In line with what has been raised by U.S. Navy officials in the context of the Surface Navy Association, the service decided to shelve its plans to continue moving forward with the early retirement of more of its troubled Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), plans which had envisioned decommissioning two Independence-class ships and five Freedom-class ships. This development comes at a time when the service has announced the withdrawal of four of its oldest Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships, which would be replaced by repurposed LCS models to carry out the mission, despite criticism over their technical issues and limited firepower.
Expanding on some details, the decision to keep these seven ships in service will allow the U.S. Navy to field a fleet of twenty-eight LCS in total, of which some fourteen remain deployed at Naval Base San Diego, another ten in Mayport, three in Bahrain, and one in Seattle. In the case of the three ships assigned to the Middle East, Vice Admiral Brendan McLane (current head of Surface Forces) indicated that these have satisfactorily fulfilled their new mission as mine countermeasures ships, according to reports obtained by NAVCENT.
It is worth recalling in this regard that the U.S. Navy has deployed three Independence-class vessels to the Middle East for that purpose—specifically USS Canberra (LCS-30), USS Tulsa (LCS-16), and USS Santa Barbara (LCS-32). In the view of U.S. analysts, this is the most complex mission assigned to the class since it entered service, especially given that the detection and neutralization of enemy mines is seen as the task requiring the most complex of the three mission packages originally available.
In addition to the mission mentioned above, it is also important to note that the LCS have been selected by the service to conduct integration trials with new technologies, which in the future would be intended to increase the combat capability of the rest of the fleet. In this regard, the ships have served as test platforms for the new Typhon launchers developed by Lockheed Martin, which give the vessels the ability to deploy SM-6 missiles or Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Finally, in addition to these two functions, it should be highlighted that LCS-class ships are also used in trials of the new unmanned naval systems being developed by the U.S. Navy. In particular, the Independence class has stood out in these support tasks thanks to its mission bay, which enables it to deploy such assets—an illustrative example being tests conducted with Black Sea Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft drones, as well as various types of aerial drones.
*Images used for illustrative purposes
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