From Omaha to Indianapolis: Accepting LCS as She is

next, let's go to single crew

I didn’t intend to for this to be LCS week, but here we are.

In yesterday’s post and in comments, we discussed the Omaha Class light cruisers in WWII.

While USS Marblehead (CL 12) managed to make a good fight of it as the war kicked off, and USS Richmond (CL 9) gave a superior showing of herself at the Battle of Komandorski Islands, most were relegated to secondary theaters with lowered threats from submarines and air attack like the good work USS Raleigh (CL-7) did in the Aleutians during the war.

The ships of the Omaha class spent most of the war deployed to secondary theaters and in less vital tasks than those assigned to more recently built cruisers. The Omaha class were sent to places where their significant armament might be useful if called upon, but where their age and limited abilities were less likely to be tested. These secondary destinations included patrols off the east and west coasts of South America, convoy escort in the South Pacific far from the front lines of battle, patrols and shore bombardment along the distant and frigid Aleutians and Kuril Islands chains, and bombardment duty in the invasion of Southern France when naval resistance was expected to be minimal.

There were ten ships of the class, all commissioned between 1923 and 1925 in three different yards in Washington State, Massachusetts and Philadelphia. Four of the ships, Omaha, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Detroit all share their name with Littoral Combat Ships (LCS).

That is where the connection set with me when I was thinking about the great question over the last six months of combat in the littorals off Yemen, “Where are the LCS?”

Then I remembered what should have been a larger story in December about a ship that shares a name with a much more storied WWII cruiser;

The Freedom-variant littoral combat ship USS Indianapolis (LCS 17) Blue Crew returned to Naval Station Mayport, Florida, Dec 20, following a historic six-month deployment to the U.S. 5th Fleet areas of operations for a Freedom-variant LCS crew.

Indianapolis Blue Crew, along with the “Dragon Whales” of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 28, Detachment 6, deployed on July 5, 2023, becoming the first LCS to execute an Exchange of Command and full Crew Swap in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Northern Arabian Sea, Gulf of Oman and Arabian Gulf.

“Making it home before the holidays was not what we expected but we definitely earned it,” said Cmdr. Matthew Arndt, commanding officer of Indianapolis Blue Crew. “The crew worked hard and took on every day to the best of their ability and made it look easy, we embraced our ships motto, ‘’Legacy of War, Legacy of Victory.”

The deployment provided an opportunity for Indianapolis Blue Crew to gain experience as the longest deployed freedom-variant littoral combat ship to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility through multiple exercises, maritime security operations, theater security cooperation engagements, and freedom of navigation patrols – keeping critical maritime commerce routes open, deterring conflict and coercion, and strengthening partnerships with other countries. Indianapolis Blue Crew navigated over 15,000 nautical miles, conducted 12 sea and anchor details, 10 underway replenishments, and port visits to Jebal Ali, UAE and Hamad, Qatar. Under their watch, Indianapolis participated in Operational Exercise Digital Talent as a staging base and command center for a host of unmanned systems during live weapons firing exercises in the international waters of the central Arabian Gulf, in Operational Exercise Infinite Defender, and escorted M/V Royal Blue through the Strait of Hormuz.

We have LCS in the area, but they are being kept out of harm’s way in “secondary theaters.”

Given that the Houthi are, at best, a fourth-rate naval power, even with their - what we think - Gen-1 ASBM, it should be clear after the last six months to even the last hold-outs, that until the last one is decommissioned, we shouldn’t even look to LCS to be as useful today as the Omaha CLs were in WWII.

Based on what we’ve heard in open-source about LCS 17’s deployment, she conducted operations in the yellow shaded area. The attacks on shipping by the Houthi have mostly been in the red areas.

The Persian/Arabian Gulf is not a risk-free area, but at the moment it is peacetime operations.

Let’s use the Navy’s NVR numbers. It states we have a 294 ship Battle Force. Of the 111 surface combatants. Of those, 24 are LCS. When planning what the USN can do where, that simple fact needs to be hoisted onboard … and based on what LCS 17 was up to, it appears that we have on the operations side…and have for awhile.

Good.

Of note, the few EuroFrigates we’ve seen in the Red Sea have - with a few exceptions - been more than up to the challenge coming from the shores of Yemen.

Never forget - goodness knows I won’t - that those kinds of ships are what we were told two decades+ ago that “…we do not need.”

Challenge everything. Demand real answers. Don’t assume people with the most power have the best ideas. The decisions we make now will support to burden generations of Sailors.