Littoral combat ship
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The Littoral Combat Ship or LCS is a new concept currently being developed by the United States Navy. The LCS will be a variation of the destroyer (DD and DDG types) designed to replace the fleet of frigates currently in use by the Navy, which are slowly being retired from the fleet.
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By 2004, preliminary designs by Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Raytheon were submitted to the U.S. Navy for evaluation with plans to begin construction of the first ships by 2005 and to take delivery by 2007.
On 9 May 2005, Secretary of the Navy Gordon England announced the selection of the name USS Freedom (LCS-1) for the first Littoral Combat Ship. A keel laying ceremony is scheduled for 2 June 2005, at Marinette Marine, Marinette, Wisconsin.
Some believe that LCS is a "preemptive strike" program, designed to create a successor to the FFGs before Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld can replace them with "Streetfighter," a concept for a series of corvette–sized attack boats. Because of this, a joking expansion of "LCS" is "Let's Castrate Streetfighter."
An international task force has also been put together to determine the usefulness of the Littoral Combat Ship in the navies of the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany, in addition to the United States.