The House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee’s mark of their portion of the fiscal year 2024 defense policy bill included provisions directing the Navy to brief them on expanding hypersonic weapon capabilities on naval platforms and reporting on potentially combining Army and Navy amphibious vessel programs.
The committee’s report on its portion of the legislation said while it is supportive of the current plans for adding a common hypersonic weapon to both the Army and Navy, respectively, called the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon and Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS), it “is interested in increasing deployment options and the capacity of CPS missiles into the surface fleet.”
The committee then directs the Navy Secretary to brief the House Armed Services Committee by April 15, 2024 on expanding hypersonic strike capabilities to additional naval platforms.
The Navy currently plans to start fielding the CPS hypersonic weapons first on the Zumwalt-class destroyers starting in 2025 and later field them on the Virginia-class attack submarines built with the Virginia Payload Module by 2028.
The Navy plans to replace the unused BAE Systems Advanced Gun System on the three-ship class destroyers with four 87-inch large diameter Vertical Launch Systems to hold a magazine of up to 12 CPS missiles.
The subcommittee’s language directs the briefing to at least include “how the MK 41 Vertical Launching System cells on DDGs can be modified to take on CPS-sized missiles for future and current classes of Navy warships, estimated costs to implement such modifications, and potential impacts to the existing missions of the DDG fleet.”
Last year, the Navy’s draft design concept for its DDG(X) destroyer that will succeed the Arleigh Burke-class Flight III ship noted it could eventually field hypersonic missiles (Defense Daily, Jan. 13, 2022).
The mark would also direct the Secretary of the Navy to report on the possibility of combining the Navy and Marine Corps’ Landing Ship Medium (LSM) and the Army Maneuver Support Vessel (MSV) into a shared base platform to potentially save on costs.
The Marine Corps wants a 35-ship class of LSMs to support the three Marine Littoral Regiments at nine per unit plus eight to round out maintenance schedule requirements, all in addition to the current requirement of 31 traditional amphibious ships.
The LSM is planned to be a beachable craft that is 200 to 400 feet long, transport 75 Marines and their equipment up to 3,500 nautical miles, while including space to carry up to 10,000 square feet of cargo.
Simultaneously, the Army is testing a new beachable Vigor Maneuver Support Vessel (Light) with a range of over 360 nautical miles, maximum capacity of 82 tons to include a main battle tank or two armored vehicles to replace its aging Landing Craft Mechanized-8. The Army is also looking at developing a separate Maneuver Support Vessel (Heavy) that would be a larger size and capable of holding upward of 175 soldiers and their equipment.
“The committee continues to support multiyear and block buy procurement authority, and is interested in the feasibility, cost, and strategic benefits of combining the Army Maneuver Support Vessel (MSV) and Navy/Marine Landing Ship Medium (LSM) programs into a shared base platform contract to expedite production, provide cost savings from block buys and higher quantity and guarantee contracts, and the series of options to make this possible in the most efficient timeline to provide capability to forces in-theater faster,” the subcommittee’s mark report said.
The provision would direct the Navy Secretary to submit a report to the full committee by Dec. 15, 2023 on the feasibility of a joint venture between the Army and Navy for joint contracts, shared platform development, and block buys for the MSV and LSM programs.
The report is also to specifically include the requirements for each program that can and cannot be met with a shared base platform; value and cost savings of using a shared base platform under one contract and builder; the value and cost savings in a shared base platform with one builder as a block buy as well; a set of options, approaches, and timelines to bidding the programs jointly; and the effect of an MSV/LSM multiple platform acquisition plan and block buy on force development, in-theater logistics and fleet capability.
The subcommittee reported its bill to the full committee earlier this week, with the full committee mark set for next week.