![]() The second award, for $536 million, was for a 16-month systems-design effort by a General Dynamics-led team. This award was for a seven-month systems-design effort, with an option to construct two prototype vessels. One, valued at $423 million, went to a team led by Lockheed Martin. Supporters of the ship took heart when in May 2004 the Navy awarded two contracts for the next phase of the LCS. The Navy spent more than two years trying to explain its decision and make a solid case for the ship. As a result, the analytical basis for the ship was immediately attacked by naval officers, defense analysts, and members of Congress. The Navy’s leadership spent little time preparing either its own officer corps or Congress for this abrupt reversal of its long-stated preference for large warships, and then it botched the explanation of its rationale. Small warships are those having a displacement of less than 3,000 tons the LCS would displace about 2,700 to 2,900 tons. It had instead supported a future fleet comprising multimission warships, the smallest of which had a displacement of 9,000 tons. And throughout the 2001 defense program review, an effort conducted at the start of every new administration, the Navy had panned the idea of small warships. Just one year earlier, the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan pointedly excluded any mention of small, modular, focused-mission combatants. ![]() Inclusion of the LCS in the Navy’s future plans caught many by surprise. It would have a modular mission payload, allowing it to take on three naval threats-diesel submarines, mines, and small “swarming” boats-but only one at a time. The LCS would be a fast, stealthy warship designed specifically for operations in shallow coastal waters. Navy announced a new family of 21st century surface warships that includes a small, focused-mission combatant called the Littoral Combat Ship, or LCS.
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