Success of Sea Basing Concept Hinges on Effective Logistics Management Systems

Major Surgery Required on Processes, Hardware to Make the Scheme a Reality

By RICHARD C. BARNARD
Editor in Chief

With Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF) ships at its heart, and protective strike groups at its perimeter, the sea base is envisioned as the operational corpus for U.S. tactical forces of the future. Its various parts will be bound together by the major arteries of the sea base; the logistics management systems that will make the difference between success and failure of the entire concept.

However, those arteries now are filled with unsuitable processes and hardware, and major surgery will be required to make the sea basing scheme a reality. Vice Adm Charles W. Moore Jr., the Navy’s logistics chief, said during an April presentation on sea basing during the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Exposition in Washington, D.C., “We believe that in order to be as responsive and capable as we need to be in the long run for sea basing, we’re going to have to get serious about enhancing our logistics capability.”

The supply systems of the four services are incompatible, for example, and much of the military’s logistics hardware would not function well as part of a sea base. The landing craft, air cushion (LCAC), a hovercraft that moves people and equipment from ship to shore, was not designed to take on cargo in sea state 4 with waves of 4 to 8 feet, a prime criterion for sea base operations. In Iraq, Marine logistics information systems — some 30 years old — could not keep track of requests from dispersed and fast-moving fighting units.

Marine Lt. Gen. Richard L. Kelly, an architect of sea basing and deputy commandant for installations and logistics, has ordered an overhaul. Existing MPF ships would be a detriment to the sea base, as they have been in current operations ranging from Iraq to the 1993 Operation Restore Hope in Somalia. As MPF ships docked at Mogadishu to help relieve famine conditions, military forces had to offload Abrams tanks to gain access to the food supplies below. In Iraq, the inflexibility of the MPFs and other cargo ships meant moving mountains of supplies and equipment off the ships onto the beach, creating the largest materiel buildup since World War II. Selective offload, a key requirement of sea basing, was impossible.

However, sea service officials believe they can come up with the innovations requisite to breathe life into the sea basing concept. Jonathan D. Kaskin, the Navy’s director of strategic mobility and combat logistics, said many of the system changes to come will center on the design of a new MPF Future ship as the services move their force constitution, staging, onward movement and integration efforts from shore to the sea base.

The MPF Future ship, to be built beginning in 2007, will do much more than carry cargo. Among the design features being considered are a flight deck, joint forces command-and-control module, accommodations for troops and selective offload capability that may be based on the systems now used by amphibious ships.

Some experts call for an MPF Future flight deck 1,000 feet long and wide enough to accommodate the C-130, which flew off an aircraft carrier in tests 40 years ago and is being considered as a “connector” craft to shuttle troops and materiel from the sea base to shore. Unlike vertical lift craft, the C-130 can transport the 20-ton cargo container, a basic storage mode for war materiel.

The Navy may decide to begin the MPF Future program with a modified commercial container ship. Maersk Line Ltd., a large maritime services company that operates a five-ship squadron of current MPF ships for the Navy, proposes its “Afloat Forward Staging Base,” a modification of the S-Class container ship, which is 1,140 feet long and could provide selective offload of cargo, berthing and support for 6,000 troops and a flight deck capable of simultaneous operations by a dozen V-22 tiltrotor aircraft.

Devised in cooperation with naval architects Gibbs & Cox and Norshipco, a ship conversion company, the ship could be fitted with a side ramp for roll-off operations. Stephen M. Carmel, senior vice president of Maersk, said the ship would be built at modest cost and in the water within 18 months of an order.

The MPF Future also could be designed to bolster the performance of LCACs in sea state 4 conditions if fitted with a ramp, loading platform and stern and bow thrusters, Kaskin said. The huge ship could be oriented “so that you have sea state 4 or 5 on one side and create a lee [sheltered area] on the other.” The hovercraft LCACs would use the ramp for access and take on cargo from the loaded platform.

One senior Navy official said the service would require two squadrons of MPF Future ships, each comprising six vessels. Their final design requirements will depend in part on operational criteria still being assessed by the Navy hierarchy. Maj. Gen. James R. Battaglini, the Navy’s director of Expeditionary Warfare, said one option during times of crisis is to move the MPF Future ships — preloaded with equipment and materiel — immediately from their forward bases, such as Diego Garcia or Guam, toward the area of operations. Meanwhile, troops and vertical lift would be sent from the United States by airliner or High Speed Vessel and marry up at an advance base or on the sea base itself.

“There are various ways of constituting the sea base,” Kaskin said. The Navy is assessing the options.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is testing various ways to improve the responsiveness of its logistics systems. A Sense and Respond Logistics (S&RL) networking plan developed by the Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation would view every entity in the sea base — military, government or commercial — as both a consumer and potential supplier of materiel. When one unit needs supplies or ammunition, the S&RL network would query all other nearby units to locate the materiel needed and get it delivered. The complex system, based on the detailed situational awareness of each unit in the network and its willingness to negotiate its demand and response, will be tested in July by Marine Corps units in the Pacific.

Another innovation tested by the Navy is a technology used by the offshore oil industry that enables ships to transfer their cargo at sea while operating in the higher sea states. “That’s a technology we hope to be able to use,” said Kaskin.

One requirement of sea basing is for so-called “skin-to-skin” transfers in high sea states of cargo from, for example, container ships to MPF Future ships for disbursement to tactical units. If that proves impossible, some military cargo ships could be used for shuttle duty, moving from an advance base to the sea base with people, equipment and materiel.

Over the next several months, the Navy will do a lot of cost-benefit tradeoffs, said Kaskin. “It’s very exciting because there are a lot of options and … we’ve got a fairly clean sheet of paper with a few capabilities that currently exist.”

Sea Power Associate Editor Hunter C. Keeter contributed to this report.