Although there are new designs on the drawing board, the forces deploying today to accomplish the Navy's missions will remain the cutting edge during development and production of tomorrow's seagoing forces. The effectiveness of those assets—and the able crews who man them—is heavily dependent on logistics support.
The Navy relies on the inventory control point system for supply, a system that served us adequately in previous conflicts. It functions on the premises of abundant materiel and sufficient logistics reaction time—time to produce the supplies needed and time to transport them to the users. The preferred transportation mode is sealift to allied ports for shore-based forces, and by underway and vertical replenishment for units at sea.
But the Navy faces a major problem that makes the current system inadequate—technology has compressed the time factor. Mechanization and computerization of air, ground, and naval forces have greatly accelerated the pace of battlefield events. In addition, funding limitations have resulted in the need to increase the numbers of critical spares. Compared to 30 years ago, the Navy does not enjoy the huge volume of spares it worked with in the past and the industrial base for producing replacement has deteriorated.
As noted by Air Force logisticians more than 20 years ago, "Without the abundance, we need a faster response time to theater requirements. ... Where we once relied on sea lift to fulfill all requirements, we are increasingly turning to airlift to meet many of our needs in the opening phases of a conflict. Rather than locate stocks at forward locations, we anticipate airlifting them into the theater quickly."' And these comments refer to supplying Army forces, not the Navy.
Even though the Navy positions stocks at forward locations such as Diego Garcia, it requires airlift for fast response because the number of allied ports to support sea transport has declined dramatically.
Consider this scenario: The Navy has deployed carrier battle groups (CVBGs) to the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Afghanistan has been stabilized enough to consider reductions of force in that theater. Then the Southwestern Pacific heats up when Islamic groups in the Philippines attempt to overthrow the ruling government, which is friendly to the United States. Simultaneously, Iran joins Iraq in an oil embargo on the West and several Arab nations begin major troop movements toward Israel's borders. The CVBGs redeploy to stabilize these situations. The fleet goes through onboard supplies at an accelerated pace and aircraft become "not mission capable" because they are awaiting spare parts. The surface-- ship supply line does its best, but U.S. operational effectiveness suffers as the extended times for repair, replacement, and travel take a dreadful toll.
A Faster Way
In view of the state of world affairs today, this is not a wild-eyed scenario. And it is why I propose an aerial replenishment system capable of delivering critical parts, end items, and materiel from the continental United States to the world's oceans in less than 72 hours. A small barge made of strong, lightweight composites would be capable of holding at least one of our largest "canned" jet engines; it also could carry any number of smaller critical spares or end items. The system would employ the types of equipment and weapon parachute drops used by Air Force transport aircraft.
The buoyant replenishment barge would be dropped within sight of the receiving ship and seawater-activated release devices would detach the parachute. In the case of delivery to a carrier, a helicopter would drop swimmers to rig the hoisting sling and the barge would be carried to the flight deck as an external load. With deliveries to other air-capable ships, swimmers would rig the barge as an external load or attach towing gear so the ship's helicopter could tow it alongside the ship. Once unloaded, the barge could be jettisoned and sunk under combat conditions; if the situation permits, however, the ship could stow it aboard or load it with items to be repaired for return by seagoing tug to the nearest available port for further shipment to a repair facility.
In addition to a huge improvement over surface shipping in delivery time, an aerial replenishment system frees the Navy from reliance on availability of foreign ports in emergency situations. Moreover, acquisition and operating costs would be relatively low because the system would take advantage of established materials, technologies, and techniques.
Conclusions
The principles of aerial replenishment have been demonstrated successfully on a small scale. The U. S. Army Natick Research, Development, and Engineering Center developed the Naval Emergency Air Cargo Delivery System in the late 1970s. In brief, plastic leaf or garbage bags are used to make a palletized airdropped load buoyant and waterproof. This simple and effective system was designed for emergency shipment of small, lightweight items.
A well-built aerial replenishment barge can be used routinely and repeatedly. While the aerial system cannot replace the volume of surface replenishment, it will do for Navy ships at sea what Federal Express and United Parcel Service overnight deliveries have done for the business world.
Sam Allen served as an aviation maintenance engineering duty officer in the Navy and as an Air Force flight engineer on C-5 and C-130 aircraft. He works for Harry Kahn Associates, Incorporated, in North Carolina.