thedrifter
12-03-03, 01:22 PM
Issue Date: December 01, 2003
Pentagon report backs Corps’ sea-basing plan
By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer
One of the Marine Corps’ key future war-fighting strategies got a boost with the release of a Pentagon report calling on all the services to redouble their efforts to base forces at sea.
The Corps has been working on such a concept for more than a year, envisioning a force much larger than a Marine Expeditionary Unit that could launch, control and support combat operations entirely from the sea without first massing forces ashore.
The strategy mainly has been a Marine Corps and Navy priority, but a study released by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board in August calls on the Army and Air Force to develop technologies and tactics that would allow them to play a role in a future sea base.
“History suggests that sea-basing has never been exclusively limited to Navy and Marine operations,” stated the Defense Science Board Task Force on Sea Basing report. “The Air Force, and particularly the Army, must participate in the development and use of this joint military operational capability which lies at the intersection of traditional special-operations forces, Marine and Army operations.”
The Defense Science Board advises the secretary of defense on military modernization but does not set policy.
The board’s report pointed to the growing difficulty of securing agreements from allies to use overseas bases and airspace to stage U.S. forces or to fly to foreign targets. For example, longtime ally Turkey refused to grant U.S. forces basing or airspace rights for the war in Iraq.
As the war on terrorism shifts to new fronts, these difficulties will grow, the board predicts, making sea-basing a perfect military strategy for the Bush administration’s new counterterrorism efforts.
A sea base, positioned in international waters, would not be subject to diplomatic squabbles, the study argues.
“Sea-basing provides a powerful alternative to land bases,” the report states. “It is likely to be the necessary lynchpin for unilateral preventative actions with both fire and maneuver operations.”
Marine officials working on the sea-basing concept are gratified that the Pentagon has recognized their brainchild as worthy of joint participation, but aren’t surprised.
Col. Arthur Corbett, director of war-fighting requirements for Marine Corps Combat Development Command at Quantico, Va., has been intimately involved with the development of sea-basing and said current events have forced the other services to consider basing at least part of their forces at sea.
“The Turks did us a big favor in pushing the sea-basing concept,” Corbett said. “Our most reliable ally became an issue. Sea-basing is expensive, but compared to the $26 billion we were prepared to give to Turkey, this is dimes on the dollar.”
But there’s still a long way to go before sea-basing can be fully implemented, Pentagon and Marine officials say.
One stumbling block is that today’s large transport ships, such as the Maritime Prepositioning Force fleet, cannot load and unload combat equipment to other ships in rough seas, a key capability of a future sea base.
The report calls for the development of new transport ships capable of:
•At-sea transfer of cargo to lighterage — smaller cargo-ferrying ships — inside well-decks.
•Selective, automated cargo movement within the sea-base warehouse ships.
•At-sea cargo transfer to and from barges alongside sea-base ships.
•At-sea cargo transfer from commercial vessels to sea-base ships.
In order to transport gear and troops to a sea base, the military will need a heavy-lift transport aircraft able to carry more than 20 tons and able to deploy aboard the sea base, the report states. Current options include fixed-wing aircraft, a four-engined tilt-rotor aircraft, a large helicopter or a lighter-than-air cargo mover — a blimp.
While the grand vision of the Defense Science Board’s sea-base concept might take years to realize, the Corps believes it’s on the right track to make its own force sea-base capable.
Conceived little more than a year ago, sea-basing already has moved well beyond the concept phase, with Marine planners beginning to formulate tactics for how to actually employ a sea base. A major exercise to be conducted next year, dubbed Sea Viking ’04, is intended to validate many of the newly developed sea-basing tactics.
“I don’t know if we’ve ever been that fast — from concept to capability — in a development process before,” Corbett said.
The full Defense Science Board Task Force on Sea Basing report can be found at www.marinecorpstimes.com.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-2396757.php
Sempers,
Roger
:marine:
Pentagon report backs Corps’ sea-basing plan
By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer
One of the Marine Corps’ key future war-fighting strategies got a boost with the release of a Pentagon report calling on all the services to redouble their efforts to base forces at sea.
The Corps has been working on such a concept for more than a year, envisioning a force much larger than a Marine Expeditionary Unit that could launch, control and support combat operations entirely from the sea without first massing forces ashore.
The strategy mainly has been a Marine Corps and Navy priority, but a study released by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board in August calls on the Army and Air Force to develop technologies and tactics that would allow them to play a role in a future sea base.
“History suggests that sea-basing has never been exclusively limited to Navy and Marine operations,” stated the Defense Science Board Task Force on Sea Basing report. “The Air Force, and particularly the Army, must participate in the development and use of this joint military operational capability which lies at the intersection of traditional special-operations forces, Marine and Army operations.”
The Defense Science Board advises the secretary of defense on military modernization but does not set policy.
The board’s report pointed to the growing difficulty of securing agreements from allies to use overseas bases and airspace to stage U.S. forces or to fly to foreign targets. For example, longtime ally Turkey refused to grant U.S. forces basing or airspace rights for the war in Iraq.
As the war on terrorism shifts to new fronts, these difficulties will grow, the board predicts, making sea-basing a perfect military strategy for the Bush administration’s new counterterrorism efforts.
A sea base, positioned in international waters, would not be subject to diplomatic squabbles, the study argues.
“Sea-basing provides a powerful alternative to land bases,” the report states. “It is likely to be the necessary lynchpin for unilateral preventative actions with both fire and maneuver operations.”
Marine officials working on the sea-basing concept are gratified that the Pentagon has recognized their brainchild as worthy of joint participation, but aren’t surprised.
Col. Arthur Corbett, director of war-fighting requirements for Marine Corps Combat Development Command at Quantico, Va., has been intimately involved with the development of sea-basing and said current events have forced the other services to consider basing at least part of their forces at sea.
“The Turks did us a big favor in pushing the sea-basing concept,” Corbett said. “Our most reliable ally became an issue. Sea-basing is expensive, but compared to the $26 billion we were prepared to give to Turkey, this is dimes on the dollar.”
But there’s still a long way to go before sea-basing can be fully implemented, Pentagon and Marine officials say.
One stumbling block is that today’s large transport ships, such as the Maritime Prepositioning Force fleet, cannot load and unload combat equipment to other ships in rough seas, a key capability of a future sea base.
The report calls for the development of new transport ships capable of:
•At-sea transfer of cargo to lighterage — smaller cargo-ferrying ships — inside well-decks.
•Selective, automated cargo movement within the sea-base warehouse ships.
•At-sea cargo transfer to and from barges alongside sea-base ships.
•At-sea cargo transfer from commercial vessels to sea-base ships.
In order to transport gear and troops to a sea base, the military will need a heavy-lift transport aircraft able to carry more than 20 tons and able to deploy aboard the sea base, the report states. Current options include fixed-wing aircraft, a four-engined tilt-rotor aircraft, a large helicopter or a lighter-than-air cargo mover — a blimp.
While the grand vision of the Defense Science Board’s sea-base concept might take years to realize, the Corps believes it’s on the right track to make its own force sea-base capable.
Conceived little more than a year ago, sea-basing already has moved well beyond the concept phase, with Marine planners beginning to formulate tactics for how to actually employ a sea base. A major exercise to be conducted next year, dubbed Sea Viking ’04, is intended to validate many of the newly developed sea-basing tactics.
“I don’t know if we’ve ever been that fast — from concept to capability — in a development process before,” Corbett said.
The full Defense Science Board Task Force on Sea Basing report can be found at www.marinecorpstimes.com.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-2396757.php
Sempers,
Roger
:marine: