By Ann Roosevelt
The new Army Operating Concept (AOC) considers soldiers might need to rely on sea basing in the future as part of conducting opposed or unopposed entry operations.
“Future Army forces require capabilities to enable sea basing or other alternatives for theater access,” the Operating Concept said.
Sea basing is described as the “rapid deployment, assembly, command, projection, reconstitution, and re-employment of joint combat power from the sea, while providing continuous support, sustainment, and force protection to select expeditionary joint forces without reliance on land bases within a joint operations area,” according to the Sea basing Joint Integrating Concept.
“We all like the sea basing idea,” said Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, director of the Army Capability Integration Center (ARCIC), part of the Training and Doctrine Command.
“On a PowerPoint chart, there are a lot of benefits to being able to put your force on a sea platform and basically be able to get in almost anywhere very rapidly if you can get off that platform directly into conflict, directly into harm’s way, directly into taking care of a civilian emergency somewhere,” he said. “We’ve seen that with Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) and Marine capable forces.”
Vane said, “The Operating Concept is setting up the conditions to do the war gaming, do the experimentation, to convince ourselves of what the cost benefit is of sea basing.”
The AOC considers sea basing for supporting arriving Army units by sea, and that joint forcible entry operations would provide sea-based assets for command, control, fires, protection, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and logistics.
Also, sea basing would provide a secure support area and be able to aid inland forces while reducing the need for improved airfields and ports.
Joint sea basing could reduce the requirement for large ground-based sustainment stocks and extended lines of communication–particularly when forces enter areas under austere conditions or when they are opposed by other forces or anti-access technologies.
Army forces could also use a sea base to move to another operation, or take an unexpected operation.
Sea basing is a concept that has been around for a while, though critics have decried the lack of warehouse-type ships, the technology to swiftly find and gather what is needed, and connectors to bring the supplies to shore.
However, the Navy is moving toward sea basing, awarding a $115 million contract modification to General Dynamics [GD] NASSCO in August for long-lead time materials and advanced design efforts for the first ship of the Mobile Landing Platform program–the key connector for sea basing (Defense Daily, May 6).
The sea service recently restructured its maritime pre-positioning plans, canceling new ships and working to improve the abilities of existing Maritime Pre-positioning Ships.
The MLPs are to be a way to move people and supplies from something like the Large, Medium-Speed Roll-on/Roll-off ships, then to land via the current Landing Craft Air-Cushion vessels and Joint High Speed Vessels.
Vane said the Army is considering if its forces could be sustained from such a platform. If so, then “you would reduce your need for fixed infrastructure, perhaps, around the world, you wouldn’t have to wait to build up infrastructure around the world that you could operate from the sea and get the kind of through-put necessary to support land operations.”
However, the service is not jumping in just yet. “There’s still a fair amount of experimentation and both questions to be asked and questions to be answered,” Vane said.