A floating truck stop keeps navy commandos at work

ABOARD THE JOINT VENTURE, near Umm Qasr, Iraq Navy commandos have been inching their way into the Iraqi hinterland with the help of an odd-looking ship with a jaw-like bow that, three years ago, was ferrying commuters and their cars around New Zealand.

The HSV-X1 Joint Venture, an aluminum-hulled catamaran ferry that has been modified to carry gunboats, amphibious landing craft, helicopters and marine platoons, has become the aquatic forward operating base for navy special operations forces that are helping to clear southern Iraqi waterways of enemy ships and mines. "We are the mother ship," said Captain Phil Beierl, the ship's commander. The Australian-built catamaran - a light, high-speed ship with twin hulls - has been anchored in Kuwaiti waters within sight of Iraq's lone deep-sea port, Umm Qasr.

Like a floating truck stop, the Joint Venture has provided supplies, shelter and spare parts for more than a dozen Naval Special Warfare boats that have been darting in and out of the riverway that links Umm Qasr to the Tigris River on the north and the Gulf to the south.

For several days, the small, speedy special operations boats have been searching Iraqi vessels for mines, snipers and fleeing soldiers. They have combed through the river's numerous derelict freighters, ensuring they are not booby trapped. And they have been carrying Seal teams into Iraqi territory on reconnaissance missions.

The work of those small boat units and commandos was critical to securing the port so that a British ship could begin bringing food, water and medicine into Umm Qasr's container port. From there, the British plan to move aid northward by land, including to Iraq's second-largest city of Basra, which is under siege.

Without the Joint Venture, the commando boats would have had to travel scores of miles to reach bases in Kuwait for fuel and supplies, drastically reducing their time on mission - and adding as many as four days to the operation, Naval Special Warfare planners said.

"It would have been a mess," said Captain Snyder, who is in charge of logistics for the Naval Special Warfare Task Group based in Kuwait. Like most of the Naval Special Warfare officers interviewed, he requested that his first name not be used.

With the Joint Venture nearby, the Seal and boat teams were just minutes from fuel, hot meals, ammunition, showers, warm bunks, Internet access and a video-stocked television room. And when hurricane-force winds damaged an MK-V gunboat on the riverway early Wednesday, the ship was able to limp back to the Joint Venture for repairs. Naval Special Warfare planners hope the Joint Venture will be the model for a new kind of ship for a new kind of unconventional warfare. Future battles will increasingly involve smaller, swifter, stealthier forces that will need to stage heavy equipment closer to a battle than in the past, they say. The Joint Venture, or ships like it, will enable the Seals - an acronym for the navy's Sea, Air, Land commando units - to mobilize larger, more complex missions than the daring but smaller-scale insertions of the past. The Umm Qasr operation was a model for that kind of mission, the planners contend. "What we did near Umm Qasr was historic," said Lieutenant Commander Tom Rancich, who is in charge of future operations for the Naval Special Warfare Task Group. "We've never had 14 small boats operating independently of the big navy for seven days, unresupplied." The Joint Venture and the smaller gunboats that have been using it as a mother ship also exemplify a concept sometimes dubbed "street fighter ships."

Navy planners had already been searching for a fast, maneuverable cargo vessel when they first observed Australian forces using a commercial catamaran to ferry peacekeeping troops to the Indonesian island of East Timor in 1999. Impressed, the Pentagon rented two of the $48-million catamarans in July 2001 for about $5 million a year each from Bollinger/Incat USA, a company based in Australia. Initially, the ships were viewed as experimental. But they were pressed into war duty in January, and 40-person crews were hastily assembled for deployment just weeks later.

With its four jet-propulsion engines, the Joint Venture can travel 3,000 nautical miles at 35 knots on a tank of gas. It carries enough extra fuel to keep several smaller boats operating for days, has room on its car deck for as many as six small boats and can carry more than 200 heavily armed passengers in relative comfort. It also has a landing pad capable of accommodating one SH-60 Seahawk helicopter. Because it is a catamaran that rides high in the water, it can also navigate relatively shallow waters. The trip close to the Kuwaiti coast required the 96-meter (315-foot) ship to weave through narrow waters, creep over a sand bar at high tide and slip under a bridge at low tide.

Department: General Catamaran News

HSV:One Quick Cat

Lease arrangement lets the U.S. military test an Australian-built, high speed catamaran.
Article by Bill Kraczor,
The Associated Press

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Aboard the Joint Venture -- It took only minutes for this giant, water-jet propelled catamaran to overtake and then run circles around 4 navy minehunting ships steaming in a line through the gulf of mexico.

At 45 knots -52MPH- this is one quick cat. "It has characteristics that are unlike any ship that we have in this fleet," said Navy Cmdr. Phiol Beierl, the Joint Venture's commanding officer. "In many ways it behaves like an airplane."
Military officials want to know if a high-speed vessel,or HSV, could improve upon conventional ships -in some cases airplanes- for missions that include mine warfare, special operations, homeland security, humanitarian evacuation and the shipment of troops and cargo.

To find out, they have leased the 313-foot Joint Venture, a former car and passenger ferry,built 3 yrs ago in Australia where it operated as the DevilCat and later as the Topcat on a route in New Zealand.
During a December mine warfare exercise off Panama City Beach in Florida's Panhandle, the Joint Venture served as the command and control ship for Capt. Rick Rush, commander of Mine Countermeasures Squadron 2, based at Ingleside Naval Station, Texas.

Rush said it also may be suitable for ferrying fuel and supplies to the slow moving minehunting ships and serve as a launching platform for helicopters and small, mine-detecting robot submarines. "Maybe we want to use the high speed to go in, drop off some unmanned vehicles, put them in the water and then scoot back out to the sea in safe water," he said. "There's a lot of promise in doing things more stealthily."
The Army, which operates its own cargo vessels, joined with the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Tampa based U.S. Special Operations Command to charter the Joint Venture, designated HSV X-1 for experimental high-speed vessel. It does not have USS in its name because it is a leased ship.

The Joint Venture is twice to four times as fast as existing vessels and can carry at least 422 tons of cargo at a sustained speed of 35 knots for 1,110 nautical miles. Like an airplane, however, its speed, range and capacity are interrelated. When one goes up the other goes down.
"It's a trade-off, and that kind of load management is not something typically that we have to do on our cargo ships," Beierl said.
The aviation analogy continues in the pilot house. Instead of a ship's wheel, the Joint Venture is steered with a joy stick. It is highly maneuverable, capable of making sharp 90 degree turn at full speed and stopping in three ship lengths. Speed is an obvious advantage for getting troops and cargo, including tanks and other heavy equipment, into battle zones or extracting civilians from trouble spots, but the Joint Venture has other benefits.
The Army-Navy-Marine crew is relatively small at 30. Its shallow draft of only 12 feet and swiveling vehicle ramp mean the Joint Venture can access five times as many ports as conventional cargo ships, said John Woodhouse, a spokesman for the Navy Warfare Development Command.

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