20 to join LCS crew on trial deployment

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Freedom is seen underway during Builders Trials.


20 to join LCS crew on trial deployment
By Philip Ewing - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Nov 14, 2009 9:16:06 EST

The Navy’s first littoral combat ship, Freedom, will add 20 sailors to its crew when it makes its trial deployment next year, making for a total complement of about 95 people, as opposed to the crew of 75 the ship was originally designed to carry.

The extra sailors will be part of a “tailored surface warfare package” that Freedom will take on its mission to the Southern Command area of operations; they will give the ship the ability to conduct at-sea boardings and do other jobs it couldn’t tackle with only its main crew, Navy officials said.

“One of the things we’re looking at is crew workload. We’re monitoring it, and it was deemed prudent that we should bring on a separate team for that boarding team capability,” said Capt. Mike Good, the program manager for LCS’s mission modules.

Cmdr. Don Gabrielson, Freedom’s Blue Crew commissioning commander, who has since moved on to a position on the Joint Staff, anticipated criticism of the Freedom’s taking extra people. It might be seen as an early concession that the ship can’t operate in the real world with the small crew for which it was designed, but that’s not so, he said.

“People are going to say, ‘Hey, this is more people than they said they’d need. They’re lying to us!’ ” he said. But just as an LCS will take aboard custom equipment to hunt submarines or mines, so too does it need custom gear — in this case, sailors — for a visit, board, search and seizure team, he said.


Rest of article about this $600+ million wonder at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/11/navy_freedom_deployment_111409w/