With the world's largest and most powerful fleet of aircraft carriers, destroyers and cruisers, the U.S. Navy absolutely dominates the deep water. But not so much in shallow waters – the so-called "littoral zones." Close to land, a ship might face overwhelming numbers of shore-based guns and missiles, swarms of small attack boats, plus the occasional hull-destroying coral reef. It's far too dangerous for a $2-billion destroyer, to say nothing of a $10-billion carrier.

The Navy's solution is to build lots of smaller, cheaper ships. The heart of this effort is the 3,000-ton-displacement "Littoral Combat Ship." LCS adapts commercial yacht and ferry designs – then adds weapons, sensors, and robots. When the ship was conceived in 2004, each copy was supposed to cost just $220 million – and the Navy wanted to build the first 13 by 2009. But after years of design changes and botched contracts, only two LCSs have been finished, each at a cost of over $600 million.

It's been rough sailing for the Navy's inshore fighter. But there might be smoother waters ahead.

The second LCS, and the first built to General Dynamics triple-hull "trimaran" ferry design, has spent this month on builder's trials on the Gulf of Mexico. "I am hearing nothing but good news from every possible place” about LCS-2 Independence, Galrahn wrote. This in contrast to Lockheed Martin's LCS-1 Freedom, a modified yacht that proved a real gas guzzler on her own trials last year.

The U.S. Navy still plans on buying at least 55 of the fast, coast-hugging LCSs, despite the cost over-runs and technical glitches on the first batch of vessels. The Navy has learned from Freedom and Independence, and costs should come down, according to Adm. Gary Roughead, the sea service's top officer. "We've turned the corner," Roughead said.

Navy support for the LCS is undiminished, according to one officer working on the Navy portions of the forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon's mega-strategy document. The officer, who requested anonymity, said the inshore ship is "the only way the Navy gets bigger." Navy planners still hope to expand the fleet from today's 280 combat vessels, to as many as 313.

The Navy's love for LCS does not extend to other small vessels that could help the sea service in the littorals, however. According to our source, the sea service is only grudgingly accepting the shallow-water catamaran transports that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates endorsed in his April speech announcing major shifts in weapons investment.

As for new versions of the coastal patrol boats and river craft that have proved so useful in Iraq? "I believe in the end we will see these vessels built as an outcome of QDR deliberations, but the Navy will state that they were forced upon them, and attempt to ignore them," the officer said. He added that the Navy might consign all future small ships to the "purgatory" that is the Navy's new Expeditionary Combat Command – the same command that oversees Navy construction workers and port security guards.

[PHOTO: General Dynamics]

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