The Navy's New Shipbuilding Program

InsideDefense (update your subscription already) is doing a great job reporting on issues surrounding the FY 2011 discussion. Indeed, this is very informative article, except the headline given is quite misleading. I get the impression the reporter didn't quite know exactly what he had, but what he had was very important.

Basically, we have a brand new shipbuilding program, replacing a shipbuilding program that never really got started... but new program will eventually assume the name of the old program?

Yep, something like that. Confused?

The headline Joint Logistics Vessel is what was the Mobile Landing Platform didn't add much clarity, but the details in the article are well reported and help quite a bit.

The gist of the article is that the original Sea Basing program is dead, but in an interview with Jim Strock, director of the Marine Corps seabasing division, he apparently told InsideDefense "the only capability the Navy still needs to make seabasing a reality is an at-sea transfer and surface connector ship, namely the Mobile Landing Platform." The thing that makes this confusing is that "at-sea transfer" system and acting as a "surface connector" are only a few capabilities of the old MLP concept, not what the MLP was in whole. Strock tells InsideDefense the MLP is included in the Navy’s draft long-term shipbuilding report under the name Joint Logistics Vessel (JLV). In my opinion, if Jim Strock actually said it like that, then he may have added to the confusion. The article gets good with the direct quotes though.

"The term JLV was just a flash in the pan," Strock told ITN last week. He said that at this point plans call for the ship to simply be called the Mobile Landing Platform.

"There was a Mobile Landing Platform in design," he said at the conference. "This is a slightly different creature. This is going to be effectively a ship design similar to the heavy lift ships that we have out there today."

"It’s a more basic form of the original Mobile Landing Platform design, but it retains very essential seabasing qualities," he added.

The middle paragraph is the key. This is a brand new shipbuilding program, not the MLP, even though it will carry the name Mobile Landing Platform. Think for a moment about the characteristics used describing this new platform.

The article describes a large heavy lift ship that interfaces with other sealift AND smaller platforms as an at-sea transfer and surface connector for purposes of moving cargo and equipment. As a platform no longer intended to reconfigure Marine forces before sending them ashore, even as it retains that capability on a limited basis, the new ship is better explained as an intermediate transfer station from logistics and lift ships to smaller platforms.

By making the platform less specific to Marine Corps requirements, and using what sounds like a Flo/Flo model with modifications to connect larger and smaller vessels, the Navy may have stumbled right into what sounds like a mothership. It isn't a mothership for smaller unmanned systems like the LCS, rather a mothership to support platforms like HSVs and manned systems like LCACs and LCUs, although there is no reason why it couldn't support manned platforms like Littoral Combat Ships, foreign corvettes, or PCs, or even smaller systems like SOF systems and RHIBs. It will be particularly interesting to find out if one of the requirements is to swap out a LCS module at sea.

When you take all the interior design modifications out and leave a large open platform to work with, the transition from specific to generic actually enables Joint capabilities. It will be very interesting if in the design process this ship gets a few modifications on its large open deck that allow the large platform to provide limited support of ISO sized modules, not unlike some of the engineering connections built into the LCS module bays. There really is a great deal of flexibility in a ship like this, not only as an intermediate transfer station between sealift and ship-to-shore connectors, but with large spaces come an opportunity for the Navy to use this type of vessel as a forward sea station for littoral vessel operations, a giant floating blue water airfield for ScanEagle UAVs, or a forward operating base at sea for Marine Corps/Army/Air Force operations ranging from over the horizon assault or support to humanitarian operations.

Reconfigurable space can be used in many ways you know, particularly when the ship is designed to provide power to stuff on the platform. In theory, this ship could pull into port and set up a giant floating hospital on its deck with ISO containers if the power distribution system is designed properly.

The JLV looks like a 75% solution with a lot of potential use from a creative Combatant Commander, and I think this could turn out to be a more interesting design than the original MLP.

All we know for certain is this will be the first Navy ship designed since the DDG-1000 and LCS, and even though it is not a warship, it will be interesting to watch.