Well yes, afloat forward deployed equipment depots are designed for a safer threat environment:
Top Marine Corps leaders say that the current way the force keeps its wartime inventory positioned forward won’t work in a battle with China and needs major changes to remain relevant.
For nearly 40 years the Marine Corps has relied on the Maritime Prepositioning Force program to have a brigade’s worth of gear at the ready in key theaters. That program has been reconfigured over the years but essentially uses squadrons of densely packed commercial ships that hold everything from tanks to trucks to radios to spare parts.
But three generals who spoke at the annual National Defense Industrial Association Expeditionary Warfare Conference said the program at best needs changing and could need an entire overhaul.
Back in 2000 (but actually published in 2001) I proposed sailing such equipment ships with defended Navy-Marine task forces in a larger version of an amphibious ready group--Marine Expeditionary Battle Forces (see the article starting on page 38)--to put a full brigade on the ground quickly. I noted the survivability problem of forward shore-based prepositioned sets:
One answer is steaming prepositioning ships. Taking the concept one step further, sailing with an amphibious ready group (ARG) will protect prepositioning squadrons. As ARGs rotate to homeports, prepositioning ships could unload weapons and vehicles for maintenance before sailing again. Such squadrons travelling with ARGs will allow the Marines to reinforce landings rapidly. Two battalions plus brigade assets either in the United States or on Okinawa could be combined with LAV variants and heavy equipment to support an embarked expeditionary unit. One battalion and brigade assets could be on immediate deployment notice while a reserve battalion would have longer to prepare for movement.
I noted that the equipment ships would be protected by sailing with the ARG. But since JFQ stripped out some of my supporting figures that I relied on to keep my essay under the contest world limits, the clear call for adding a Navy surface action group (SAG) for that protection and fire support was lost.* In fairness the essay wasn't primarily about the MEBF, which was one element about integrating the Marine battle role with the Army war role. I mentioned this a year ago and grabbed the relevant figure from the now-dead zombie site of the old Geocities site of mine where I had included those figures:
SPS stands for "steaming prepositioning ships" (although on Geocities I mistakenly called them "sailing prepositioning ships," but that might be better actually!) which would hold the equipment and supplies that flown-in Marines from the U.S. or Okinawa could use in a seaborne REFORGER concept.
Which sounds like the novel idea that a retired lieutenant colonel suggested in that initial article:
He offered an idea where the ships could be attached to the Amphibious Readiness Groups, moving alongside them but at protected distances.
Huh. Good idea.
*That happened in another article, too, and I learned my lesson.
