Keys to the Future
Clark touts Sea Swap and Fleet Response Plan
Reflecting on his five years as chief of naval operations, Adm. Vern
Clark highlighted his drive to transform the Navy from a force structure
designed for rotation to one responsive to “the real enemy that
we have.”
He told an audience at the Navy League’s 2005 Sea-Air-Space Exposition
(SAS) that Sea Swap — the practice of rotating crews to deployed
ships — and the Fleet Response Plan to deploy forces less predictably
and surge forces when needed “have postured us for the future.
Force posture is at least as important as force structure. DD(X) [next-generation
destroyer] and LCS [Littoral Combat Ship] are being designed from the
keel up to be sea-swapped,” Clark said, indicating his confidence
in the potential demonstrated in Sea Swap experiments.
In other news from SAS:
MSC Head Sets Goal For Nine-Minute Offload
Citing the painful slowness of current logistics vessel offload capabilities,
Vice Adm. David Brewer, commander of the Military Sealift Command (MSC),
said his organization is testing various options to improve offload time,
including improved shipboard elevators, enhanced small craft shipboard
interface and a selective discharge system, also known as automated warehousing.
“We’re working with Defense Logistics Agency to develop
an automated warehousing system that we could put inside of a hull and
take it to the sea base. We just contracted with Benedict Engineering
(Tallahassee, Fla.),” Brewer said during an SAS seminar on enabling
deployed forces.
“We have to come up with a selective discharge system that can
offload very rapidly to get … forces ashore what they want, when
they want it, from the bottom of that stack of nine containers to a deck
to fly it ashore or [offload] over the side in nine minutes. This will
be demonstrated in August. We’re going to land-base it first, test
it ashore and then put it aboard a ship using a stabilized crane system.”
Stockham’s ‘Real Good Stuff’
Brewer also revealed that between March and July 2004, at the request
of the commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet, MSC modified the USNS Stockham,
a maritime prepositioning ship, with additional capabilities to support
the global war on terrorism. Modifications included a 54-foot flight
deck — capable of handling two H-60 helicopters — a commercial-type
aviation fuel system, a medical module, communications upgrades and watercraft.
The conversion cost just $3 million because, Brewer said, “we
leveraged our commercial partners. That ship is off doing some real good
stuff that we can’t talk about.”
MPA Force Structure to Decline
The number of Navy personnel in the Navy’s maritime patrol aviation
force structure will decline to 2,800 from 6,500 as the P-8A Multimission
Maritime Aircraft (MMA) replaces the current P-3C Orion patrol plane
by 2019. The change is in keeping with the Human Capital Strategy enunciated
by Clark to reduce the cost of manpower and match personnel with the
skills needed by the service, said Capt. Steven Eastburg, the Naval Air
Systems Command’s MMA program manager.
The reduction would be achieved in part by using contractor logistic
support for maintenance. Eastburg also said that the airframe life of
the planned 108 P-8As would be preserved by increased use of very sophisticated
simulators for crew training.
No Going Back On New Spy Plane
Eastburg squelched rumors that the MMA is a candidate for the Navy’s
Aerial Common Sensor (ACS), a reconnaissance aircraft that will replace
the Navy’s EP-3E. Eastburg, the Navy program manager for the ACS,
cited a study by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
that affirmed, “ACS was the best value for recapitializing the
EP-3 fleet.” n
Compiled by Seapower Managing Editor Richard R. Burgess.
