Two Views of Sea Basing, War and Peace Time Metrics

This photo is of MV Blue Marlin moving the X-Radar system used for ballistic missile defense, click for very high resolution. This photo was taken sometime last year we believe. When we look at this photo, we observe two distinct strategic views of Sea Basing, both of which align to the Navy's maritime strategy.

The Sea Base program of record will include the Mobile Landing Platform (MLP), intended to be a ship like MV Blue Marlin with capabilities specific to the Sea Basing program requirements. The concept behind using the MLP is to have a mobile dock act as a transfer station, allowing large cargo ships to offload materials and manpower to "ship to shore" connectors like the LCAC.

Maneuverability, Mobility, and Movement are three principles of military strategy. At the operational level, the ability of the MLP to roam the battle space at sea gives the MLP more flexibility necessary to concentrate with other forces to deliver forces by sea, strike more quickly from an advantageous position, and evade detection by remaining agile on the battlefield. This is primarily a view from the warfighters perspective at sea against a competitor.

The US Navy's new maritime strategy is a peacetime strategy, indeed it reconciles this position by placing the importance to prevent war in equivalence with winning war itself. Recognizing a changing maritime environment, the six core capabilities of the Maritime Strategy include forward presence, deterrence, sea control, power projection, maritime security and humanitarian assistance/disaster response. We observe the way one would execute these capabilities are different based on conditions of war and peace.

For example, during the management of peacetime activities in troubled waters, for example when dealing with pirates and other criminal and humanitarian challenges, deep sea platforms based on rig technology represent a means by which to greatly assist forward deployed naval forces towards the ways of Maritime Domain Awareness. Too often we see Maritime Domain Awareness described as an end in strategy, in the context of absolute knowledge being the achievement, but we see Maritime Domain Awareness as a way to implement the ends of maritime strategy, not as a strategic end itself.

These platforms, as forward operating bases at sea, establish forward, visible, static presence in seas being contested by irregular threats. These platforms are traditionally very difficult to sink, and would be even more difficult if armed with a ship self defense system including 30mm guns to RAM launchers. As a forward base at sea, maneuvered to static locations by a MLP, a forward operating base at sea built on top of a traditional oil rig platform can establish regional sea control over irregular challenges while providing regional information and command facilities to theater coalition forces. The US Navy has never shown interest in using this type of alternative for enabling MDA in forward theaters, even if they would be particularly useful in places like the Horn of Africa. The argument this type of platform is too threatening to regional nations doesn't hold much water, they would be best used in cooperation with regional naval forces as an information enabling sea base, thus supporting regional nations through partnership.

The primary reason the Navy wouldn't do something like this is start up costs for such a commitment are not trivial, a start up cost estimate for a navalized rig, 6 boats for the US (we assume M-80 cost range and capability), 12 boats for a neighboring nation (we are assuming smaller 50ft coast guard boats with technology to operate with coalition forces), and integration would total around $750 million. Operating cost would be lower than that of deploying amphibious ships to forward theaters.

Naval doctrine emphasizes mobility, so this concept does not get serious consideration by the Navy. However, in low-threat, high activity environments like the Horn of Africa, or perhaps the Gulf of Guinea, $750 million is close to, if not already below the annual GDP economic loss of regional nations from a lack of maritime security. These types of concepts tend to support metrics within the context of peacetime maritime strategy, although the political costs also must be accountable. Those costs are beyond the scope of this analysis.

We envision of joint forces concept with these platforms; Navy, Coast Guard, and Marines. Indeed the necessity to support up to 1 Marine Rifle Company or SOF units would be a primary requirement within the context of how we see the utility of these platforms. It is worth noting these type of forward operating bases at sea would be very useful for swapping mission modules on platforms like the LCS. We also note this model has a very successful history for maintaining a static presence during peacetime, indeed Ocean 6 with its barge hull form is one such example in use today, and the stories of barges used in Vietnam, or even the Persian Gulf in the 80s during wartime are legendary as well.

Food for thought.