adversary’s risk calculus would be radically changed. It would force the enemy to devote more assets to locate the smaller ships, thus weakening their defense and sustaining heavier losses.
This concept of putting offensive weapons on smaller ships is the third iteration of lessons learned from World War II, and again during the 1980s with the Pegasus hydrofoils. U.S. Naval War College studies show that these smaller ships with offensive weapons attacking opposing fleets from multiple directions would add a force-multiplier to any kinetic action. While some ships may be lost, the final result is that the enemy’s fleet would be sent to the bottom of the sea. This creates a cost-imposing strategy and a nightmare scenario for belligerent navies trying to deny the U.S. Navy operational freedom throughout the globe.
Tasked with the daunting challenge of maintaining freedom of the seas, deterring international aggression, and playing pivotal roles in times of war and peace, the U.S. Navy has earned naval supremacy. This is not only because of the skill of our sailors, but also because it has invested great effort and money to provide the finest technology in modern warfare.
With over 70 nations now owning more than 75,000 anti-ship missiles, we need our fleet to have the weapons to enhance combat effectiveness and remain offensive in nature. The combination of a modular approach to shipbuilding and tried-and-true, off-the-shelf weapon systems procurement is the right approach at the right time to effectively and efficiently increase the offensive capacity of our fleet.
With the Navy’s push toward “distributed lethality” and the need to fight in either brown water or blue water operations, the NSM, being a fifth generation strike missile, can fill that role and provide both quantity and quality when installed aboard the LCS.
Retired Navy Cmdr. Jim Feldkamp is a former naval electronic countermeasure officer. He flew combat missions in Operation Desert Storm off the aircraft carrier Midway and served as the international outreach officer for the National Maritime Intelligence-Integration Office and the Office of Global Maritime Situational Awareness in Washington, D.C. He is an adjunct professor teaching the theories and politics of terrorism at George Mason University. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
