Defense Technology International - September 2007 - (Page 36) TRANSPORT OCEANGOING “We have the capability of movable when they arrived. That’s ing cargo rapidly within the part of MSC’s distribution proship and vertically. There’s uncess ownership. Let’s find out precedented elevator and crane what the customers need, when capacity plus eight replenishthey need it and how much it ment stations to offload cargo. costs, then decide the best way Also, we have aviation facilities.” to get it to them.” The T-AKEs feature the biggest Sometimes a customer needs helicopter deck of any Milisomething a little more complitary Sealift Command vessel: a cated than the traditional pointquarter of an acre, enough for to-point delivery of material on H-53-class aircraft and MSC’s a weeks-long trip. In coming chartered Pumas. years Military Sealift Command Besides being bigger and might perform impromptu more capacious, the Lewis and evacuations and large-scale hu- Lewis and Clark-class ships have wide passages Clark class is more versatile than manitarian missions, and sup- for easy movement of cargo. older logistics ships thanks to its port forward seabases and the smaller “Global Fleet Stations,” all while Command is just beginning to improve its 12,800 cu. meters (451,968 cu. ft.) of prestaging area, where handlers can lay out and still undertaking its traditional mission of forecasting. Even Military Sealift Command’s govern- sort cargo before off-loading or re-stowing hauling equipment and supplies from U.S. ment-owned vessels are looking more and it. The Navy calls this “selective unloading,” ports to combat theaters. Just last year during the early days of the more like commercial cargo ships. Besides and it’s a critical capability for supporting Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon, the being manned mostly by civilian mariners, seabases and short-notice missions, Reilly command was ordered to evacuate foreign who are cheaper, generally more experienced explains, because the T-AKE might set sail civilians from that country on short notice. and accustomed to longer deployments than before it’s clear what cargo will go to combat No U.S. Navy or MSC vessels were available, Navy sailors, new ships like the Lewis and forces or other customers. Without selective Reilly says, so MSC turned to its charter con- Clark class are built almost entirely to com- unloading, the T-AKE is a single-use tool. tract office. “They responded by doing a rap- mercial standards. This is the key to keep- With it, a Lewis and Clark-class ship, at sea id survey of the market for vessels that meet ing down the cost of the class, according for up to 270 days, will be able to support U.S. Coast Guard safety standards. There to Nassco spokesman Karl Johnson. “It’s many different missions back to back. But there’s a catch. The commercial stanweren’t any U.S.-flag vessels, so we hired a built from the ground up with commercial small Lebanese-flag cruise ship and a Saudi ship technology and with international ship dards and practices that have made the TAKEs useful for seabasing and other emerging Red Sea passenger ferry, and a high-speed standards in mind.” That includes greater degrees of automa- missions also mean they might be too vulnerferry from Italy.” The three vessels ultimately evacuated 15,000 people and demonstrated tion than in most naval vessels. The Lewis and able. “These are large ships but they don’t posMilitary Sealift Command’s diversifying mis- Clark class has a fully automated engine room, sess a lot of combat systems or command and sions, and its increasing reliance on commer- and the bridge can in theory be manned by one control,” Reilly says. The class is fitted for, crewmember, driving the total crew comple- but not with, a single Phalanx radar-aimed cial practices to perform those missions. Commercial logistics providers such ment down to just 170. All the electronics are cannon. But seabases might be close to the as FedEx and DHL—and even weapons of a solid-state type derived from cruise-ship fighting. “That’s an issue of debate: What’s maker Lockheed Martin, which manages systems, according to Nassco manager Steve the threat?” Reilly asks. Seabasing is still conjectural, and Reilly tire supplies for the military—use sophisti- Eckberg. Perhaps as importantly, ergonomics rather stresses that experimentation is needed to cated numbers-crunching to model changes in demand for their services. These mod- than survivability drove the design. The T- figure out where his command—and the els allow them to forecast future demand, AKEs boast wider passageways and broader T-AKE—fits in the concept. Still, Reilly is which helps the providers scale their capac- spaces than previous logistics ships. “It’s all happy to have the vessels, for as his command ity to the minimum required, thus cutting about moving cargo,” says Art Diaz, Military diversifies its missions while improving core overhead costs. Reilly says Military Sealift Sealift Command representative at Nassco. skills, it needs a ship that’s as flexible. I HIGH-SPEED HOSPITAL Military Sealift Command operates many ships that are vital to niche functions, but are too few or too specialized for the regular fleet. These include hospital, survey, surveillance and high-speed transport ships, tenders, tugs and salvage vessels. The two Mercy-class hospital ships are among the most controversial. “They are capable platforms, but were designed and built in the 1980s to handle Cold War casualties,” says Rear Adm. Robert Reilly, head of Military Sealift Command. Still, the hospital ships were useful in tsunami relief, and one of them, the USNS 36 DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL SEPTEMBER 2007 Comfort, toured South America this past summer with Navy doctors and civilian aid workers. Reilly says the class could form the core of a “medical seabase,” but for the future he envisions a smaller, more modular approach to seagoing hospitals. “A mobile field hospital is already modularized. Maybe you could break it down and put it on a High-Speed Vessel.” The Navy, Army and Marine Corps have experimented with these modified ferries (DTI May, p. 33). The Navy plans to buy purpose-built HSVs for Military Sealift Command beginning in 2009. I www.aviationweek.com/dti http://www.aviationweek.com/dti
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