Economically, containerization is a golden goose; militarily, it could become an albatross. Consider this: in World War II, the number of enemy submarines was small and the number of Allied ships was extremely large. In a future war, the U.S.S.R. could put to sea ten times as many commerce raiders as Hitler managed, against perhaps a tenth as many ships.
Containerization—the dominant trend in modern ocean shipping—offers major improvements in military logistics and important savings in defense land and ocean transportation costs, pipeline inventory, and logistic operating forces. On the other hand, replacement of the U. S. flag break-bulk fleet by big, fast container ships introduces serious vulnerabilities into U. S. strategy.
Russia is the only potential major enemy now in sight, and U. S. defense posture is based primarily on the need to protect the Free World against possible Soviet aggression. Europe has been the focus of strategic concern since World War II, but Soviet naval and merchant marine expansion in recent years has raised, in some eyes, the specter of U. S./U.S.S.R military confrontation throughout the world. If this threat had substance, it would complicate tremendously the U. S. problem of providing shipping support for overseas operations. In fact, the threat outside Europe does not now seem serious. Soviet postwar naval expansion has been generally defensive, and the Soviet merchant marine does not seem to be developing into an instrument for projecting national military power. The Russian fleet consists mostly of small ships, useful primarily for domestic commerce and coastal hauling. In June 1970, the Soviet Union had 1,023 freighters averaging 6,440 dwt. In July 1971, the 269 dry cargo ships, excluding container ships, on order averaged 5,552 dwt. One hundred-and-fifty-six were under 5,000 tons, only 33 were over 10,000 tons, and the nine largest ranged from 13,521 to 15,800 tons. The first Soviet container ships were laid down after June 1968; up to that time, the Russians seemed unaware of the container revolution. Eighteen container ships were building in July 1971, the eight largest 15,000 tonners. Sixty-eight tankers on order averaged 9,454 tons.
Other factors suggest that the U.S.S.R. is still far from being a world shipping power. Odessa and Leningrad, the two largest ports in Russia, account for no more than about 20 million tons of cargo a year, and there are indications that managers of the Soviet export fleet are still learning their business.
The current ship inventory and the order book indicate that the Soviet Union does not have in being or in prospect the cargo fleet necessary to project land combat power outside the European continent. While this situation obtains, Europe is the only region in which the United States and Russia can confront each other in large-scale combat. In a European war, the Soviet Union would operate on internal lines, the United States—as usual—supporting a foreign war. And support of sustained overseas combat operations depends on ocean shipping.
An Army cynic has said, “With the C-5 they can put us anywhere in the world overnight—and we’ll starve to death on the end of the pipeline!” Unless, that is, equipment for heavy forces and sustaining supplies follow promptly and dependably by sea. U. S. ability to conduct foreign wars rests, as always, upon the effectiveness of the U. S. merchant marine.
The state of the merchant marine has been the subject of much hand-wringing, and the trends in size and composition of the fleet are well-known. The Maritime Administrator has estimated that between five and six hundred break-bulk ships will pass out of service for age by the mid-1970s. The remaining conventional freighters are excellent ships, built in the last ten years or so, but even these ships are becoming uneconomical in the trades for which they were built and stand at the brink of technological obsolescence. To offset the loss of break-bulk capacity, 146 container ships with a capacity of more than 60,000 containers will be in U. S. flag service by 1972. The trend in new construction is toward greater size and higher speed, with Sea Land’s 22,000-dwt., 33-knot container ships, now under construction, leading the field for the moment.
This trend has important defense implications. About 150 ships were used to haul ammunition to Vietnam during the peak years of that operation; 25 or 30 high-productivity ships will be able to do the same job in the future. The other side of the coin is that container ships are replacing break-bulkers on a ratio of up to one-for-seven, and only 25 or 30 ships will be available in the next decade to do the job of 150 in the past. A comparatively small fleet of high-productivity ships will have the capacity to support large-scale overseas combat operations. But a small, high-productivity fleet has inherent vulnerabilities which would be critical in a European war involving the Soviet [U]nion.
The first vulnerability arises from the fact that the container ship is, far more than any earlier ship, a component of an integrated system. The ship’s cost is paid for by her high productivity, which depends upon rapid turnaround in port. In peacetime commercial trade, quick turnaround is assured by fixed terminal installations. In wartime, the major North European ports in which modern container terminals have been built could be neutralized by nuclear weapons, aerial bombardment from submarines, or sabotage. Sabotage is the easiest, cheapest, and surest. Loss of the major ports would throw the burden of support for U. S. expeditionary forces on substitute systems.
The difficulty of maintaining container ship system productivity without developed port facilities can scarcely be overstated. To preserve ship productivity, which is especially critical for a small fleet, the emergency terminal must provide the same ship turnaround rate that fixed terminals provide. If there were an easy alternative to fixed terminals, commercial operators would have found it.
The emergency options for discharging container ships are the same options that are available in peacetime: ship-mounted cranes or separate crane facilities. The obvious first fix is to use self-sustaining container ships for combat support operations where fixed terminals are denied. Only a handful of U. S. flag container ships, however, are self-sustaining, and nearly all new container ships are being built without shipboard cranes. Container cranes add significantly to the cost of a ship, reduce carrying capacity about 15 percent on the average, and are an inefficient investment of capital because they are idle most of the time. These factors eat into profitability margins of shipping companies that are already running close to the edge of profitability, and self-sustaining container ships in the numbers needed for large scale combat operations simply are not going to be built for commercial trades. New subsidized nonself-sustaining container ships have decks strengthened to take cranes, but installation of cranes after mobilization would be a slow process unless the cranes were bought and stockpiled in peacetime and, when the cranes were installed, the problem would not yet be solved. The problem of relative motion between ship and lighter is so difficult that self-sustaining container ships can operate efficiently only at a pier or, if discharging in the stream, in a dead calm. Combat planners are notably poor pickers of good weather.
The Hobson’s choice is to provide crane facilities separate from the ship. Jury-rigged systems—for example, unloading with floating cranes to flattop barges or piers—would not meet the productivity requirement; a container ship discharged by this method would stay in port as long as a freighter discharged conventionally. Some of the few available self-sustaining container ships could be held in the operational areas for use as crane ships—but every available bottom would be needed to support a substantial contingency and holding even three or four high-productivity ships out of carriage service would be counterproductive. Old tankers or ore ships could be modified to carry container gantries; this appears to be a relatively cheap option. Conversion of old LST’s would be still cheaper and would make continuing use of hulls which otherwise have little future after operations in Southeast Asia wind down. At the other end of the cost scale is the proposal that a Seabee-type barge-carrying ship be used for a pier ship. This is impractical, cost aside, because the few available barge-carriers of this type will be needed urgently for over-ocean carriage. All of the crane-ship options have the inherent weakness of the relative motion problem.
A stable crane platform could be provided by a deLong-type spud barge mounting a container crane. In the past, big barges could be deployed only by towing, which, at three knots, took weeks. Modern engineering seems to have overcome that problem. The Seabee can carry very large barges on the top deck, and the barge-pusher tug concept, which seems to be working in its thus-far-limited application, would permit movement of still larger barges at ten knots or more. The cost in either case would be reasonable. The spud-barge container pier is the currently preferred theoretical option.
By one method or another, portable facilities could be designed to support container ship operations, and military operations on a continental scale could be supported through portable terminals. The trouble is that there are no emergency port facilities in existence. There are many studies but no hardware. If emergency port equipment is not selected and stockpiled before M-Day, loss of the major North European ports could mean loss of a European war, for simple lack of ability to discharge container ships.
If ship system productivity can be maintained by using emergency terminal facilities where fixed terminals are not available, delivery of cargo across the Atlantic in a war with Russia becomes an ASW problem. The second strategic vulnerability introduced by containerization of the U. S. merchant marine is the vulnerability of a high-productivity fleet, as a system, to the submarine threat.
A fleet consisting of relatively few high-productivity ships affords no cushion for combat losses. The sinking of a Victory ship or a dozen Victories in World War II was not a mortal blow to Allied strategy. Loss of a big container ship, however, would make a significant hole in the capacity to support overseas forces.
In World War II, the number of enemy submarines was small and the number of Allied ships was very large. Nevertheless, German submarines nearly strangled the Atlantic sea lanes and made a shooting gallery of the Caribbean. Today the U.S.S.R. can put to sea perhaps ten times as many commerce raiders as Hitler managed, against perhaps a tenth as many ships.
Convoys were the only successful measure for protection of merchant shipping in World War II, but high-productivity modern ships cannot maintain their productivity if they must accept the delays of conventional convoy operations. To maintain productivity, container ships must operate on the tight schedules typical of their peacetime employment, and lay time awaiting convoy departure would be no less fatal to productivity than unloading delays in inefficient far shore terminals.
At first glance, the new ships appear to have a major defensive advantage over World War II shipping. The few ships which could run at high speed in World War II sailed unescorted in relative safety. Container ships which can steam above 30 knots have already been built and the economics of container ship operations will continue to make high speed profitable. In the last 25 years, however, submarine performance has improved at least as much as cargo ship performance. Modern high-speed cargo ships will be safer than slow ships against modern submarines, but this is not to say they will be safe. Other ASW defenses are necessary to keep the sea lanes open.
Solution of the container ship phase of the ASW problem will require tactics new in at least some degree. U. S. experience is limited to protection of slow, massive convoys. Defense of a comparatively small number of big, fast ships operating on tight schedules presents a different problem. The solution to maintaining productivity of a small, fast fleet appears to be daily convoys of as few as four or five ships. High speed and small convoy size would increase the survivability of these convoys and daily sailings would keep ship use high. The speed and size of new container ships would hold down the requirement for escort ships.
Tactics cannot be carried out, however, without operating forces. Although ASW technology has continued to advance, the shortage of combat ships optimized for ASW operations has limited the return in combat effectiveness from technological progress. Budget constraints have promoted the general purpose destroyer at the expense of ASW ships and the missile-carrying submarine at the expense of the attack submarine. Many of the ships now available for ASW duty do not have the speed necessary to protect the 30-knot convoys which are possible in the future. A major investment in new ASW systems is needed to complement the modernization of the U. S. merchant fleet. If that investment is not made, the modernized cargo fleet will be of little use in wartime. The new problems of protecting a small number of large, high-speed cargo ships may help to bring the requirement for strengthened ASW forces into focus.
Against a major enemy, the most effective ASW system which can be contrived cannot prevent some losses, and this makes the small number of ships in the U. S. flag fleet another vulnerability. Business economics will not support construction of more high-productivity ships than peacetime trade can employ to advantage. (Over-tonnaging on major trade routes is a matter of business judgment, not economics.) At the outset of war, some shipping can be diverted from commercial trade for emergency military needs, but this potential is limited. The initial shipping requirement for deployment of combat forces is large and tonnage is needed immediately after M-day to begin moving such nonpeacetime cargo as ammunition. When these strains are placed on a merchant fleet which is designed to handle only peacetime trade, losses to enemy submarines will stretch shipping capacity beyond the breaking point. Somehow, reserve shipping capacity must be created.
For reserve shipping support for Korea and Vietnam operations, the Defense Department relied on the National Defense Reserve Fleet. The NDRF is disappearing almost as rapidly as the shipbreakers can take the ships for scrapping. The Military Sealift Command nucleus fleet has been rationalized, since the Wilson-Weeks agreement in 1954, as a Defense shipping reserve, but the nucleus fleet operates at full capacity in peacetime and therefore cannot provide reserve capacity. Today there is no significant U. S. flag reserve shipping capacity in existence or in prospect.
In World War II, the United States built ships in 30 days. A few years ago, the Maritime Administration proposed a design for a new war construction ship, an austere “super-Victory.” At that time, the container revolution was already in full swing and there was simply no interest in a break-bulk design, so the project died in its cradle. At present, there is no program for emergency ship construction, and it is hard to visualize a construction program comparable with the World War II Liberty and Victory programs, when the shipping industry has moved so far into system sophistication. A modern high-productivity ship cannot be built in 30 days.
At least two options for creation of reserve shipping capacity are, however, available. The first is readily at hand. The U. S. flag fleet includes about 140 conventional freighters built during the last ten years, the finest ships of their type ever built. Container ships have already driven some of them out of the trades for which they were designed. The rest are becoming uneconomical in the face of container ship competition and are already technologically obsolescent. Military Sealift Command has chartered 14 of these fine ships, but defense peacetime traffic will not support chartering many more. Most of these ships were built with construction differential subsidy and cannot be sold foreign. The mortgages are unpaid on nearly all and the ships are a financial burden to their owners. That burden is, increasingly, a bar to development of the new U. S. merchant marine. These ships could be bought into the National Defense Reserve fleet, to reconstitute the strategic shipping reserve, and converted as necessary into optimized ammunition ships, aircraft transports, RO/ROs or container ships.
The second option would be more expensive, initially, but it would be more productive and eventually it would be self-liquidating. Under the Mariner program, the Maritime Administration built and bought ships, and sold them to the shipping industry as they were needed. The industry, which opposed the program at the beginning, now acknowledges that the Mariners carried U. S. flag shipping a quantum step forward. A new Mariner-type program could provide the reserve shipping capacity which the Defense Department needs, and, at the same time, make another quantum step toward greater efficiency and effectiveness for U. S. commercial shipping.
As the initial built-for-reserve ships were sold off, advanced-design replacements would be added to the Reserve Fleet. The result would be systematic injection into the U. S. merchant marine of successively updated designs in comparatively large numbers every six or seven years. Reserve capacity would be guaranteed, under a continuing program, for wartime expansion of lift capacity and for replacement of ships lost to enemy action. A mechanism would be created for orderly replacement of earlier generation ships in peacetime trade. The program would encourage construction of and provide business for modern shipyards, and the yards would be kept in active readiness to meet wartime requirements. The cost of war reserve shipping capacity would be only the interest expense on the investment during the holding period.
The strategic vulnerabilities of the container ship fleet which the United States is building may be ignored, in the hope that the Soviet Union will not have to be faced in open warfare. The sensible alternative is timely, definitive action to counter the Soviet threat to a small, high-productivity cargo fleet.
Timely action costs money. However, money has been made available to counter Soviet nuclear capabilities, although U. S. policy seeks to constrain within nonnuclear limits any way that cannot be avoided. That policy is fatally flawed so long as the ocean shipping required to support a conventional war is vulnerable to catastrophic disruption by enemy action, for, if the United States were deprived of the shipping support needed to conduct a non-nuclear war, it would have no alternative to defeat except a strategic nuclear exchange. The justification for spending money to ensure the viability of ocean shipping is as great as the justification for ICBMs and ABMs and the need is more immediate.
The United States has no realistic economic alternative to continuing to build a high-productivity container ship fleet to replace break-bulk ships for commercial trade. The container revolution promises to restore American shipping to an important position in world ocean trade and offers significant military advantages. The characteristics of a small high-productivity fleet, however, include some inherent defensive weaknesses. If action is not taken to compensate for those weaknesses, the United States may find itself unable to support a conventional war in which the U.S.S.R. is the enemy.
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An Army Transportation Corps officer and logistician, Colonel Case has served overseas in Europe during World War II and in Korea, Alaska, and Vietnam. He commanded the 48th Transportation Group (Motor Transport) in Vietnam in 1968 and was Chief of Staff, U. S. Army Support Command, Saigon, prior to his present assignment as Chief of Staff, Headquarters, Military Traffic Management and Terminal Service. He is a 1965 graduate of the Army War College.