Navy: Norwegian Missile Test On Littoral Combat Ship Successful

USNI News ^ | September 24, 2014 | Sam LaGrone

[sukhoi-30mki]

A Tuesday test of the Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile on Littoral Combat Ship USS Coronado (LCS-4) was deemed a success and could pave the way to expand the weapons portfolio of LCS and the follow on Small Surface Combatant (SSC).

“We view this successful missile test as a possible future warfighting capability for the LCS program,” said Naval Surface Forces commander, Vice Adm. Thomas Rowden in a Tuesday statement. “This allows for the integration of weapons and sensors like the Kongsberg NSM technology as part of the LCS warfare suite.”

The missile was fired from a launcher positioned on Coronado’s flight deck at a mobile ship target at the ranges off of Port Hueneme.

The sea skimming and subsonic NSM has a range of about 100 nautical miles — greater than the Navy’s current Harpoon missile — and is designed to evade radar.

According to Rowden, the modular design of LCS would make it possible to integrate new weapons onto the platform.

“This allows for the integration of weapons and sensors like the Kongsberg NSM technology as part of the LCS warfare suite,” he said.

The test was facilitated through the foreign competitive testing (FCT) program following a demonstration of the NSM at the Rim of Pacific 2014 exercise.

“Since 1980, the FCT program has helped the United States and allies reap substantial savings by avoiding research and development costs, lowering procurement costs, reducing risk for major acquisition programs and accelerating the fielding of equipment critical to the reading and safety of operating forces,” according to a release from Naval Surface Forces.

Currently, the Surface Warfare (SuW) package of the LCS is oriented toward fighting an asymmetric swarm boat threat. The lack of firepower onboard both variants of LCS has been a lingering criticism of the program for years.

[sukhoi-30mki]

The Sept. 23, 2014 test of the Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile onboard USS Coronado (LCS-4). US Navy Photo

[GreyFriar]

I thought you were going to say that the Norwegians used the LCS as a target and sank it.

[TheEditor]

As I understand it Navy is far and away the service which has the best testing regime.

[wetphoenix]

~I thought you were going to say that the Norwegians used the LCS as a target and sank it.~

From what I know about this ship you don’t need a missile to sink it. It is called littoral for a bad reason too.