The Navy’s latest FY 2024 30-year shipbuilding plan revealed the Navy plans to sell six Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) it has been planning to decommission.
The plan noted the FY 2024 budget request seeks to decommission 11 ships next year so that it “frees up additional resources for shipbuilding and other priorities.”
Notably, the Navy seeks to decommission the even-numbered Independence-variant USS Jackson (LCS-6) and Montgomery (LCS-8) in 2024, which are only nine and eight years old, respectively. The ships were originally meant to serve for 25 years and were built by Austal USA.
The shipbuilding plan said the budget continues to focus on using LCSs for mine countermeasures (MCM) and surface warfare (SUW) missions and shifting anti-submarine warfare (ASW) missions to the upcoming Constellation-class frigates.
The document said the Navy has a current warfighter requirement for 15 Independence-variant LCSs focused on MCM missions and six Freedom-variant LCSs focused on the SUW mission. LCS-6 and 8 were originally designated for the SUW mission, but after the FY 2023 budget resetting of the LCS mission set for the six SUV vessels, the Jackson and Montgomery were left “excess to need.”
The Navy said it hopes restricting each variant to specific mission types will help streamline operations.
“Dedicating each of the classes to a specific mission set enables hull form and fleet concentration areas to align, simplify and streamline manning, training, and sustainment activities. A total inventory of 17 Independence-class LCS leaves the Navy with two of those ships as excess to need supporting the wrong mission set; consequently, the two oldest Independence-class ships are planned for decommissioning in FY2024,” the document said.
The Navy also said neither LCS-6 nor 8 have completed lethality and survivability upgrades while they will be replaced with newer Independence-variant LCS delivering within five years “with more capability.”
While the FY 2023 shipbuilding plan also expected to set LCS-6 and 8 into Out of Commission in Reserve status, retained as reactivation candidates, the latest plan sets them up for Foreign Military Sales (FMS).
The plan also plans for the odd-numbered Freedom-variant ships USS Wichita (LCS-13), Billings (LCS-15), Indianapolis (LCS-17), and St. Louis (LCS-19) for inactivation and FMS in fiscal year 2025. The Freedom-variant ships are built by Fincantieri Marinette Marine under prime contractor Lockheed Martin [LMT].
The Freedom-variant LCSs have been plagued by a class-wide combining gear defect requiring fixes installed on all ships the Navy is keeping as well as making changes to in-production ships. Lockheed Martin has already installed the fix into the newer future USS Marinette (LCS-25), USS Minneapolis-Saint Paul (LCS-21) and the future USS Cooperstown (LCS-23).
Without the fix, this variant of LCS is limited in its top speed and remaining in-service ships may have to wait years to get it.
The Navy has been pushing to retire the oldest Freedom-variant ships both due to the combining gear issue and the cancellation of the planned ASW mission package due to severe technical challenges.
While the Navy sought to retire eight Freedom-variant LCSs in the 2023 budget, the final congressional authorization bill only allowed the Navy to inactivate four.
When the FY 2024 budget was unveiled last month, Rear Adm. John Gumbleton, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for budget, told reporters “the department is looking into exactly what we might be able to do with selling LCS. The particular decision for the six and eight call was not about, you know, we’re going to sell these, but the department is looking at that strategy for vessels that we’ve already decommissioned, and that may consider in the future” (Defense Daily, March 13).
Last year, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday told a Senate Appropriations panel the government should consider selling the LCSs to other countries that could use them effectively, specifically citing countries in South America (Defense Daily, May 27, 2022).
“There are countries in South America, as an example…that would be able to use these ships that have small crews and so instead of just considering scrapping as the single option. I think there are others to look at.”
The shipbuilding plan did not indicate what countries the Navy was currently looking to sell these ships to.