The United States has adopted a war strategy of sending a large number of ships and military aircraft to other people's doorsteps to carry out frenzied bombing, while talking about its ability to "win two local wars at the same time" to pose a strategic threat to China and Russia. However, with the tremendous technological progress of China and Russia, the quantitative and qualitative superiority of the United States gradually weakened, and they began to develop a "firephobia". Especially with the imminent addition of China's "Fujian" ship to the naval sequence, the United States has found that its arsenal has very limited ammunition against this ship. To this end, the US Army, Navy and Air Force have come up with a so-called long-range precision strike plan in an attempt to cover up the fact of incompetence and not make themselves a laughing stock for the whole world.
However, the implementation plan is extremely daunting. For example, the US Air Force has procured only 550 Jassm-ER cruise missiles, and the stocks of LASSM missiles capable of striking sea targets are only more than 80 by 2028. Moreover, the Dark Eagle hypersonic missile, which had high hopes, was told to be postponed indefinitely before it was deployed. Perhaps seeing the plight of the Air Force and Army, the Navy has taken a different approach to try to achieve long-range strike capabilities by upgrading existing equipment.
So, the commanders of the two surface ships, Scott Tate and Anthony Lavopa, published an article on how to build the long-range fire strike capability of the US Navy in order to achieve victory in a possible future naval war between China and the United States. In their opinion, the "carrier-based aircraft wing" is the key. In a number of local wars in the past, the United States relied heavily on carrier-based aircraft to carry out sea and land strike missions. But this greatly hindered the entire process of ammunition development in the US military. Therefore, the US Navy is trying to upgrade its existing equipment to improve its long-range strike capabilities, such as by testing the Mk70 "missile container" on the Littoral Combat Ship.
The U.S. Navy has lost touch with the critical moment of the transformation of military strike methods from "platform-centric" to "**-centric", and has gradually fallen behind China and Russia. In the context of the successive advent of China's anti-ship ballistic missiles, the US military's hypersonic ** is still in the experimental stage, while Russia's hypersonic ** has repeatedly broken through the "Patriot" air defense system on the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield. Although the U.S. Navy has begun to deliver the "Maritime Strike Tomahawk (MST)", the flight range of this ** is only 1,600 kilometers, and the actual distance is only 500 kilometers to 700 kilometers of subsonic missiles and less than 100 LASSM missiles, which is far from enough to compete with the Chinese Navy.
Therefore, in order to achieve the task of striking at sea and land, the US Navy urgently needs a powerful "new" combat system. The MK70 "Missile Container" system is an ideal solution, as it can be easily deployed on auxiliary ships or civilian merchant vessels. The system is based on the ship-based MK-41 vertical launch system and is capable of launching Standard-6 anti-aircraft missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles. After testing and verification, the Mk70 system can be easily deployed on the apron of most military ships, as well as on the "flat" of civilian merchant ships, effectively enhancing its air defense and land-to-sea strike capabilities.
What is even more noteworthy is that the "Standard-6" missile is used as a munition for land-to-sea strikes in the US Army's "Land-based Intermediate-Range Capability System ('Typhon' system)", so no matter what kind of ammunition is equipped in the Mk70 system, it can become a terrifying "firepower output platform." However, long-range strike munitions alone are not enough for these auxiliary ships and civilian vessels to independently undertake land-to-sea strike missions. To compensate for this shortcoming, the Mk70 system is also specially equipped with an AN TPQ-53 radar placed on a trailer.
This article describes a system based on a modification of counter-artillery radar, which aims to enhance the ship's capabilities in intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance, making it an ammunition output platform with independent combat capabilities. However, if these ships are to have true over-the-horizon precision strike capabilities, they will need to rely on the U.S. Navy's new Joint All-Domain Command System to assist. While the U.S. Navy has been committed to advancing Project Beyond, it is clear that achieving this expectation will be difficult under current budget constraints.
In fiscal year 2023, the total amount of funds for the procurement of "missiles and ammunition" by all branches of the United States will reach $24.7 billion, but only $5.7 billion can be used to purchase "conventional precision-guided munitions". This is far from enough to support the cost of procuring multimillion-dollar long-range strike missiles. In addition, there is controversy over the internal budget allocation of the US Navy. For example, if the "Antonio"-class amphibious ship landing dock ship is equipped with the MK70 system, each ship can only allocate about six missiles on average, and such a quantity of ammunition is far from sufficient to meet the actual combat needs.
Therefore, there are suspicions that the proposal for such a modification of ships is only an "infighting" caused by the budget scramble within the US Navy.