thedrifter
06-13-06, 01:26 PM
June 19, 2006
Amphibs could be ‘mother ships’ for near-shore forces
By Andrew Scutro
Times staff writer
Navy ships and boats may soon operate from a mobile, maritime equivalent of a forward operating base, a sort of “mother ship,” according to Rear Adm. Joseph Walsh, director of the submarine warfare division at the Pentagon.
For sailors serving on amphibious warfare ships, it could mean assignment to a ship home-ported in a place like Guam or Bahrain.
“We are evaluating a new concept called ‘global fleet stations,’ which would establish a forward-deployed small-draft fleet of ships and support vessels able to be stationed where most of our allies are right now, in green and brown water,” Walsh said during a speech at a Washington, D.C., conference on joint warfare hosted by Armed Forces Journal, a sister publication of Marine Corps Times.
In recent years, the Navy has pushed its ocean dominance mission closer to shore through the littoral zone, or green water, and upriver into the so-called brown water.
With the Soviet fleet gone, Navy leaders talk often about emerging threats operating closer to the world’s highly populated coastal areas.
As many admirals have noted in public speeches, Walsh said that the current and future threat array could be anything from pirates operating off the African coast and smugglers moving terrorist weapons to hostile modern navies armed with submarines and swarms of fast-attack boats.
“That is an important realization: We must be able to do more in the green and brown water,” Walsh said.
The Navy is taking the expanded capability seriously enough that in January it established a fourth type command in Navy Expeditionary Combat Command. Made up of formerly disparate communities like Seabees, coastal warfare squadrons, dive units and bomb disposal teams, it will soon add a renewed riverine capability as well as a maritime civil affairs group.
The “global fleet stations” concept is to establish floating home bases for small forward operating forces like those provided by NECC, Walsh said.
While he said the fleet stations are in “very early development,” NECC forces, which specialize in near-shore and inshore environments, will need support nearby.
“As we think about that and we think about having small ships [and] their ability to sustain themselves in areas ... like the Philippines, Indonesia and the western Pacific,” he said, “we need to have areas where we can mother-ship them and coordinate logistics support for those ships.”
To do that, Walsh said, the Navy is looking at the possibility of home-porting an amphibious transport dock ship or amphibious assault ship in a port in current use, such as Guam or Bahrain.
The new Littoral Combat Ship, which is supposed to join the fleet with an eventual force of 55 hulls, will also need ready replenishment from the likes of a global fleet station.
Walsh said the Navy might test the concept by operating a “global fleet station” in Key West, Fla., on counternarcotics operations, but did not say when that might happen, as it is an idea still in development.
Although Walsh did not make the comparison in his remarks, the “global fleet station” concept differs from the high-profile “sea base” concept of massing a large array of forces at sea when a land base cannot be used, such as for an invasion.
Andrew Scutro covers the Navy.
Ellie
Amphibs could be ‘mother ships’ for near-shore forces
By Andrew Scutro
Times staff writer
Navy ships and boats may soon operate from a mobile, maritime equivalent of a forward operating base, a sort of “mother ship,” according to Rear Adm. Joseph Walsh, director of the submarine warfare division at the Pentagon.
For sailors serving on amphibious warfare ships, it could mean assignment to a ship home-ported in a place like Guam or Bahrain.
“We are evaluating a new concept called ‘global fleet stations,’ which would establish a forward-deployed small-draft fleet of ships and support vessels able to be stationed where most of our allies are right now, in green and brown water,” Walsh said during a speech at a Washington, D.C., conference on joint warfare hosted by Armed Forces Journal, a sister publication of Marine Corps Times.
In recent years, the Navy has pushed its ocean dominance mission closer to shore through the littoral zone, or green water, and upriver into the so-called brown water.
With the Soviet fleet gone, Navy leaders talk often about emerging threats operating closer to the world’s highly populated coastal areas.
As many admirals have noted in public speeches, Walsh said that the current and future threat array could be anything from pirates operating off the African coast and smugglers moving terrorist weapons to hostile modern navies armed with submarines and swarms of fast-attack boats.
“That is an important realization: We must be able to do more in the green and brown water,” Walsh said.
The Navy is taking the expanded capability seriously enough that in January it established a fourth type command in Navy Expeditionary Combat Command. Made up of formerly disparate communities like Seabees, coastal warfare squadrons, dive units and bomb disposal teams, it will soon add a renewed riverine capability as well as a maritime civil affairs group.
The “global fleet stations” concept is to establish floating home bases for small forward operating forces like those provided by NECC, Walsh said.
While he said the fleet stations are in “very early development,” NECC forces, which specialize in near-shore and inshore environments, will need support nearby.
“As we think about that and we think about having small ships [and] their ability to sustain themselves in areas ... like the Philippines, Indonesia and the western Pacific,” he said, “we need to have areas where we can mother-ship them and coordinate logistics support for those ships.”
To do that, Walsh said, the Navy is looking at the possibility of home-porting an amphibious transport dock ship or amphibious assault ship in a port in current use, such as Guam or Bahrain.
The new Littoral Combat Ship, which is supposed to join the fleet with an eventual force of 55 hulls, will also need ready replenishment from the likes of a global fleet station.
Walsh said the Navy might test the concept by operating a “global fleet station” in Key West, Fla., on counternarcotics operations, but did not say when that might happen, as it is an idea still in development.
Although Walsh did not make the comparison in his remarks, the “global fleet station” concept differs from the high-profile “sea base” concept of massing a large array of forces at sea when a land base cannot be used, such as for an invasion.
Andrew Scutro covers the Navy.
Ellie