International maritime security needs a dramatic shift in thinking and commitment to the greatest transnational threat of the twenty-first century. It is not drug trafficking which, while impactful in criminal behavior and the unfortunate consequences to consumers and their families, is not an existential threat. Nor is terrorism, specifically maritime terrorism, the primary concern. While maritime terrorism has occurred, it has been rare; and while it must be addressed and perpetrators brought to justice, the frequency of incidents (USS Cole, MV Limburg, Mumbai, and so on) have been comparatively few and far between.
Instead, the international community needs to turn to mid-twentieth century psychologist Abraham Maslow whose hierarchy of needs suggest that security and safety are important but are secondary to physiological needs for any person: rest, warmth, water, food.
Food is central to warfighting and to national stability. Whether it was Napoleon or Frederick the Great who said that an army marches on its stomach, the concern over the availability of food is apparent in medieval sieges or Julius Caesar’s near obsession about the availability of corn for his legions or denying it to his enemies as he discusses in his work, The Gallic Wars. The same is true for access to grain in the Sicilian Expedition, the Roman Empire’s ties to Egypt, or in some of the decision-making in major campaigns.
In terms of maritime security, maritime life provides the most fundamental need for protein. Contrary to the popular adage used in another context, there aren’t always other fish in the sea. Fish consumption continues to increase with population, but the population of fish doesn’t necessarily increase with human demand. It is difficult to find a report on fishing that doesn’t paint a bleak picture of overfishing in most waters. Marine protein for people and as fishmeal for cattle is growing unabated. Some dire reports suggest that by mid-century commercial fishing will be unviable due to fish depletion. Fish as a resource will be fought over just as spice and oil have been the cause of conflicts, but it could be far worse considering that spice was a nicety and not a necessity in the hierarchy of needs. And while all nations are dependent on oil economically, its unavailability would not be as immediately life-threatening as would the disappearance of fundamental marine protein. In fact, some countries have already begun firing on fishing vessels intruding on local waters. This is the canary in the coal mine for maritime security.
At nearly every maritime forum, audiences are reminded of the 90/80/70 percentages: the proportions of shipping by water, human population that lives near the water, and surface of the Earth that is covered by water. In this case, we need to consider a new set of numbers that affects maritime security, 50/40/30/20, including:
30 percent of the world’s fishing fleet is Chinese
20 percent of global fish is caught illegally
Part of the problem is that 20 percent, otherwise known as Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. One needs only read the work being done at the Pew Charitable Trusts or the superlative journalism by reporterIan Urbina that cast a light on illegal fishing and its relationship to other security issues. 20 to 30 percent of fish sold in the United States, for example, was caught illegally. It can be higher elsewhere.
The U.S. Navy is not in the business of dealing with illegal fishing, as one senior Navy advocate once told this author. “That is not our job. It is not our mission. We have China to deal with.” China is at the heart of the problem given how its fishing fleets have moved well beyond the South China Sea to nearly all parts of the globe in recent decades. The issue is recognized by the current U.S. administration: “The PRC ranks first in the world for illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing in coastal nations’ waters around the world, threatening local economies and harming the marine environment. Chinese leaders’ unwillingness to rein in these globally harmful practices does not match their rhetorical promises of environmental stewardship.” In Congress, the Maritime SAFE Act to address the threat of IUU fishing to national security was incorporated in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020. Just a few elements of this legislation direct the inclusion of counter-IUU fishing as part of the mission of the Combined Maritime Forces, including counter-IUU fishing exercises in the annual at-sea exercises conducted by the Department of Defense, in coordination with the United States Coast Guard, and creating partnerships similar to the Oceania Maritime Security Initiative and the Africa Maritime Law Enforcement Partnership in other priority regions. It also encourages shiprider agreements.
The Navy would understandably resist this added mission for a variety of reasons. Organizationally, it changes very slowly, and is fundamentally opposed to shifting some construction resources from capital ships to smaller vessels that would be more appropriately suited for maritime security missions such as IUUF partnerships. Influential defense contractors are also predisposed to larger ship programs given the financial considerations. In addition, some of the most threatened areas, such as off the coast of West Africa, are not where the Navy can invest many assets given other threats and missions in the Western Pacific and the Middle East. While the Coast Guard is the authoritative choice on countering IUU fishing, it needs more resources, particularly given the cost of even just prosecuting captured vessels.
However, the Navy is deeply involved in great power competition, and IUU fishing is now part of that dynamic. Diminishing marine protein has the potential to destabilize China, given its insatiable appetite to feed its enormous population, and that increases the risk it poses to other nations as it tries to satisfy its essential needs at others’ expense. China will increasingly pressure states for access to their waters or outright impose itself as it has already done before. In the near term, IUU fishing denies local populations resources and economic benefits from marine protein. Today, Chinese fishing vessels are plying global waters for their own interests, but tomorrow, their white hulls will follow to protect these interests. And then, given the quickly growing size of the Chinese Navy, gray hulls will eventually ensure that fishing fleets go virtually unimpeded by any nation.
To counter this, the Department of Defense should establish a new Joint Interagency Task Force for IUU fishing (JIATF-IUUF) that has initial responsibilities off Africa. Such a JIATF, ideally led by U.S. Coast Guard officers, must work closely not only with partnered nations but with nongovernment organizations which have been at the forefront of the IUU fishing challenge. Organizations such as Global Fishing Watch, C4ADS, and others ought to be consulted, as should the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which has shifted its focus from challenging Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean to successful public-private partnerships, especially in Africa. Sea Shepherd provides platforms and crews while the partnered host nations embark law enforcement detachments. This has resulted in the capture or seizure of more than 50 illegal fishing trawlers in recent years. Sea Shepherd, an organization with more than a dozen ships globally, is able to operate for about $10 million annually (due in part to most of the crew being unpaid volunteers). Whether the U.S. Government is willing to admit it or not, Sea Shepherd is providing capacity building and maritime partnerships that have been successful. In some cases, it has used former Coast Guard cutters. But the fact they are able to have such an impact at low cost ought to be looked at as a possible model for future U.S. partnerships.
Conclusion
Between NGOs, elements of U.S. government agencies, and Congressional legislation, there are positive moves toward addressing IUU fishing. Given the rapid depletion rates of fish stock, China’s growing global presence, and the impact of IUU fishing on economies, more action must be taken. Part of that action requires a reassessment of real innovative and adaptive measures that NGOs have used in partnership with host nations to counter what may be the greatest challenge in the twenty-first century.
Commander Claude Berube, USNR, PhD teaches at the U.S. Naval Academy. The views expressed are his and not necessarily those of the Academy or the Navy.
Featured Image: A Chinese fishing boat caught fire during an inspection by the South Korean Coast Guard on Friday. (South Korean Coast Guard photo)
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea(UNCLOS) specifies that all ships “have the nationality of the State whose flag they are entitled to fly.” Consequently, flag states exercise jurisdiction over their flagged vessels. A recent and quickly growing phenomenon, however, has put this basic tenet of the law of the sea in question: unauthorized flag use.
Unauthorized flag use is a practice whereby a vessel uses a state’s flag without its consent and, oftentimes, without its knowledge. Although this can take many forms, often overlapping, it may be helpful to think of this issue in two broad categories: fraudulent flagging and false flagging. Fraudulent flagging generally entails an official recognition of fraudulent registration, e.g. fraudulently issued registration documents resulting in formal recognition by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). False flagging, on the other hand, describes a situation where a vessel falsely claims registration different than the flag it is actually authorized to fly as a matter of expediency. Both create a gap wherein there is no effective oversight of the vessel’s activities, which can be exploited to facilitate a range of illicit activities.
Fraudulent Flags, Real Issues
The issue of fraudulent flagging was brought to the attention of the international community in 2015, when the IMO became aware of a fraudulent registry purporting to operate on behalf of the Federated States of Micronesia. Micronesia does not operate an international shipping registry. It is not even an IMO Member State. Two years later, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) formally brought the issue to the attention of the IMO Legal Committee after discovering that 77 out of the 84vessels flying its flag have been doing so without authorization. Other countries have also fallen victim to fraudulent registration, including Fiji, Samoa, Nauru, Vanuatu and the Maldives. Although in some cases, like Nauru, the fraud was caught early enough that no fraudulent documents were ever issued, as of last year over 300 vessels are believed to have beenregistered fraudulently.
These fraudulent registrations are exploited by those engaged in illicit activity. In the case of the DRC, the country only became aware of the issue when contactedby INTERPOL with a request to prosecute two vessels engaged in illicit activity that claimed the DRC flag. Of the 98 vessels investigated by Fiji since 2017 for fraudulently claiming its flag at least 20 percent were subsequently linked to North Korea and likely engaged in sanctions evasion. Fraudulent registries not only deprive legitimate registries of income but can also cause significant reputational damage when vessels fraudulently flying a flag are involved in illicit activities. In just one example, the Maldives found itself having to officially denya statement by the Japanese Foreign Ministry which identified a supposedly Maldives-flagged vessel as engaging in a prohibited ship-to-ship transfer with a North Korean tanker.
In addition to enabling illicit activity and causing financial or reputational damage to legitimate maritime actors, fraudulent and false flagging can also adversely impact a range of other areas—maritime safety and security, environmental protection, and maritime emergencies among them. More broadly, as the resolution on the subject adopted by the IMO Assembly in January 2020 notes, unauthorized flag use “endanger[s] the integrity of maritime transport, and undermine[s] the legal foundation of the Organization’s treaty and regulatory regime.”
Despite that, the IMO response to the issue has been slow to come. While the organization has been aware of the problem at least since 2015, it was only in 2019 that it adopted any concrete measures to address it. One of these measures involved establishinga whitelist of authorized national registries and a procedure of verifying the information provided. This is particularly important given that the IMO had in the past erroneously recognized the fraudulent Micronesia International Ship Registry as a legitimate authorized body acting on behalf of the Micronesian government.
The fraudulent entity, Micronesia International Ship Registry, listed as the official registry representative in an IMO contact list circa early 2018. This has since been corrected.
The other element—perhaps the most practically impactful—is the adoption of a new flag indicator in IMO records denoting fraudulent registrations. Adopted as an outcome of the March 2019 meeting of the IMO Legal Committee, it is intended to identify instances where a flag state has confirmed that a vessel was never legitimately registered. This, however, has been implemented inconsistently and likely only identifies a portion of vessels that have engaged in the practice. As an example, despite Micronesia having never operated a flag registry, not all vessels which had fraudulently claimed Micronesian registration are marked with the ‘false’ indicator in the IMO’s Global Integrated Shipping Information System (GISIS).
Entries for the FU DE and SEA STAR 3 in the IMO’s Global Integrated Shipping Information System (GISIS), only one of which notes Micronesia flag use as illegitimate. (Click to expand)
While these steps are welcome, they are insufficient to combat fraudulent flagging on their own. Indeed, the most impactful measure taken has been efforts by individual countries to denounce fraudulent registrations issued in their name. Marine circulars by Tuvalu and the Cook Islandsnote that Fiji reported the unauthorized use of its flag to the Tokyo MOU while Micronesia, Nauru, and Samoa reported the fake registries operating in their name to the IMO. Notifying multilateral organizations of the issue may have contributed to decreased unauthorized use of these countries’ flags: an annual reporton vessel inspections maintained by the Tokyo MOU shows drastic decreases in inspections of vessels flagged to both Fiji and Micronesia between 2017 and 2019. Inspections of vessels “registered” to Fiji went from 23 to four; those for Micronesia from 67 to zero.
False Flagging – Quicker and Easier
In comparison to the relative success combatting fraudulent flagging, false flagging poses a more complex challenge. This is because it is much easier to perpetrate: it does not require anchoring the deception in an official recognition by the IMO, but instead involves creating a false identity that is good enough to get away with illicit activity in the present moment. This includes broadcasting false identities via a vessel’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder—a safety and navigation system whose use for most international vessels is mandated by International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea(SOLAS)—or the fraudulent use of registration documents.
Broadcasting false identities using AIS transmissions is relatively straightforward as the identifiers broadcast are entered manually. This allows them to be changed frequently, complicating efforts to track a vessel’s activities. AIS transmissions using identifiers registered to the KUM RUNG 5, a North Korean cargo ship, for instance, show a vessel cycling through around 30 different identifiers, including names, Maritime Mobile Service Identity (MMSI) numbers, callsigns, and even IMO numbers, which are meant to be unique to just one vessel throughout its lifetime. This includes the use of at least four names in 2020 alone. Because the identifiers are programmed onboard the vessel, confirming the authenticity of the broadcast is not possible without other means of verification.
Identities affiliated with the IMO number registered to the KUM RUNG 5 (left) and locations of AIS transmissions and names broadcast in 2020 (right) based on AIS data from IHS Markit.
A vessel seeking to falsify an identity can also match the unique identifiers legitimately assigned to another vessel. In the case of a North Korea-flagged cargo vessel TAE YANG, investigated jointly by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and the Royal United Services Institute, the vessel mimicked aspects of the identity of the Mongolia-flagged tanker KRYSPER SINGA. The AIS record initially broadcast by the TAE YANG with its assumed identity appeared to show the KRYSPER SINGA as having visited North Korea, while the real KRYSPER SINGA was actually off the coast of Singapore. Imagery, both satellite and ground, was necessary to verify that the AIS transmissions from North Korea were really coming from another vessel, the TAE YANG. Relying on AIS transmissions alone would have implicated an otherwise innocent vessel in a violation of United Nations sanctions on North Korea.
With regards to the use of fraudulent documents, the somewhat artificial distinction between fraudulent flagging and false flagging blurs. But a distinction, however minute, remains: fraudulent documents in the context of false flagging are used not to support a registration claim made to the IMO but to allow a vessel to navigate interactions with third parties when expedient. The case of the WISE HONEST is illustrative.
The WISE HONEST was a bulk carrier detained by Indonesia in 2018 for illicitly exporting coal from North Korea. At the time of the detention, it was registered to North Korea. Yet court documents show that the vessel initially identified itself to Indonesian authorities as being flagged by Sierra Leone—which it had been from August 2015 until May 2016. Authorities found two sets of documents onboard the vessel, one supporting registration with Sierra Leone, and one with North Korea. Although it is unclear whether the Sierra Leone documents found on the WISE HONEST in 2018 were an expired set of documents issued to the vessel in 2015 or a forgery, this case illustrates the ease with which legitimately issued documentation could be repurposed for illicit activity.
Building a Better Response
Although the measures adopted by the IMO are an important step toward addressing the problem of fraudulent and false flagging, a much more comprehensive response is needed. This should combine measures taken collectively by the appropriate international bodies, measures taken individually by states, and measures taken by the private sector.
At the international level, leadership by the IMO is crucial. Actions taken to date have been slow and limited in nature, largely hewing to IMO’s traditionally defined role. In addition to the two measures described above, the IMO has also issued a guidance on best practices to combat what it terms “fraudulent registration and fraudulent registries of ships.” The guidance urges states to make use of the registry whitelist and ‘false’ indicators in GISIS, verify the vessel’s IMO numbers and Continuous Synopsis Record prior to registration, and consult the UN sanctions lists. This guidance, however, does not go far enough. It does not seem to, for instance, address false flagging—the unauthorized use of a country’s flag absent fraudulent registration. Action to rectify this ought to include facilitating information sharing on vessels engaged in false flagging with the aim of allowing countries to better coordinate vessel de-registrations, detentions, and prosecutions, where applicable. Given IMO’s statutory functions, this naturally falls within the organization’s areas of responsibility.
At the national level, there are several steps countries can take.
First, implement national measures to prosecute fraudulent or false flagging and the illicit activity it facilitates, and enhance enforcement capabilities. Though fraudulent or false flagging may be illegal in some jurisdictions, this has not deterred vessels from engaging in the practice. This might have to do with how difficult enforcement action can be. Fiji opened criminal investigations into the unauthorized use of its flag in 2017. Its current status is unknown. Micronesia was finally able to bring charges in April 2020 against the individuals behind the Micronesia International Ship Registry—five years after the fraudulent registry first became active. Following the detention of the WISE HONEST in 2018, the only charges Indonesia could bring against the captain of the vessel were for “being in charge of an unseaworthy vessel.” It is unclear whether Sierra Leone tried, or would have been able to take any action in relation to unauthorized flag use.
Prosecution on the basis of the associated illicit activities—violations of United Nations sanctions on North Korea, for instance—could offer a supplemental pathway as well. Yet all too often, these measures are not appropriately implemented in national legislation. In many, if not most, cases, however, mutual legal assistance agreements would likely be necessary to take action effectively, given that vessels claiming a flag fraudulently may never be under the aggrieved party’s effective jurisdiction. The same is true of appropriate national enforcement procedures, without which any enforcement action will be difficult if not impossible. Exercises like those conducted under the banner of the Proliferation Security Initiative— a multinational response to the transnational threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction—could focus on the ability to track and interdict a shipment and help build this capacity.
Second, invest in capabilities to monitor a broader set of vessel activity. In order to follow through on national legislation criminalizing fraudulent or false flagging, countries need to be able to identify it. Doing so requires investment in capabilities—both human and technological—to monitor vessel activity. Human capabilities entail relevant personnel knowing how to identify vessels engaged in fraudulent or false flagging. This is key to making sure that indicators of fraudulent or false flagging are noted and acted upon. Technological capabilities include the ability, likely via an AIS monitoring platform, to trace AIS transmissions linked to vessels in a country’s territorial waters to see if they have previously engaged in fraudulent or false flagging, and the ability to scan for AIS transmissions making unauthorized use of the country’s flag. Regional partnerships may offer smaller states, including those without international ship registries, a more cost-effective way of maintaining these capabilities.
Third, when it comes to assumed identities and identity theft perpetrated through AIS transmission, the way AIS transponders work is part of the problem: manual data entry makes fraud quite easy. The most recent advisory for the maritime sector issued by the U.S. government recommends that registry managers work with classification societies to provide a “soft lock” on AIS transponders, which would disable the option of manual changes during a vessel’s voyage while allowing for disablement in sanctioned emergency situations. This could go some way toward addressing the issue, although it would necessarily miss many of those actors already engaged in illicit activities who are not likely to allow for this sort of modification to their vessel’s equipment.
The private sector also has a role to play. To do so, it is important that AIS data providers and AIS monitoring platforms review how they aggregate data associated with false flagging. The ability of states to take action against those engaged in fraudulent or false flagging is contingent on the indicators of that practice being visible. As noted in the report on the TAE YANG, AIS data can be “corrected” or jettisoned when found to be associated with a vessel identity not registered with the IMO. This risks, in effect, erasing the illicit activity or making it harder to attribute. In the case of the TAE YANG, its AIS transmissions were merged with those of the KRYSPER SINGA and ultimately attributed to it. In other cases, like that of the KUM RUNG 5, AIS data for what is likely a single vessel may be grouped into different records on the basis of some of the false identifiers used by a vessel engaged in false flagging. Failure of data providers and maritime platforms to address these issues risks undermining faith in AIS as a means of monitoring vessel identities and activities—leaving national authorities and independent analysts with one fewer tool to monitor and disrupt illicit activity.
Conclusion
Fraudulent and false flagging is a complex issue requiring action from multilateral organizations like the IMO, national authorities, and the private sector. Each of these actors has a different set of incentives. Much is at stake for the private sector, including both data providers and the maritime industry that uses said data, and the reliability of AIS transmissions. For individual countries, their motivation comes from the reputational or financial costs they might incur as victims of unauthorized flag use. And for the international community writ large, with the IMO as the guardian of global maritime trade, the persistent and seemingly growing problem posed by fraudulent and false flagging—as the organization itself admits—threatens to undermine the entire legal regime it embodies. The temptation to pass responsibility for combatting unauthorized flag use to others is immense. But it is only through steps taken collectively by all relevant stakeholders that this problem can be addressed.
Cameron Trainer is a Research Associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS). His work focuses on identifying trends in illicit and sanctioned activities, often in relation to North Korea.
Paulina Izewicz is a Senior Research Associate and Project Manager at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS). Her work focuses on sanctions issues, with a particular focus on North Korea’s sanctions evasion in the maritime domain.
Featured Image: ARABIAN SEA (Oct. 30, 2007) – North Korean cargo vessel Dai Hong Dan transits off the coast of Somalia after the ship hijacked by pirates Oct. 29. (U.S. Navy photo)
Submissions Due: August 31, 2020
Week Dates: September 14-18, 2020 Article Length: 1000-3000 words Submit to:[email protected]
The maritime world, as vast and interconnected as it is, exhibits unique circumstances and conditions across its many locales. From the Caribbean littoral to the Baltic Sea, to the Bay of Bengal and the Sea of Japan, specific maritime regions each have their own challenges and context.
CIMSEC is partnering with the Yokosuka Council on Asia Pacific Studies, the Institute for Security Policy Kiel University, and the Dominican Command and Naval Staff School to launch the latest call for articles of Project Trident to highlight the impact of regional maritime powers and strategies on future international maritime security.
Emerging areas of interest include the interconnectedness of regional theaters (e.g., the Black Sea/Baltic Sea nexus, the East China and South China Seas, the Caribbean and East Pacific nexus, and others) and how regional maritime strategies and forces can integrate and adapt to a future of great power competition.
What challenges do maritime forces of smaller and medium powers face in their regions and what strategies may they adopt to confront them? What are the perspectives and roles of smaller and medium maritime powers in great power competition between major states? Is the current structure of the region’s maritime forces appropriate to its maritime interests and the threats they face? What is the longer-term view on how regional maritime powers could evolve? And what role can regional organizations play?
Authors are invited to write on these topics and more as we look to understand the implications of regional maritime powers and strategies on the future of international maritime security.
For this call for articles we are excited to collaborate with our partners, including:
The Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies (YCAPS) promotes the study of strategic, diplomatic, and legal issues affecting the Asia-Pacific Region. Capitalizing on Yokosuka City’s unique pool of global expertise and rich maritime heritage, YCAPS builds networks between individuals, promotes dialogue, provides world-class educational opportunities, and enables professional mentorship.
The Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University (ISPK) provides research, analysis, and commentary on conflicts and strategic issues. ISPK is committed to furthering the security policy discourse in Germany and abroad by way of focused, interdisciplinary, policy-oriented research. Moreover, the Institute is involved in the promotion of talented, young academics. Complementing research, publications, and teaching, members of the Institute advise decision-makers in government, academia, media, and business. ISPK’s main research foci lie in German and European foreign and security policy, international security architecture, nonproliferation of nuclear weapons and disarmament, stabilization of fragile states, maritime security, and asymmetric challenges such as transnational terrorism. In addition, ISPK’s innovative Kiel Seapower Series contains symposia, workshops, podcasts, publications, and much more.
The Dominican Command and Naval Staff School is the Dominican Republic Navy’s advanced education program for naval officers to develop leadership and strategic skills for the decision-making process in naval command functions. It provides officers with the necessary capabilities for the execution of naval operations under the framework of international law and regional cooperation. The school receives both officers from other national forces and international guests, and seeks in the dissemination of naval doctrine an element that strengthens both joint and combined operations.
We hope this call for articles generates wide interest from many maritime regions and makes for a diverse range of topics and discussion. Please send all submissions to [email protected].
Jimmy Drennan is the President of CIMSEC. Contact him at [email protected].
Featured Image: AQABA, Jordan (May 18, 2015) Military service members from Belgium, France, Jordan, Pakistan and the United States employ various ships and aircraft to conduct a simulated assault on a target during Eager Lion 2015 (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Paul Coover/Released)
As the U.S. Navy moves into the unmanned age and implements Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), there is a need for small, lightly manned warships to streamline that transition and fill roles which require a human crew. Congress has expressed concerns about unmanned vessels on a number of fronts and highlighted the need for a class of ships to bridge the gap. The Naval Postgraduate School’s Lightly Manned Autonomous Combat Capability program (LMACC) has designed a warship to meet this need.
The need for these small, heavily armed warships has also been well established, and is based on extensive analysis and wargaming across the Navy’s innovation centers. These ships will provide distributed forward forces capable of conducting surface warfare and striking missile sites from within the weapons engagement zone of a hostile A2/AD system. They will be commanded by human tactical experts and operate in packs with supporting unmanned vessels, like the Sea Hunter MDUSV, to distribute capabilities and minimize the impact of combat losses.
Our intent with this article is to publicly lay out the engineering dimension of the LMACC program. Since the United States does not have a small warship to use as a baseline, it is necessary to first establish what our requirements should be based on our unique needs. Fortunately, this can be accomplished in a relatively straightforward manner by broadly analyzing how foreign ships are designed to meet their nation’s needs, and using that understanding to establish our own requirements. As such, we will start by examining the choices faced by other nations, use that to develop a core of minimum requirements for an American warship, examine its shortcomings when compared with other budget options, and finally discuss how to affordably expand on that to deliver a capability set the Navy will be happy with. Once we have established our requirements and overall configuration, we will conclude with a discussion of our approach to automation, manning, concepts of operations, future special mission variants, and current status.
(The scope of this article has been deliberately limited to the engineering side of the LMACC program. Our acquisition approach will be discussed in an upcoming issue of the Naval Engineers Journal. Fleet and budget integration was discussed in a previous article on USNI blog, “Beyond High-Low: The Lethal and Affordable Three-Tier Fleet.”)
Examination of Foreign Designs
Due to our relative lack of practical domestic experience in the field of small warship development, we will start with an examination of foreign designs to build a transferable understanding of their capabilities, limitations, and design tradeoffs. Since there are many ship classes used worldwide, it is impractical to discuss every example individually. We will instead discuss mission areas and compromises in generic terms and leave it to the reader to consider how specific foreign designs were built to meet their nation’s needs. Areas of design interest include anti-ship missiles, survivability, anti-submarine warfare (ASW), and launch facilities. The first three subsections divide the discussion between large and small nations, while the final subsection is split by type of launch facility. Each subsection then concludes with a discussion of how this translates to the United States’ unique situation. This will then set us up for the subsequent discussion of the basic preliminary requirements for a generic small American warship.
Anti-Ship Missiles
Small warships are frequently given labels like “missile boat” or “corvette” based on their primary armament of anti-ship missiles with little further thought. However, not all missiles are created equal. The choice of missile is driven by the platform’s intended use.
Small nations (e.g. Norway) attempting to defend themselves on a limited budget typically prioritize lethality with a highly capable missile designed for sinking major warships. However, because they often face limitations in offboard sensors, strategic depth, and force structure to absorb combat losses, they tend to sacrifice range and networking capability to control missile cost and weight.
Large nations prioritizing coastal defense against a more powerful opponent (e.g. Russia and China’s A2/AD systems) tend to view their small warships as part of a larger system. These ships are intended as much to complicate enemy targeting and defensive formations as they are to sink ships. As a consequence of this, they are more likely to invest in range and networking since they can reasonably expect to take advantage of it, but may be willing to save money by arming these ships with less expensive, and therefore typically less lethal, weapons.
Due to the nature of the U.S. Navy’s highly networked, forward deployed forces, we cannot accept these compromises and must arm our small warships with highly lethal, long-range, networked weapons.
Survivability
A major concern with all warships is survivability. One of the key distinguishing features of small warships is how they address this problem. Rather than rely on a large, expensive missile system to destroy threats at long range, these small warships instead rely primarily on avoiding attack and feature only limited point defense weapons. This is achieved through a combination of small size, signature reduction, electronic warfare, and tactics.
It is important to remember other nations are frequently focused primarily on pre-launch survivability rather than a counterattack based on the missiles’ signature. This lack of focus on post-launch survivability is generally based on the assumption that the cost ratio of the exchange will generally be in their favor even if they lose the ship. Another important consideration, especially for smaller nations, is that their ports are usually very vulnerable to a standoff strike, so surviving ships may not be able to rearm or refuel and are therefore effectively out of action even if they do survive. For large nations with sophisticated A2/AD systems, protecting these ships is usually primarily the responsibility of other platforms, allowing significant savings by reducing survivability-related costs.
Smaller nations usually invest more in survivability features and trade endurance for extremely high speed to improve their odds of getting into attack position before they are sunk. They also commonly employ tactics to make their ships difficult to track in peacetime by exploiting maritime geography and blending into commercial traffic to avoid a preemptive strike.
The United States can count on having a safe port to rearm somewhere, even if it requires withdrawing all the way to CONUS, so we would need to further emphasize evasion since these ships would have to persist within hostile A2/AD networks even after launching missiles. This means it would be essential for a small American warship to use a stealthy, networked missile capable of flying deceptive routes to mask the launch point, as well as the best electronic warfare equipment, passive sensors, and acoustic signature reduction we can afford. Other forms of signature reduction are an interesting question because there is a risk of standing out from civilian traffic if the warship’s signature is significantly different from those around it. After all, a Chinese maritime patrol aircraft could easily recognize that a “buoy” making an open-ocean transit is actually a small warship. On the flipside, we have no need for the high speed favored by many foreign nations, especially since blending in with slow-moving civilian traffic will be a critical aspect of survivability. Therefore, we should trade speed for range to control cost and project power from our generally safe but distant ports.
One final U.S.-specific feature which could greatly enhance survivability inside A2/AD networks, reduce range requirements, and reduce the logistical burden is the exclusion of gas turbines in favor of diesel engines. This will allow these ships to stop at any commercial port to take on diesel fuel, and possibly food, while further enhancing the illusion that they are small commercial vessels. With some imaginative leadership, this will provide virtually unlimited in-theater range and loiter time with minimal logistical support, simplifying our operations and complicating the situation for the enemy.
ASW
While many small warships include ASW capability, they are usually intended to operate as coastal area denial platforms rather than oceangoing escorts or sub-hunters. For nations worried about hostile submarines, this area denial provides essential protection to ports and other coastal facilities which would otherwise be extremely vulnerable. In contrast, performing the latter high-end missions requires the large aviation facilities and expensive sonars of a frigate or destroyer.
Thanks to our large nuclear-powered attack submarine fleet and the remoteness of hostile submarine forces, we don’t need a small surface ship to defend our ports from submarines, so this ASW equipment is generally best omitted. The U.S. only needs the ship to have a reasonable chance of surviving in a theater with hostile submarines, and this can be most economically provided by acoustic signature reduction and appropriate tactics. In fact, the active sonar systems used for area denial by other nations would be detrimental in American service since they let hostile submarines detect the ship from much further away.
Launch Facilities
Many small warships include launch facilities of some form for boats, helicopters, small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and underwater vehicles (UUV).
A boat launch facility is very important for a variety of maritime security operations and general utility tasks including allowing access to unimproved coastlines. Thanks to this utility and their modest space and weight impact, they are found on many small warships. It is also important to note that a boat launch facility can generally launch USVs of similar size if desired to perform a variety of functions including acting as offboard sensors and decoys.
While the utility of naval helicopters is well established, they are relatively uncommon on small warships. Adding full aviation facilities requires a major increase in ship size, crew, and cost. Even a simple helipad for vertical replenishment has a major impact on topside configuration. Furthermore, helicopters are relatively visible and can thus make it much easier for an adversary to distinguish the warship from civilian traffic.
A much more common way of providing aerial surveillance for small warships is small UAVs. Because they can easily be added to existing ships, they have become common additions to small military and coast guard vessels worldwide. These aircraft provide many of the benefits of a helicopter with a much lower signature and little to no design impact on the ship. Furthermore, considering their proliferation in the civil sector, launching a small UAV is no longer a recognizably military activity. It is reasonable to assume all future designs will at least consider the operation of hand-launched drones, and it is highly likely many will also integrate launch systems for larger assets as well.
While UUV launch facilities are currently relatively rare outside dedicated MCM platforms, the maturation of this technology makes it worthy of more general consideration. UUVs could perform a range of other missions including undersea search and interacting with undersea cables without the need to specialize the ship itself. Furthermore, the launch facilities could also be used to transport additional MCM UUVs for use by other ships. As such, it seems likely this capability will proliferate since the launch facilities aren’t especially large, although it is still too early to say for certain exactly how useful it will actually be.
For the U.S. Navy, the only truly critical launch capability is small UAVs to enable over-the-horizon surveillance and targeting. Our enduring presence requirement means we will almost certainly want some form of boat launch capability to support those missions. We may want UUV launch capability as well, but it likely does not meet the bar to be a minimum requirement.
Minimum Requirements for a Small American Warship
Based on the above discussion and a few common practices, the list below provides a reasonable set of approximate minimum requirements for any small American warship. Note that this is not our final design, but a simplified interpretation using current technology and standard design practices:
Eight LRASMs
SeaRAM
Latest generation full-sized AN/SLQ-32 electronic warfare suite
Standard decoy launchers
Excellent optical sensor suite:
Visible Distributed Aperture System (DAS)
IR DAS
Visible/IR camera turret
Maximum affordable acoustic signature reduction
Appropriate reduction of other signatures to blend into civilian traffic
COTS navigation radar
Low probability of detection/intercept datalinks
30-knot speed (approx.)
7500+ nautical mile range
One 7m RHIB
Small UAV storage and launch accommodations
Traditional light gun armament
One 30mm autocannon
Two M2 Browning heavy machine guns
It has been assumed that the likely boat launch facility is included while the more tentative UUV launch facility has been omitted. The range was selected to allow the ship to sortie from one island chain to the next and back (e.g. Guam to the Philippines) on internal fuel, and it also makes it relatively easy to operate over even longer distances using extra fuel bladders and/or limited refueling. Speed is not exact since small changes wouldn’t have a major impact, and no attempt was made to identify a displacement or crew complement because it is not immediately relevant to this example.
Ambassador Mk III missile boat (Navalanalyses.com)
While the above requirements are obviously distinct from any current design, they should be immediately recognizable as the rough outline for a fairly conventional small warship tailored to the needs of the United States Navy. More work would obviously need to be done to refine this into a finalized set of requirements, but it is close enough to analyze how this conventional design compares to other hypothetical budget priorities and show why we did not simply settle for this minimum configuration.
‘Adequate’ is Not Enough
In any discussion of hypothetical designs, it is critical to keep key alternatives and counterarguments in mind. In the case of small warships, the most relevant argument that might be presented is that aircraft can do the job better. This can take many forms of varying strength, but attacking a weaker form undermines the discussion. Thus, a hypothetical, purpose-built, bomber-like anti-ship aircraft will be considered here. The comparison with the aircraft described in this section will be used to demonstrate the shortcomings of the ‘adequate’ warship described above and set up a discussion of how to make it worthwhile.
This hypothetical aircraft would be a large, stealthy flying wing built using technology from the F-35. Using these electronics eliminates much of the cost of new development and eases maintenance by sharing logistics between this hypothetical anti-ship aircraft and the F-35. In addition, the new low-maintenance stealth coatings will eliminate the headaches of older designs like the B-2, and the design would be further simplified since its mission doesn’t require extreme stealth. It only needs to be able to attack hostile warships before they can detect it, which is not particularly challenging given the range of LRASM and the sensor performance inherited from the F-35. Thus, the cost should be relatively low.
For the sake of argument, it will be assumed this aircraft costs $300 million and carries 24 LRASMs, although better numbers may be possible. This compares cleanly with the small warship which would cost a little under $100 million and carry 8 LRASMs, so the cost per missile carried is approximately the same and we can focus on other performance parameters.
The ship has three key advantages: persistence, presence, and attritability. The first two stem from the obvious fact that a ship can loiter much longer than an aircraft, which makes it better for keeping weapons on-station in wartime or demonstrating American interest by performing a variety of low-end missions in peacetime. The third stems from the fact that we can afford three ships for the price of one aircraft, so an equal investment will provide more ships and losing one costs less, assuming the crew is recovered. While attritability is a benefit in a high-end war, the peacetime flexibility provided by the enhanced persistence and presence is less of a concern in the current geopolitical environment. Finally, this ship may be able to provide some amphibious lift for small USMC units operating under their Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) concept, although its inability to provide meaningful fire support will limit its utility if an island is contested.
In contrast, the aircraft has numerous wartime advantages. The obvious speed advantage means the aircraft can respond to a developing situation and rearm much faster than ships. This further combines with its altitude to allow a single aircraft to survey a much wider area than the three ships can in spite of their persistence advantage. Furthermore, its combination of long detection range and stealthy airframe means the aircraft is more likely to see hostile warships before they see it, providing a major advantage over ships with respect to survivability and firing effectively first. Finally, thanks to its F-35 architecture, the aircraft will be compatible with a wide range of standard ordinance like the AGM-158 JASSM, AIM-120 AMRAAM, AGM-88 HARM, GBU-39 SDB, and so on, allowing it to perform other missions.
From this comparison, it is clear that those deciding which program to fund will not choose the ‘adequate’ small warship because other programs like the aircraft described above offer a greater return on investment. More capability is clearly needed to make the ship worthwhile.
Going From Viable to Worthwhile
The challenge with solving this problem is that it must be done without compromising the cost and size of these ships. The addition of desirable features led to the size and cost growth of LCS out of the original Streetfighter concept. Subsequent additions to fit into the traditional concept of a frigate with the FFG(X) program have produced a vessel with capabilities, and by extension costs, approaching that of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.
To retain the advantages of a small warship and keep it from growing into another Burke, two fundamental options are available: enhanced launch/support facilities, and secondary armament reconfigurations.
This section will explain how the LMACC program addresses this problem and provide the full design details for our baseline configuration. We have made significant enhancements to our launch and support facilities to improve overall utility, and have detailed plans for providing sealift support to the USMC during distributed operations. For the secondary armament, we took advantage of the interactions between technologies to provide much greater lethality against smaller surface threats and to restore the ability to provide robust fire support for Marines ashore at comparable cost.
Launch and Support Facilities
Before diving into how this ship will integrate with the Marines’ EABO concept, we will briefly circle back to the previously discussed launch facilities. UUV launch facilities, while not essential, have been included to provide additional flexibility at low cost, and are designed to benefit from the stern launch ramp required to support EABO. Furthermore, thanks to the small crew and wide beam, we were also able to fit an 11m RHIB to provide additional utility and transport capacity. Helicopter accommodations on the other hand have a major design impact even for a relatively minimal landing pad, especially in terms of manning for maintenance and support, so it has been omitted in favor of a topside UAV locker.
While the Marines are correct to pursue dedicated transports to implement EABO, the surface combatant fleet can also provide limited sealift support. A DDG-51destroyer would have to provide this support on a not-to-interfere basis, but our ship will be an integral part of the mission. The normal wartime employment of these ships will see pairs sortie into the same contested littorals the Marines intend to operate in, so they will supplement the dedicated transport fleet by carrying light units and supplies. LMACC has two empty six-person cabins, plus four extra beds in the crew cabins, so a tactical pair can easily carry a Marine platoon between them with hot racking. These cabins will also provide space for detachments, and one will be equipped to serve as a brig in support of peacetime patrol and partnership missions.
The other half of providing sealift support is delivering the embarked Marines ashore. Features such as shallow draft, pumpjet propulsion, and COTS navigation sonars will allow these ships to get very close to shore to facilitate rapid transfer, possibly even including swimming. Readily accessible stowage spaces at the forward end of the launch bay support rapid transfer of equipment and support use of the inflatable Combat Rubber Raiding Craft (CRRC), while oversized lower-deck cargo bays provide ample storage space. Finally, small boat operations have been greatly enhanced by combining a fully enclosed bay with a stern launch ramp to facilitate rapid Marine deployment, especially in inclement weather or at night.
It should also be noted that the attributes which make it well-suited to supporting the Marines also make it well-suited to supporting Special Forces.
Rethinking the Secondary Armament
For secondary armament, we took the overall configuration back to its fundamental requirements: short-range small boat defense, long-range small boat defense, area land attack, precision land attack, and limited air defense. This allowed us to rethink our approach to those requirements and take advantage of the interactions between modern weapon systems to get better results than a traditional deck gun.
The key technology that enables our layout is the unassuming Javelin Launch Tray. This adds a Javelin missile launcher to a standard pintle mounted weapon, and allows a loader/gunner team to outperform a 30mm autocannon with greater range and comparable engagement rate at greatly reduced weight and installation cost. While this is a useful supplementary defense on existing ships, the large number of installations makes LMACC an excellent escort against small swarming threats and, more importantly, amply satisfies the short-range small boat defense requirement without a deck gun. This may seem less important at first glance since these types of threats are typically associated with Iran, but China has already developed a small USV to perform a similar mission, making this threat relevant to the high-end fight. Javelin also provides a limited anti-aircraft capability since it was designed to destroy helicopters as well as tanks.
Since there is no need for a traditional multi-million dollar deck gun, LMACC instead mounts a 105mm howitzer. The cased ammunition of this weapon makes it suitable for sea service, unlike the larger, separately-loaded 155mm version. As a traditionally towed artillery piece, it is a lightweight, low cost weapon ideally suited to land attack. This of course addresses longstanding concerns about naval gunfire, and is directly relevant to supporting the Marines.
These two weapons fill the short-range small boat defense, area land attack, and limited air defense requirements, leaving long-range small boat defense and precision land attack. These two remaining requirements are both addressed through the addition of Spike NLOS missiles. This allows small surface threats to be safely engaged from over the horizon, and allows armored vehicles and other point targets to be precisely eliminated as well. This complements the howitzer and Javelin to provide excellent anti-boat capabilities and robust fire support for Marines ashore.
Spike-NLOS being fired from a Plasan Sand Cat (Republic of Korea Armed Forces/Wikimedia Commons)
The final weapon system is the Miniature Hit-To-Kill (MHTK) missile, which provides additional defense against low-end aerial threats like small UAVs and rockets. This further improves survivability, especially against swarming threats, and ensures the air defense capabilities of a deck gun are fully replicated.
The result of this is a much more flexible and lethal armament with relatively low installation weight and cost. This makes our armament unequivocally superior to the conventional autocannon configuration established previously without significant design growth, and even provides major advantages over a larger deck gun.
The LMACC Design
Now that we have walked through the requirements and logic of our design, we will take a moment to provide a design summary of our baseline configuration:
Name: USS Shrike
Type: Patrol Ship, Guided missile (PCG)
Cost: $96.6 million
Displacement: 600 tons
Length: 214 feet
Beam: 29 feet (waterline)
Draft: 6.5 feet
Range: 7500+ nautical miles
Speed: 30 knots
two steerable, reversible pumpjets with intake screen
Integrated electric propulsion
Diesel engines
Crew: 15 (31 beds)
Armament:
Eight LRASMs
SeaRAM
Seven Javelin pintle mounts
One Javelin launch tray per mount
Ten stored missiles per mount
Either a M2 Browning or Mk 47 AGL per mount
105mm howitzer
36 Spike NLOS missiles
64 Miniature Hit-To-Kill Missiles
COMBATSS-21 combat management system
Latest generation full-sized AN/SLQ-32 electronic warfare suite
Standard decoy launchers
Excellent optical sensor suite:
Visible Distributed Aperture System (DAS)
IR DAS
Visible/IR camera turret
COTS navigation sonar
Maximum affordable acoustic signature reduction
Appropriate reduction of other signatures to blend into civilian traffic
COTS navigation radar
L3Harris Falcon III® RF-7800W non-line of sight radio
Multifunction Advanced Datalink (MADL)
Aft launch bay
One 11m RHIB
One 11m long UUV slot (multiple UUV transportation possible)
Bay door doubles as launch ramp
Small topside UAV storage and launch accommodations
This maintains the previously established minimum requirements while integrating the additional features discussed.
Circling back to the comparison with the hypothetical anti-ship aircraft, these low cost enhancements have added numerous advantages over the ‘adequate’ design. In addition to the previous advantages of persistence, presence, and attritability, it can now operate UUVs, transport Marines, provide surface fire support, and destroy small boat swarms. This makes the ship a much more useful platform with the flexibility to adapt to an uncertain future, and gives procurement officials a good reason to select it over the aircraft. This clear utility and economic viability is the hallmark of well-thought-out requirements, and makes this design, in our opinion, viable for American service.
It should be remembered that this information is only applicable to the baseline configuration. The other variants add a ten-foot hull segment to add special mission capabilities and will have increased costs as a result.
Automation and Manning
From a systems perspective, the core concept for this ship is that it will be built like a large USV. Since the automated systems can notify the crew when action is needed, traditional watches are unnecessary and significant crew reductions are possible. Furthermore, since the ship’s systems will be designed to operate with minimal intervention as expected of a USV, there will, in theory, be very little need for maintenance. However, there will be people on hand to correct any problems that do occur, unlike a full USV. Thus, from a systems perspective, this will allow LMACC to bridge the gap to autonomy because it keeps people on board while operating like an autonomous vessel. As such, a fleet of these ships will allow us to safely build a large body of operational knowledge and inform our approach to future USVs and human-machine teaming.
We intend to man these ships with a 15-person crew lead by a Warfare Tactics Instructor (WTI). These tactical experts will be ideally suited to lead their ships and attendant packs of unmanned vessels to victory in the most challenging circumstances, and take the initiative when cut off from external command. They will lay traps, strike targets ashore, and hunt down hostile warships while confounding the enemy’s ability to respond by vanishing into civilian traffic.
While our work indicates a crew of 15 is appropriate to manage the weapons, sensors, and drones, we are acutely aware of the uncertainty associated with this novel manning concept and the need to bring aboard additional personnel for special missions. As such, the ship has been designed with five, six-person cabins, plus a single cabin for the commanding officer, to provide ample berthing. Two of those cabins are notionally intended to be used for non-crew personnel such as Marines conducting EABO deployments, Coast Guard law enforcement detachments, or brig space. That leaves free beds for four more crewmembers with no meaningful impact, and the crew could be further enlarged by using one or both of those cabins if needed. Even in the worst-case scenario, 31 beds allow for three more crew than the existing Cyclone-class patrol ship, without hot racking. This effectively eliminates the risks associated with a smaller crew by allowing the ship to comfortably carry a traditional full complement if required.
Concepts of Operation
These ships are intended to fight forward to defend or retake island chains. The design emphasizes fighting in complex environments by disappearing into civilian traffic and littoral clutter. These ships will rely on passive sensors to complicate the enemy’s target identification problem and maximize the chance of achieving tactical surprise. The basic wartime operational unit will be a tactical pair, consisting of either two of the basic short-hull ships, or one basic design and one specialized variant. These pairs will work closely with unmanned vessels and Marines ashore to deny the area to the enemy, degrade hostile defenses, and clear the way for heavier units. They will also provide light sealift and logistics support to small, lightly equipped Marine units. Note that while we have done extensive work on tactics, deployment strategies, and cooperation with the existing leviathan navy, much of that material is not publicly releasable and will not be further discussed here. That said, much of this is built on the work of our colleague, the late Capt. Wayne Hughes, so members of the public interested in learning more are encouraged to read his work.
In peacetime, these ships will provide a cost effective asset for patrol, partnership, and deterrence missions. Since these ships are much cheaper than even frigates, they will be a better choice for countering piracy, smuggling, human trafficking, illegal fishing, and other illicit activity, allowing more expensive ships to focus on missions and training which fully exploit their capabilities. They will also enable more effective joint training with our smaller partners whose fleets are closely matched to these ships. This is particularly relevant in the South China Sea and Western Pacific where there is a need to carry foreign coast guard detachments for joint patrols and visit many small, primitive ports to reassure our friends and deter China. This will also substantially improve the readiness and performance of our fleet by reducing the workload on high-end assets, and offering early command billets to help develop young officers.
Finally, fleet integration is greatly simplified by the operational similarity of this PCG to the Cyclone-class PC. LMACC can serve as a drop-in replacement for the Cyclone at similar cost, so there is no operational risk. We could hand one of these ships to the fleet today and they’d be able to put it to work immediately by treating it like a Cyclone while the Surface Development Squadron refines the more advanced tactics developed by the Naval Postgraduate School. This makes it possible to jump immediately to serial production if desired, although building a prototype first would reduce risk at the cost of delaying its entry into service.
Ship Variants
We have plans for several special mission variants. In keeping with the Navy’s historical tradition of naming small ships after birds, they have all been given bird names. The baseline LMACC variant, the Shrike, has already been discussed, and two additional variants have been fleshed out, the anti-aircraft Falcon and the anti-submarine Osprey, both of which add new capabilities with a ten-foot hull extension.
It is difficult to discuss the details of the Falcon’s operation publicly, but it adds a new sensor and a tactical-length Mk 41 VLS module to destroy hostile maritime patrol aircraft before they can distinguish it from civilian traffic. This will protect these ships from the single greatest threat to them, hostile aircraft, and substantially improve their ability to operate within hostile A2/AD systems.
The Osprey variant, on the other hand, is relatively simple and is built to maximize the impact of USV-mounted sensors. The primary addition is eight new angled launch cells for Tomahawk cruise missiles modified to carry a lightweight torpedo. This allows a very small number of these ships to greatly improve our ability to deter and defeat submarines, since they can quickly strike targets detected by offboard sensors from hundreds of miles away. Furthermore, since Tomahawk is a well-established weapon fielded across the fleet, this will allow us to add this capability across our surface combatant fleet, and provide a way to recycle obsolete Tomahawks when we inevitably move on to other weapons. Finally, this variant is rounded out by a hull-mounted passive sonar and four fixed torpedo tubes for self-defense, since it is expected to operate in areas with elevated submarine risk.
Two additional variants have been considered. The first is a drone mothership which adds a UUV handling module to field large numbers of UUVs, and may also modify the aft launch bay to carry two boats or USVs. The second is a coast guard variant which replaces most of the missiles with a dedicated sickbay, brig, and secure contraband storage to turn it into a bigger, more capable version of the Sentinel-class cutter, although these capabilities could also be added in a hull segment if an export customer wants to retain the missiles.
Program Status
Our requirements and top-level engineering are complete. The only major task remaining is to finalize our hullform, and we can do that in parallel with shipyard and supplier selection. Almost all the technology we have selected is fielded. The remaining technologies are closely based on fielded systems, and the baseline Shrike will still be combat effective if delays force it to deploy before these technologies are ready. Since the Naval Postgraduate School is outside the traditional shipbuilding bureaucracy, we have significant flexibility in our path forward to production. We could do anything from traditional acquisition to building this under the umbrella of a research project outside all existing acquisition structures, as was done with TACPOD, so we can take whatever approach is most acceptable to Congress and the Navy.
Mr. DiDonato is a volunteer member of the NRP-funded LMACC team lead by Dr. Shelley Gallup. He originally created what would become the armament for LMACC’s baseline Shrike variant in collaboration with the Naval Postgraduate School in a prior role as a contract engineer for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. He has provided systems and mechanical engineering support to organizations across the defense industry from the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) to Spirit Aerosystems, working on projects for all branches of the armed forces.
Featured Image: LMACC design screenshot courtesy of Ben DiDonato
