The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments today released Naval Transformation and the Littoral Combat Ship, a report analyzing the Navy’s transformation plans and the role of small combatants in

“Small combatants have always played an important role in the Navy’s battle force. This has been especially true whenever the fleet has been compelled to operate close to shore,” said the report’s author, Colonel Robert Work (USMC, Ret.) “In a 21^st century Navy designed to operate in shallow littoral waters, small combatants are likely to prove their worth once again.”

The Navy’s new small combatant is the modular, and controversial, Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The LCS is designed to operate as a component within a distributed “naval battle network”—seamlessly linked ships, aircraft and unmanned systems operating together to improve combat effectiveness. The LCS’s ability to reconfigure itself for new missions may enable future naval battle networks to adapt rapidly to changing threat conditions.

“The LCS’s planned level of modularity is without precedent in naval history. If realized, it would allow the ship to perform many different battle network roles and give the 21^st century Navy an important advantage when confronting existing or evolving access challenges,” states Work.

Despite the LCS’s promise however, the report finds that more thorough operational experimentation is warranted before the Navy commits to large-scale LCS production plans. The Navy has not produced or operated small combatants capable of working with high speed task forces since World War II, and the design goals for the ship’s modular systems are quite ambitious,” said Work. “More thorough operational testing would help to resolve many outstanding issues.”

The report recommends that the Navy select at least two different LCS prototypes and form two prototype squadrons for fleet tests to validate the LCS’s potential. Although a testing phase would delay the final production run for a short period, it would lower the program’s developmental risk without appreciably raising the fleet’s operational risk.

“Naval warfare experts have argued about the necessity and requirements for a small LCS-type combatant for over five years,” said Work. “This report is intended to inform the debate as the Navy reports the findings of its mandated LCS assessment to Congress on March 1st.”

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The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) is an independent policy research institute.

Bound reprints of this report are available from CSBA for $15.00. (order form)