(11-30-2021 03:37 PM)CrimsonPhantom Wrote:  Littoral Combat Ship Minneapolis-Saint Paul Delivers to Navy After Combining Gear Fix; Navy Resumes Delivery of Freedom-Class

Quote:The Littoral Combat Ship Minneapolis-Saint Paul (LCS-21) delivered to the Navy after almost a year of waiting for a fix to the gearing mechanism that connects the ship’s gas turbines and diesel engines, Navy officials said today.

Minneapolis-Saint Paul had completed its acceptance trials in 2020, but the Navy did not take delivery of the ship while the service was assessing the larger class-wide defect in the RENK AG-built combining gear that came to light after two combining gear casualties aboard USS Detroit (LCS-7) and USS Little Rock (LCS-9). Without the gears that combine the power of the ships’ Rolls Royce MT-30 turbines and diesel engines, the Freedom-class ships can’t achieve their top speed in excess of 45 knots.

The fix to the combining gear, announced on Wednesday by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday, now lifts the Navy’s restriction – implemented in January – on accepting new deliveries of the Freedom-class LCS from shipbuilder Lockheed Martin.

“I feel confident that we have applied that technical rigor to address this problem. And I look forward to delivering LCS 21… as well as the rest of the Freedom variants of the LCS class,” Jay Stefany, acting assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, told reporters on Thursday.

Cooperstown (LCS-23), the next ship in line for the fix, is finalizing the repair to its combining gear and is expected to deliver to the Navy by January, Program Executive Office for Unmanned and Small Combatants Rear Adm. Casey Moton told reporters at the same roundtable.

After Minneapolis-Saint Paul was taken from the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard in Wisconsin to Escanaba. Mich., to prove out the repair techniques that will be applied to the rest of the class.

“On LCS-21, it took us a little under six months, it’s an extensive process,” Moton said.
“We think LCS-23 will probably only take four to five months.”

The Navy now has a path to repair the remaining ships to be delivered – Cooperstown (LCS-23), Marinette (LCS-25), Nantucket (LCS-27) and Beloit (LCS-29).

Cleveland (LCS-31), the final Freedom-class ship, “already has the gear fix because of where that ship was in the production schedule. Her gears were actually delivered with the fix already installed,” Moton said.

While the fix is set for the ships under construction, questions remains as to how much of the cost will be shouldered by the Navy or Lockheed Martin.

Moton declined to say how much the repair would cost ,citing ongoing contract negotiations that would determine the cost responsibility.

The Navy is still also working through how it will address the fixes for the eight in-service ships with the RENK AG combining gear. The decommissioned Freedom (LCS-1) and USS Fort Worth (LCS-3) were designed with a different gearing mechanism built by U.S. company Philadelphia Gear.

“Specific plans for incorporating the fix for in-service ships are under Navy assessment,” Moton said.

Until then, the remaining Freedom-class LCS are under a Naval Sea Systems Command advisory restricting operations of the LCS to either turbines or diesels – not both.

As for the ships in the yard, the service will keep them in the Great Lakes over the winter to wait out the freezing of the Saint Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic Ocean and transiting to their homeport in Mayport, Fla.

“Our plan for Minneapolis-Saint Paul is to keep the ship there over the winter. And then she will sail away in the spring and head to her commissioning which is going to be in Duluth in the spring,” Moton said.

Next Generation SSN(X) Attack Sub ‘Is Going to Carry a Lot of Torpedoes,’ Says Admiral

Quote:ARLINGTON, Va. – The next U.S. nuclear attack submarine must require less maintenance, be fast, quiet and packed with torpedoes, the service’s director of undersea warfare said on Thursday.

The SSN(X) nuclear attack boat will be more focused on the war in blue water than the multi-mission Virginia-class submarines, which are designed to operate closer to shore for missions like signals intelligence and special operation missions.

“Virginia remains the most capable multi-mission submarine in the world – bar none,” Rear Adm. Doug Perry, the director of the undersea warfare division on the chief of naval operations staff (OPNAV N97), said last week. “But we must maintain our undersea advantage by investing for future capabilities. And we know we need to start that work today to make sure we can deliver SSN(X) in time of need, and without lots of technical or schedule risk.”

In 2019, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the SSN(X) boats could cost up to $5.5 billion per hull. The current Virginia-class boats cost about $2.8 billion per hull, while the Block Vs with the 80-foot Virginia Payload Module will cost about $3.2 billion.

“The Navy indicates that the next-generation attack submarine should be faster, stealthier, and able to carry more torpedoes than the Virginia class—similar to the Seawolf-class submarine. CBO therefore assumed that the SSN(X) would be a Seawolf-sized SSN, which displaces about 9,100 tons when submerged, and would have an all-new design in keeping with the Navy’s description of it as a fast, lethal next-generation attack submarine,” the CBO wrote.

Before Virginia, the Navy developed the Sea Wolf-class to be a deep-diving submarine with a weapons room that can field about 50 torpedoes.

Perry said, in broad strokes, SSN(X) would take the heavily-armed Seawolf template, combine the stealthy technology developed for Virginia and keep the time in maintenance to a minimum.

Outside of a classified initial draft capabilities document, “we don’t know the specific characteristics that will be in SSNs. But we do believe that the next submarine will have a large horizontal payload capacity. You can read that as it’s going to carry a lot of torpedoes. And we know how to do that. It’ll be fast. And it’ll have acoustic superiority. That’s both sensors to hear the other ships out there as well as stealth – staying quiet,” Perry said.

“We know how to do all of these things, but we have to integrate them into one platform.

Speed and large payload? We did that on Seawolf, and we need to pull that forward to a modular construction submarine.”



Part of the development of more offensive submarines, the Navy restarted the Mk-48 Advanced Capability (ADCAP) heavyweight torpedo in 2016.

“The heavyweight torpedo will remain the weapon of choice for the submarine for this for the foreseeable future, primarily due to its inherent stealth, its destructive effects in the battlespace, and [it’s] pretty difficult to defend against and it also [preserves] the stealth of launch platform,” Perry said.

The development of the Navy’s Acoustic Superiority Program began on Virginia-class USS South Dakota (SSN-790), which commissioned in 2019, Perry said. The package includes a large vertical array mounted on the hull just aft of the sail, a special exterior coating and machinery quieting improvements inside the boat.

Based on the timing of the construction of the Columbia-class, the new class would come just as the construction of the class of 12 nuclear ballistic missile submarines is ending in the 2040s and in the short term design work should begin soon.

“With Columbia 95 percent design complete, now is the time to begin transitioning that experienced design workforce,” Perry said.
“Fielding any new class submarine is challenging, but we got to strike while the iron is hot.”

The Virginia boats now – and the Columbia boats in the future – are built in a teaming arrangement between Huntington Ingalls Industries and General Dynamic Electric Boat. Each yard builds part of a boat and the components are barged to each yard for final assembly, with EB being the lead yard for the design of each class. Perry said that the workforce would be key to making SSN(X) affordable.

“This maintains a steady demand signal for the shipyard workforce, which is a key element of developing and sustaining a resilient submarine industrial base,” Perry said.

The Navy is also considering how it will leverage unmanned undersea vehicles with its new class.

“We know the ability to influence the battlespace and leverage the seafloor is to get to the bottom of the ocean you will need UUVs,” Perry said.
“That requires a submarine interface that will drive what SSN(X) has to be in terms of a dimension for an interface that will launch and recover [UUVs]. It may be a torpedo tube it may be something different.”

On the other end of construction, the Navy is working to increase the amount of time the submarines can operate by reducing time in maintenance.

“SSN(X) has to have high operational availability, [we’ve] got to be able to keep that ship at sea. And that gets to sort of the class maintenance plan. We’ve learned a lot from operating [the Los Angeles class], then Seawolf and Virginia. We are analyzing those class maintenance plans with PEO Subs and making sure that the class maintenance plan we’ve come up with gives us the highest operational building availability possible,” Perry said.
“That’ll be really part of our calculus as we define the work through the capability development document and [requirements] process and defining what SSN(X) needs to be.”

Ive always been curious as to why a torpedo cannot be easily defeated with the same concept we use to defeat a missile. Why are there no anti-torpedo torpedos?

As for the LCS---if they can at least get the propulsion issues worked out---you can always add weapons to the platform to make them more useful. If you can arm them with "smart shells" for the 57mm gun and add 8 to 12 VLS cells---you've at least got a platform thats dangerous in a blue water scenario and has some enhanced survivabilty. If you can then add a large long range drone like the Bell 247 that can carry missiles, torpedos, sonobouys, or recon modules to its air component---you've got a pretty useful platform for merchant interdiction, scouting, or even ASW work. Ships like that could be very useful if satellite capabilities get taken out. At the very least---they can be a reasonable stop gap low end warship until better options can be built in adequate numbers.