The Navy is planning a lethality upgrade on both classes of the Littoral Combat Ship that includes the ability to launch larger missiles like the SM-6, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said on Wednesday.
“Today, the Littoral Combat Ship is equipped with the Naval Strike Missile, a long-range precision strike weapon. Eventually, many will receive the Mk 70 Payload Delivery System with vertical launch system technology,” Del Toro said as he announced the service’s efforts to upgun the Littoral Combat Ship with Naval Strike Missiles and containerized Mk.41 vertical launching systems at the Naval Institute’s Defense Forum Washington.
“Yes, the LCS is back.”
The Navy plans to install the two systems on Freedom and Independence Littoral Combat Ships under the Over-the-Horizon Weapons System upgrade, which looks to deliver enhanced maritime strike capabilities to the class. Compared to the NSM, a low-observable missile that can strike targets more than 100 miles away, the containerized four-cell MK-41 vertical launch system can support the multi-role SM-6 and the intermediate ranged Tomahawk Land Attack Missile. Del Toro said the MK-70 PDS would give the service “tremendous firepower and even more technical advantage over our adversaries.”
USS Beloit (LCS-29), the service’s latest Freedom-class LCS, was slated as among the first vessels to receive the Over-the-Horizon Weapons System upgrade. USS Nantucket (LCS 27), another Freedom-class, sported a Lockheed- Martin-built MK- 70 PDS during its commissioning ceremony last month.
This plan builds upon previous initiatives by the services to upgun the lightly armed hulls, which include vertically launched Hellfire missiles and limited Harpoon experimentation. It should be noted that Naval Strike Missiles have been installed onboard forward-deployed Independence-class in the Indo-Pacific, which has drawn ire from Chinese analysts. In a 2021 paper, the Marine Design & Research Institute of China noted that missile-equipped LCS could be a “powerful tool” for American forces in the region.
“We have every intent to deploy them aggressively. Everywhere around the globe. And the Persian Gulf, obviously with the mine-sweeping capability, and everywhere else its needed. Particularly in the Pacific with these added capabilities,” said Del Toro.
A single Mk 70 PDS mounted on the flight deck of the Independence-class USS Savannah (LCS-28) conducted a live-fire test of an SM-6 missile in the Eastern Pacific last year by the Program Executive Office Integrated Warfare Systems in a rapid capabilities initiative.
Lockheed Martin also presented concepts that integrate NSM and up to three Mk 70 PDS onto the Freedom-class at Surface Navy Association 2024.
Overall, the Navy plans to field a fleet of 25 Littoral Combat Ships – 15 Independence-class ships equipped with a mine countermeasures mission package that will eventually replace the legacy Avenger-class MCM ships based in Bahrain and Japan and 10 Freedom-class ships that will field a variation of the surface warfare package that will include Naval Strike Missile and Hellfire AGM-114L Longbow strike missiles in addition to the MK-70 launchers.
