USS Coronado LCS 4 Littoral Combat Ship Independence-class

[Music] we are now on board USS Coronado USGS for an independence class littoral combat ship my name is commander Doug Maher I am the commanding officer of the United States ship Coronado littoral combat ship number four we are home ported in San Diego California and right now we were embarked on the ship's maiden overseas deployment where we have an intermediate staging base here in Singapore USS Coronado is a multi mission platform that it focuses on one primary area based on a mission package that we have embarked right now Coronado is for deployed with the surface warfare mission package which includes 30 millimeter guns and 11 meter ribs in support of ni surface warfare as well as maritime interdiction we have sailors that are embarked with the tailored and quality training and visit board search and seizure as well as the ability to employ those 30 millimeter guns organically the ship has a main battery it's a mark 110 Bofors 57 millimeter gun a gun is capable of shooting at a very high rate of rate of fire significantly greater than that of typical guns that the United States Navy has had on our cruisers and destroyers in the past we're also outfitted with a non program of record harpoon weapon system it is a legacy system in our Navy but has been modularized for use here on Coronado's maiden deployment to go ahead and test that concept for potential carry on outfit on future LCS platforms so the littoral combat ship Coronado is capable of doing speed at 40-plus knots they have four main propulsion engines includes 2lm 2500 General Electric gas turbines something that our Navy has had for several decades they also have MTU german-built main propulsion diesel engines 20 V's they're utilized predominantly for the ships steaming there are more efficient engine as far as achieving fuel economy the gas turbines obviously provide us the ability to sprint at very high speeds relative to our typical cruiser destroyer counterparts so what you're looking at here not not the best view relative to where the actual gun barrel is but this is our main battery it's a medium caliber guns called mark 110 Bofors gun 57 millimeter rounds that it'll fire two unitary projectile and this gun will fire at a rate of 220 rounds per minute very substantial speed for a gun of this size it's a very accurate and certainly complements the ship systems as far as how to engage in the event that you have to in an anti surface role if you have boats that are swarming against the ship it's got the ability to adequately defend the ship at the medium caliber with a medium caliber round as we work our way back aft in the ship we'll take the opportunity to look at the 30 millimeter guns which is the next step down as far as range in caliber it's part of the surface warfare mission package as you're probably aware littoral combat ship is a modular design it has open architecture which essentially means that we can go ahead and change the configuration of the ship's primary mission from as it exists now is a surface warfare platform to being a mine countermeasure vessel or anti-submarine warfare vessel based on that modularity and the ability to basically quickly roll on a roll off a mission package or crane on or crane off that same mission package depending on the equipment that you're talking about relative to the the package you're trying to bring onboard so Coronado is exclusively an SE W mission package for this deployment the maiden deployment for the independence variant of LCS we left San Diego back in June of 2016 led by Commander Scott Larson's crew 2:04 brought it out to RIMPAC exercise that su w mission package and brought Coronado out here with the same mission package intact we are as a Navy continuing to bring the anti-submarine warfare mission package in a mine countermeasure package to full operational capability but right now the surface warfare mission package is fully deployables as you as you see and certainly aligned to the mission that we're doing here in the asia-pacific region what you see here is a legacy harpoon system the only thing that differs from our harpoon system then you would otherwise see on a ticonderoga-class Cruiser or a guided missile destroyer is basically where it's located LCS platform was brought to life with the vision in mind for a an organic surface of surface missile system that concept did not make its way to complete fruition is from a programmatic perspective but we as a surface Navy are competing having a competition to determine what will be deployed and there may be certainly a Delta between what eventually gets outfitted on LCS to variant a relative to what gets outfitted on LCS one variant obviously not for for me to decide but this is a basically a rehearsal of concept as far as being able to demonstrate the ship's modularity and have the ability to distribute lethality in keeping with our strategic initiatives for the surface Navy and again harpoon legacy harpoon nothing special or new about it relative to its capabilities here on Coronado it's bringing delivering a service service capability that we've had consistently in our Navy now for for several decades or those are our philosophical and integrated with your they are they're integrated in a in a typical fashion yes we'll go ahead and try to make our way back into the shade here [Music] over here is the Central Station for controlling the ship from a maneuvering perspective the littoral combat ship really starts to get unique at this place relative to a legacy ship and that's because on a destroyer or cruiser for example you could have up to ten people on your bridge watch team starting with the signal men of the watch the quartermaster the watch the bosun's maybe they'll watch and that's before you even get into the officers who are responsible for controlling the ship as far as driving it and tactically maneuvering it what we have here in LCS is a minimal Manning concept and it starts with the managing the resources on the ship's bridge we'll have a console operator on each side of this centreline console we call the junior officer of the deck the office of the deck in the opposite chair that part is not special or unique from the traditional Navy or American Navy the differences in addition to those duties they bring on the burden of all the other watch stations that you would typically parse out to ten or twelve people what makes that somewhat manageable is that we have the ability to fully automate the ship's controls we do steer the ship typically in autopilot so if we intend to make a substantial course turn we can quite literally dial that course digitally in the ship's console telling it to turn right or to turn left and so long as we you know raise your eyes and validate that you're turning in a seeming like fashion without any traffic in danger then the ship will essentially automatically turn to that ordered course rather than having to manipulate a helm like which would be typical for a cruiser or a destroyer type vessel the other thing that's fairly easy for for our deck officers that manipulate the ship is when we're doing more tactical maneuvering specifically when we're pierside these combinators as they're called represent each of the ships five propulsion assets the Ford Combinator is used to control or bat are as a mythical bow thruster that is relative to where you see the the main battery here up forward it's essentially just a tad bit forward of that and below the ship so it retracts the Ford portion of that thruster will retract from the ship and can be trained 360 degrees to maneuver the bow port or starboard as well as provide a vector both forward or aft in doing that the other four combinators represent the each each individual main propulsion drivetrain what this particular variant of LCS has is a legacy LM 2500 General Electric gas sir something you would have seen on Spruance class destroyers ticonderoga-class cruisers and certainly on the arleigh Burke destroyer 's now for several decades so as far as that propulsion drivetrain what differs is not the main the prime mover but actually how that drivetrain translates to the running gear out beyond the thrust bearing so each one of those four main propulsion engines and I'll get to the main propulsion diesels in a minute they are essentially a couple to a reduction gear and then to a propulsion shaft and that shaft terminates with it with an impeller and that impeller essentially draws water from underneath the ship and directs it out or some combination of a thrust vector immediately forward or some portion of it both forward and aft at slow speeds or directly aft when you're trying to back the ship up the way we steer the ship is in addition to controlling the impellers throttles with the with the throttle handle here each one of these combinators can be trained up to 30 degrees and while the throttle controls the amount of thrust coming out of the impeller and being directed out of the water jet these Combinator's can train the water jet up to 30 degrees so that thrust gets directed 30 degrees off access and thus the resulting vector or force to the ship is to go ahead and turn it a very agile capability particularly for a ship that only draws three thousand metric tons in that regard we will typically operate the ship in a or else tearing mode which essentially means that if you grab any one of these Combinator's and adjust the throttles or adjust the the Train of the of the bucket it'll tell the other three to match so you're basically driving the engines in tandem in that regard when we get on and off the pier in a docking or undocking evolution we have the ability to change that mode in three different ways we can put it in individual mode where we're telling each individual drivetrain to train the water jet bucket at a certain angle and then adjust manipulate the throttles for each one with the idea that with the proper configuration and use of the a Z thruster you can literally walk the ship as it sits right now on its pier heading to port or to starboard depending on which side you're made up to the pier what that all amounts to in a in layman's terms is that the ship can walk immediately laterally without twisting at all if you configure the engines correctly both port and starboard or you can twist the ship 360 degrees both port or starboard without changing where that pivot point is geographically located so we could literally if we didn't have the pier here to compete with we could put the bow 180 degrees point in the opposite direction and never get any closer to the vessels afford a draft of us and that's what you know which is very unique about the LCS platform is the ability to manipulate the the main propulsion system with such precision relative to your traditional dual shaft dual prop kind of cruiser destroyer type ship what you see behind you is the multifunction consoles I believe we're sanitized so we can certainly give you some access to that trying to find a good spot to rip it open so you have five multifunction consoles and they're called multifunction because you can do anything that you would do at one console you can do at another so in a traditional Navy environment we're going to have particularly watch stations that will sit at a given console some of those consoles of a destroyer or cruiser can only do what that particular watch standard does based on the type of configuration these are can be manipulated in any which way you choose so if you have a casualty where you know you have a circuit card or you have a loss of communications with the internal servers at one console and you're in the middle of a gunnery event then the watch trainer who controls the gun can immediately switch to another console without really skipping a beat the the only other thing there is that everything we do from this space we have a complement in integrated command center - which is a below us a couple decks and a little bit further aft I'm sorry taken as a pickup it's not it's not a backup it's where we integrate the mission package so the ability to control 30 millimeter guns which are very difficult to see unless you get far away from the ship very very obvious to you when you're a beam of the ship and then looking up but those guns are using the anti-surface warfare mode they'll be controlled from integrated command center - as well as the unmanned aerial vehicle that you saw at the beginning of the tour this is the captains quarters so this is where my workstation is we call this the import cabin one thing about the littoral combat ship is because it is a fast agile ship it requires to be light and compact so this is a little bit more modest and you would typically see on a US Navy destroyer but it certainly gets the job done as far as providing media accommodations to sleep and have access to the networks on the ship obviously some some nice little photos of our ship's namesake the city of Coronado and in California and we're very proud of the ship as you can see the anger is large enough to accommodate two m2hb Fire Scout VTOL UAVs as well as one mh-60 Sierra helicopter [Music] what we're looking at here is the the mq8 Bravo fire Scouts an unmanned aerial vehicle USS Coronado has two of them embarked and they help support our missions that deal with aviation assets my compliments are sh-60 Sierra Seahawk in net we have pilots on board that is qualified to fly the hell man helicopter as well as pilot the unmanned vehicle from integrated control station within the skin of the ship what Fire Scout brings to the table is the ability to have long endurance with a smaller airframe and deliver essentially the same kind of overhead surveillance that the sh-60 Sierra can provide and it's fully integrated into the combat suite for USS Coronado [Music]

Channel: DefenseWebTV

Views: 196,322

Rating: 4.8193398 out of 5

Keywords: USS Coronado, LCS 4, LCS, Littoral Combat Ship, US Navy, IMDEX Asia, IMDEX 2017, Singapore

Id: Vt6b6kG0ExU

Length: 16min 57sec (1017 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2017