Littoral Combat Ships Integral Part of US Navy's Future

Vice-Admiral Tom Copeman pronounces on 'Surface Forces Priorities in an Ever-Changing Maritime Environment', sees LCS playing crucilal Navy role.

In an article for the US Navy News Service, the Admiral writes:

"Twenty-five years ago, then CNO Admiral Trost looked into the future and began our shift from a Cold War focus to dealing with regional and littoral conflicts in the years to come.   So we started down the path to where we are now—working through various iterations, starts and stops, and plenty of ideas on ship types and classes to deal with unknown future threats.
Now we have assets in place to operate in the littorals and we have new ways of delivering troops and equipment to the beach ...

The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is an important addition to the Battle Force and is exactly the ship we envisioned 11 years ago to fill a capability gap in the Littorals in Surface Warfare, Mine Warfare and Anti-submarine Warfare.  It is here now and we fully expect it to be an important an integral and substantial part of our future force.  

It’s a high speed, shallow draft, multi-mission workhorse full of technology that is our future.  As we decommission different ships of various classes, LCS will step up and fill multiple roles.  It is far more automated than previous class ships, and with lower manning, requires us to adapt our training and operations to meet that reality.