The Little Crappy Ship (LCS) is tragically incapable in the Houthi littoral combat environment of drones, anti-ship cruise missiles and anti-ship ballistic missiles.
And the USN brass knows it
No USN flag rank will risk losing his career by exposing an LCS in the Red Sea⬇️
1/
The failure of the LCS procurement is why Peter Zeihan's prediction that the USN will abandon protecting the world sea lanes in his book
"The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization"
is getting far too close to reality for my comfort.
2/
This Politico headline featuring three anonymous Pentagon officials talking about the US Navy losing the cost-attrition war shooting multi-million dollar missiles at $2000 Houthi drones underlines the anti-access area denial effect cheap drones cause.
3/
politico.com/news/2023/12/1…
Those anonymous Pentagon officials are correct to be concerned because they are looking at the per round unit costs of American anti-drone munitions like the Block 2 Coyote at $100,000.
The jet powered Coyote Block II is nice for dealing with a TB-2.
4/
thedrive.com/the-war-zone/d…
The Coyote Block II is marginal against an Orlan-10 costing $100K in Russia's corrupt procurement system.
The Coyote at $100K is pointless attritional loss versus a $6,000 Lancet loitering munition, let alone the $2000 Houthi drones the USN is fighting
6/
What we saw with Raytheon going from the much cheaper electric-propeller Block I Coyote to the micro-jet engine powered Bk II version is the typical Big/Expensive/Few crew increase the capability for higher unit cost spiral of every Pentagon procurement for the last 65 years.
6/
The Big/Expensive/Few crew in the Pentagon are as professionally obsolete as Horse Cavalry Generals in 1940 and Battleship Admirals on December 7th 1941.
Their military paradigm that they built careers upon has died, but they refuse to acknowledge it.
The picture I started this thread with is of the guided missile frigate USS Stark that 30 years ago ate an Iraqi Exocet missile that its Standard missiles, 76mm gun and Phalanx CIWS failed to intercept.
Objectively, the USS Stark had a better anti-aircraft fit than any LCS.
7/
And USS Stark had Destroyer Tenders like USS Cape Cod to reload it's Standard missile while underway(left).
Burke Class Destroyers like USS Carney have to withdraw to a port to reload their vertical launch missile cells.
8/
Given the increasing range of Houthi land attack cruise missiles.
Burke class DDG's like USS Carney may have to fall back as far as Diego Garcia to reload.
Assuming the Houthi don't hide a few Quds-3 launchers in few ISO containers on a merchant ship & land a dozen there.
9/
Which brings up an important point about US Navy analysts thinking inside a box, the VLS missile box.
That means they can't assess what adding conformal fuel tanks or bigger wings mean for cruise missile range, if you launch missiles like a V-1 off a ramp or from bombers.
10/
Because the Tomahawk cruise missile was scaled for a 21 inch torpedo tube, it's wings have a lift to drag ratio of about 2.425.
If you launch a Tomahawk like a V-1, we could improve the L/D ratio of a Tomahawk to somewhere around 10,which is Piper PA-28 Cherokee performance.
11/
Hypothetically a VLR Tomahawk would need to have a 194 ft^2 wing, which is essentially about 36~ feet wide; resulting in something like this & have a range on the order of about 4,900 nautical miles (9,074 km).
You couldn't launch it from a VLS cell, but you could from a CVN
12/
A 9K km VLR Tomahawk assembled by deck crews & fired from USN carriers would make hash of China's A2AD doctrine (figure below).
Because we have jet pilots in the USN airpower chain of command, the USN literally can't think that way, AKA VLR Tomahawk CVN deck strikes.
13/
In WW2, the US Army Cavalry missions of reconnaissance, offensive penetration of enemy screens & economy of force screening against the enemy continued after the horse flesh was removed.
The 21st century naval airpower mision will continue after the human flesh is removed.
14/
But there is going to be one heck of a fight to dump the US pilots unions.
At the end of WW2 these was an incredible three way turf fight over the US copy of the V-1 buzz bomb, the JB-2 loon.
The USAAF want to use JB-2's from bombers, the USN from LSTs, subs & CVE's while
15/
the US Army ground forces wanted to use JB-2's from ramp launchers because they could deliver medium bomber weight bomb tonnage from 24/7 ramp launchers for the same manpower hit as a B-26 Marauder group.
The fight was resolved by the end of WW2 and the pilots unions rise
16/
...to power inside the newly unified Defense Department via President Eisenhower's "Massive Nuclear Retaliation" doctrine.
This focused the DoD on manned aircraft as nuclear delivery platforms and killed cheap drones & conventional air breathing missiles for 30 years.
17/
Now 80 years from that JB-2 turf fight, the pilots are facing another reckoning they and the Big/Expensive/Few crew in the Pentagon that supports them can't win.
They are no longer "cost-effectiveness competitive" in the age of $2,000 drones.
18/18 End
@threadreaderapp unroll please
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.