By Geoff Fein
The USS Freedom (LCS-1) has been operating in the western Caribbean for a little over a month, and in that time the Navy has learned a bit about the ship’s capabilities as she has tracked down drug traffickers, according to a service official.
Freedom has been engaged in counter narcotics trafficking operations tracking and chasing down “go fast” boats and seizing tons of cocaine, according to the Navy.
So far, the ship’s performance has been exceptional, Cmdr. Randy Garner, commanding officer of the Gold Team, told reporters during a conference call yesterday.
“We are learning a lot about what Freedom can do well. We have sprint capability that people are well aware of and is well documented. We put that to use in pursuing some of the vessels in this part of the world that are narcotics trafficking,” he said. “And, with that speed, we were able to get some busts with the help of a very capable helicopter and 11-meter RIBs and a Coast Guard boarding team. We’ve got a pretty good team effort down here to catch some drug runners.”
Freedom is equipped with a modified surface warfare (SuW) mission package. “We modified it from the envisioned 15-person detachment with multiple combinations of remotely operated vehicles and 30mm gun mounts,” Garner said.
“What we have onboard right now are two 30mm gun mounts, eight techs to support those. We have a boat crew–a three person boat crew and two 11-meter RIBS used for boarding,” he added. “We have a Coast Guard legal detachment on board as well. They augment our ship’s capability, because they are law enforcement officers and the U.S. Navy does not do law enforcement operations.”
Freedom also carries a six-man visit board search and seizure (VBSS) team that assists with boardings, Garner noted. “That’s kind of our unique mission package tailored for this deployment.”
The VBSS team was brought on for the counter narcotics trafficking operations, which is not normally part of the surface warfare mission package the ship has on board, Garner said.
“There are small tweaks that we are still evaluating that could improve the mission package,” he said. “We are still evaluating what those should be.”
The surface warfare mission package has been very effective, Garner added. For example, the two 11-meter rigid inflatable boats are better than the seven-meter variant that most Navy ships use to conduct counter narcotics.
“The sea keeping of an 11-meter RIB is much better than the sea keeping of a seven-meter RIB. We also have a redundant propulsion plant, two engines vice one,” he said.
The Coast Guard’s legal detachment is well trained and specialized for the mission at hand and they have been invaluable, Garner added.
“The SuW mission package with the boat crew specifically trained to conduct 11-meter RIB operations has been helpful as well, and not just in boarding, but in the recovery and seizure of contraband once jettisoned,” he said. “We may be able to improve the RIBs some to get more speed out of them. The speed we have on the RIBs onboard has proven very useful and effective in our current mission.”
During one counter narcotics operations, as a RIB was getting close to the traffickers, it suffered an engine failure, enabling the suspects to get away, Garner said.
But Freedom was able to track the small boat down and force it into Panamanian territorial waters, he said. “The people hit the beach and left, but the boat was left [behind] and seized by local authorities.”
The Navy recovered 72 bales of cocaine from the water and Panamanian authorities recovered seven bales from the abandoned boat. “That resulted in 79 bales of cocaine, somewhere around 4,600 pounds is the rough weight of all that,” Garner said.
To date, Garner said there are several things he would call successes with Freedom‘s first deployment.
“I think the ship’s sensors are performing well. We have had very good reliability in our combat systems suite. We are able to detect go fast vessels with some of our unique sensors that other ships might not be able to. The EO (electro-optical) and IR (infrared) cameras have been very helpful…that’s a big success,” he said.
While the propulsion capabilities and the speed of LCS are well known, Garner pointed out that the ship is still able to reach high speeds even when fully loaded for the current deployment.
“There is lots of ammo, lots of people, lots of equipment on board. We are as heavy as we have ever been and we are still able to operate at high speed and fast enough to interdict go fast vessels. That’s also been a big success,” he said.
During the deployment, two of the ship’s four ship system diesel generators (SSDG) failed (Defense Daily, March 5).
“We have four diesel generators on board. We had problems with some of those. That’s the nature of life on a ship. You are going to have equipment break and we’ve had a maintenance process in place where we get support from the original equipment manufacture and from Lockheed Martin as the coordinating agent,” he said. “They have been able to get techs in place quickly and support our normal operations.”
Even with two SSDGs failing, Garner said Freedom never had to significantly alter its operations in support of the repairs.
“We had a maintenance period in Panama scheduled and we did that maintenance period and affected some more repairs. Right now we have all four generators available and we haven’t had anything be a major surprise,” Garner added. “As far as corrective actions required, the maintenance process where we have folks arrive as needed to support us has worked well and we are learning a little bit here and there. So far, it has been a success story. We have been able to continue our underway operations despite a few problems here and there.”
Apart from the problem with the SSDG casualty, from the maintenance and logistics perspective, Garner said the crew had seen exactly what they had expected. “We were able to respond very quickly and get those corrected and sustain operations,” he said of the SSDG repairs.
“All of those are good lessons and positive lessons. We still have things to learn about the ship to keep it sustained as best as possible with s small crew and a maintenance model that is different from the rest of the fleet,” Garner said. “But those are not things that detracted from our ability to operate.”
There are lots of small equipment things Freedom‘s crew have learned, and there are small upgrades or adjustments that could be made to bring more capability, he said.
“We have a bag full of those lessons learned that we are going to provide our chain of command. The good thing is they are all tweaks and not major changes,” Garner said. “We are finding that the sea frame works very well as it is currently designed and maintained.”
Freedom was built by the team of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Marinette Marine, which is now part of Fincantieri.