"America's Got Useful Ships Just Lying Around" Topic

"U.S. Navy mulls putting aviation logistics ships to work

It's no secret that the U.S. Navy doesn't have enough amphibious ships. The Marine Corps, which rides the amphibs into battle, says it needs 38 of the ships — and could make do with 33, in a pinch. But Congress hasn't been willing to pay for the vessels, which can cost a billion dollars or more apiece.

So today the Navy has 29 amphibs and might manage to boost that number to 33 by 2018.

But never fear. It turns out that Military Sealift Command, the Navy's quasi-civilian specialist branch, has lots of useful ships lying around mostly idle that, with some imagination, can partially fill in for the pricey amphibs…"
Full article here
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Amicalement
Armand

I read recently they're even thinking of putting US Marines on other nation's vessels, which makes little sense to me in many cases.

Talk about penny wise, and pound foolish.

Perhaps they could buy a few more American-built vessels (which would also help with the 20 million Americans out of work, but not counted in the "official" stats) if they stopped sending billions of dollars, for just one year, to countries/people that hate us.

Of course, I'd prefer trying that tactic for a century or three, just to see what impact it might have.

When was the last time the marines landed on a beach, that wasn't staged like Somalia. That would be Korea maybe, and that was only about a regimental size force in the actual invasion if I remember right, to grab Inchon and that was lightly defended. This sounds like another service trying to increase their budget again. What beach do we need to invade again?

Bondi?

The marines have a pretty good point, though. An amphibious group is usually 3 'phibs plus escorts. One flat-top for helos, one well deck for AAVs, and one well deck for LCACs or LCUs.

33 amphibious ships means 11 groups, and 11 groups means 3 groups deployed and ready to respond at any given time.

The Navy seems to have made a point over the past few decades of $**t canning anything that would be even remotely useful in the real world we live in, so long as said thing isn't a big shiny new Aircraft Carrier, or a gargantuan waste of money to return insufficient capabilities. Best of luck to the Marines to figure this out on their own. Better up those swim qual distances boys, looks like you are going to find out if you can in fact "Run to Iraq just like this".

*end nasty rant*

It's too big a vote loser to cut the USMC, but frankly it is redundant. Just an elite force of light infantry with organic support. An expensive luxury to any objective eye.

That said – tradition and attitude is impossible to rebuild so I would say keep the Corps, but cut the number of ships down to about half what they have now.

Large scale seaborne invasions are never going to happen again.

Never say never………

Large sea-borne invasions actually happened again in both the 1990 and 2004 as preludes to the Iraq ground offenses. The good news US and allies was that they were largely unopposed, but invasions they were with the vast majority of beans, bullets, and hardware delivered to theater by sea. Same happened in 1984 with the Falklands. I suspect that "never" is the wrong word unless the US decides to abandon sea-power as our primary means of conducting expeditionary warfare.

Amphibious operations are not just opposed beach landings. There are 3 amphibious squadrons with 3 MEUs forward deployed today.

They (along with the carrier battle g roups) have a significant impact on the Theater Security Plans. While it may surprise some on this wargaming forum, for some odd reason, the Geographic Combatant Commanders, 'requirements are for far more Marines deployed aboard amphibious warships. They are an excellent tool to show the flag, deter threats, train and support allies, and have a proven track record of being effective in crisis response. They also have a 'light footprint' ashore and are very flexible, compared to other assets.

You do not need an entire MEU to conduct some missions: theater security engagement with friendly nations and maritime security (i.e. piracy suppression). Employing 'full-strength' MEUs in these missions, prevents them from being available as theater reserve or other missions.

A Special Purpose MAGTF of a few hundred Marines, with the right task organization of tilt-rotor aircraft and vehicles is a smart economy of force measure that could free up the more capable MEUs.

The first conventional combat forces into Afghanistan (a small survey and liasion party from the 82 Airborne Division was actually on the deck before the 2 BLTs, but did not constitute a combat force) was Task Force 58. Which was two MEUs, reinforced with USN, Australian and "other" SOF elements.

In March 2003, 15th MEU conducted a amphious assault seizing key terrain that enabled the seizure of Um-Qasr in Iraq.

The use of the Military Sealift Command ships in this manner is a smart effort designed to stretch available resources by using "non-traditional" amphious platforms in permissive and semi permissive environments. Similar efforts are being done with "high speed vessels."