Posted on 03/08/2005 7:28:08 PM PST by wagglebee
WASHINGTON — A war averted more than a decade ago may be pointing the way toward 21st-century warfare for the U.S. Navy.
In September 1994, a U.S. flotilla positioned itself off the coast of Haiti to help restore a democratically elected president to power. The flagship, the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, was stripped of its fighter planes and turned into a landing hub for Army helicopters and barracks for 2,000 soldiers.
Operation Uphold Democracy, as it was called, ended in a few weeks and the Norfolk-based Eisenhower headed to the Mediterranean for a more conventional deployment. But Navy leaders say the successful use of the Ike as a floating base, duplicated in 2001 when Marines operated from the carrier Kitty Hawk in the early stages of America’s invasion of Afghanistan, foreshadows a new naval era.
They contend that the “sea base” – a network of ships providing offshore artillery fire, air support, food, ammunition and even a place to sleep for ground troops – is about to replace the carrier as the centerpiece of the fleet.
The Navy always has been part of the supply chain for U.S. ground troops fighting overseas. Most of the tanks and heavy equipment used in Operation Iraqi Freedom were delivered by sea, for example.
But the sea base concept makes ships the end of the supply line. Soldiers and Marines accustomed to building and defending bases inland operate from the sea, going ashore only to fight.
“This is a revolution,” said Adm. Vern Clark, the outgoing chief of naval operations.
Within a decade, if it can find the money and win over skeptics in Congress – both tall orders – the service may deploy the first sea base.
It may have a dozen or more ships and be spread over hundreds of square miles of ocean to protect itself against terrorist attacks like those bedeviling U.S. troops in Iraq. But it also will be close enough to shore and have weapons to directly support those troops fighting hundreds of miles inland.
A typical base could include:
- A next-generation carrier, now called CVN-21, armed with 80 warplanes and manned by a crew one-third smaller than the 3,000 needed to run today’s flattops.
- An amphibious assault ship, the LHA-R, essentially a mini-carrier carrying attack helicopters, 20 or more fighters and bunks for 1,800 Marines. It will replace an assault ship that can accommodate only six fighters.
- Several newly designed destroyers, the DDX class, each packing 80 Tomahawk cruise missiles and new satellite-guided artillery with a range of 100 miles or more.
- A collection of “littoral combat ships,” high-speed floating trucks able to ferry troops and equipment ashore, clear mines, hunt enemy submarines and intercept potential suicide-boat attackers.
- Two or more nearly carrier-sized cargo vessels, loaded with supplies, including tanks and heavy trucks, and topped with a flat deck that could serve as a landing strip for aircraft that would lift them ashore.
- One or more attack submarines.
Except for the submarines, none of those ships now exist. The Navy’s bid to develop so many new or radically redesigned vessels simultaneously is the broadest such effort since World War II.
It largely grows out of Clark’s conviction, shared by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other Pentagon leaders, that future enemies are likely to be the kind of hit-and-run insurgents U.S. troops are now battling in Iraq and that Americans must become quicker and less predictable to defeat them.
“We have to provide this nation with a raiding-party kind of capability, ... without that great big footprint” that goes with major installations and large troop concentrations ashore, Clark said.
And, he added, “We have to provide land forces with real precision.”
Officials say two of the new ships, the DDX destroyer and the MPF-F cargo ship, are especially critical to those goals. The destroyer will be manned by one-third as many sailors as are on today’s destroyers. They will be outfitted with rapid-fire, satellite-aimed guns that will let a Marine or soldier far inland target and destroy individual enemy tanks, artillery, even foxholes, through protracted battles.
The 5-inch guns on today’s destroyers are far less accurate and have a range of only about 10 miles. That means troops inland must depend on Navy and Air Force planes, which must fly so high that they often have trouble distinguishing between friendly and enemy troops in close combat.
“It’s been awhile since we have built a single ship that is going to have such a dramatic impact on the total force as DDX will have,” said Vice Adm. Phil Balisle, who heads the Naval Sea Systems Command headquartered at the Washington Navy Yard.
The cargo vessel will be sort of a floating Wal-Mart, carrying almost anything troops might need and able to send it ashore within hours. It would replace ships that must pull into port to unload and are packed so tightly that longshoremen must remove – and expose to attack – tons of gear to reach the supplies that troops really need.
Engineering a ship that can be stocked and then unloaded at sea, even in rough weather, is an enormous challenge, said Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak, the Navy’s top warfare requirements officer. And it’s expensive, with an estimated cost of $2.2 billion.
Though Navy officials insist that they’re committed to the sea base, skeptics abound on Capitol Hill and among military intellectuals.
Lawmakers last year slowed development of the new destroyers amid warnings that the DDX relies too heavily on unproven technologies, and they froze spending on the cargo ship program until the Navy provides a “detailed report” on the craft, its mission and possible alternatives.
The moment is coming, and we will need to be prepared for the future.
bump for reference
I like the idea as an alternative base for early entry forces, but there's a lot of weather & time/distance factors that can make this dicey or even impossible. And you won't get the steady presence or rapid response from the sea that you can get from soldiers on the ground or from an engines running armored reaction force standing by to bust the gate within seconds. I was in Mogadishu when things went bad. We had a MEU off-shore and they were pretty much useless to us because they couldn't respond fast enough--not their fault--great guys & very eager to get into the fights, but there's a big difference between driving, walking or running a few kilometers versus cranking up and launching a heliborne force from off-shore.
bump!
Why would we go to all the trouble of developing a sea base this size when we have allies like Turkey and South Korea all over the world? /sarcasm
I wish they'd weld a few old carriers together into a huge seagoing trimaran, though. It'd probably be cheaper than starting from scratch.
Pardon my ignorance, legit question: which law is this? Any threads on this you're aware of that I can check out?
I am a bit concerned about the rush to shrink crews. It is tough to justify to bean counters, but it takes people to fight a ship and where that has really been demonstrated is in the damage control successes the Navy has had in the past decades. The Stark, Cole, Roberts and Tripoli all represent failures to one degree or another, but huge successes in damage control. The Stark and the Roberts both would have sunk if not for the heroic efforts of their crews. It takes people to do that. Would a smaller crew be able to save a ship in that situation? I don't know.
I will fully admit there are positions we can get rid of on U.S. warships. We really don't need 2 man teams dragging floor buffers and bottles of spray wax all over the ship. That being said we still need to maintain manning capable of taking the ship into combat.
Thanks! I'll be durned...the Chinese must really think we'll do nothing.
Can't say I blame `em, given the fact that they basically knocked down our spy plane in international waters and we let them check out our high-end spy gizmos, then ship it home in worthless scrap condition--and we apologized.
Commies. Give `em an inch, they'll take Taiwan.
Its actually on the board now, as of this writing, it should be the post just above this.
Nope, that's mine. Beat you to it. Thanks, though. :)
Yes, and the B-2s are being forward deployed to Guam just to burn some fuel. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1357652/posts
P, didn't say we WOULD do nothing...but we blinked last time. The Reds are probably more inclined to roll the dice as a result.
Let's not forget that the Koreas are in the same neighborhood, too, before we assume that the B-2s are just going to Guam to stare down China. After all, the Commies are still just a threat to regional stability in Asia. We don't have to worry about them in Europe any more--they've already taken over there.
What happened on the Tripoli?
How about a cheap, easy-to-build, unsinkable frozen ice(pykrete) carrier, as proposed during WWII?
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/7/floatingisland.php
http://www.combinedfleet.com/furashita/habbak_f.htm (drawing on the one above)
Gulf War part I, hit a mine. The USS Princeton also hit a mine.
- An amphibious assault ship, the LHA-R, essentially a mini-carrier carrying attack helicopters, 20 or more fighters and bunks for 1,800 Marines. It will replace an assault ship that can accommodate only six fighters.
These are replacements for the Tarawa LHA's and will probably be modified Wasp LHD's.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/lhx.htm
- Several newly designed destroyers, the DDX class, each packing 80 Tomahawk cruise missiles and new satellite-guided artillery with a range of 100 miles or more.
DDX/DD-21
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/dd-21.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/dd-x.htm
- A collection of “littoral combat ships,” high-speed floating trucks able to ferry troops and equipment ashore, clear mines, hunt enemy submarines and intercept potential suicide-boat attackers.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/lcs-mods.htm
- Two or more nearly carrier-sized cargo vessels, loaded with supplies, including tanks and heavy trucks, and topped with a flat deck that could serve as a landing strip for aircraft that would lift them ashore.
MPF(F) Sea Base
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/seabase.htm
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