Compass Points - New Ships
Creative maritime alternatives
Compass Points - New Ships
Creative maritime alternatives
July 16, 2024
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Are there new ways to rapidly add to the fleet?
The Marine Corps needs to jump into the robust discussion ongoing inside the Navy about finding creative ways to add new ships and new capabilities to the fleet. Congress is lending urgency to the discussion.
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Congress has demanded the U.S. Navy look into buying a new class of small warships loaded with missiles or adding bolt-on launchers to existing vessels, including amphibious warfare and auxiliary support types, to help increase its combat capacity. Lawmakers ordered the study in response to major delays in work on the Navy’s future Constellation class frigates in large part due to extensive changes in the core design. There is already a long-standing debate about whether the 32 vertical launch system (VLS) cells on those ships are adequate to support their expected mission sets, something The War Zone has previously explored in detail.
. . . The Secretary of the Navy now has until April 1, 2025, to produce a study that addresses the following five points:
“Examine a crewed variant of the LUSV [Large Unmanned Surface Vessel[ that can serve as a pathfinder for the unmanned version while adding near-term missile-launching capacity, including a discussion of any need for waivers of survivability or other requirements, given the non-crewed original design of the LUSV.”
“Examine other foreign, commercial, or U.S. Government ship designs that are mature and could be adapted with minimal modifications to produce a crewed small surface combatant.”
“Examine existing Navy ships (including amphibious and support ships) or commercial-type hulls that could be quickly modified into missile-firing ships through the addition of VLS, bolt-on, or containerized missile launchers.”
“Evaluate the time to field each platform, as well as the platform’s producibility within current supply chain and industrial base constraints.”
“Provide cost estimates and manpower impacts for each platform.”
-- The War Zone
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Instead of continuing with a fleet that has grown smaller over many years, the Navy has begun to plan for a much expanded fleet.
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The Navy stands on the precipice of another monumental technological advancement. The Navy’s Force Design 2045 document envisions a fleet of 500 ships—350 crewed and 150 uncrewed. This represents a once-in-a-generation paradigm shift for Navy fleet operations, and one that will place big bets on the emerging technologies needed to make uncrewed maritime vehicles more autonomous.
-- Ocean News
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In another example of the Navy experimenting with new ships, the Navy is building a new class of hospital ships based on the expeditionary fast transports.
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Bethesda-class expeditionary medical ships are designed as a dedicated medical ship that optimizes hospital-level medical care in support of distributed maritime operations (DMO). EMS will feature a shallow draft enabling greater reach and allowing direct access to shallow austere ports, while also providing a flight deck that accommodates military helicopters. This design provides a full range of medical capabilities including triage/critical care, three operating rooms, medical laboratory, radiological capability, blood bank, dental, mental health, OB/GYN and primary care, rapid stabilization and follow-on evacuation of multiple casualties and combat search and rescue including recovery at sea. The primary mission of the EMS as a high-speed forward-deployed medical ship is to provide rapid responsive sea-based and near-shore hospital level critical care, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, non-combatant evacuation operations and special operations. The EMS is designed to respond and provide care at a more rapid pace than their predecessors, USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort, sailing at speeds of at least 30 knots with a range of 5,500 nautical miles at 24 knots.
-- Navy Medicine
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With a push from Congress, the Navy is searching for new crewed and uncrewed missile platforms -- including adding missiles to amphibious ships. The Navy is also building an entirely new class of expeditionary hospital ships. The timing is perfect for the Marine Corps to encourage the Navy to find new ways to rapidly increase the options for amphibious ships. The construction and maintenance of traditional amphibs must not only proceed as scheduled but should proceed at an accelerated rate. Still, to acquire more amphibious options more quickly, it will require new thinking. Options include not only the LUSVs, but commercially available ships, the Military Sealift Command's expeditionary fast transports, and the logistics ships from the Maritime Administration – Ready Reserve Fleet.
The idea from Congress to add missiles to amphibious ships is similar to the solution many Marines have advocated for the Marine Stand-in-Force missile units. Instead of leaving small units of Marines stranded on isolated islands, why not add missiles to ARG-MEUs? That way any Marine missile units would be part of a Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) and have built-in transportation and logistics.
Are there new ways to rapidly add to the fleet?
Add missiles to amphibious ships? Add missiles to LUSVs? Add to the number of both hospital ships and amphibious ships by using expeditionary fast transports? Add to the number of maritime pre-positioning ships by using ships from the Maritime Administration – Ready Reserve Fleet? In a dangerous world, the US needs more Marine MEUs on global patrol, with the ability for each one to be rapidly augmented, reinforced, and expanded. If the Navy is going to rapidly add to the fleet, it will take new ideas. Compass Points salutes all those working to find creative ways to rapidly increase the fleet.
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The War Zone - 07/11/2024
Navy To Explore Arming Other Ships With Missiles Amid Constellation Frigate Woes
Congress wants the Navy to look at turning large uncrewed vessels into crewed missile ships, arming cargo ships, or buying something new.
By Joseph Trevithick
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Ocean News - 02/29/2024
Uncrewed Vessels Spearhead US Navy Innovation Plans
By Ocean News Staff
https://www.oceannews.com/featured-stories/uncrewed-vessels-spearhead-us-navy-innovation-plans
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Navy Medicine - 11/06/2023
SECNAV Del Toro Names Future Medical Ship USNS Balboa (EMS 2)
The acquisition of additional naval platforms for fire-support/anti-ship weapons is a long overdue idea. This has been an issue for decades. Things will only worsen with the retirement of the Tico Class cruisers which is an ongoing concern. In the past there was the call to bring back the battleship with its
unprecedented firepower. Then in the 90s there was a plan for an "arsenal ship" loaded with numerous missile cells. Currently the Japanese are proposing a ballistic missile defense ship (BMD), which displaces as much as a cruiser (9,000-12,000 T). The proposed ship would have a 5in gun as well as 128 VLS cells. Korea is proposing something similar.
More firepower is always better. However, before we rush to build a new ship class, we must remember the Zumwalts which turned into a fiasco, the LCS program which never lived up to their promise, the new LAW/LSM ship for FD, and finally the Constellation Class frigate which is a mess and hasn't even been built yet.
As for using existing ships for more missile platforms we could add the Naval Strike Missile to the LCS. In 2013 Huntington Ingalls proposed using an LPD 17 hull as a missile ship.
However, before the Navy commits again to a ship system, it needs to get their acquisition program and maintenance program in order first. We must do this smartly and hold people accountable.