2019: Big test for reorganized LCS

Four Littoral Combat Ships – two west-coast based LCS that were built at Austal USA’s shipyard in Mobile, Ala. - are among four on track to deploy in 2019, Vice Adm. Richard Brown, commander of Naval Surface Force Pacific, told Defense News in an Aug. 16 interview. It is not clear when those deployment dates will be since the surface warfare community is still piecing together advanced training and maintenance needs for the ships to deploy with the anti-surface warfare (ASW) mission package and newly-formed blue-and-gold crews. Blue-and-gold crews will replace the three crews for two LCS hulls. In the new model, one crew mans the ship while the other trains ashore then switching at the end of a set period of time. The Navy now has semi-permanently assigned one of the three mission packages – ASW, anti-submarine warfare, mine countermeasures - to future LCS. Anti-submarine warfare should be ready to go in 2019; and mine counter-measures in 2020. All four of the LCS will deploy with the ASW configuration. Those scheduled for 2019 deployments are the Austal-built trimaran variant hulls USS Montgomery (LCS 8) and USS Gabriel Giffords (LCS 10) based in San Diego; and the mono-hulled USS Detroit (LCS 7) and USS Little Rock (LCS 9) out of Mayport, Fla., Brown said. Getting the LCS to the fleet will likely lead for more calls from combatant-commanders’ requests for the ships. Adm. Kurt Kidd, head of the U.S. Southern Command and one of the highest ranking surface warfare officers in the military, has called for using the ships in the neglected counter-narcotics mission to augment the Coast Guard. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told lawmakers in April he was reviewing options for the LCS mission. “We don’t have the answer yet, sir, but we’re working it,” SECDEF told Defense News. (Source: Defense News 08/22/18)