A Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile (NSM) is launched from the littoral combat ship USS Coronado (LCS 4) during missile testing operations off the coast of Southern California in September 2014. US Navy photo.
Posted on 05/04/2016 12:35:00 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
The Littoral Combat Ship program is poised to make big strides this year in its strike capability, both with over-the-horizon missiles and the shorter-range Longbow Hellfire missile.
The Independence-variant USS Coronado (LCS-4) will deploy later this year with the Boeing-built Harpoon anti-ship missile, and engineering is underway to outfit USS Freedom (LCS-1) with the Naval Strike Missile (NSM), a partnership between Kongsberg Defence Systems and Raytheon.
Program Executive Officer for Littoral Combat Ships Rear Adm. Brian Antonio told USNI News in a May 2 interview that the Harpoon system will be installed on Coronado within the next month, in time for an over-the-horizon missile demonstration at the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2016 exercise in Hawaii this summer.
“It’s the beginning of how to incorporate OTH on LCSs,” he said.
The NSM effort is a bit farther behind, with the engineering not yet complete, but the missile system integration will be done in time for Freedom’s next deployment.
Antonio said the OTH missile effort falls into four categories: demonstrating the capability on Coronado and Freedom in the near term to “show that LCS is capable of having a long stick;” building a missile system into new LCSs; backfitting the systems into existing LCSs; and designing a missile into the frigate design.
The program office is looking at the last couple LCSs ahead of the transition to the frigate – the planned Fiscal Year 2017 ships – and investigating “are we able to capture with our FY 17 ships, actually starting it right from scratch and getting the shipbuilders to incorporate the right systems to be able to support OTH?” Building the systems into the frigate design will be somewhat easier, since there will be more freedom to install the system where it makes the most sense instead of where the LCS design allows for a missile launcher.
As for the backfit effort, once the PEO decides on which missile to use going forward, the program will look for opportunities during ships’ midlife availabilities, shorter maintenance availabilities and even post-delivery availabilities to insert the OTH missile system. The engineering being done on Freedom today will help inform the backfit effort, Antonio said.
Director of Surface Warfare Rear Adm. Pete Fanta previously told USNI News that this year’s OTH missile installation efforts would more tightly integrate the missile system with the ship’s combat system, whereas a previous test of the NSM on Coronado featured a less connected set-up.
In addition to the OTH strike capability, the Navy is also adding a short-range missile to the LCS surface warfare mission package to help address the fast inshore attack craft threat.
“Later this year we’ll also do some surface-to-surface missile shots of the Longbow Hellfire missile – I think it’s four more this year off of a guided test vehicle,” Antonio said in the interview. The Navy began testing the modified Hellfire missile – altered to fire vertically from the ship instead of horizontally from a helicopter – last year and will continue testing the missile from test platforms rather than from an LCS in the short term.
A Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile (NSM) is launched from the littoral combat ship USS Coronado (LCS 4) during missile testing operations off the coast of Southern California in September 2014. US Navy photo.
Had my hopes up "Navy to Demo Harpoon Missile on LCS" title had me hoping they were going to SINKEX one of those P.O.S. jokes with a Harpoon................
Seeing that ruddy rocket exhaust made me think of the rd residue found on the seats from TWA flight 800.
Don’t know why.
This is very good news...and long needed.
A Freedom Class LCS deploying with the NSM is going to up arm her to be a capable combatant against peer adversaries in the surface combat role.
The Independence with the Harpoon would be the same.
My guess is that ultimately they will settle upon one of the two for both classes.
Hopefully they’ll find a better installation method than a rack on the helipad.
Very little can fix the LCS - otherwise known as the ‘Little Crappy Ship’ in professional Naval circles.
One thing they have to have...in any case...are longer range SSMs.
We already have three of each variant commissioned, three more of each variant fitting out, and three more of each variant building.
They are going to be out there in some numbers no matter what.
So we are going to have to make the best of them and either the Harpoon or the NSM will help do that for the ASuW role.
The Sea RAM on each will help them for purely self defense, but if the talk of using them as any kind of escort holds any truth, the will need better AAW capabilities as well.
If they have a couple of SeaHawks aboard, that will help with the ASW.
I wish they were curtailing them at 24 vessels...and maybe Trump can help make that happen...and then move on to a true FFG..
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