15-02-2025
The US Navy is arming its fast war trimarans with drone-killer missiles
Desperate to find some use for its much-maligned Littoral Combat Ships and equally desperate to add to its roster of fully combat-capable vessels, the US Navy has found a surprising new mission for the 3,000-ton vessels – one the fleet couldn't have anticipated when it first conceived of the lightweight, near-shore surface combatant more than 20 years ago.
The Navy is transforming the $500-million LCSs – well, some of them – into drone-hunters. And it's doing so in an unusual way: by arming the flimsy, speedy vessels with a version of the Hellfire anti-tank missile that's capable of intercepting aerial targets.
USS Indianapolis, one of 10 monohull Freedom variants of the LCS, was the first to get the Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Hellfires, during the vessel's recent deployment to the Middle East, where US and allied warships have been battling Houthi missiles and drones while also deterring attacks by Iranian forces.
The Freedom variants are mostly outfitted for the anti-surface mission – that is, battling small boats at close range – so they usually sail with 24 vertical launchers for the 100-pound, 11-mile-range Hellfire.
They and the 15 trimaran Independence-variant LCSs also sail with multi-purpose 57-millimeter guns as well as infrared-guided Rolling Airframe Missiles for short-range air-defense.
But the Freedoms' normal Hellfire complement includes radar-guided models optimized for striking targets on the surface, including boats. It apparently took a little work to modify the missiles for surface-to-air usage. The missiles arrived shortly before Indianapolis departed the Middle East in November, ending a nine-month deployment.
The ship didn't actually shoot any Hellfires at Houthi drones, but that's not really the point. The point was proving the ship could shoot down Houthi drones.'This rapid integration of C-UAS capabilities enhances our ability to project power and maintain freedom of maneuver in contested environments,' said Rear. Adm. Kevin Smith, the head of the Navy's unmanned and small combatants division.
Now additional Freedoms are getting the drone-swatting Hellfires. It's part of a wider trend toward up-arming the formerly lightly-armed LCSs to finally, belatedly, lend the vessels meaningful combat capability.
The Navy is adding minesweeping gear to the Independences. Both LCS variants can also sail with quad packs of anti-ship missiles plus few canister launchers for long-range land-attack missiles bolted onto their helicopter decks. After several years of intensive effort on the part of embarrassed Navy leaders, who spent years defending the LCS amid rising costs and poor at-sea performance, the near-shore combatants can sweep for mines, attack small boats, strike targets on land – and now fling volleys of Hellfires at enemy drones. Not at the same time, of course: bolting on one weapon system might preclude the addition of another.
Still, the up-arming is welcome good news for the LCS flotilla, which is shedding the oldest vessels in the class to stabilize at 25 ships while also settling in at its home ports in California (the Independences) and Florida (the Freedoms). And it helps validate former Navy secretary Carlos Del Toro's December claim that the LCS 'is back' – and capable of joining the rest of the 290-ship US fleet in a major operation. Say, defending Taiwan from Chinese attack.
The upgrades still leave some yawning gaps in what the LCSs can do, however. Lacking the large vertical launchers, Aegis combat systems and long-range radars that equip the Navy's bigger destroyers and cruisers, the LCSs cannot launch or guide heavy air-defense missiles – to say nothing of launching and guiding the best heavy air-defense missiles, which also possess anti-ballistic-missile and anti-satellite capability.
'We wanted to make sure that they had as much capability as possible,' Capt. Matthew Lehmann, program manager of the Navy's LCS Mission Modules office, said of Indianapolis's crew. But alongside a few other add-on weapons, the drone-killing Hellfires might be all the extra capability the Freedom-variant LCSs can handle.
It's much better than nothing for a fleet that's struggling to keep pace with its closest rival, the Chinese navy.
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