Bryaxis sent me this link to a Defense News article regarding the Mistral at Bold Alligator. Here it is...
At a time when the U.S. Navy is trying to enlarge its fleet on a tight budget, a series of foreign ships offer thoughtful ideas about how that can be done.Wow.
France’s Mistral amphibious assault and command ship is a good example. Now participating in the massive Bold Alligator amphibious exercise off America’s East Coast Jan. 30-Feb. 13, she combines the commercial construction and automation to pack enormous capability into a relatively small and affordable package.
Able to carry up to 650 troops, up to 90 vehicles and between 16 heavy and 35 light helicopters, she has a crew of just 170 and costs about $600 million.
It’s hard to compare her to any U.S. vessel. She carries slightly fewer troops than an LPD-17-class amphibious ship at a third the cost and half the crew, but has a flight deck and aviation capabilities more akin to a Wasp-class assault ship at a sixth the cost and crew size.
Every vessel is the result of tradeoffs. Time will tell whether France made the right choices in a ship that compromises robustness for capacity and efficiency.
What is clear, however, is Mistral has spent most of the past four years at sea on real world missions, most recently off Libya more efficiently and at less cost than older warship designs.
Overall, Mistral is an attractive package that U.S. officials should check out more closely.
The age old argument between combat and mercantile standards.
Its really not even an argument in my mind. Remember the USS Stark? I wasn't there so I don't know but what was reported is that the ship was hit with two Exocet missiles and survived.
That's was a ship built to combat standards.
In the meantime we've had ships hit by mines...and expect our ships to go into harms way. Unless we lessen our desire to protect our men and women who crew these ships then we will continue to build them to combat standards. If we decide that saving money in the short term is more important then we need to make our people aware of that fact ---- and lower the Servicemen's Life Group Insurance payouts.
I know that high tech at sea combat is not expected but if it ever comes then the loss of life over the ten years in Iraq/Afghanistan can be equaled on one bad day.
5k or more people on an aircraft carrier.
3k or more people on an LHD or LHA.
Yeah, we need combat standards. Defense News is wrong.
Construction standards for naval vessels are a complex subject. Commercial classification societies have added naval build profiles to their growing repertoires. What used to be a clear distinction between naval and mercantile standards is more muddied today.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's unclear to what extent US NVRs play in the higher cost for US Navy amphibs over their European counterparts. My guess at least as much has to do with procurement inefficiencies and more complex combat systems.
Recall also that US Amphibs aren't built to "warship" standards (so-called "Level III" survivability). Amphibs are built to lower Level II standards.
What does this all mean? Good question. It is likely that the Mistral class is not built with the same level of survivability as, say, the San Antonio class. However you can buy two or more Mistrals for the price of one San Antonio. And numbers do matter when it comes to the survivability of a fleet or task force as a whole.
Mistral is a tad too slow with a top speed of 18kts, with a range of 10,500 at 15kts.
ReplyDeleteSan Antonio tops out at over 22kts and can easily sustain 20kts to achieve the the USN/USMC desired 500miles of movement per day.
The Chinese Type 071 have similar performance to USN ships.
A stretched Mistral might meet the speed requirements.
ReplyDeleteThe Navantia Juan Carlos class LHD is another candidate.
Just to throw a couple of things up:
ReplyDeleteHMS Ocean is another example of a commercially built ship that came in extremely cheap for the capability it gives.
Likewise ships built to combat standards (images of HMS Sheffield spring to mind) have gone down in combat.
It comes down to much more than build standards when we talk about survivability. The escorts that are out on goalkeeper duties do need to have high build standards, but if those same build standards are necessary on an Amphib my argument would be that something has already gone terribly wrong.
My thought is, what if we reconfigured the ARG around one class of smaller "LHD(L)" like the Mistral or Juan Carlos, instead of the current LHD/LHA, LSD, LPD mix?
ReplyDeleteWe would need more LHD(L)s to have the same capacity as the current ARG, but spreading the MEU around improves survivability.
However, stamping out the same ship over and over should significantly improve production efficiencies, which should reduce costs.
Spreading the MEU around to, say, 4-6 LHD(L)s also would improve our ability to deploy one- or two-ship mini-MEUs for various purposes.
disagree Grim.
ReplyDeleteeveryone is forgetting the complex, high tech naval battle. in that realm if you lose a capital class ship (and i contend that large amphibs are in that category) then you should do everything necessary to see them surviving hits.
if ships are disposable (and thats really what the argument is about....our ships are so cheap that we can afford to lose a few) then you better make sure that at ALL times manning is almost miniscule.
but back to the Sheffield. it was unlucky in a couple of ways. aluminum is not US combat standard. second, the exocet isn't what killed the Sheffield, it was bad luck, fuel spilling into a ship after being hit? disaster in a handbag.
i contend that if the Sheffield was built with steel instead of aluminum that it would have survived...and the RN seems to agree, they went back to steel.
Smitty.
ReplyDeleteit makes no sense to make mini-ARGs. except for show the flag ops, then you have nothing.
if you're talking about making a company of Marines combat capable as an individual unit, i just don't see it. more likely they'll run into trouble that requires someone help them.
i just don't see the combat power that several light amphibs would bring to the fight.
Further there is the new Dutch Karel Doorman class support ship which is an up sized Enforcer. Bigger than San Antonio LPD, but once again let down by being slow.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_Doorman_class_support_ship
Sol,
ReplyDeleteFour to six light LHDs can bring the same combat power as the current ARG. It's just split up between more ships.
Amphibs are valuable for more than just carrying Marines though.
Say you need to simultaneously support fighter and CSAR sorties over Libya, and SPECOPS missions over Somolia. A single ARG could split off one LHD(L) with F-35s and helos for the Libyan mission, and another two to support SPECOPS and still have additional LHD(L)s for surge capacity or rotations to extend missions.
One of the two LHD(L)s supporting SPECOPS could carry a company-sized SPECOPS element with aviation, and the other could carry a Marine CoLT to act as a QRF for the SPECOPS. Both ships have enough capacity for this, and could even carry AAVs, tanks and landing craft too. Or small patrol craft to interdict pirates.
Sure you can do this to some extent today, but you have to make a choice where your primary aviation platform will be. It can either be off the coast of Libya OR Somalia, but not both.
If every ship in the ARG can carry and support all Marine and SPECOPS aviation, then you can split or combine them as needed.
thanks Steve.
ReplyDeleteSmitty.
during a time of downsizing you want to further subdivide Marine Corps assets, create a new formation (CoLT) and start buying LHD(L)????
not gonna work. if you have a CoLT then you're gonna have to have a Major in charge of the new ground element, a Major in charge of the aviation element, a Major in charge of the service support element and then place a LtCol in charge of each CoLT.
thats an amazing amount of overhead for such a dubious return. additionally what happens when they reform? you're going to have to have a Marine General in charge of every MEU if you go this route.
why a Major in charge of a CoLT? because you've just made them a SPMAGTF and an independent unit of action. you want experience to handle that.
sounds good in theory but bad in actual application.
I want to see us build cost-effective amphibious ships. One way to do that is through economies of scale. Producing ONE class of amphibious ship across the board enables this.
ReplyDeleteProducing two different large aviation ships (LHA and LHD), plus an LPD class and potentially LSD(X)s splits production efforts across four different ship types. No economies of scale there.
If you can't figure out how to effectively command sub-units, then don't deploy them separately. But at least you have the option to. My guess is, especially for temporary deployments, you could make something work.
There are other benefits to increasing the ARG size this way. All LHDs means more helo spots in the ARG, which translates to greater sortie rates.
You can dedicate one ship to F-35 ops, and the others to rotary. So no time consuming switching between modes on a single deck.
More ships means more well decks for improved throughput there.
And a single cruise missile or mine strike doesn't take out most of your aviation.
3 x Juan Carlos cost as much as 1 x Makin Island; give or take $100million! (Though the former lack "serious" defensive armament.)
ReplyDeleteThat is 2934 troop lift vs 1687 troop lift.
That is 672t lift from 12 LCM vs 192t lift from 3 LCAC.
(Juan Carlos' dock can take 1 LCAC.) These 12 LCM will leave in one wave.
There will also be (approx) 3 times the flight deck space.
When one has a commercial shipping industry then building ships for one's navy becomes cost effective. We killed ours off long ago and further so reduced our shipbuilding base and the numbers of ships the USN buys every year we seem almost entirely incapable of building cost effective warships. Thus I submit going to commercial standards would probably not save a substantial amount of money.
ReplyDeleteThat said it would be worth costing it out. Certainly one wants USN amphibious ships to have reasonable levels of survivability but it's at least considering that if we could buy the Gators cheaper that we'd also end up with more in the shipbuilding budget and end up with more escorts which also affects survivability.
Frankly at this point it would be nice to just us building overly expensive ships actually on or below budget (besides the SSN's) that are also reliable. All through the 90's Congress and the Administration were repeatedly told what was going to happen to the shipbuilding base. The short term savings of not buying enough ships turning into very long term cost increases will be with us for decades.
I agree Lane. I'm not sure going with commercial standards would save a lot, even non-navalized commercial standards. We still have to develop and install combat systems, and those are expensive.
ReplyDeleteHowever by buying larger numbers of ONE class of Gator instead of four, we can improve production pipeline efficiencies and provide a more manageable and predictable workload to shipyards.
If multiple yards know how to make them, we can split buys based on competitive bids. There's enough of the SAME work to go around.
That's a good point but I don't see us going with one class. Operating large number of helicopters effectively requires a large LHD type which we don't want as the only class. That said there's no reason not to have one class as a complement and consolidate the LPD's and LSD's into one class.
ReplyDeleteIt's been suggested that LPD-17 be used to fill LSD(X) but the USN seems to be saying LPD-17 might be too big for the role. Now they might be right but is building a slightly smaller new design going to actually save any money or cost more?
In any case a transition isn't going to be easy. The LSD's with their big well deck can carry 4 LCAC's so going with more LPD-17's and their 2 won't work so at best they'll have to modify the LPD-17.
In a perfect world one might have one class carrying 3 LCAC's each but how would you transition to this given LPD-17 is the latest class? Thus the distinction between the two classes is probably going to stay for many decades.
Lane,
ReplyDeleteDo all of the helos need to operate from the same ship to be effective? An ARG composed of five Mistral/Juan Carlos style LHDs has many more helo spots than the current ARG. And, like I said before, with that many ships you could dedicate one to continuous STOVL ops so they all don't have to switch back and forth between rotary and STOVL (a time consuming process on the current LHD/LHAs).
Each LHD could carry a pair of LCACs, or one LCAC and two LCMs. Five LHDs equals 10 LCACs.
Juan Carlos has a ski jump for improving STOVL aircraft performance.
Here's a Navantia brief on the Juan Carlos, starting at page 56,
http://infodefensa.com/wp-content/uploads/JCI_en_v2.pdf
If we were starting from scratch I think 3 ships is where we want to be for an ARG. Three Juan Carlos seem overkill and two not enough.
ReplyDeleteLarger carriers are more efficient than smaller for a lot of reasons. The LHD's are all new and the LPD-17's are still being built. It's really an academic exercise discussing what we might do if starting from scratch.
It's also worth considering that the ship that has to operate closer to shore to launch the AAV's be the best protected and that the main helo carrier need not be risked inshore.
Why three ships? We use to have five (IIRC), then went to four, and now three.
ReplyDeleteLarger carriers are more efficient than smaller ones, but building very few large carriers (one every four or more years) doesn't provide enough work for yards to optimize production efficiencies and foster competition. Building lots of the same thing does. We exacerbate this problem by building LHDs sometimes and LHAs at other times.
Existing LHA/LHDs do have to get close to shore eventually to discharge LCACs and cargo.
The ships going close to shore should have a balance of protection AND numbers to survive. (per Capt. Hughes' Salvo Model)
Three ships seems to make sense for a number of reasons. Do you really want half your eggs in one basket or lose half the force if one ship has mechanical issues? The MEU really has 3 parts in the BLT, air group, and support battalion and centering each on one ship seems to make sense on a number of levels.
ReplyDeleteI'd tend to disagree on the size of a carrier. Consider a 90,000 ton carrier can operate around 90 aircraft while the 65,000 ton QE is designed to operate around half as many. Building one every 4 years, and putting others in for maintenance, seems to work fine. It'd be more efficient if we had more carriers in the fleet but we don't have the requirement or budget for that.
I agree the back and forth with ship design is annoying. The first America class LHD doesn't have a well deck but then they decided that was stupid and the rest will. In any case with 36 amphibious ships the USN really only has to buy 1 a year. Which would be another argument against going to 24 and only having to buy on average one every other year.
As an aside the new LHD has gotten big enough that studies suggest it would save money long term if she were nuclear powered.
Lane, do we actually split the MEU along those lines in practice? Or do we put one Company from the BTL is on each ship, and the air group and support battalion largely reside on the LHA/D?
ReplyDeleteIf not, and the BLT is totally on the LPD, do you really want your entire BLT sidelined if the LPD has mechanical issues? What if it strikes a mine? This type of thing favors having MORE redundancy in the ARG, not less.
I agree that splitting it across multiple ships will make command and control more difficult. I haven't looked at possible load plans in detail. But we used to do it in the past, so I have a feeling we could figure something out.
On a five LHD(L) ARG, put one BLT Company on each of three ships, along with a rotary wing slice of the aviation group. On the other two LHD(L)s split the support battalion, fixed wing aviation and remainder of supplies.
This way, three LHD(L)s participate in initial landings while two hang back and provide fixed-wing air support and command and control.