During my tour as navigator of the USS Coronado, an Independence-class littoral combat ship in San Diego, I became all too familiar with the many challenges facing the LCS program. Yet for all the controversy, LCS has demonstrated a surprisingly better model for officer training and watch standing in the Surface Navy. The focus on specialized mariner courses combined with a more efficient watch configuration on the bridge have resulted in a reliable, more independent corps of junior officers. As the Navy continues to rethink its SWO training pipeline, the LCS model serves as an example for positive change.
Because littoral combat ships were designed with waterjet propulsion and a minimally manned bridge, the Navy realized that the existing training model for junior officers would not be sufficient to prepare future LCS watch standers. Their solution was the LCS Officer of the Deck course, an intensive, eight-week navigation crash course based at the Surface Warfare Officer School in Newport. Split between classrooms and simulator sessions, the course emphasizes core mariner skills and is taught primarily by civilian mariners who offer a level of experience unmatched by SWO lieutenants. Most importantly, the course accepts attrition as a necessary part of any officer training program, as even prospective commanding officers can be dropped from the class. For first tour division officers, the LCS training pipeline offers a similarly designed junior officer of the deck course.
After I reported to the USS Coronado, I also realized the benefits of the minimally manned bridge. During my first tour on a destroyer, a typical watch team to take the ship in and out of port required over a dozen sailors on the bridge, at least seven of which were officers. That’s a lot of people in charge, and unsurprisingly the bridge of a traditional U.S. Navy ship during such operations contains its fair share of chaos. Littoral combat ships greatly simplify this formula by, firstly, removing most of the enlisted watch standers found on other ships and streamlining the underway watch configuration. With their specialized training, a team of three junior officers, made up of an officer of the deck, navigator, and conning officer, manage the LCS bridge during more difficult navigational transits.
As a result, the LCS model puts responsibility back in the hands of junior officers. Because of the ship’s unique configuration, only a core team of officers operates the necessary navigation systems. There is, for example, no helmsman on an LCS; a single conning officer directly manipulates the waterjets and drives the ship (a destroyer, meanwhile, sometimes requires two officers and two helmsmen to do the same). When in open ocean, littoral combat ships also operate with a greatly reduced watch team on the bridge, further enabling officers to take over all aspects of bridge management.
This approach empowers officers to think of themselves as professional mariners, a concept which is sorely lacking in the SWO community. The surface force’s many accidents in recent years have revealed a decline in junior officers’ expertise and their ability to confidently navigate ships on their own. Though more formal training is required before we achieve the kind of professional competency found in, for example, the Royal Navy’s corps of surface officers, the LCS training construct takes a positive step in reforming the U.S. Navy’s surface warfare community.