Imagine the look on General Kleist’s face if, prior to the German blitzkrieg of the Low Countries in 1940, his commander, Gerd Von Rundstedt, had told him, “Your five Panzer and three motorized divisions will spearhead the attack. Your objectives are Sedan and Montherme, about 60 miles from here. Before you jump off, make sure your mules are carrying sufficient ammunition, and double-check to make sure your cooks have loaded their wheelbarrows with ample rations.”
Mules? Wheelbarrows? Ridiculous. The mobility to deploy their power was the key to Germany’s initial success and, although much has changed in the intervening 23 years, that concept is still valid.
The mobility of the U. S. Navy is being somewhat curtailed today because the majority of the ships of our Service Force are, like wheelbarrows, still functional, but limited in their capability. The new, swift combatant ships joining the Fleet only serve to dramatize the inadequacies of the lumbering service ships on which they must depend for success and, indeed, survival.
When thinking of the Navy today, most people picture a recruiting poster panorama of sleek, grey missile cruisers, destroyer leaders, and destroyers knifing through moderate seas with bones in their teeth. Or super attack carriers, with Foxtrot close-up port and starboard, hurling Mach 2 jet aircraft from their catapults in rapid succession. The jets, bearing such exotic name tags as Phantom II, Vigilante, or Skywarrior, exude an aura of speed even while at rest. And below the surface, nuclear-powered, Polaris- packed submarines glide effortlessly by on their assigned missions. This full-color, three-D, Superscopic image suddenly seems to go out of focus when we see on the screen the ungainly, but always necessary, oilers, reefers, ammunition, and stores ships.
The heart of the replenishment-at-sea system is the Underway Replenishment Group. This group needs new ships. The World War II and pre-World War II vessels still in use must be replaced. Unless bold corrective action is taken soon, many of the 20-year-old hulls will cease to give satisfactory results and the present replenishment problems will be compounded.
The alongside method, the primary replenishing method at present, strangles a task force’s mobility. It nullifies the dispersal concept and adds to, rather than reduces, vulnerability. Ask the commanding officer of an aircraft carrier when his ship is in the greatest potential danger.
Vertical replenishment holds the answer. There are only two Service Force ships in the Atlantic Fleet, however, using helicopters as a primary means of replenishing. In test operations, screening ships have been replenished successfully by helicopters. We should enlarge and improve this concept by installing enough helo platforms so that all ships in a task force could be replenished vertically.
E. B. Potter, editor of Sea Power: A Naval History defines logistics as: “The science of supply, transportation, and maintenance”— and points out that it has “been the product of gradual development based on precedent, and of intelligent disregard of precedent.” It is high time we disregarded a few precedents. In spite of budget restrictions and allocations, we should focus our attention on the immediate need for adequate funding to overhaul and modernize completely the Service Forces.
It is probable that any future world upheaval will find Fleet units cut off from their shore-based support activities and dependent upon the Underway Replenishment Group. The mission and purpose of the URG is to guarantee maximum endurance and mobility of the combatant vessels. Ships in the group will usually include an oiler (AO), reefer (AF), stores ship (AKS), and ammunition ship (AE). Any of the above may be increased or decreased in accordance with a force’s needs.
The Service Forces constitute a delivery system which extends over approximately 70 per cent of the earth’s surface. Their purpose is to enable the Navy to be fully ready in the right place at the right time regardless of the weapons employed. As a nation and a Navy, we have become enamored with “super weapons” and “super delivery systems.” Each relates to the other, and both present an increasing logistical nightmare creating an even greater need for support planning to cover effectively the entire spectrum of human conflict from a psycho-political cold war through an all-out thermonuclear holocaust.
Whereas the gun-type and early rocket weapons created stowage difficulties, these were minor by comparison to the guided missile and nuclear weapons complex of today. New elements for consideration in stowage, such as sensitivity to shock, proximity to other dissimilar units, and larger physical dimensions of weapons, are all characteristics requiring special concern. Loading crews cannot be selected at random, for special instruction, training, and constant supervision are all mandatory requisites whenever any movement is required. Due to the fact that many support ships are still configured to handle old, conventional weapons instead of the newer elements of weaponry, the transfer is slowed to a snail’s pace. Look briefly at our missile/rocket family of today: Regulus I, Terrier, Talos, Tartar, Polaris, Sidewinder, Sparrow III, Bullpup, Subroc, Alfa, Zuni, and Asroc (with Typhon developing). Even disregarding nuclear hardware, project the above listed missiles into the fleet-in-being and the fleet-a-building. Though this is but a single aspect, one must conclude that future logistical requirements in the area of new weapons alone will be astronomical.
Naval ammunition ships are confronted with the multiple problems presented by the missile/rocket/nuclear/conventional support cargo load they must carry. In the AE-21/23, Sunbachi/Nitro-class, the addition of refinements and improvements such as hydraulic hatches, electric-hydraulic cargo elevators, and battery-powered fork-lift trucks have solved many handling problems. The addition of a few new ships, however, cannot wipe out the problems which still remain because of the existing balance of obsolete hulls. We are fighting a battle for time. Time aboard an ammunition ship is directly related to the location of the ammunition components desired and their immediate availability. Time to prepare a topside stockpile to insure rapid transfer. Time to replenish. Time to rearm our missile launchers, guns, and aircraft and return to the strike area.
A grave support problem lies also in the vast field of electronics. Diversified electronic components threaten to overshadow all other kinds of spare parts—at present, the average man-of-war stocks approximately 15,000 to 20,000 different electronic spares. Particularly in this field, the frequent modifications to equipment add to the support problem due to a lack of interchangeability between units previously installed. Space for maintaining an adequate stock to back up properly electronic equipment installed in our warships is hard to come by, yet the high turnover rate makes fast, positive replacement mandatory.
Our complex Mach 2 jet aircraft continue to be a mounting maintenance headache. The day of the baling-wire, chewing-gum mechanic is long past. Whereas a competent technician could, and did, make do with ingenuity, and even fabricate the needed spare when necessary, this approach is no longer feasible. Replacement parts must be compatible to the systems, and they must be available. The maze of electrical, hydraulic equipment jammed into an aircraft configured for supersonic speeds demands a constant operational, preventive, and corrective maintenance program to ensure “ready aircraft” in place of “downed birds.”
In missiles—air-to-air and surface-to-air— intricacy is the byword. Not only in the munition itself, but also in the search, detection, acquisition, guidance, and other ancillary equipment. Miniaturized and subminiaturized tubes, plus printed circuits, and, recently, transistors came into their own because of weight limitations. The use of “go- no-go” testing procedures with trouble shooting and casualty analysis leading to the corrective action of replacing entire plug-in sub-assemblies. A large percentage of these sub-assemblies, by virtue of their size alone, make repair impracticable and replacement obligatory.
In the case of electronic, aircraft, and missile spare parts, the AKS is “under the gun” to provide the required back-up. In order to do this better, extensive modifications were made to existing hulls to increase the carrying capacity for stock items. This, in turn, created the need to install a complete electric accounting machine system for inventory control, which itself took up all too much of the added space.
Armchair strategists may scoff at logistic support problems, but these problems are inextricably entwined with the problems of strategy and tactics; all three must be considered as an entity in future planning.
There is a tendency to cite the number of available ships in the “mothball” fleet, the Merchant Marine, or even our past record in meeting emergencies as answers to these problems. But the mothballed ships would require extensive rework and modification prior to being acceptable. Lead time for the integration of the Merchant Marine into present logistical support units is practically nonexistent. If all ships could be put into use immediately, there might be enough bulk carriers, but these are not ships possessing a transfer-at-sea capability.
The record of achievement in World War II testifies to our latent capabilities, but any build-up requires time and we have no time. During the Berlin crisis in 1961, three merchant refrigerator ships were converted to Navy AFs. Working on a tight schedule and employing three shifts around the clock, three different naval shipyards completed the conversions in record time—90 days.
An editorial in the 5 August 1962 Virginian-Pilot entitled “Beneath the Navy’s Muscle” comments in further amplification:
Secretary of the Navy Korth’s advice to a House Armed Services subcommittee that the Navy must add or modernize ships at a rate of one a week for the next 10 years should not be regarded as a mere dramatizing of service selfishness. The alternative is what he said it is: to risk losing mastery of the seas.
The Navy’s ship situation has been distorted by the great attention given to the nuclear-powered Enterprise and her sister attack-carriers of conventional propulsion and to the growing fleet of Polaris-firing atomic submarines. It is good to have these splendid units and forces.
But beneath this fleet muscle is much flabby tissue. As Admirals Dennison and McCain have pointed out many times, 200 naval ships already are over-age and another 100 are at the margin of usefulness. . . . Our amphibious and auxiliary vessels meanwhile are not only aged but shamefully lacking in hull, engine, and cargo-handling refinements that money could provide.
In our peacetime, cold-war Navy, the test of meeting mounting logistical commitments is best observed on a day-to-day basis in deployed fleet elements such as the Sixth fleet. This force of approximately 40 warships is dependent upon an Underway Replenishment Group of less than ten ships. Standard operating procedure is 100 per cent replenishing at sea. Every support item arrives by seaborne carrier. Standard operating procedure also requires the Task Force to rendezvous with the URG. The rendezvous is necessary because the replenishment group cannot possibly operate as an integral part of the Task Force. All advantages of speed and maneuverability are shelved while the refueling/reprovisioning/rearming operation takes place. Throughout the entire maneuver —a lengthy operation—the units involved are “in irons.”
If the balloon went up right this minute, how long could the Sixth Fleet remain combat ready? Through conscientious rationing, most combatants could maintain an adequate readiness posture which would require mandatory replenishing of only two items—fuel and ammunition. But without effective, immediately available back-up of these commodities, the ships and their worth as members of the first team would be nil.
In World War II, the huge base complex in the Pacific behind our advancing fleet enabled a highly effective resupply group to transfer needed commodities at sea. Tomorrow obsolescent support ships, probably cut off from bases, will force the combatants to withdraw from striking range to replenish, creating a vacuum in the tactical situation that could tip the balance in favor of the enemy. Our support ships must have a versatility and an adaptability never before required. If speed is a requisite for today’s combatants, then conversely it is a requisite for the support ships.
Nuclear propulsion for seagoing craft has been heralded with an enthusiasm akin to that exhibited when black oil replaced coal. Since ships have gone to sea there has always existed some limiting factor pertaining to endurance and “on-station” time. In sail, it was predominantly fresh water. In steam, it was first coal and then oil. Now with nuclear power, in an attack aircraft carrier, aviation fuel is at a premium.
Some visionaries contemplate an entirely nuclear-propelled task force as a cure-all to logistical ailments and restrictions. Such specious reasoning parallels the thinking of the extremists who advocate preparation for only one type of potential conflict.
There has been a great outpouring of ideas regarding replenishment and logistic support. Every conceivable carrier has been suggested. To name a representative few: hydro-skimmers, nuclear-powered submarine tankers, seaplanes, hydrofoils, and converted aircraft carriers or battleships. All have some degree of merit. Progress has been agonizingly slow; it has been hampered by budget cuts, a failure to realize the importance of replenishment ships to naval readiness, and the apathetic attitude that adequate lead time will always be available prior to involvement in World War III.
Finally, in the fiscal budget of 1962, the work of years of evaluative studies and tests came to fruition. Contracts for two multi-purpose replenishment ships were let. This was a concrete step toward the desired answers to all present and future calculable mobile logistic support requirements. But ideas for improvement are like rockets—how far they will ultimately go depends on the power behind them at take-off.
The multi-product replenishment ship is not an innovation in resupply. Such ships were used extensively by the Germans for their U-boats during World War II. The Dithmarchen, a 21.5-knot ex-German ship, was converted to USS Conecuh (AOR-110) (Replenishment Fleet Ship) in 1952 for evaluation. Carrying frozen, chilled, and dry provisions, ammunition, black and diesel oil, she achieved logistic support greater than that provided by an AO, AE, or AF.
The two new ship types, on the building ways, are designated as AOE-1 (fast combat support ship) and AFS-1 (combat store ship). The Bureau of Ships says that the AOE-1 will have a cargo-fuel capacity greater than the largest fleet oilers, and a large hold capacity for ammunition, dry cargo and refrigerated cargo. Moreover, all automatic material handling devices developed in existing Service Force ships have been incorporated into this radical design. Additionally, the AOE-1 will be equipped with a fast automatic shuttle transfer (FAST) system, which is specifically designed to simplify quick transfer of missiles up to and including Talos.
The AFS-1 combines the functions of a cargo ship, general stores ship, and an aviation supply ship. M-frames, replacing conventional king posts and booms, fitted with automatic tensioning mechanisms, combine to insure rapid hook-up, flexibility of operation, and heavy-weather control. Both ships are designed to steam with a strike force. Both are designed for replenishing at high speed. Both will use helicopters for vertical replenishment in addition to their alongside capability. The result is that two ships can replace four and further, they will out-produce any one, or all four, at their assigned missions. These support ships and our present combatants combine to enhance and strengthen the naval principles of mobility, freedom of action, and flexibility in the use of armed power at sea.
The AOE and AFS are a tremendous forward step in replenishing-at-sea concepts. But as long as the Shasta (AE-6), the Aldeharan (AF-10), the Salamonie (AO-26), all circa 1941, and others too numerous to mention, continue to represent the bulk of our Service Force/URG capability, we will be forced to rely on the older methods rather than forge ahead. The new responsibility is to formulate far-reaching plans for the sole purpose of maintaining a balanced Navy—strategically, tactically, and logistically.