The U.S. Navy has a long history of operating in the global maritime domain. Our laudable traditions of anti-piracy operations, maritime-security cooperation, and training and exchange programs are unparalleled. We provide a model for developing navies to emulate. With a focus on the expanding economic growth and power of south Asian and African nations and the importance of their littorals to the majority of international trade and commerce, ensuring our engaged presence has never been more vital. Just as today’s officers will proudly pass along the Navy’s maritime traditions and hand off a leaner, more littoral Navy, it is equally important to ensure that Fleet operations not be hindered by a lack of foresight and action on our part.
Our smaller, more agile Navy is also increasingly more dependent on a leaner, equally agile supply chain for support. The littoral combat ship (LCS), for example, is not only built around the concept of minimal manning; its small size and design limitations are structured around a minimal logistics footprint for provisions, spares, and aviation fuel. Its consequent reduced underway endurance will require more frequent replenishment using small, focused supply support. This leaner supply chain lacks the mass and redundancy that supported our rise and dominance of naval power projection. That difference will put the supply chain increasingly at risk.
Risk and Threat Assessment
Logistics support for maritime operations in large parts of the U.S. Africa Command; Central Command; and Pacific Command areas of responsibility (AOR) has always been a challenge and has manifested itself in the randomness of our port visits. The lack of comprehensive, modern port infrastructure in much of this AOR, the distance from established base support, and a 50-plus year focus on European and western Pacific operations, has produced a system of military supply distribution that excels at supporting geographically horizontal locations at or north of the Tropic of Cancer, with much less capability to the south. A quick view of overseas Fleet Logistics Center (FLC) locales, with their coupled Defense Logistics Agency distribution depots, demonstrates this latitudinal trend: FLCs Pearl Harbor, Yokosuka (Japan), and Sigonella (Sicily). This support paradigm has been successful in its time, but it no longer provides a realistic model to apply elsewhere, especially in remote and underdeveloped regions near and south of the equator.
The Navy is completing its final moves away from organic ownership of inventory and the means to deliver it and adapting the potentially advantageous business practices of reduced inventory, just-in-time maintenance practices, and commercial carriers for distribution. As we outsource logistics to commercial and other government agencies, the old models for supply and maintenance vanish. In addition, our modern naval platforms have been designed with vastly different logistics solutions embedded. The world of the LCS and joint high-speed vessel (JHSV) calls for creative solutions, and our overseas afloat and ashore support model needs to be reengineered to ensure their success in tomorrow’s littorals.
Back to the Littorals
Since well before 9/11, our seagoing forces have been in search of smaller, faster, reliable transport and variable-mission vessels to meet the growing demand for the dynamic requirements of overseas contingency operations. Today’s shipbuilding plans and associated prototypes give a surprising glimpse of a rapidly growing branch of tomorrow’s naval fleet that will represent as much as 30 percent of a future Navy. This category of small surface combatants and support vessels currently includes guided-missile frigates, mine countermeasures ships, and patrol craft, among others, but the newest additions represent a dramatic course change toward significantly more versatile and maneuverable ships than today’s predominantly larger blue-water Fleet.
The Report to Congress on Annual Long-Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for FY 2011 states that the Navy intends to build an additional 17 LCSs and 8 JHSVs through Fiscal Year 2015. Sustaining a steady production of both vessels in the years thereafter, this plan will culminate in a total of 66 LCSs and 41 JHSVs built by 2040 with planned replacement for their 25- and 20-year service lives, respectively. These new smaller ships will represent as many as 100 of the projected 301 ships in 30 years—a third of the Navy’s future Fleet. Through the next decade the Navy also intends to keep the 13 Cyclone-class patrol craft remaining in its inventory from the 1990s, including the three on temporary loan to the Coast Guard, making this growing class of small surface combatants and support vessels a significant force in the next five years.1
Clearly, in the budget battles that are raging in Congress, no weapon system is going to be sacrosanct. The numbers discussed here, while relevant today, may change significantly by tomorrow. But this does not mean that the challenges of deployed support in the littorals are going away. These new ships will be expected to traverse the globe, venturing confidently into the most austere maritime locations. Minimally provisioned, they will increasingly demand a support structure as fast and versatile as their scope and scale of operations. The future Fleet’s support overlay will be expected to advance the ships’ dynamic mission and seamlessly ensure that tomorrow’s warfighters can conduct operations faster and more decisively than the enemy, ultimately maintaining an agile forward presence alone or with other vessels and navies around the world. To meet that logistical challenge, we may need to question our current manner of afloat support and put aside some assumptions.
Underway and Vertical Replenishment
Today’s Navy relies on Military Sealift Command’s highly-capable Combat Logistics Force (CLF) ships to sustain its global operations by providing food, fuel, supplies, and ammunition via underway replenishment to its combatants, ensuring nearly unlimited on-station time should the situation demand it.
Starting in FY17, the Navy intends to build its next class of replenishment ships, the double-hulled oiler T-AO(X), which will replace the current fast combat support ships starting in FY22 and ultimately result in a CLF composed of 11 dry cargo/ammunition ships (T-AKEs) and 19 T-AO(X)s.2 By closely managing the deactivation and construction of its CLF assets, the Navy’s long-term construction plans show the complement of CLF ships averaging somewhere between 26 and 30 ships through 2040.
With a focus on the current strategic relevance of our 11 carrier strike groups and 10 expeditionary strike groups, the CLF ships—whose total numbers remain steady around 30 ships for the immediate future—should not be expected to sustain the increasing number of smaller ships slated for construction. Additionally, as these smaller ships begin to deploy alone or in small groups to conduct littoral operations in the farthest corners of the world, any substantial reliance on the current or future complement of CLF assets quickly represents an unrealistic, inefficient, and ineffective logistics-support model. Forward-deployed tendering concepts, such as the use of the proposed Navy SEAL “mother ship”—the USS Ponce (LPD-15)—may be an option as operations permit, however, for the Navy’s newest platforms we will need to think differently about the future sustainment foundation.
Other at-sea alternatives include the use of commercial vessels capable of conducting underway replenishment with the Navy’s growing LCS and JHSV fleets. An option that highlights the JHSV’s ability for astern refueling is to employ craft such as offshore support vessels (OSVs), which have been used for decades throughout the oil industry in the world’s harshest environments to ensure maximum production of oil-rig fields. Because they use dynamic positioning technologies, OSVs can hold station on much larger fixed or moving objects with pinpoint accuracy even in heavy seas, making them an excellent fit for the possible replenishment of the Navy’s expanding fleet of smaller vessels. Helicopter-capable via a forward landing platform, OSVs are commonly outfitted with cranes that can dexterously employ refueling booms that could be fed by inboard tanks with capacities of up to a million gallons of fuel, simultaneously achieving the double-hulled environmental compliance requirement (another of the Navy’s pressing issues to ensure future entry of its CLF tankers into all the world’s ports). Aside from their vast commercial availability and operational viability, the Military Sealift Command is using these versatile ships to provide direct support to the Navy’s submarine and special-warfare missions. These agile craft could be chartered for the Navy in essentially any quantity and crewed by contract mariners, maximizing their operational availability worldwide.
LCS prototypes and JHSVs are outfitted with large helicopter landing decks that permit vertical replenishment. The demand for fuel and on-board storage capacity for JP-5 to fuel aviation assets as permanent tenants on both LCS and JHSV platforms has proved challenging. As a result, neither platform should plan to rely on vertical replenishment to sustain future operations. More important, the fuel, which is obviously not transferable by helicopter, is easily the greatest operational restriction and the most cumbersome and difficult to replenish in port or at sea. Vertical replenishment is only a partial answer to providing support for the Navy’s smaller vessels.
In-Port Replenishment
Because it is available and cost-effective, in-port replenishment, especially for refueling, is destined to be the foundation of logistics support for tomorrow’s small, high-speed vessels. There are many options however, for providing in-port support. Commonly, Navy ships obtain fuel and supplies in port via a husbanding contract that pays a premium to a broker for the various services and products requested. These contractors are embedded in their respective regions, financially motivated to invest in the infrastructure of ports frequented by their customers, and generally exceptional at being flexible to meet customer demands. Cost premiums are to be expected but should be weighed carefully against the high-overhead costs of Navy-owned and -operated infrastructure alternatives. Because the operational unit relies on local subcontractors and can reinforce and navigate the region’s political and economic structures, husbanding services have become its path of least resistance. Because husbanding and other commercial contracting can substantially reinforce the local and regional economies of the world’s most remote locations, these options may be regarded as the most cost-effective when viewed through the lens of national-security strategies.
Husbanding contracts warrant close scrutiny. Fiscal oversight is often lacking if left to individual ships receiving their services far from the actual officials who award and administer the contract vehicle. LCS and JHSV platforms seem destined to rely on husbanding contracts to facilitate their services in port in the far corners of the world where these craft will operate and would therefore greatly benefit from Navy contractor’s on-scene oversight. Either providing trained, warranted contracting officers in the crew or adding additional experts in either an expeditionary capacity or embedded in country teams, should be considered.
Husbanding is one solution. Using commercial facilities currently supporting U.S.-flagged container carriers—including Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, and American President Lines—might offer an alternative solution. Partnering with local navies such as South Africa’s and helping to cost-share at their bases, is another opportunity.
In-Port Security and Fuel Risks
Aside from the demand for oversight, commercial contracting presents other, more serious concerns than cost-effectiveness and continuity. In-port security ranks as a top concern as the Navy’s assets are understandably at greater risk when they are in port and restricted in their ability to maneuver or repel attack. Commercial contracts require initial analysis and routine advance notice to non-Department of Defense entities; operational security is compromised to varying degrees in every execution. This risk should be weighed against the strategic importance that entering port in many of these locations is of critical value for consistent replenishment and the continued security and economic support of these future operating regions.
Another operational trade-off to in-port replenishment is the difficulty in ensuring military-grade fuel from the commercial market. For instance, the Navy’s fuel (JP-5 and F-76) is largely unavailable in the world’s ports. Replenishment is virtually inconceivable in the remote locations that are likely to be targeted for LCS and JHSV operations. What is available in vast quantities is commercial-grade marine gas oil (MGO) burned by the world’s shipping industry. This fuel is low-grade and frequently contains varying levels of contaminants that can wreak havoc on high-performance engines. Unfortunately, even if MGO were cleared as a consistent alternative to F-76, the scarcity of JP-5 essential to embarked aviation assets rapidly becomes a debilitating factor. And the Navy is under increased pressure to comply with worldwide efforts to reduce air pollution.
Recommendations
The Navy needs to develop alternative support approaches, as follows:
• Contract for, and experiment with, underway replenishment using the OSV during routine sea trials in the Gulf of Mexico;
• Pilot a public-private venture with our commercial shipping partners to test the security and feasibility of using their facilities overseas; and
• Capitalize on our longstanding mil-to-mil relationships with select African and south Asian countries and begin negotiations for U.S. Navy port visits and support from their naval facilities with an eye toward long-term supply and maintenance agreements.
The advent of LCS and JHSV operations in significant numbers by 2020 and potentially greater quantities within 30 years demands realistic and reliable logistics support strategies to ensure the ultimate accomplishment of “persistent presence, maritime security, irregular warfare, joint sealift, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and partnership-building missions.”3 As these ships begin to deploy, relying on the current or planned complement of 30 CLF assets, 19 T-AO(X)s and 11 T-AKEs focused on our blue-water Navy, obviously represents an unrealistic, inefficient, and ineffective support model.
This blue-water Navy construct, which has been in place for more than 70 years, and which relied on mass and velocity to support underway operations, can no longer be the sole method of expeditionary logistics. We need a tiered approach that flexes the full capacity of an organic, commercial, and hybrid support concept. And any future logistics plan should include expanding our global partnering with military and commercial entities.
Quantifying future demand and closely scrutinizing potential support models is vital to ensuring all viable solutions. Based on today’s long-range plans for naval construction, the LCS and JHSV platforms will undoubtedly become some of the most visible and pervasive symbols of the United States around the world. These new and exciting assets warrant appropriate support plans that will likely require substantial analysis, early investment, and frequent updates as more of them enter the Fleet.
1. Christopher Cavas, “JHSV Gets Larger Role in U.S. Navy Plans,” Defense News, www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4484594.
2. PNAV N8F, Report to Congress on Annual Long-Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for FY11. 12-15.
3. Ibid., 5.
Commander Fitch is a 1995 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy with an MBA from the University of Kansas and a Master’s degree from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. He served on board the USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) and the USS Mount Vernon (LSD-39). He is assigned to U.S. Special Operations Command J4 Logistics Directorate.