"The US Navy Has A New Small Ship Strategy" Topic

"We're getting the first glimpses of the Navy's new force structure plan, as officials begin dropping clues about the Pentagon's months-long effort to war game new plans for modernizing the Navy and Marine Corps.

Previous comments from the reform-minded Marine Commandant have suggested that those plans will include moving Marines from large, big-deck amphibious ships to smaller, faster and harder to track ships that can move Marines around contested areas in the western Pacific or the crowded Baltic Sea quickly.

And it's become clear that one way to do that is to buy dozens of what's being dubbed the light amphibious warship, or LAW…"

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From pictures I've seen, it's basically an LST.

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The emerging motto is, "if it floats, it fights,

I'm pretty sure this is also the motto of the Iranian Navy…

No doubt they're going to include these unarmed commercial grade tubs as combat ships in the 355 ship navy goals just like in the past they counted the two Comfort class hospital ships in the previous tallies, until they were removed.

Also note the following more problematic quote regarding development of new large surface combatant:

It's not clear what the ship will look like, as the Navy has pushed back the start of the effort to 2026.

So Ticos are going to have to serve a lot longer even though the Navy wanted to start retiring them due to growing age related maintenance issue and need for modernisation.

So you think you're smarter than the planners who came up with DMO (of which the LAW is a key component)?

To improve their ability to perform various missions in coming years, including a potential mission of countering Chinese forces in a possible conflict in the Western Pacific, the Navy and Marine Corps want to implement a new operational concept called Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO). DMO calls for U.S. naval forces (meaning the Navy and Marine Corps) to operate at sea in a less concentrated, more distributed manner, so as to complicate an adversary's task of detecting, identifying, tracking, and targeting U.S. naval forces, while still being able to bring lethal force to bear against adversary forces.

So you think you're smarter than the planners who came up with DMO (of which the LAW is a key component)?

These guys also came up with Littoral Combat Ship, the Zumwalt "destroyer" and the Gerald Ford CVN.

All are unmitigated disasters that are costing untold billions yet actually decreased USN combat capability and put back warship development and production by decades!

And they are most definitely a return to the WWII LST – similar dimensions and performance except these can't carry tanks (and the Marines are getting rid of them anyhow)!

But then the new DMO and Marine Corps model seems to be based on Japanese strategies for invading islands in 1941.

Land small next to useless groups of men on undefended little atolls, give them some light anti ship missiles (2020 equivalent of small coastal artillery) in the hope the enemy stays away.

And if the enemy does come, then affix bayonets and prepare to sell your lives dearly cause a handful of missiles won't stop the enemy.

If they're aiming for islands close to China then the Chinese already totally screw up US maths here with their 80+ Type 22 missile boats, 44 Type 056 corvettes (and building more with a plan of 71 ships), 34 coastal gunboats and a plethora of coast guard type patrol ships which would be used to deter coastal infiltrators as well as increasingly numbers of MPAs, drones etc.

That's not including the major surface combatants, which China is churning out much quicker than the US.

Of course I doubt the Chinese will be looking at landing troops on Guam or Tarawa or Guadalcanal.

Oh and all totally useless for operations against the Russians who the Navy seem to have forgotten about.

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I note the transit speed of these has been quoted as a measly 14 knots which is average speed for a bulk carrier. So they're slow.

I guess those zippy Chinese fast attack craft will just have to look the other way, whilst the Marines get into position.