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26-05-10, 02:12 AM
Seabasing Counters Area Denial
May 25, 2010
By Bettina H. Chavanne
Washington
Imagine trying to stage an entire U.S. Marine Corps expeditionary brigade from a country that does not want it there. Consider the logistical and security issues associated with operating, maintaining and protecting all the equipment and forces. Now imagine taking the whole operation offshore.
The Marine Corps has dedicated an entire sector of its Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va., to seabasing. The concept “spans two dimensions,” says Col. (ret.) James Strock, director of the Marines’ Seabasing Integration Division, “platforms and connectors and the battlespace function.” A platform can be anything from a naval flotilla to multinational shipping companies. “Anything that floats, quite frankly,” says Strock. Connectors operate vertically (for example, the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft) or horizontally from a Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV) to a floating causeway.
The so-called Battlespace Function spans fires and maneuver; command and control; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; and force protection.
Typical joint seabasing components could include a carrier strike group, maritime prepositioning group, combat logistics force vessels, amphibious ships, an expeditionary strike group, connectors, and coalition-forces and sister-service ships.
“Seabasing is not an end to itself,” Strock says. The mission is the deciding factor. Is it humanitarian assistance? Forcible entry? Stability operations? “What types of platforms and connectors would you need to accomplish that [particular] mission?” he asks. “No two seabases are the same.”
For the U.S. military, seabasing is a very real need. The Pentagon has had to deal with obstacles to its logistical plans in both Afghanistan and Iraq, due to problems in securing adequate land bases. In 2001, according to a report published three years ago by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), operations in Afghanistan had to be developed with Central Asia’s limited infrastructure in mind. The invasion of Iraq in 2003, similarly, was affected by Ankara’s decision to deny the Army access to northern Iraq through Turkey. “Dependence on local access complicates military planning and makes U.S. forces more vulnerable to external operational constraints,” the CBO stated in its report.
Even now, uncertainty complicates U.S. military planning in critical parts of the world. The unrest in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic, could eventually affect Manas Air Base in that country, which the U.S. Air Force and NATO forces use to support operations in Afghanistan. The base suspended flights briefly last month while fighting raged in the capital. Last year, Kyrgyzstan’s parliament tripled the annual rent the U.S. pays for the facility, to $60 million, after threatening to close it. Some observers believe that if a government allied with Moscow comes to power the U.S. could lose Manas entirely. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called the conflict a civil war on April 13, a signal, perhaps, that Moscow views its neighbor as unstable, and thus a border threat that might compel the Kremlin to send forces in to secure the country. If this scenario plays out, it is likely that Russia would not want a U.S. and NATO air base in the country.
In the U.S. Navy’s Fiscal 2011 30-year shipbuilding plan, seabasing is listed as a priority. The service decided to shift away from a single Maritime Prepositioning Force Future (MPFF) squadron and instead establish three Maritime Prepositioning Squadrons (MPS) “with enhanced seabasing capabilities useful across the full range of military operations.” Each MPS will have one Large Medium-Speed Roll-on/Roll-off (LMSR) cargo ship and be supported by a T‑AKE dry cargo/ammunition ship and a new Mobile Landing Platform (MLP).
The decision to move away from a forward-deployed MPFF concept, noted in the Navy’s Fiscal 2011 shipbuilding plan, arose because MPFF addresses the “lower end of the warfighting spectrum,” according to the report. But certain tactics, techniques and procedures contained within the MPFF vision are still applicable and will be filtered down into the MPS. LHA 6-class amphibious assault ships, which originally fell under the MPFF umbrella, will now be moved into the amphibious warfare category to address forcible entry joint operations.
“Any time you operate from the sea, you have a seabase,” Strock says. “People initially try to equate seabasing solely with logistics.” But the concept spans “all warfighting and maneuvers from the sea.”
One new element in seabasing is the ability to move vehicles from a large logistics ship to the shore, which means transferring them in deep water. The MLP is an essential link, allowing vehicles to roll off a ship and onto a landing craft.
The Seabasing Integration Div. is focusing on studying the art of the possible in equipment movement at sea. The Navy recently devoted a month to demonstrating vehicle transfer between a surrogate MLP ship and an LMSR ship. The test, which wrapped up in mid-February, demonstrated a self-deploying ramp system installed on the surrogate MLP and a new self-deploying sideport platform installed on the USNS Soderman, an LMSR ship. Personnel and vehicles, including Humvees, Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacements and amphibious assault vehicles, were transferred between the ships in Sea State 3 conditions in the Gulf of Mexico.
For the moment, however, the capability will have to remain a concept. “We’re in a holding pattern,” says Mark Deskins, deputy program manager for Strategic and Theater Sealift in the Navy’s Program Executive Office for Ships. “Our current MLP design could take on a modular platform if there were funding available.”
“There is no specific program for seabasing with money against it,” Strock says. The concept is mutable. “Individual platforms and connector programs in various stages of development and acquisition, taken together, are the resource pool necessary to put a seabase together.”
One of those individual platforms is the Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) replacement, called the Ship-to-Shore Connector, or SSC. In August, a request for proposals (RFP) will be released for a $4.2-billion contract to design a test and training craft and then deliver 72 SSCs. Approval for full-rate production is scheduled for Fiscal 2019.
A Boeing-Marinette Marine team and a Textron-L-3 team announced their intentions to compete for the contract. Boeing notes it has already won five awards for technical study contracts on the SSC for machinery reliability, maintainability and availability; high-durability protection schemes; gearbox concepts; composite lift-fan structure; and the input, output and control system.
The challenge with this program, according to Greg Peterson, Boeing’s manager for the SSC, is to provide “the improvements the customer is expecting within the bounds of the program.” The cockpit, too, which will change from a three-person configuration on the LCAC to a two-person configuration and fly-by-wire controls, is also significant. Peterson says Boeing has the advantage of years of helicopter experience to bring to bear on a ship that will, once it rises 4 ft. off the water, essentially be controlled like a rotorcraft.
The Army has a piece of the seabasing puzzle as well, and has been researching ways to deploy its forces using the concept. In a September 2009 presentation on joint seabasing, Bill Rittenhouse, director of the Joint Interdependency Coordination Division of the Army’s Capabilities Integration Center, noted that “arriving by sea is an Army core competency.” Tests such as the one the Navy ran on a vehicle-transfer system are indispensable to Army planners. “The at-sea transfer of vehicles and equipment in Sea State 3 is what really enables you to keep much of your capability at sea as opposed to having to [use] a fixed port,” says Strock. This is particularly true in areas where troops may not be very welcome.
In Haiti, Strock notes, ships were able to come in close to the island to deploy assets. “Notionally, we should have the ability to operate over the horizon,” he says.
Credit: US Navy
May 25, 2010
By Bettina H. Chavanne
Washington
Imagine trying to stage an entire U.S. Marine Corps expeditionary brigade from a country that does not want it there. Consider the logistical and security issues associated with operating, maintaining and protecting all the equipment and forces. Now imagine taking the whole operation offshore.
The Marine Corps has dedicated an entire sector of its Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va., to seabasing. The concept “spans two dimensions,” says Col. (ret.) James Strock, director of the Marines’ Seabasing Integration Division, “platforms and connectors and the battlespace function.” A platform can be anything from a naval flotilla to multinational shipping companies. “Anything that floats, quite frankly,” says Strock. Connectors operate vertically (for example, the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft) or horizontally from a Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV) to a floating causeway.
The so-called Battlespace Function spans fires and maneuver; command and control; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; and force protection.
Typical joint seabasing components could include a carrier strike group, maritime prepositioning group, combat logistics force vessels, amphibious ships, an expeditionary strike group, connectors, and coalition-forces and sister-service ships.
“Seabasing is not an end to itself,” Strock says. The mission is the deciding factor. Is it humanitarian assistance? Forcible entry? Stability operations? “What types of platforms and connectors would you need to accomplish that [particular] mission?” he asks. “No two seabases are the same.”
For the U.S. military, seabasing is a very real need. The Pentagon has had to deal with obstacles to its logistical plans in both Afghanistan and Iraq, due to problems in securing adequate land bases. In 2001, according to a report published three years ago by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), operations in Afghanistan had to be developed with Central Asia’s limited infrastructure in mind. The invasion of Iraq in 2003, similarly, was affected by Ankara’s decision to deny the Army access to northern Iraq through Turkey. “Dependence on local access complicates military planning and makes U.S. forces more vulnerable to external operational constraints,” the CBO stated in its report.
Even now, uncertainty complicates U.S. military planning in critical parts of the world. The unrest in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic, could eventually affect Manas Air Base in that country, which the U.S. Air Force and NATO forces use to support operations in Afghanistan. The base suspended flights briefly last month while fighting raged in the capital. Last year, Kyrgyzstan’s parliament tripled the annual rent the U.S. pays for the facility, to $60 million, after threatening to close it. Some observers believe that if a government allied with Moscow comes to power the U.S. could lose Manas entirely. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called the conflict a civil war on April 13, a signal, perhaps, that Moscow views its neighbor as unstable, and thus a border threat that might compel the Kremlin to send forces in to secure the country. If this scenario plays out, it is likely that Russia would not want a U.S. and NATO air base in the country.
In the U.S. Navy’s Fiscal 2011 30-year shipbuilding plan, seabasing is listed as a priority. The service decided to shift away from a single Maritime Prepositioning Force Future (MPFF) squadron and instead establish three Maritime Prepositioning Squadrons (MPS) “with enhanced seabasing capabilities useful across the full range of military operations.” Each MPS will have one Large Medium-Speed Roll-on/Roll-off (LMSR) cargo ship and be supported by a T‑AKE dry cargo/ammunition ship and a new Mobile Landing Platform (MLP).
The decision to move away from a forward-deployed MPFF concept, noted in the Navy’s Fiscal 2011 shipbuilding plan, arose because MPFF addresses the “lower end of the warfighting spectrum,” according to the report. But certain tactics, techniques and procedures contained within the MPFF vision are still applicable and will be filtered down into the MPS. LHA 6-class amphibious assault ships, which originally fell under the MPFF umbrella, will now be moved into the amphibious warfare category to address forcible entry joint operations.
“Any time you operate from the sea, you have a seabase,” Strock says. “People initially try to equate seabasing solely with logistics.” But the concept spans “all warfighting and maneuvers from the sea.”
One new element in seabasing is the ability to move vehicles from a large logistics ship to the shore, which means transferring them in deep water. The MLP is an essential link, allowing vehicles to roll off a ship and onto a landing craft.
The Seabasing Integration Div. is focusing on studying the art of the possible in equipment movement at sea. The Navy recently devoted a month to demonstrating vehicle transfer between a surrogate MLP ship and an LMSR ship. The test, which wrapped up in mid-February, demonstrated a self-deploying ramp system installed on the surrogate MLP and a new self-deploying sideport platform installed on the USNS Soderman, an LMSR ship. Personnel and vehicles, including Humvees, Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacements and amphibious assault vehicles, were transferred between the ships in Sea State 3 conditions in the Gulf of Mexico.
For the moment, however, the capability will have to remain a concept. “We’re in a holding pattern,” says Mark Deskins, deputy program manager for Strategic and Theater Sealift in the Navy’s Program Executive Office for Ships. “Our current MLP design could take on a modular platform if there were funding available.”
“There is no specific program for seabasing with money against it,” Strock says. The concept is mutable. “Individual platforms and connector programs in various stages of development and acquisition, taken together, are the resource pool necessary to put a seabase together.”
One of those individual platforms is the Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) replacement, called the Ship-to-Shore Connector, or SSC. In August, a request for proposals (RFP) will be released for a $4.2-billion contract to design a test and training craft and then deliver 72 SSCs. Approval for full-rate production is scheduled for Fiscal 2019.
A Boeing-Marinette Marine team and a Textron-L-3 team announced their intentions to compete for the contract. Boeing notes it has already won five awards for technical study contracts on the SSC for machinery reliability, maintainability and availability; high-durability protection schemes; gearbox concepts; composite lift-fan structure; and the input, output and control system.
The challenge with this program, according to Greg Peterson, Boeing’s manager for the SSC, is to provide “the improvements the customer is expecting within the bounds of the program.” The cockpit, too, which will change from a three-person configuration on the LCAC to a two-person configuration and fly-by-wire controls, is also significant. Peterson says Boeing has the advantage of years of helicopter experience to bring to bear on a ship that will, once it rises 4 ft. off the water, essentially be controlled like a rotorcraft.
The Army has a piece of the seabasing puzzle as well, and has been researching ways to deploy its forces using the concept. In a September 2009 presentation on joint seabasing, Bill Rittenhouse, director of the Joint Interdependency Coordination Division of the Army’s Capabilities Integration Center, noted that “arriving by sea is an Army core competency.” Tests such as the one the Navy ran on a vehicle-transfer system are indispensable to Army planners. “The at-sea transfer of vehicles and equipment in Sea State 3 is what really enables you to keep much of your capability at sea as opposed to having to [use] a fixed port,” says Strock. This is particularly true in areas where troops may not be very welcome.
In Haiti, Strock notes, ships were able to come in close to the island to deploy assets. “Notionally, we should have the ability to operate over the horizon,” he says.
Credit: US Navy