Defense Technology International - September 2007 - (Page 35) DAVID AXE/DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL PHOTOS T-AKE 3 Alan Shepard was handed over to Military Sealift Command in July. ing plan, which should keep Nassco busy through 2012. The T-AKEs are a rare bright spot in the Pentagon’s murky shipbuilding program. The ships have come in on budget, on time and without scandal. And the recent boosts to the Lewis and Clark order book reflect the continuing—even growing—importance of sealift to the American way of war. Meanwhile, Military Sealift Command is in the throes of a revolution in practices that is aligning the force with commercial shipping operations in order to become cheaper, speedier and more flexible. Airlift is inherently sexier than sealift, and purchases of Boeing C-17 and Lockheed Martin C-130J cargo planes as well as the contest for new aerial tankers have grabbed headlines for years. Meanwhile, Military Sealift Command’s roughly 220 government-owned ships (it also frequently charters civilian ships) have quietly shouldered the bulk of the logistics burden for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, keeping deployed aircraft carriers in gas, beans and bullets and hauling war supplies for all but the final few hundred miles of their long trips from the U.S. to the battlefield. At the peak of its effort to support the war in Iraq, Military Sealift Command had 167 ships plying the oceans with vehicles, ammunition, fuel, food and parts. Cargo ships might be slower than airplanes, requiring weeks for a round trip instead of days, but they’re much cheaper. In August, Pentagon officials told reporters that it cost $135,000 to fly one new 20ton blastproof truck from the U.S. to Iraq; transporting it by sea costs only $18,000. “Consider the fundamental laws of physics,” says Rear Adm. Robert Reilly, Military Sealift Command chief. “Ultimately, 95% of equipment to support the Defense Dept. goes by sea.” Even weapons systems capable of selfdeploying often hitch a ride on sealift ships. “Take, for example, moving aviation assets [like helicopters] to Iraq,” Reilly says. “You could ferry them or move them by sea. We looked at a number of cost options and figured out a scheme by which we could sealift a number of aviation assets to places like Rota [in Spain], then take them out, put fluids back in, and they were flown the last distance into theater, fully ready and avail- www.aviationweek.com/dti SEPTEMBER 2007 DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL 35 http://www.aviationweek.com/dti
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