Common Hull Strategy: Amphibious Ships

As shipbuilding costs have continued to rise, several suggestions have been made to help bring down the costs in shipbuilding. Among the many suggestions, one that continues to rise to the top is for the Navy to use common hull strategies for ships, similar to how the Spruance class destroyer hull and Ticonderoga class cruiser used the same hull. Another aspect of the common hull strategy is the type vs model debate, for example the DDG-51 represents a single type of ship with three models. These types of model changes for a ship type are built from lessons learned in production and adapted to meet requirements in an evolutionary model as technology changes, so they aren't necessarily a bad thing.

Defense Daily has an article out today describing some of the efforts of NAVSEA to evaluate reducing the number of hull types the Navy operates. Today, the Navy operates 21 types of ships and there are 29 models based on those 21 types. The process as described in the Defense Daily article focuses on amphibious ships and surface combatants (available here, #16). This post is specific to Amphibious Ships.

Amphibious Ships

"If you kind of look at it, it is how we decided to spread the MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) across those big ship. We tended to focus aviation assets on the large deck, and then depending upon the variety of the LPDs and LSDs, one is heavy in vehicles and one is heavy in well-deck kind of craft," he said. "The question is, is that the best way and most efficient way to spread the MEU across the ESG? And who says it has to be three ships?

"So we created what would be a new ESG," Goddard added.

One variety had two large deck ships, one focused more on aviation and the other focused more on well-deck. And then there was a variant that had them both the same--the same aviation and the same sort of well-deck capacity. "That drew you to two pretty large ships, not all that different in size from a LHA-6 [or] LHD- 8," Goddard said.

The Navy has followed a pattern since WWII of replacing ship type with like type, so as the current LHAs are being retired, the Navy is building a new LHA(R) for example. The same theory is being applied to the LSD with the future LSD(X). The Navy is just completing a build of 9 LPD-17s, and is just beginning a program to build 4 LHA(R)s, an evolutionary design based on LHD-8. It should be noted that the design requirements, including the size increase of both the LHA(R) and LPD-17 over the platforms they replace, are driven specifically by the size increases of both the EFV and MV-22. High Speed Transport Vessels, like the JHSV that will be funded over the next 5 years, is a break from the traditional model, and signals perhaps even in the Navy, traditions can be retired.

Consider the irony, at a point in time the Navy is looking at consolidating the number of amphibious platforms to deliver Marines, the Navy is also designing and getting ready to build a new MPF(F) force driven directly by requirements established for an amphibious assault capability. The MFP(F) is 15 ships of 5 types and 6 different models. There is the MLP, LMSR, T-AKE, Fast Supply Ship, and the LHA(R)/LHD which we count as the type with 2 models. When you consider the different requirements driving this Sea Basing ship structure, including the 1 MEB and the '2 battalions in one 10 hour period of darkness' type stuff, and acknowledging the requirement for an additional MEB on amphibious ships is required anyway the whole idea of common hull strategy is ironic. Sea Basing is a very clever idea as proposed, particularly the logistics aspect (aviation isn't impressive to us), but being clever doesn't make it the best way ahead.

The question the Marines should ask is whether it is time to give up this very smart but perhaps wrong approach to delivering Marines from the sea? Since the Korean War, Marines have not had to assault a beach. That doesn't mean it won't be a requirement in the future, but the Sea Base doesn't meet the beach assault requirement anyway. The lack of a beach assault has not however reduced the necessity of the Marine Corp and its afloat capability, in fact in recent times the ESG, not the CSG, has been one of the most desired capabilities to fight the emerging irregular and small war challenges at sea. This shift by forward commanders from desiring the CSG to ESG at sea in gap spaces of South Asia and Africa comes at the same time the number of ESGs has been reduced from 12 to 9, directly counter to the recommendations of most studies looking to the post cold war requirements of the Navy, including the studies leading into the 1997 QDR, not to mention the expeditionary nature of the new Maritime Strategy.

NAVSEA, and the Marines, have their hands full on this issue. The Marines face increased demand for capabilities by forward commanders, larger deployable platforms in the future requiring larger amphibious ships, and the primary requirements driving future designs are based on the least likely but most difficult scenario; an assault from the Sea. Throw in a common hull concept to maximize economies of scale for shipbuilding expenditures at this point and the challenge appears daunting. When, or if for skeptics, the 10th LPD-17 is built, current plans will produce 9 ESGs spreading 9 MEUs around as follows.

1 LHD, 2 LPD-17, 1 LSD - Forward deployed
1 LHD, 1 LPD-17, 1 LSD
1 LHD, 1 LPD-17, 1 LSD
1 LHD, 1 LPD-17, 1 LSD
1 LHD, 1 LPD-17, 1 LSD
1 LHD, 1 LPD-17, 1 LSD
1 LHD, 1 LPD-17, 1 LSD
1 LHA(R), 1 LPD-17, 1 LSD
1 LHA(R), 1 LPD-17, 1 LSD

If you add that up, it comes in at 7 LHDs, 2 LHAs, 10 LPD-17s, and 9 LSDs for a total of 28 Amphibious ships. The Navy intends to use the remaining 3 LSDs for GWOT operations, presumably as motherships for MSO operations like we have been observing off the Horn of Africa.

It requires 5 ESGs to assemble a single MEB with the force structure described above. The total force above is actually 1.9 MEBs, below the stated requirement of 2.0, meaning even with the Sea Base the Marines are not capable of even a 2 brigade assault from the sea under current plans (plus the 10th LPD-17). The Sea Base adds 1 more MEB, and 2 traditional MPF squadrons bring the total number of MEBs afloat to 5. We see irony that the reduction from 6 MEBs to 5 MEBS comes at a time when the Marine Corp is being expanded, as well as the other demands on the Marines mentioned above.

Given the ESG is in higher demand, and it looks like that trend will continue to go up, not down, as the US moves to Phase 0 approaches in unsecured gap regions, are the requirements really leading to the conclusion we need to 1) reduce the number of ESGs, and 2) consolidate some of the MEUs into MEB sized chunks? The nature of globalization points to a distributed force requirements for ESGs in the future, not a consolidated ESG force requirement that removes 3 MEUs that could potentially be distributed to form a MEB as the Sea Base concept does, and drops an entire deployable brigade at sea from the inventory.

Perhaps it is time to take a new look at the requirements. Hopefully NAVSEA is developing alternatives that discard the current proposed Sea Base, and specifically look at a very well thought out concept (PDF) by Bob Work, first produced in Chapter 5 of the Newport Papers #26.