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Posted on 07/03/2019 1:16:42 AM PDT by robowombat
Littoral Combat Ship Deploys for First Time in 19 Months; USS Montgomery Left Unannounced in Early June
By: Megan Eckstein July 1, 2019 12:26 PM • Updated: July 1, 2019 10:41 PM
The littoral combat ship USS Montgomery (LCS-8) departs Naval Base San Diego to conduct routine operations and training in the Pacific Ocean. US Navy photo.
This post has been updated to include a comment from a Navy official regarding the timeline of the USS Montgomery deployment.
There is a Littoral Combat Ship operating forward on deployment for the first time in 19 months, with USS Montgomery (LCS-8) arriving in the Philippines over the weekend on its maiden deployment.
The Navy did not announce the departure of Montgomery from its San Diego, Calif., homeport, but the service on Saturday released a news release and several photos of the LCS during its first port call of the deployment, in Davao City on the island of Mindanao.
“In this era of Great Power Competition, the U.S. Pacific Fleet does not announce the deployment of every ship in the Pacific,” a Navy official told USNI News after this story was first published. “USS Montgomery departed its homeport of San Diego in late May, as part of a deployment to the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations.”
According to commercial ship tracking data, Montgomery made a port call in Hawaii and left on June 10 to continue its trip towards 7th Fleet.
According to the Navy news release, Montgomery will host local military and civic leaders during the port visit.
“Our navies, just like our nations, have a long history of cooperation and partnership based on mutual trust, respect and decades of friendship,” Rear Adm. Joey Tynch, commander of Logistics Group Western Pacific, said in the news release. “Every port visit and exercise we complete together continues to strengthen maritime security and regional stability.”
The Independence-variant LCS went through the first-ever LCS Surface Warfare Advanced Tactical Training (SWATT) event in April as part of its pre-deployment workups. During that five-day at-sea event, Montgomery’s crew practiced surface warfare operations – including live-fire shots with the crew-served weapon, 30mm gun and SeaRAM missile defense system – as well as limited anti-air warfare operations.
The ship also practiced some missions on its own and some falling under the tactical control of a warfare commander on another ship, simulating how the LCS might be used solo or as part of a larger task group on its deployment.
Independence variant littoral combat ship USS Montgomery (LCS 8) launches a RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) during a missile exercise on April 23, 2019. Montgomery is underway in the Eastern Pacific conducting routine training. US Navy photo.
USS Coronado (LCS-4) was the last LCS to deploy overseas, from June 2016 to December 2017. Since that deployment, though, the LCS community has gone through a major reorganization that involves moving from a system of three crews supporting two ship hulls to a blue/gold crewing model similar to that used in the submarine community; the creation of a test division that includes the first four LCSs, which will now focus on mission package testing and other work at home and will not deploy overseas; the standup of Littoral Combat Ship Squadron 1 (LCSRON-1) in San Diego that includes all the Austal-built Independence-variant ships; and the standup of LCSRON-2 in Mayport, Fla., for the Lockheed Martin-built Freedom-variant hulls.
The Navy had not planned to have such a long gap between LCS deployments, but in part due to trying to implement the new organizational structure and in part due to LCS hull maintenance availabilities, USNI News first reported in April 2018 that there would be no LCS deployments that calendar year.
Those things are floating death traps. Reminds me of when after the first gulf war the Army tried to lighten armored battalions. That was well and good until the shooting started again.
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The Lockheed-Martin build hull version looks a bit more conventional:
https://4gwar.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/lcs-lockmart.jpg
Did they get their diversity & perversity training prior to deployment?
They look as if they would be tossed around quite a bit in heavy seas.
Because a single 57mm gun is going to shift the balance of power in the region. At least the LCS has a gun that fires, unlike the new, state of the art, destroyers.
It’s a good thing the departure was unannounced. If another ship had been present to witness it, there is a high likelihood the navy ship would have collided with it.
I heard from a relative that their friends daughter was called for duty yesterday. They are a pilot.
Flush the toilet on the admirals who are pushing for these pieces of garbage and start building some effective fighting ships!
They are not intended for heavy seas. They are intended for operations close to shore, a.k.a. the littoral environment.
“They are not intended for heavy seas. They are intended for operations close to shore, a.k.a. the littoral environment.“
Lucky thing the seas never get heavy near land.
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Fair enough, I meant blue ocean operations. These are based on commercial transports as an experiment, get speed and sacrifice some other things so you can rapidly counter threats from small craft and the like. So yeah, they aren’t good in a hurricane or tropical storm.
They are kind of useless I think. They were created when we thought there was no fleet that could challenge us on the blue ocean so what we needed were fast ships that could sweep the coasts and ports for threats. Times change, China and Russia have bigger, more capable ships with more advanced weapons now so destroyers are more in vogue now. But we still have these.
“They are kind of useless I think.”
Me too. One gun? How stupid is that idea?
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“They are not intended for heavy seas. They are intended for operations close to shore, a.k.a. the littoral environment.”
Methinks the problem is they have to cross the ocean to get to most of those littoral environments.
Reminded me of one transit from Southern California to our homeport in Bremerton on Nimitz in 1988. Not far off the coast of Oregon I watched the inclinometer on the bridge hit 24 degrees.
OTOH, there will probably be many medals given out for finding Mindanao...
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