LCS goes to War. Battle off Vietnam 2015.

LCS goes to War. Battle off Vietnam 2015 (Hypothetical scenario):

This scenario is inspired in the current (January 2011) discussions about the Littoral Control Ship, her future, her future missions and her future fate. In a surprising decission with the absurd allegation of budgetary eficiency, on November 2010 the US Navy decides to purchase a great number of LCS, when yet are not resolved a myriad of issues relatives to the ship design, concept and tasks. The US Navy will purchase ten ships of each one of the concurrent designs (added to the previous four), and not declare a winner neither select only one design for series shipbuilding.

In particular this scenario is motived when in some blog someone asked a few days ago: "How a group of LCS can stand before a Chinese Sovrenmenny ?".

We must remember the LCS is not defined clearly as a single class of warships. With a group of specific but not clearly defined missions, tasks, and the correspondent modular mission packages, (with limited weapons of not very long range and of limited punch), limited protection and limited structural resistance, limited number of crew members (operational fatigue of a reduced crew is a limitating factor of military operations) and emphasis on speed, LCS should be placed only in very concrete niches on the naval operations (basically sea control in areas with limited menaces, littoral ASW, special operations support and minehunting). But many people fears, in a crisis situation, LCS will be used as an ordinary warship in usual combat missions as an ordinary light frigate/corvette, perhaps as the vulnerable British battlecruisers in the Battle of Jutland, and the outcome will be the same, an Admiral saying: "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today", a lot of servicepeople died in vain, and one more loss for the interests of the United States.

That is one of the Harpoon strong points, we can imagine and simulate easily what will happen in the future, evaluate it, and after future modifications in the configurations of the LCS applied on the database, we can evaluate it again and every time the LCS design changes.

Historical background (Hypothetical):

The near future, summer 2015. A constant succession of new challenges in a fast changing world. At the other extreme of the world Argentina has seized the Falklands/Malvinas Islands on August 2011, and the failure of the reduced British forces sent without air support to recover the islands has motivated a great lack of credibility on the Western military capacities. In Europe, the Islamic Supremacy groups are forcing the European Union governments to be aside of the global issues. Europe is not already a player. Only very reduced US forces are keeping a credible operational readiness in the Western countries.

China sees on it an opportunity to expose clearly and affirm what is his strategic influence zone, the countries from which he needs to import raw strategic materials and other resources, and the external markets that considers as of his exclusive property for import and export of manufactured goods, and in those China will not tolerate the intromission of powers strange to Asian countries. His strategic influence zone is very similar in extension and configuration to the previous Japanese Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and it will motivate the same type of troubles in the Pacific Ocean.

And remember, the intelligence estimates ever can be erroneous ...

Enrique Mas, January 2011