Why a Big-Ship Navy Can’t Win the Wars of the Future

by MIKE FREDENBURG
August 26, 2015 4:00 AM

Enter the idea of smaller, highly capable, highly maneuverable missile attack ships. For what each Burke-class destroyer costs, we should be able to buy more than ten of these smaller single-purpose missile ships.

This is a way of implementing in the Navy a time-proven principle more often associated with ground wars — “dispersion of forces.” Smaller, harder-to-see, and harder-to-target missile-attack ships of 600 tons or less can attack land- and sea-based targets, execute ongoing sea-control operations and, after two or three weeks on station, withdraw to refuel, resupply, re-crew (if necessary), and rearm. Crew sizes of 25 to 50 could vary from mission to mission. For a fraction of the total displacement and cost, a squadron of eight of these ships could provide the kind of sea control and tactical situational awareness impossible for a single Burke-class ship or even the Navy’s new 3,500-ton Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs). While smaller than a Burke, the Navy’s much criticized LCSs are still relatively large ships that bring very little firepower to the littoral force given their $700 million price tag (including a mission module). For the cost of an LCSs mission module, a small littoral combatant can be purchased that would have more than enough firepower to sink the lightly constructed, under-manned LCSs. The small green-water combatants being proposed by the LOC will actually do the jobs that the Littoral Combat Ship, originally touted as costing $200 million, was supposed to do. Despite the name, the LCSs are ill-designed to fulfill the Navy’s needs. With more shallow-water ships, the Navy’s ability to conduct anti-piracy, anti-smuggling and search-and-seizure operations would be greatly expanded.

Along with their own considerable firepower, these green-water ships, through the Navy’s cooperative engagement capability, would be able to direct missile launches from their larger blue-water cousins lurking farther out to sea. And while a surprise attack could destroy or mission kill one of our large multi-role blue-water ships, a successful ambush of one of our smaller, less expensive green-water combatants would leave the rest of the squadron intact and fully mission capable.

Further, the finer-grain sea control that more ships and more eyeballs bring to the battlespace would make it harder for the enemy to execute a surprise attack in the first place. Can the Navy realistically build a new class of ships in a reasonable amount of time? Partnering with friendly nations to jointly build or buy variations of existing littoral warships would allow us to start commissioning these smaller surface combatants in a matter of only a few years.

The LOC has identified a simplified, cost-reduced version of Sweden’s 600-ton Visby-class corvette or Indonesia’s new Klewang-missile corvette as possibilities for jointly building or buying. And, in a nod to just how far China has come in the last 20 years, the LOC also has identified the 200-ton Houbei-class attack boat as an inspiration for building a larger fast-attack ship of 500 to 600 tons that has greater endurance.

Swedish Navy’s Visby-class corvette HMS Helsingborg Each of these ships could be configured to carry eight or more long-range missiles capable of attacking ships and land targets. In addition to their guns and a lethal complement of missiles, they would have active and passive defenses that, coupled with their smaller visual signature, smaller radar signature, and superior maneuverability would make them far from defenseless. In coastal waters their smaller size makes them much harder to spot than longer, wider, taller warships such as the Burke, the Zumwalt-class “stealth” destroyer, and the two variants of the Navy’s LCSs. Depending on the specific ship and the configuration, the cost of these small littoral combatants should be in the $80 million to $150 million range, perhaps less for the Klewang-class corvettes.While not intended to replace big blue-water combatants like the Burke, littorally focused ships need to be a bigger part of our navy’s force structure.