Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Crew
The flexibility of the LCS to perform many different missions, with a relatively small crew, made this ship extremely attractive to the Navy. Staffed by a crew ranging in size from 15 to 50, the nucleus crew would be augmented by special mission crews that would embark on a mission-need basis. In total, the ship can berth approximately 75 people. Each ship would also have two crews, a blue crew and a gold crew. Each crew would have a commanding officer, executive officer and a command senior chief. Unlike most ships, the only two people aboard this type of ship who won’t stand a watch are the commanding officer and executive officer. The command senior chief will, in addition to his or her normal duties, stand watch as an officer of the deck (underway).
The LCS would have no extra personnel. There would be no wasteful duties and no sailor assigned would perform meaningless work. Every sailor counts. The two-crew concept has many merits. While one crew is at sea, the other would be ashore training. This rotation allows the ship to be deployed to a greater extent, maximizing the ship’s operational impact to the fleet, yet protecting the individual deployment tempo of the crew.
The LCS uses a training repertoire known as Train to Qualify (T2Q) that represents a completely different paradigm than traditional officer of the deck (OOD) training. Train to Qualify establishes as a baseline objective the intent to equip the prospective LCS OOD with the requisite mariner skill set and tactical awareness within the maritime environment required to proficiently handle the ship immediately upon reporting aboard. From an engineering perspective, students would depart the course with about 65 percent of their personal qualifications standards (PQS) completed.
The T2Q concept, which began at SWOS in July 2006, was new to the surface warfare community, but it has been used successfully by the Navy’s aviation community and civilian maritime industry for years. Just as with aircraft, where a small one- or two-man crew is required to operate high-cost, high-risk complex systems with no margin for error, the LCS demands a similar level of training for its OODs. On a traditional surface vessel, the OOD is backed by a bridge team consisting of redundant layers of highly skilled individuals focusing on specific parts of the overall picture. On the LCS, the OOD must be able to do it all, often in tight maneuverable quarters at speeds in excess of 40 knots.
This means the majority of prospective OODs would find the LCS to be quite different from most vessels they have served on before, most notably in the ship’s ability to travel at great speed and do so in water as shallow as 15 feet. These are huge assets for the Navy in the war on terror, but they require the OOD to maintain a level of vigilance and situational awareness well beyond that required of conventional vessels.
The LCS OOD curriculum was designed with two primary areas of focus: reinforcing the basic lessons that every OOD must understand and exploring, identifying and honing the skills that are critical to the officer operating in a high-speed environment. Tests are heavily weighted toward ‘Rules of the Road’ knowledge and understanding. The idea is to produce consistent, measurable, objective training outcomes for all students, which the student can immediately and directly apply to the real world.
The most vital tool in this T2Q curriculum is the simulator used at SWOS. Most shiphandling simulators used in the Navy and in commercial training facilities have a generic quality to them, which is somewhat unrealistic. The LCS simulator is unique in that it is approximately an 80 percent replication of the bridge of the LCS, including the placement of controls and seating positions, much like a flight simulator. This is the essence of the T2Q methodology because the simulator experience not only teaches the OOD how the LCS handles under any given condition, but it also teaches him or her “muscle memory.” Put another way, because of the fast-paced, littoral environment the OOD must operate in, he or she must know exactly where to reach without looking down, and the simulator teaches that.
These simulators are of the highest quality and provide realistic training that matches real world operations on a ship. As a result, the students leave the course highly trained and with a level of confidence that is usually not obtained until having spent a significant time on board their platform. By dedicating focused training time at SWOS, the path to qualification is not hindered by their other job demands at sea.
The simulator exercises begin with basic shiphandling in open water on a clear, calm day. The students then practice working around berths and slips with varying levels of wind and/or current. Training eventually progresses to the point where each two-person bridge team is routinely running the ship in restricted waters at top speed with multiple contacts in low visibility and/or at night.
The Littoral Combat Ship Wholeness Concept of Operations requires a crew to certify in 15 mission areas using its core crew and one additional mission area applicable to both the core crew and mission module personnel. Using a discrete event simulation tool called the Total Crew Model, a March 2007 Naval Postgraduate School study analyzed the proposed Fleet Response Training Plan for Littoral Combat Ship. This examination using a 14-day training cycle snapshot of the 40 proposed crew members was found to be sufficient to sustain the ship through a training assessment phase. The snapshot evaluated crew endurances using 63, 67 and 70-hour workweeks. The modeling showed the 70-hour workweek satisfied the manpower requirement workload, as delineated in OPNAVINST 1000.16J. This workweek, however, exceeded core crew endurances by 594 hours and 42% of the crew exceeded acceptable fatigue levels.
The LCS would provide sufficient berthing forthe simultaneous assignment of ship's company and mission detachments. Designs must use a human-centered design approach to automate decision processes and optimize manning. LCS designs should exploit SMARTSHIP technologies to the maximum extent practicable. Generic multi-modal reconfigurable work-stations and consoles would be used to the maximum extent practicable. Designs must also:
- Maintain the health and well being of the crew.
- Provide medical care to assigned and embarked personnel.
- Provide administrative and supply support for assigned and embarked personnel.
- Provide on demand individual and team training, with mission rehearsal capability, both in port and underway.
- Provide ship upkeep and maintenance.
- Provide physical security.
- Ensure safety to equipment, personnel and ordnance.
The LCS would operate throughout its life cycle in U.S., foreign, and international waters in full compliance with applicable Federal, state, local foreign and international pollution control laws and regulations. Environmental constraints include minimization/mitigation ofdischarges and emissions. Four Naval Personnel Development Command Learning Centers began working in November 2005 to build a training program for the first crew members of the Navy’s first Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), USS Freedom, who started arriving for duty in January 2006.
The Center for Surface Combat Systems (CSCS) is the lead Learning Center of Excellence for LCS and is working in conjunction with the Center for Naval Engineering (CNE), Center for Service Support (CSS) and Center for Information Dominance on individual schoolhouse training issues. To identify the skills needed to operate the ship, Human Capital Objects (HCO), a detailed description that identifies all work, including watches and collateral duties.
LCS is the first ship on which manning and training requirements were determined based on the development of Human Capital Objects, leveraging the significant work accomplished in Job/Task Analysis and skills-based assessment. With a total projected crew of 75, the optimally manned Freedom requires that its crew members have skills in more than just their rating. They would have a blend of skills from several ratings, which is creating a new, or hybrid, Sailor.
The new system of preparation and evaluation for LCS is necessary because of its unique crew size and billets aboard. Each LCS would have a core crew of about 40 Sailors for a ship about the size of a frigate. The core crew would be joined by a mission package crew and an aviation detachment, bringing the total crew size to approximately 75. To perform any one of several missions, an LCS seaframe can be configured with mine warfare, anti-surface or anti-submarine mission modules.
With Train to Qualify, everyone has to report aboard the LCS ready to fulfill all the duties of their watches and their jobs, both individually and as an integral part of the crew. The main change with this process is that each Sailor would be evaluated by strict reference to uniform measures, metrics and standards. They would be required to demonstrate parts of their job in ways that give their evaluators, their fellow crew members and commanding officers confidence that they would be able to step into their role aboard LCS with minimal on-the-job training.
The way the LCS Sailor is chosen is also a new process. Instead of looking for a specific Navy Enlisted Classification (NEC), they are looking for a specific set of skills for each LCS billet. Every Sailor stationed aboard an LCS would be filling a specific numbered billet defined by tasks that often range far from their individual rating or NEC. With this, the entire detailing process is being changed to incorporate time for all the training a Sailor must get before stepping aboard an LCS. With LCS, a billet would become available 18–24 months before a scheduled loss instead of the normal 9–12 months currently used.
Once a Sailor has been chosen to fill the LCS billet, their individual training track would then be made up for them and train them on the skills they are lacking. This would be completed by a combination of online, classroom and simulator training since they would be required to step aboard LCS ready to stand watch.
The LCS CONOPS featured a new approach to individual, team, unitlevel , integrated/advanced phase , and proficiency training to accommodate the minimum ( "optimal" ) manning and rotational crewing concepts. LCS Core Crews are comprised of approximately 54 Officers and Enlisted personnel . These crews are almost all E-5 and above with at least some form of previous shipboard experience . When embarked on a ship, the Core Crew is notionally augmented with the following operational teams:
- A 19-person Mission Package Detachment. The Surface Warfare Mission Package to operate and maintain the ship ' s 30mm cannons and 11M RHIBs, and to perform the functions of a Visit, Board, Search and Seizure team.
- A 24-person Aviation Detachment to operate, support and maintain the ship's organic helicopter assets (both manned and unmanned).
Prior to the 2013- 2014 time period, Core Crews were comprised of 40 personnel. Crews started receiving 4 Ensigns and a "+10" complement of Enlisted Sailors in 2013- 2014 in response to crew feedback that there simply were not enough personnel to properly and safely accomplish the expected mission sets. Included in the "+10" group were three engineering positions : HTl, EN2, and DC3. Crew training was broken up into two distinct phases; Train to Qualify (T2Q) and Train to Certify (T2C). T2Q is designed to prepare individual watchstanders up t o their final q u alification . T2C concen trates on watch team training in preparation for final certification. During pipeline training e nroute to their ultimate duty crews, prospective LCS Sailors receive a series of vendor training courses provided by civilian contractors.
Results of the July 2015 Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI) Organizational Climate Survey revealed a number of areas of concern. Of particular concern were the job satisfaction and exhaustion scores, which the LCSRON ONE Commodore said was consistent among LCS crews. Because of the high OPTEMPO, numerous demands placed on the ship, and seemingly endless workload, 9 out of 10 enlisted Sailors and half of the Officers surveyed said they felt overwhelmed. In a comment made during an informal command climate survey, a Sailor stated there was "no break, no reprieve, just increasing daily tasking." A contradiction existed, however, between what Crews are told about procedural compliance and what they perceive to be necessary. While they are told almost daily not to rush through tasks and to comply with every procedure verbatim, this guidance does not match the feeling they get of being overwhelmed with work and the need to hurry.
