Development background and planning?
199 1 years ago, the disintegration of the Soviet Union caused great changes in the operational environment and objectives of the US Navy. The US Navy gradually realized that "today's battlefield is offshore, at the land-sea junction of five continents." After the Gulf War, the US Navy began to constantly adjust its military strategy, and successively put forward strategic concepts such as "from sea to land" and "frontier existence". In 2002, the US Navy put forward the concept of "sea strike, sea shield and sea base", which marked that "offshore strategy" officially replaced "ocean strategy".
In order to adapt to this important change in military strategy, the US Navy submitted the document "Force Structure Development Plan for the Next 30 Years" to Congress in late March this year. According to this plan, which includes two different schemes, the US Navy will further reduce the size of large warships by 2035, in which the number of aircraft carriers will be reduced from the current 12 to 10 or10, and the number of attack nuclear submarines will be reduced from 58 to 40 or 43 (3 sea wolves and 37 or 33). The US Navy's "slimming" plan is a substantial action to implement the Pentagon's new national defense strategy and national military strategy, which highlights the major change of the US Navy's operational concept from "ocean-going" during the Cold War to "offshore" during the anti-terrorism period.
In fact, as early as the 1980s, the US Navy's combat area was mainly concentrated in offshore areas, and most of the threats it faced came from offshore areas. In the last 30 years, five US Navy ships were damaged in battle, all of which occurred in offshore waters. Three of them were damaged by mines, 1 was hit by anti-ship missiles, and 1 suicided was damaged by bombs. In the Iraq war in 2003, 55% of the fleet sent by the United States to the Gulf region was moored in coastal areas, and 80% ~ 90% of the follow-up troops also came from the sea. The above facts show that in future operations, the US military has a strong demand for security intervention in coastal areas.
In view of this, the US Navy believes that although its existing ships have the ability to counter the threat of anti-intervention in coastal areas, if they give up their main combat missions, they will lose more than they gain. Moreover, the US Navy does not have enough multi-mission ships to control all the coastal areas or battlefield spaces that need to be controlled. ?
In the future, the service of "LCS" will make up for the shortcomings of aircraft carriers and submarines, which will not only ensure the safe intervention of the US Navy in coastal areas, but also ensure that other warships are engaged in their main combat missions, thus ensuring that the US Navy will use its main combat forces to carry out the central task of "land assault".
The design of US Navy LCS largely refers to three different types of LCS built in Norway, Sweden and Britain. They are: the Norwegian Navy's 260-ton "Shield Constellation" class air-cushion catamaran fast patrol boat, the Swedish Navy's 600-ton "Visby" class traditional light frigate and the British Navy's 800-ton "Poseidon" three-body test ship. These three types of ships adopt three different and representative hull structures, which have the same characteristics of complete invisibility, high speed, strong seaworthiness and high degree of automation, thus becoming the best reference prototype for the development of LCS in the United States.
"Poseidon" three-body hull line, the United States and Britain reached an agreement to cooperate for 18 months during "Poseidon" sea trial. In 2002-2003, the U.S. Navy also rented a Norwegian "Shield Constellation" class missile fast patrol boat to conduct a series of tests for 13 months, including participating in confrontation drills. , research and analyze its design technology concept. Of course, it's close to Norway and Sweden.
"Coastal defense" has different operational ideas. The US Navy requires that LCS must have the ability to sail across the ocean, so its displacement is also large, at least about 800 ~ 3000 tons.
At the same time, the purpose of developing LCS in the United States is not only to have offshore combat capability like Britain, but also to make it an important part of the networking and global operations of American military forces, that is, cyber combat forces. Therefore, the LCS of the US Navy has a higher starting point, higher requirements and more comprehensive performance.
design requirements
According to the design requirements put forward by the US Navy, LCS will be mainly used in global coastal waters. It is a fast, mobile, shallow draft surface ship with high degree of automation design, and the crew establishment will be controlled within 100. The ship's hull will adopt a modular structure, with advanced hull materials and power devices, so that the speed will reach at least 40 knots and the voyage will exceed 6,900 kilometers.
The design of ship-borne sensor, combat system and C4ISR system of LCS will also break through the traditional concept, and different weapon module systems can be flexibly assembled and matched according to mission requirements, thus qualitatively improving its technical/tactical performance in anti-submarine, anti-mine and anti-surface operations. It can deal with various threats: it can attack and evade surface ships, especially high-speed dense boats; Can cut off the submarine's approach; Avoid mines and calmly carry out anti-mine operations.
In addition, LCS also has good radar detection and avoidance ability and communication command ability, and can secretly drive near the enemy coastline to assist special forces in carrying out secret tasks. Therefore, LCS can not only be used in the traditional combat mode, but also has the ability to deal with the enemy's "asymmetric combat" and will be the future "all-round warship".
Task module?
The biggest feature of LCS design is that its combat system adopts "configurable task module", which can be easily reconfigured on shore or other facilities, so it can undertake various tasks. LCS's anti-submarine warfare, mine warfare and anti-surface warfare will all be completed through different "task modules". ?
Anti-submarine warfare module
Including MH-60R anti-submarine helicopter equipped with sonar, sonar buoy and torpedo, anti-submarine UAV equipped with improved torpedo system, RQ-8 "fire scout" UAV capable of carrying sensors and launching weapons, and echo ranging system.
Mine warfare module
Including a seahawk helicopter, unmanned surface boat, WLD- 1 long-range mine hunting system, automatic underwater vehicle for theater preparation and REMUS unmanned underwater vehicle. The mine warfare LCS will also be equipped with vertical take-off and landing drones to support the anti-mine explosion handling team.
Anti-surface combat module
The ship will be equipped with a naval gun and can carry a MH-60R helicopter equipped with photoelectric/infrared sensors and Hellfire missiles, machine guns and rockets. In addition, the ship also plans to use vertical takeoff and landing drones and unmanned surface vehicles equipped with photoelectric/infrared sensors and airborne weapons.