Littoral Operations

The US Navy is testing a fish like robot designed to carry out stealthy, silent and secure underwater surveillance missions - from intelligence gathering to hull inspections, where its silent operation and mission endurance would provide great advantages to sailors and marines.

The US Navy wants its Littoral Combat Ships to be better armed and survivable. Consistent with the Fleet's views on the most valued capabilities delivered by a small surface combatant, provide multi-mission anti-surface warfare (SUW) and anti-submarine warfare capabilities (ASW), as well as continuous and effective air, surface and underwater self-defense.

Navies from 44 nations are participating in this year's exercise, whose focus is to promote regional security through mine countermeasure operations.

The Israel Ministry of Defense has called off an international tender for the supply of four Offshore patrol Vessels for the Israel Navy after Germany said it will reconsider sharing the construction costs if the contract is handed to a German shipyard

Cherbourg based CMN (Constructions Mecaniques de Normandie) has unveiled the C Sword 90 stealthy corvette at the Euronaval naval expo in Paris this week. The stealth vessel is one of three new ship designs the company is launching, all positioned to address the growing needs of world navies to support increasingly demanding missions encountered at the high sea and littoral waters.

The US Navy contracts Textron Systems to deliver Common Unmanned Surface Vessel (CUSV) for the Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UAISS) - a Mine CounterMeasure (MCM) system to be deployed by unmanned boats on the Littoral Combat Ships (LCS)

The US Navy is evaluating a technology controlling swarms of unmanned boats with high level of autonomy. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has tested an applique kit that will allow any unmanned surface vehicle (USV) to not only protect Navy ships, but also, for the first time, autonomously “swarm” offensively on hostile vessels.

Could a stealthy, fast going corvette-sized 'super Ghost' vessel take on the US Navy Littoral Combat Ship and win? The people at Portsmouth' Juliet Marine Systems believe it can. They are proposing that, at a cost of a single LCS, the navy take six of Ghosts which will be able to assume many of the LCS' littoral operations either independently, or operating with oceangoing naval vessels as motherships, providing a more affordable, agile and survivable naval strike force.

The US Navy has demonstrated operations of manned and unmanned aircraft from the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). On a test off the Pacific coast, the Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Fire Scout launched and controlled from the USS Freedom, transferred information to an airborne Sikorsky MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter, both providing the LCS critical surveillance information

Boeing and the US Navy began testing an Advanced Airborne Sensor (AAS) radar system for the P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft. A series of photos, taken by Russell Hill revealed earlier this week. The radar, developed by the Raytheon company, is a follow-on to the Littoral Surveillance Radar System (LRRS, APS-149 also built by Raytheon) currently...

In three years the US Navy could have a prototype of an autonomous anti-submarine warfare vessel that will be able to detect, track and shadow any type of submarine, including ultra-quiet diesel-electric subs, turning these undersea beast from predators into targets.

The U.S. Navy’ plans to base four Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) in Singapore. The lead ship of the LCS class, USS Freedom is expected to embark on a 10 month demonstration deployment to the area in 2013 but a recently published report highlighting a number of malfunctions questions the vessels readiness and ability to operate far from its base.