Navy platforms, particularly ships and aircraft, are large capital investments frequently designed to last for 20 to 50 years. To ensure our Navy stays relevant, these platforms have to adapt to the changing fiscal, security, and technological conditions they will encounter over their long service lives. It is unaffordable, however, to adapt a platform by replacing either it or its integral systems each time a new mission or need arises. We will instead need to change the modular weapon, sensor, and unmanned vehicle “payloads” a platform carries or employs. In addition to being more affordable, this decoupling of payload development from platform development will take advantage of a set of emerging trends in precision weapons, stealth, ship and aircraft construction, economics, and warfare I will describe in this article.
Indeed, this is a sound idea. It also makes it easier to justify updating a ship with less than even 5 years left of service because the modular payloads can be lifted out of the ship when it is retired and easily installed on a newly built ship.
And if the modular payloads are built on standard shipping container sizes, we'd have the ability to quickly expand the Navy for emergencies by placing them on container ships to create modularized auxiliary cruisers:
The tyranny of distance makes it difficult for our Navy to operate affordable and capable warships. Our need to sail to any point on the globe will always push up their size and cost. Today, our capable warships are spread thin. Often, we must use a ship with more capability than needed because nothing else is available. The tyranny of numbers means we simply can't be everywhere.
It was once common to draft civilian ships by bolting guns to their decks. With Navy crews, they were useful for scouting or patrol work. They provided numbers that the active Navy could not provide. They could not fight first-class enemies, but they accomplished missions that otherwise necessitated a conventional warship. In a platform-centric Navy, creating traditional auxiliary cruisers with limited organic capabilities would be a wasted effort.
In a network-centric Navy, Modularized Auxiliary Cruisers would be a force multiplier, defeating the tyrannies of distance and numbers. Mission Packages tailored for specific missions mounted on leased civilian container ships and plugged into the Navy's network to create Modularized Auxiliary Cruisers would contribute significant capabilities at low cost. We should not need to rely only on allies to achieve a thousand-ship Navy. Are we at the point where we can resurrect this traditional method for generating numbers of hulls quickly?
Right now, the modular payload concept is limited to the Littoral Combat Ship classes. But those modules are pretty much limited to those classes of ships. Let's standardize payload modules on shipping containers and explore building hulls for corvettes, frigates, destroyers, and cruisers that use these payload modules.
