Sens. McCain, Reed send Navy letter on LCS program changes

Two influential senators are suggesting recent changes made to the Littoral Combat Ship program don't go far enough.

In a Sept. 15 letter to top Navy officials, Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) and Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI) applaud the service for the program overhaul borne out of a recent LCS review, but also urge it to go several steps further.

"While the review yielded some promising initiatives, we are concerned that several critical foundational assumptions of the program were not challenges, including operational availability, Navy's in-house technical support for LCS, manpower requirements, and transition to a new small surface combatant," the senators wrote in the letter to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson and Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley.

The lawmakers suggest the Navy consider reducing the operational availability of LCSs to "a sustainable level," establish a land-based LCS propulsion and machinery control test site, conduct a "bottom-up review" of the LCS crewing requirements, and shore up plans for procuring and delivering a new small surface combatant "as soon as possible in the 2020s."