The new American ship was followed, why was it safe in the end?

The picture shows USS Ziyou, a US Navy littoral combat ship, once claimed to be the most subversive new ship in the world. At the beginning of the 20th century, the US military launched two new naval projects, one is the DDG 1000 "zumwalt" class missile-driven ship project, which was the previous DDX project, and the other is the US Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), which will be renamed as a frigate. The littoral combat ship project is a severe challenge to the traditional American navy, and it is also the only project in which the US military finalizes two bidders at the same time. Both bidders won the bid to build two types of littoral combat ships respectively. The initial order was as high as 50 ships, one of which was an independent littoral combat ship with sci-fi flavor. It is designed with a trimaran, but its performance is not lost, and its speed can reach 47 nautical miles.

The us military once had high hopes for the littoral combat ship. At first, its main purpose was to serve as an offshore combat platform, so as to liberate the expensive and more advanced Alibek-class missile-driven ships. The main surface ships can perform more important tasks in the open sea, while the low-intensity tasks in coastal operations are carried out by littoral combat ships. However, this warship is not as useful as expected. Although equipped with 57mm naval guns, hiram air defense missiles and other weapons, this level of equipment is too weak for the modern navy. The Littoral Combat Ship has a tonnage of nearly 3,000 tons and can be said to be a standard destroyer. However, as long as there is this firepower configuration, many people are quite picky about this warship.

Ideally, the US Navy is also very dissatisfied with the Littoral Combat Ship. Take the littoral combat ship "Fort Worth" stationed at Changi Naval Base as an example. Its speed can reach an astonishing 47 knots, far exceeding the speed of China naval escort ships. In the eyes of the us military, relying on its excellent stealth performance, it can shine in the pursuit of the sea. However, the performance of this warship can be said to be very poor. Several movements in the waters around China were all found, and the color was closely tracked by the 054A frigate. Although the speed of 054A frigate can't catch up with this "large speedboat", don't forget that the Eagle Strike 83 anti-ship missile on 054A can catch up with this warship in a few seconds.

The reason is that LCS has no anti-ship capability, so when it meets other slightly decent warships, it has no countermeasures and can only escape. Therefore, the US military decided to urgently install anti-ship missiles for littoral combat ships. However, because there is not much reserved space under the ship, anti-ship missiles with oblique launch can only be installed in the middle of the warship. Previously, it was equipped with an improved version of the Paradise Fire missile used by the US military for anti-tanks. Although it has certain anti-ship capability, its range is only 8 kilometers, and the threat is very limited in practice. Therefore, the United States has to test the anti-ship missile equipped with NSM, which has a range of 200 kilometers and adopts modular devices, but there are still a series of problems and it still cannot be put into active use.

And the problem of littoral combat ships is not limited to this. The most proud advantage of Littoral Combat Ship is its high speed. But when it flies at high speed, the characteristics of its wake are very obvious, which can be found by aircraft or satellites. Therefore, the US military intends to gradually reduce the number of three-body littoral combat ships in the future, and eventually cancel all these warships, leaving only the self-class littoral combat ships. In addition, the code name "LCS" of Littoral Combat Ship will be renamed as the conventional "FF" frigate, so it can be said that the plan of American Littoral Combat Ship has failed. In the future, the US military will only have a fast frigate with insufficient firepower.