Amphibious landings were hard enough before the age of long-range precision weapons. But is this the future?
The concept is to configure a dispersed, yet “networked” fleet of next-generation connectors and other smaller boats launched from big-deck amphib “mother ships.” The larger host ships are intended to operate in a command and control capacity while bringing sensors, long-range fires and 5th-generation air support to the fight.
“We envision fleets of smaller, multi-mission vessels, operating with surface warfare leadership. People talk about a 355-ship Navy, how about a 35,000-ship Navy?,” Maj. Gen. David Coffman, Director of Naval Expeditionary Warfare, told an audience at the Surface Naval Association Symposium.
I'm on board the idea of dispersal, and I advocated armed amphibious vessels to hold company-sized elements to replicate the APDs of World War II (here in the August 2017 Proceedings, but membership is required for online access) which took old destroyers converted them into armed transports. I figured we could test the concept with old Perry class frigates (although those seem to be getting sold) before designing them from the keel up.
And I saw the aviation-centered big-deck amphibs as hubs--kept back to avoid enemy surveillance-strike assets to command and support numerous smaller operations with air power and ground reinforcements carried on the big ship (or staged through the ship).
But I don't know how you disaggregate down to 35,000 separate sea-going elements. Let's call that hyperbole, eh?
Yet landing at undefended places and having the ability to quickly mass and land at such a location for a bigger landing is key to preserving an amphibious capability against an enemy with a working surveillance net and precision weapons. The combination of those assets is deadly.
And the effort to launch a more traditional invasion from over the horizon has foundered on the practical problems of long-range landing craft and long-range amphibious vehicles--plus the increasing ability of enemies to strike targets over the horizon. (Although we have the V-22, which works.) So we have extreme disaggregation suggested.
Of course, I've long had worries about defining Marine expeditionary capabilities as purely an amphibious mission defined by forcible entry, which was really an answer to the problems foreseen in the Pacific prior to World War II. As part of this old Joint Force Quarterly article (starting on page 38), I wanted the Marines to embrace urban warfare as a problem similar to hitting a defended beach, but without the water.
Disaggregated operations can salvage some of the amphibious mission, but I don't think it can overcome enemy assets to preserve large-scale amphibious operations without first degrading enemy opposition. Let's not get carried away with spreading out our assets to overcome the enemy assets that are causing us to search for counter-measures.
Maybe we need to define what expeditionary means apart from the amphibious mission that was adopted for a specific strategic problem in a particular time.
