By Geoff Fein
The Navy and Marine Corps have spent the past year working to better define the requirement for sea base operations, looking at platform needs and how best to move warfighters and their equipment from ship to shore, a Marine Corps official said.
The cornerstone of the sea basing effort is the Navy’s Maritime Preposition Force Future or MPF(F).
“We learned a lot in the last year in developing the requirement,” Maj. Gen. Thomas Benes, director, Expeditionary Warfare, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
The two services took a step back and spent a lot more time reviewing the MPF(F), he added. “We needed to define the requirement a little bit more between the two services, and we did that.
“There is alignment between the Commandant (Gen. James Conway) and the CNO (Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead). They definitely understand and have given us guidance as to where we need to develop this,” Benes said. “MPF(F) is now going to be a reinforcing capability to deliver a MEB (Marine Expeditionary Brigade) from a sea base.”
The MEB will reinforce a Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF), he added.
Back in 2005, the Navy had considered developing between one and three MPF(F) squadrons, each composed of 14 ships capable of quickly moving equipment, troops and other supplies to forward theaters to project and sustain forces ashore as well as reconstitute equipment and forces at sea for reemployment. At the time, each squadron was estimated to cost approximately $14 billion (Defense Daily, July 18, 2005). However, in January 2006, a draft Quadrennial Defense Review referred to only one MPF(F) squadron (Defense Daily, January 31, 2006).
The lone MPF(F) squadron still consists of 14 ships that includes: Two LHA-Rs (now called LHA-6), with Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) Command and Control (C2), one Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) ship with Aviation C2, three modified Large Medium Speed Roll on Roll off (LMSR) ships, three Combat Logistic Force (CLF)-T-AKE (Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo and ammunition) variant ships, and three Mobile Landing Platforms (MLP) (Defense Daily, April 25, 2006).
The Navy will first acquire MLP and T-AKE, Benes said, “because those are in our budget programming.”
General Dynamics [GD] NASSCO shipyard in San Diego builds the T-AKE ships.
The first MLP is expected to be delivered around the FY ’10 time frame, Benes noted. The ship will be built to commercial standards.
Following the MLP and T-AKEs, the Navy will move on to acquiring the three LMSRs and then the big deck amphibious ships, he added.
Initial Operational Capability (IOC) for the MPF(F) fleet is in the 2019 time frame.
“We define IOC as having one ship of each type operational. So really what we are looking at is the capability. Once we have the capability we consider that IOC,” Benes added.
Full Operational Capability (FOC), defined as when the Navy has taken delivery of all 14 ships in the MPF(F), will occur somewhere around 2020, Benes said.
MLP is being designed as a unique ship that other vessels will be able to integrate with via a number of different technologies being developed by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Benes said.
Those systems will be used to transfer equipment, personnel and vehicles, for example, from a LMSR to a MLP, Benes said. The MLP would then deliver the cargo and personnel to shore via LCACs.
General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman [NOC] build the LMSR.
In the future, MLPs could be used to move U.S. Army forces and allied forces, Benes added.
“If we look at spiral development of this capability, we could have container transfer at sea and then we could develop [the ability to move] goods and services, medical support, or relief supplies ashore from the MLP and use the LCACs as connectors,” he said.
The Navy has done some ship-to-ship transfer experiments, moving goods from a LMSR to the Mighty Servant, a semi-submersible heavy-lift ship, that served a surrogate for MLP.
“That’s how we developed the concept of skin to skin transfer for people, cargo and all of that,” Benes said.
One concept is the Interface Ramp Technology (IRT). Benes said this is a main technology piece that will be in MPF(F), most likely on MLP.
“We think that’s where it is going to be, where you are going to move vehicles and equipment up and down this ramp to surface connectors,” he said. “We demonstrated this in our experiments last year, so we cut down the risk quite a bit.”
Initial trials were conducted in sea state 2 but the seas turned to a little higher sea state during the experiment, so personnel actually did transfers in sea state 3.
“You can drive an [Abrams] M1A1 tank down that [ramp], Benes said. “[That’s] the biggest piece of equipment.”
The transfer would occur between the two ships while they are both in motion, he noted.
“It’s [a matter of] keeping that ramp in place as these two ships are moving side by side, in average and heavier sea states, so that you can transfer stuff from these ships,” Benes explained.
Marines’ equipment, kept onboard a LMSR, would be loaded onto LCACs aboard the MLP, he said. Once loaded, the MLP would break away from the LMSR and then discharge the LCACs, notionally 25 miles from shore. “That’s what we want for a requirement.”
The Navy is looking at automated transfer. However, Benes said the best thing right now is to physically drive vehicles across.
“I am sure in the future we will be looking at spirals like that, but right now they think this is doable,” he said. “If you got the vehicle loaded right there and you can sequence it in. The easiest way is to just drive it, instead of hauling it.”