CNO: 2019 LCS deployment reset

WASHINGTON – Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John M. Richardson, the Navy’s top officer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 19 that the gap in overseas deployments of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) is part of a reset and their deployments will resume next year. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked why no LCS deployments in 2018 when there have been 11 ships already delivered to the Navy, a number adequate to having some deployed. CNO initially noted the program’s “troubled times” and that the Navy “probably pushed that ship out forward deployed a little bit ahead of its time” before becoming more stabilized. CNO had asked Naval Surface Forces to take a longer look at the LCS program, which led to changes in maintenance, crewing, and where to homeport and forward deploy those ships. This year has become a “reflection of that shift,” CNO said, and beginning in 2019, the Navy will restart deploying LCS. “They’ll be sustainable. They’ll be more lethal by virtue of the enhancements we’re putting on (LCS),” he said. There are 24 deployments planned from 2019-24. This is a “reset year” to put in place those “sustainable” changes in advance of a future model ship, CNO explained. Since March 2013, the Navy has deployed three LCS in succession to Singapore: Two Freedom class LCS - USS Freedom (LCS 1), USS Fort Worth (LCS 3) – and the Independence class USS Coronado (LCS 4). (Source: Seapower magazine 04/19/18) Gulf Coast Note: The Independence class is built by Austal USA shipyard in Mobile, Ala.