Naval capabilities
and build that one hull – but also makes procurement and manufacturing considerably more streamlined. Of course, it’s important to note that when it comes to modular ships, there are several types of modularity at play, explains retired Rear Admiral Nils Wang, director of Naval Team Denmark, and former chief of the Royal Danish Navy. With the LCS, the modularity in question was what Wang would refer to as “functional modularity” – namely, it involves “modules in some shape or form that become a functional entity on board the platform by being integrated”. “Design modularity”, on the other hand, is when a navy can choose between several variants of the same ship – such as with the German-manufactured MEKO frigates, different versions of which have been sold to a number of countries. With design modularity, once the variant is chosen, the ship is a fixed model and can’t be changed within its lifecycle. The subject of functional modularity might be a hot topic now for navies across the world – as we’re seeing with the UK’s Type-31 frigate and with the Constellation-class in the US, in particular – but for the Royal Danish Navy, it’s been par for the course since the early 1990s, in the form of its StanFlex containers. “It was a brilliant idea, but we were the only ones who had it,” says Wang. “And we didn’t have it because we were brilliant – we had it because we were poor, and we had to figure out how to put more into a reduced number of platforms.” Now, however, the topic of modularity has spread across the navies of the world, which Wang attributes to fears over the ever-increasing pace of technological development, as much as the hope of minimising costs. If a navy wants to be able to carry out mid-life updates and implement new technology into a ship to keep it relevant during its lifetime, then it needs to be able to adapt that technology without making big constructional changes to the vessel – the other option is to let it spend the majority of its lifespan in the shipyard.
Through containerisation, the Royal Danish Navy has been able to achieve three forms of flexibility across its fleet. The first is tactical flexibility – if a system breaks down, a ship can return to a naval station and remove a part, put another in its place, and then resume operations while the broken gun or missile launcher is taken away for repair. Operational flexibility, then, is the ability to adjust
a ship’s equipment to the mission at hand. Before entering an area with a severe air threat, for example, you might choose to replace a surface-to-surface missile container with a surface-to-air missile container instead. Similarly, when a system becomes outdated, you can simply upgrade to the newest version and slot the replacement into the same space. Finally, there’s strategic flexibility. “When we got rid of the StanFlex 300 ships, we took out all the
containers with Harpoon SSM, ESSM (Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile) systems and the OTO Melara 76mm SR that were upgraded throughout the ships’ lifecycle,” Wang says. When the Danish navy then had five new frigates in the shipyard, these weapon systems became the basic weapons suite on those new ships. Wang also cites the work of Odense Maritime
Technology (OMT), the ship-design company behind Denmark’s frigates, who have co-founded a company, together with Systematic, a Danish software company, to create a standard interface for the containers implemented through the Royal Danish Navy’s future modular ships. The idea here is to develop a standard that can be used by several navies, creating a modular system that holds the potential to be an ecosystem in a Nato environment where you could go to a base in a member country and change out a broken weapon, if all allies use the same system.
Putting theory into practice However, even given the success of the StanFlex concept, Wang notes that some of its early goals have never been fully realised. Initially, the Royal Danish Navy planned to outfit the ships with a defensive posture in mind, to avoid escalating tensions in the Baltic with the Soviet Union in peacetime. Yet, if deterrence failed, it would able to add new containers to its ships to make them more offensive and lethal. In practice, this never quite worked out. As Salisbury notes, while the LCS is ostensibly a mission-modular ship with packages that can be swapped out over its service life, most of these vessels never saw this put into practice. “While you have the modularity over all of the hulls, [LCSs] don’t necessarily use that ability to have flexibility and modularity within a singular hull,” she says. “Although swapping out mission packages is something that is given as a benefit for modular ships, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen.” Her observations are echoed by Wang. “If you think you can have one ship one day, and then a completely different ship for different roles another day, then you fall into the same trap we did,” he notes. The issue here isn’t necessarily hardware-related, however, because it should technically be possible to change a ship’s entire inventory if you’ve modularised enough of it – the problem instead is with the crew. Basic equipment can be added, allowing a navy to tailor a ship for a specific mission. But a modular ship’s crew can’t be expected to run specialised MCM systems one month, then ISR ones after that. For these systems to be properly operated, they require trained specialists to come on-board and join the crew – and that presents challenges of its own. There are benefits to such a set-up, however, if a balance is found that allows these specialists to operate efficiently on-board without disrupting their work or that of the crew at large. A modularised vessel that can handle its own self-defence, outfitted with MCM
Defence & Security Systems International /
www.defence-and-security.com
Opposite page: Freedom-variant LCS USS Billings (LCS 15) and USS Wichita (LCS 13) in the Caribbean Sea.
$500m
The approximate amount spent on each of the US Navy’s 23 LCSs.
Forbes 17
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