U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships To Receive Major Weapon Upgrades Including New Missile Launchers

Secretary of the U.S. Navy, Carlos Del Toro announced the Navy’s plans to upgrade weapons of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), which includes equipping them with MK-70 Payload Delivery System as he expressed confidence in the role of LCS in future combat operations. A Chinese military expert has expressed doubts about this development.

This upgrade will be done on both classes of the LCS which means they will be able to launch bigger missiles such as the SM-6, Del Toro added.

He also said that presently the LCS has Naval Strike Missile which is a long-range weapon however many will be fitted with the Mk 70 Payload Delivery System which has a vertical launch system.

The Navy is planning to install the two systems on Freedom and Independence LCS under the Over-the-horizon weapons systems upgrade. This would enhance the ships’ maritime strike capabilities.

When compared to the NSM that can hit its targets over 100 miles away, the containerised 4-cell MK-41 vertical launch system can support SM-6 and the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile having an intermediate range.

Del Toro added that the MK-70 Payload Delivery System will give the ships tremendous advantage over their adversaries.

The first ship chosen for the upgrade is LCS-29 or USS Beloit, which is the new freedom-class Littoral Combat Ship. USS Nantucket or LCS 27 is another Freedom-class LCS which has an MK-70 PDS built by Lockheed Martin.

The decision to upgrade the LCS is part of the earlier efforts to up-gun the lightly armed hulls. Naval Strike Missiles on Independence-class deployed in the Indo-Pacific region drew ire from Chinese experts in the past.

Del Toro said that the Navy plans to deploy these upgraded ships across the globe, especially in the Persian Gulf, the Pacific and wherever required.

A Mk 70 PDS on a flight deck of the USS Savannah or LCS-28, of the Independence-class, fired an SM-6 missile in the Eastern Pacific in 2023, during a test overseen by the Program Executive Office Integrated Warfare Systems.

Lockheed Martin also brought forward concepts to integrate NSM and 3 Mk 70 PDS on the Freedom-class LCS at the 2024 Surface Navy Association.

The Navy plans to build a fleet of 25 LCS, 15 from the Independence-class with mine countermeasures package that will replace the legacy Avenger-class MCM vessels based in Japan and Bahrain and 10 Freedom-class ships with naval strike missiles and hellfire AGM-114 L Longbow strike missiles and MK-70 launchers.

References: USNI, TWZ

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