The Challenges of Leading a Small Crew - the Littoral Combat Ship

The Challenges of Leading a Small Crew:

The Littoral Combat Ship

Troy University

Abstract

The infusion of Information Technology, combined with the concept of modularity, promises to make the new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) a uniquely capable and robust war-fighting platform in the U.S. Navy's arsenal of ships. These highly complex ships will be taken to sea by a small crew of highly trained sailors, operating in a fashion never before seen in the Navy and illuminating an idea central to the Navy's ability to dominate the world's seas for decades to come; increased technology and fewer sailors. The use of increasingly sophisticated technology to reduce manning requirements leads to lower operating costs and a significant leadership challenge for officers and senior enlisted sailors who will be in charge of these fine ships.

Deckplate Leadership and Information Technology: The Littoral Combat Ship

The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program was brought to life in May 2004 when the Defense Department authorized the construction of two different LCS class ships to be built by two design teams, one led by General Dynamics and a second led by Lockheed Martin (Figure 1). The Lockheed Martin built LCS-1 is under construction at Wisconsin's Marinette Marine Corp. while the General Dynamic built LCS-2 is under construction at Alabama's Austal USA shipyard in Mobile ("Navy Moves", 2007). Each design team had expended significant resources and expertise to be considered, and this authorization brought the opportunity for both design teams to build the ship they had designed under a multi-million dollar contract that would begin with two ships and possibly culminate in the construction of up to 60 ships in total ("Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)", n.d.). The Lockheed Martin ship design is a single hull ship while the General Dynamics design is a trimaran type of hull.

Figure 1

Each design team met or exceeded the design specifications required by the Navy, producing ship designs that could operate in the littoral waters of the world where other U.S. Navy vessels had limited or no capability, could achieve speeds in excess of 40 knots/46 miles per hour ("Measurement Conversion, n.d.") and encompassed an un-refueled range of more than 3500 nautical miles. It is very likely though, that the most notable of the design specifications sought by the Navy, was the notion of warfare component modularity ("Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)", n.d.).

The modularity design feature is a significant departure from years past in U.S. Navy ship design. Previous classes of ships were designed and built to perform multiple warfare functions and equipment changes were difficult, usually resulting in costly and time-consuming maintenance availabilities (Lexington Institute, 2006). The modularity design feature was highly sought after because, in the words of Rear Admiral Mark Buzby, "technology has changed so quickly in the course of the past 10-12 years, the combat system on many surface ships is outdated and no longer able to meet threats or projected threats. Now you are stuck with a hardwired combat system that you now have to upgrade at tremendous expense and, oh by the way, you've now taken that ship out of the fleet for up to a year while you are ripping stuff out and putting it back in. The beauty of LCS is that you are not linked to that tyranny anymore."

The addition of other sophisticated systems such as the Integrated Bridge System (IBS) round out the manpower reduction technologies that will enable the LCS ships to operate with a core crew of only 40-50 sailors (Littoral Combat Ship Specifications, n.d.; Lexington Institute, 2006), a stark reduction in manning from the 300 crewmembers found on a similarly sized Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate (FFG) (Federation of American Scientists, n.d.).

Operating and maintaining such a technologically advanced ship presents a significant challenge for a new generation of sailors, particularly so for the officers and senior enlisted people who will be responsible for leading and managing the small number of sailors assigned. In addition to the obvious challenges stemming from the manning reductions, additional challenges will come from the design features that make the LCS ships so different from the ships operating in the U.S. Navy today. Some of the very functions that make the LCS such a capable sea-going platform or "sea frame" ("Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)", n.d.) such as modularity, the unique combination of propulsion