That's right, keep that sense of humor admiral:
"[SOUTHCOM Commander Adm. Craig] Faller said he has sought an ESB for his area of responsibility, arguing SOUTHCOM is a good region to test out operational concepts.
“I strongly support one here in this theater. I made that pitch during the combatant command review. Then-[Defense Secretary Mark] Esper agreed with me, asked the services to look at prioritization. We’re still working through that. But there is future plans to have one in this region,” Faller said.
“And I know that our Marine Corps forces … will use that as an expeditionary platform. This is a great theater to test concepts. We’re short distances from [Naval Base] San Diego and [Naval Station] Mayport and big training ranges and capable partners. Peru has an amphibious shipbuilding capability and they welcome that type of training, for one example.”
While SOUTHCOM hopes to get an ESB, 7th Fleet is likely to get the future USS Miguel Keith (ESB-5), the next ship in the class the Navy will commission. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm. Phil Davidson said last week he could use the ESB in regional exercises and that the vessel would help the joint force in its current transitional phase.
In the Pentagon world of allocating resources to regional unified commands, AFRICOM is below INDOPACOM and EUCOM. Well below them. So much so that its unofficial motto is "Thank God for SOUTHCOM!"
If Faller wants a power projection platform like the ESB, he should, as I advised a predecessor, try to scrape up the money to build his own:
Sure, perhaps he could leverage a loan of ships transiting to other commands for brief visits as our 6th Fleet gets in the Mediterranean Sea with ships transiting the area between our east coast and CENTCOM. But that won't be any kind of persistent presence for engaging with regional partners.
I suggest using leased container ships equipped with shipping container-housed systems to turn the ships into auxiliary cruisers, which are civilian ships equipped to supplement fleets (usually during wartime) and which have a long tradition in naval warfare.
I thought that Africa Command--AFRICOM--could exploit this opportunity given their low priority for naval assets, and focused on them in the article "The AFRICOM Queen" [link fixed] that Military Review published earlier this year, which was a play on the Humphrey Bogart movie The African Queen.
But SOUTHCOM is even lower on the priority list than AFRICOM. Indeed, in the article I quoted a prior commander of SOUTHCOM who said that his naval needs were basic. Said Marine General Kelly, “So as I said, I don’t need a warship. I need a ship, something that floats, with a helicopter.”
The SOUTHCOM Queen would fill the capability gap that Faller sees and that predecessors wanted filled. One day a SOUTHCOM commander will take my advice.
