The USS Fort McHenry amphibious ship just returned from six months off the West African coast. More on that later, but first this: the deployment gave the Navy one of its first chances to try out the new “seabasing” concept, which links up large cargo ships to bare-bones ports by way of “connectors,” including floating barges (aka “lighterage,” pictured) and high-speed catamarans. It’s a tricky maneuver, but pull it off and there’s not limit to where you can go. Just ask deployment commander Captain John Nowell:
We ran a group of concept demonstrations to put together a seabase and used it to offload seven vehicles that would be used by a Marine convoy. We brought those via lighterage [from cargo ships] to Fort McHenry, finished assembly, married them with humanitarian assistance supplies (that we had on aboard from Africom) and the Marines, then took them back out to the seabase [lighterage], onloaded to [the catamaran] Swift, which served as a high-speed connector, to take them into the harbor and offload them. Then the Marines convoyed the medical supplies to four different sites in Monrovia. … It was absolutely successful.
“Seabasing will ultimately be the most important strategic concept in peacetime in the future, and will define forward sustained presence in the 21st century the way carrier battle groups defined the naval era following World War II,” Galrahn writes.
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This really isn’t a new concept. It sounds a lot like the Mulberry harbors that Allied forces used right after the D Day invasion.
calipygian,
It isn’t a new capability, but it is very much a new concept. You said D Day invasion, we are talking about sustainment at sea during periods absent war.
The difference between those two is very much conceptual.
[...] Preventing — or, more accurately, deterring — war has long been a major Navy mission, but the means of prevention has traditionally been overwhelming display of potential force. The Africa Partnership Station concept reverses that tradition by emphasizing assistance over threats. But doing so means resisting the powerful magnetism of the Navy’s — and the world’s — most powerful warships. [...]
[...] cargo vessels will carry on their decks pieces of heavy-duty “lighterage” — basically, motorized causeways — that they can crane into the water to function as a bridge between the large ship and [...]
[...] cargo vessels will carry on their decks pieces of heavy-duty “lighterage” — basically, motorized causeways — that they can crane into the water to function as a bridge between the large ship and [...]