The current conflict over the Strait of Hormuz seems like an opportunity tailor-made for Navy ships made in Mobile to finally live up to their potential. To judge from a new Navy Times report, that may not be happening.
In recent years, the knock on the Littoral Combat Ship was that it had been marginalized by changing times. The ships – including the Independence-class LCS, an angular aluminum trimaran built by Austal USA in Mobile – had been conceived for a world in which the Navy would have to go after pirates and other small fry in shallow coastal waters. But superpower conflicts, particularly with China, had re-emerged as the scenario of greatest concern. The concern was that the relatively small aluminum ships didn’t have the firepower or the armor for heavyweight fights.
But when the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran resulted in an Iranian chokehold on a globally important shipping corridor, that seemed more like the original LCS scenario. Particularly given that one of the main missions envisioned for the LCS was minesweeping…