Latest news with #LittoralCombatShips
Malay Mail
02-05-2025
- Business
- Malay Mail
Malaysia's ageing navy to get major upgrade with five new combat and three mission ships, says deputy defence minister
SUBANG, May 2 — The Royal Malaysian Navy's (RMN) capability to defend national waters will be significantly enhanced with the procurement of five Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) and three Littoral Mission Ships (LMS), scheduled to begin next year, said Deputy Defence Minister Adly Zahari. He said construction progress for both classes of vessels was satisfactory, with the first LCS expected to be delivered in August next year and the LMS fleet in 2027. 'The government remains committed to enhancing the navy's capabilities by equipping it with new assets. We are also ensuring these ships are fitted with advanced technology to meet our defence needs,' he told reporters after the launch of a digital studio at Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK) TUDM Subang today. He was responding to a news portal report highlighting the challenges faced by the RMN due to its ageing combat fleet. Adly added that the first LCS is undergoing port and sea trials, while construction of the LMS is underway following the finalisation of its procurement from Turkish defence firm Savunma Teknolojileri Mühendislik in June last year. Meanwhile, Adly said the new digital studio at SK TUDM Subang under the Affin Digital Space programme is part of the Ministry of Defence's initiative to digitalise schools located in army camps. He said the studio is equipped with green screen technology, allowing students and teachers to carry out media-based programmes with creative digital content. SK TUDM Subang is the second school to be involved in the initiative, following the launch of a similar studio at SK Kementah in Kuala Lumpur earlier this year. The next rollout is scheduled for June at SK Sir Sultan Ibrahim in Kluang, Johor. 'The digital studios at these three schools are made possible through an RM94,000 contribution from Affin Bank. The ministry hopes to eventually expand the initiative to all 27 schools located in camps nationwide,' he said. Also present at the launch were Affin Bank Berhad Group's chief executive officer of Community Banking, Mohammad Fairuz Mohd Radi, and SK TUDM Subang headmistress, Zatul Bazamah Abu Bakar. — Bernama
Malaysiakini
02-05-2025
- Business
- Malaysiakini
First littoral combat ship expected in Aug 2026, LMS fleet in 2027
The Royal Malaysian Navy's ability to defend national waters will be enhanced with five Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) and three Littoral Mission Ships (LMS), said Deputy Defence Minister Adly Zahari. He said construction progress for both classes of vessels was satisfactory, with the first LCS expected to be delivered in August 2026 and the LMS fleet in 2027. 'The government...
The Sun
02-05-2025
- Business
- The Sun
LCS, LMS procurement to significantly enhance navy's capability
SUBANG: The Royal Malaysian Navy's (RMN) capability to defend national waters will be significantly enhanced with the procurement of five Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) and three Littoral Mission Ships (LMS), scheduled to begin next year, said Deputy Defence Minister Adly Zahari. He said construction progress for both classes of vessels was satisfactory, with the first LCS expected to be delivered in August next year and the LMS fleet in 2027. 'The government remains committed to enhancing the navy's capabilities by equipping it with new assets. We are also ensuring these ships are fitted with advanced technology to meet our defence needs,' he told reporters after the launch of a digital studio at Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK) TUDM Subang today. He was responding to a news portal report highlighting the challenges faced by the RMN due to its ageing combat fleet. Adly added that the first LCS is undergoing port and sea trials, while construction of the LMS is underway following the finalisation of its procurement from Turkish defence firm Savunma Teknolojileri Mühendislik in June last year. Meanwhile, Adly said the new digital studio at SK TUDM Subang under the Affin Digital Space programme is part of the Ministry of Defence's initiative to digitalise schools located in army camps. He said the studio is equipped with green screen technology, allowing students and teachers to carry out media-based programmes with creative digital content. SK TUDM Subang is the second school to be involved in the initiative, following the launch of a similar studio at SK KEMENTAH in Kuala Lumpur earlier this year. The next rollout is scheduled for June at SK Sir Sultan Ibrahim in Kluang, Johor. 'The digital studios at these three schools are made possible through an RM94,000 contribution from Affin Bank. The ministry hopes to eventually expand the initiative to all 27 schools located in camps nationwide,' he said. Also present at the launch were Affin Bank Berhad Group's chief executive officer of Community Banking, Mohammad Fairuz Mohd Radi, and SK TUDM Subang headmistress, Zatul Bazamah Abu Bakar.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Yahoo
Navy finally finds something the LCS is good at: Stopping drug smuggling
The oft-maligned Littoral Combat Ship, or LCS, may have found its true calling: chasing down smugglers. USS Minneapolis-Saint Paul, a Freedom-variant LCS, recently stopped two suspected drug smuggling operations within 72 hours 'through a combination of air and surface operations' while deployed to the Caribbean, according to the Navy. A Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment that is embarked aboard the ship and Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 50, Detachment Three helped the Minneapolis-Saint Paul seize nearly 1,279 pounds of cocaine worth about $9.5 million along with 2,480 pounds of marijuana worth roughly $2.8 million, according to an April 17 Navy news release. The successful operation is one of several examples in recent years of an LCS nabbing drug smugglers. In 2020, USS Gabrielle Giffords stopped a vessel in the Eastern Pacific that was carrying $106 million worth of suspected cocaine. In 2021, USS Wichita and USS Sioux City seized $17 million and more than $20 million worth of suspected cocaine, respectively in the Caribbean Sea. Not a bad haul for Littoral Combat Ships, vessels long beset by problems, including a serious design flaw in the Freedom-variant's propulsion system, prompting the Navy to decommission some of the ships after a short lifespan. The Sioux City was mothballed in 2023 after only five years of service. The LCS's reputation was so bad four years ago that then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday suggested to lawmakers that the service give the ships to other countries that 'would be able to use them effectively.' But the LCS is 'almost perfectly made' for operations against drug smugglers, said Brian Persons, who previously served as the civilian chief engineer and executive director of Naval Sea Systems Command and later became deputy chief of naval operations for warfare systems. 'Eventually, these ships, they find their place and niche in the warfighting world,' said Persons, who is currently a senior management scientist with the RAND Corporation. The Navy selected two different hull designs for Littoral Combat Ships: The Freedom- and Independence-variants. Freedom-class ships are among the smaller warships in the Navy. At 387 feet long, they are more than 100 feet shorter than an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and displace less than half of the total tonnage, 3,400 tons to a destroyer's 8,400. But Littoral Combat Ships are fast, carry embarked helicopters and are brimming with air- and surface-search radar, all of which are helpful for nabbing drug smugglers, who tend to use go-fast boats and rudimentary submersibles, Persons told Task & Purpose. The ships are also armed with missiles, though they are unlikely to use them against drug smugglers due to the costs of the munitions, he said. Of all the Navy's warships, the LCS is probably the best choice for counternarcotics missions, said Persons, who explained that destroyers and cruisers are expensive ships that are designed for 'high-end' combat, such as ballistic missile defense. Also, drug smugglers tend to focus on speed in hopes of eluding detection rather than fighting back against pursuers, unlike military forces in China and Russia, which have advanced anti-ship weapons, Persons said. 'It would be extremely overkill for a destroyer or cruiser to go do counternarcotics missions,' Persons said. 'They could do it, but the Littoral Combat Ship system would be a better employment of assets for the U.S. Navy. While drug cartels currently do not pose a serious threat to U.S. Navy ships, that may not remain true forever, said James Holmes, the J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. 'If the Russia-Ukraine war and the operation in the Red Sea have shown anything, it's that naval warfare has been 'democratized,'' Holmes told Task & Purpose. 'Capabilities once available only to great powers are becoming available to many contenders.' Ukraine has managed to inflict losses on Russian ships using shore-launched missiles and drones, even though it does not have a significant navy itself, Holmes said. And Houithi rebels in Yemen have used missiles and drones to challenge Western navies, even though they have not hit any warships so far. 'Now, I doubt drug cartels will ever field antiship cruise or ballistic missiles, but they could well deploy cheap surface, air, or even subsurface drones against littoral combat ships,' Holmes said. 'LCS has been doing pretty well now that it has found its niche, but these are very lightly armored warships. The trimaran variant, the Independence class, even has an all-aluminum hull and a legacy of hull cracking. 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Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Yahoo
Navy MH-60 Seahawk Replacement Will Leverage Army's Future Vertical Lift Tiltrotor Plans
Ongoing work on the U.S. Army's Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) tiltrotor is helping the U.S. Navy refine its next-generation Future Vertical Lift-Maritime Strike (FVL-MS) plans. FVL-MS is set to be a family of systems with crewed and uncrewed components to succeed the Navy's existing MH-60R and MH-60S Seahawks, as well as its MQ-8C Fire Scout drone helicopters. Navy Rear Adm. Michael 'Buzz' Donnelly, head of the Air Warfare Division within the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, provided new details about FVL-MS to TWZ and other outlets on the sidelines of the Navy League's Sea Air Space 2025 exhibition yesterday. The Army is currently working toward fielding a fleet of FLRAA aircraft derived from Bell's V-280 Valor design, which will replace a significant portion of the service's H-60 Black Hawk fleets. The Navy has 270 MH-60Rs and 256 MH-60Ss in inventory, according to NAVAIR's website, but it is unclear whether those figures are current. At present, the service expects to fly both types at least deep into the 2030s. The Navy is already moving to retire all its still-young MQ-8Cs, which have struggled with various issues before and after reaching initial operational capability in 2019. Collectively, MH-60R/S helicopters currently perform a wide range of missions, including anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare, mine countermeasures, electronic warfare support, combat search and rescue, assault, and vertical replenishment. The MQ-8C was envisioned primarily as an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platform, particularly to help Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) with targeting at extended ranges, but that might also have been adapted for other roles. The planned replacement FVL-MS 'is a family of systems. We foresee that to be both a manned platform partnering with an unmanned capability,' Rear Adm. Donnelly said. Whether the concept is close to the Army's FLRAA 'or another type of design is still being evaluated in concept development.' 'We'll definitely continue to leverage what we are already teamed with the [on] Army for FLRAA. Certainly not going to miss an opportunity to take advantage of what they've already developed,' he continued. 'We've got different space and environmental factors in terms of operating from sea, operating from a combined flight deck, that won't allow us to use the exact type of air vehicle they were looking at, but they have done a lot of very good work that we can continue to leverage.' Donnelly noted that the Navy's has a requirement for two FVL-MS aircraft to fit aboard any one 'CRUDES' – short for cruiser and destroyer type ships like the service's existing Ticonderoga and Arleigh Burke classes – as well as its Freedom and Independence class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) and future Constellation class frigates. Seahawks also currently operate from other Navy ships, including aircraft carriers, amphibious assault ships, expeditionary sea base vessels, and command ships. In addition to needing to account for limited physical space, designing aircraft for protracted operations from sea-based platforms brings along other inherent requirements, including measures to mitigate saltwater corrosion. 'Specifically, you know, the [FLRAA] air vehicle, the mechanics, and kinetic performance of that is interesting,' the rear admiral added. 'What's most interesting is the combat system, the ability to integrate unmanned systems from the design up.' 'The [FVL-MS] program is informed by the Army and Marine Corps advances in improved engine design, digital backbone, Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA), advanced rotor blades, materials and launched effects,' the Navy has also said in the past. As TWZ has highlighted many times in the past, increased range, as well as greater speed to cover those distances faster, were key considerations for the Army when it picked Bell's V-280-based design as the winner of the FLRAA competition. The Army has also been very outspoken in touting FLRAA's open-architecture mission systems, which will make it easier to integrate new and improved capabilities and functionality down the line. For the Army, the performance boost that FLRAA offers will be particularly critical in any future operations across the vast expanses of the Indo-Pacific region, especially a potential high-end fight against China. These are similarly important considerations for the Navy, which has to contend with the added complexity of conducting aviation operations from ships at sea that could be thousands of miles from friendly or hostile shores. Extending the operational reach of friendly forces is only set to become more important as the range of potential threats also increases. 'The threat paradigm in the 2030-2035 timeframe — as well as the principles of DMO [Distributed Maritime Operations] — dictate that FVL (MS) be able to conduct these tasks in a highly contested environment, at greater ranges, and with greater speed, endurance and precision,' the Navy previously laid out in its Naval Aviation Vision 2030-2035 document. 'FVL (MS) will leverage advances in AI and ML [artificial intelligence and machine learning] sensor technology, AI and ML to fully integrate the manned and unmanned platforms to form highly effective teams, thereby reducing operator workload and increasing the speed and quality of aircrew decision-making.' This, together with Donnelly's comments yesterday about the Navy being particularly interested in what the Army is doing with FLRAA when it comes to teaming with uncrewed platforms, underscore just how important vertical takeoff and landing capable drones capable of performing a variety of missions are to the FVL-MS plan. A crewed-uncrewed team with extended reach could be particularly useful for anti-submarine warfare missions, something TWZ has highlighted in the past. Overall, 'FVL (MS) will be the most widely distributed aviation platform in the Navy embarking on all surface combatants from future FFG to aircraft carriers and will contribute to more primary mission areas than any other aviation platform in the Navy,' Rear Adm. Donnelly had said last May. That month, the Navy announced the FVL-MS program had completed an analysis of alternatives (AoA) and was moving on to the development of a Capabilities Development Document (CDD) to firm up core requirements, as well as associated concepts of operations (CONOPS). For its part, Bell has pitched a navalized derivative of the V-280 tiltrotor in the past, as well as maritime strike and anti-submarine warfare configurations of its companion uncrewed V-247 Vigilant design, to the Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps. The Marines say they are also following the FLRAA program closely to see what could be leveraged in their search for a new Next Generation Assault Support (NGAS) aircraft to succeed the MV-22B Osprey tiltrotor. Tiltrotors, in general, offer substantial advantages in terms of speed, range, and maximum operating altitude they offer over traditional helicopters. However, they have not seen widespread adoption globally by armed forces or in the commercial sector due to historically high costs and complexities associated with the designs. The V-22, though currently in service with the Navy, Marines, and U.S. Air Force, has been and remains a very controversial aircraft with a checkered service record punctuated by numerous fatal crashes. This includes the loss of an Air Force CV-22B in 2023 off the coast of Japan that triggered a three-month-long grounding of virtually all Ospreys worldwide, the fallout from which is still being felt. It is worth noting that tilt-rotors do also present particular challenges for shipboard operations when it comes to the aforementioned space requirements. The Osprey features a folding main wing and rotors to help reduce its physical footprint. Adding such features to a design that does not include them from the start could be a complicated proposition. Models of the V-247 have been shown with a similar folding main wing and rotor arrangement to the V-22. Advanced compound helicopter designs like the SB>1 Defiant that lost to the V-280 in the FLRAA competition are still another pathway to increases in range and speed. At the same time, they bring their own costs and complexities, and still have generally lower overall performance than comparable tiltrotor designs. Back in February, a Navy contracting notice also highlighted the service's potential interest in a new Service Life Modernization (SLM) effort for the MH-60R/S Seahawk fleets, which could entail 'a collection of efforts with intended competitive space that will result in an extensive re-architecture and modernization of the MH-60R/MH-60S cockpit avionics and mission systems using a Modular Open System Approach.' The full scale and scope of the proposed SLM plan remains unclear. Sikorsky, now a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, developed a common digital cockpit architecture for the MH-60R and MH-60S variants decades ago. The Navy has also been looking at a separate Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) for the MH-60S specifically, and primarily to address airframe fatigue, since at least 2022, according to official budget documents. The Navy is already pursuing a number of other Seahawk modernization efforts, including engine improvements and communication suite upgrades, as well. As already discussed in the context of FLRAA, installing new open-architecture avionics and other mission systems onto the MH-60R/Ss would help simplify the process of adding updated functionality to the Navy Seahawks across the rest of their remaining service life. This might also provide another bridge, at least in part, to capabilities for FVL-MS. It's also worth noting that the cost of replacing all of the Navy's MH-60R/S helicopters with new FVL-MS aircraft could well be very steep. Like the Army, the Navy could decide to operate a hybrid fleet that retains a number of Seahawks for the foreseeable future. What we do know is that the Navy is actively leveraging elements of the Army's FLRAA program to help push ahead toward its future FVL-MS family of systems. Contact the author: joe@
