via USNI News.
The idea comes as the Navy looks for ways to employ the Littoral Combat Ships – which are now entering the fleet in high numbers – and the Marine Corps pursues a Light Amphibious Warship to shuttle Marines around the island chains. The Navy has struggled with the LCS mission packages – envisioned as a way to swap three different types of mission sets within the ship. But the service has only deployed an LCS with a version of the surface warfare mission package, as developing and fielding the anti-submarine warfare and mine countermeasure packages has been delayed.
“The LCS – the mission is not completely clear. And so I think the Navy is looking at this as a way to provide an additional mission for the LCS to do,” Hudson Institute senior fellow Bryan Clark, a former submariner who previously worked on the chief of naval operations staff, told USNI News.
“It would help the Navy get more value out of the LCS and make those deployments more impactful,” Clark added. “And then it would help them on the financial side because it would give them a way to mitigate that the LAW may be slow in coming or may not ever come at all.”
Here
I like this idea. I once pushed for this idea (but not as part of the EABO concept...I pushed it as part of my Reinforced MEU concept).
But make no mistake about it. It's suboptimal. It could even be called less than a half measure.
Which leads back to this whole thing.
We still don't see how the LAW and LPD/LHA/LHD would co-exist. The Navy can't grow crews on trees.
Which leads to the real canary in the coal mine.
It's obvious that the Navy has bigger fish to fry than getting the Marines the LAW. It's obviously more concerned with its surface, subsurface and air fleet than it is with pushing for a new ship for the Marines.
Now I ask you all.
If the LAW doesn't come online then how do you make the EABO a thing? If the Independence Class LCS is the ride for Marines in the Littorals then how does it offload HIMARS/NEMISIS?
Kinda patting myself on the back. If you recall I stated that the LAW would be the shatterpoint for this thing. I doubted that the Navy would saddle up to pay for another ship that the Marines had "figure out how to use" and it looks like the time might be now.
The Marines moved before the Navy while at the same time trying to tie itself to its hip.
We've been burned by doing this before and it looks like it might be happening again.
Ain't interservice politics grand?
