By Geoff Fein
Later this summer, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) is planning on conducting a demonstration of a cargo transfer operation between multiple vessels, using a government designed scale model of the T-Craft (Transformable-Craft), a proposed sea base to shore connector.
“We really need to characterize the relative motion and forces between multiple vessels and the sea base, and this is an opportunity for the government to do that,” Kelly Cooper, ONR program officer ship systems and engineering division, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
Earlier this year, ONR selected Alion Science and Technology; Textron Marine & Land [TXT]; and Norwegian-based Umoe Mandal to continue with technology development, scale model tests and modeling and simulation to refine their designs, Cooper added.
“We have different performance assessments done by each of the teams which are not in agreement, so the government has taken on a piece of this to understand our ability to simulate and evaluate various two body motion performances in an open ocean environment,” Cooper said.
The idea is to develop a sea base to shore connector capable of carrying four to 10 Abrams M1A1 tanks.
But the game changing capability T-Craft brings is that it will be self-deploying, Cooper said.
“Which means it will come from a long distance away, into the sea base, and will not need to be carried in by a well deck,” she said. “The Navy wants to go away from some well deck ships.”
The Mobile Landing Platform (MLP), a key component of the Navy’s sea basing concept, is an opportunity to bring in LCACs and other vessels capable of going to the shore on something other than a well deck, Cooper explained.
Another capability that T-Craft brings to the table is that it can make its way from the sea base to the shore at a far greater distance than the Navy currently has the capability to do, Cooper said.
The current capability with a LCAC is 25 miles offshore. A LCAC can travek 50 knots, but not in a overloaded condition and not above a sea state 3, she noted.
“We are looking at far more carrying capacity at five times the stand off distance of a LCAC capability,” Cooper said. “And being able to go feet dry on the beach to deliver cargo on the shore, not requiring any port improvement, without any requirement for shallow draft, and without a particular draft requirement.”
T-Craft could also operate in an improved port and could operate without draft limitations, she added.
T-Craft is not meant to compete with the Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV), Cooper pointed out.
JHSV will be used for fast intra-theater transportation of troops, military vehicles and equipment (Defense Daily, Feb. 1).
T-Craft is meant to provide an end-to end capability in one vessel that the Navy currently doesn’t have, Cooper said. And T-Craft will do the work that it would take multiple vessels to do.
The Program Executive Office (PEO) Ships is involved every step of the way, Cooper said. And ONR and PEO Ships are working to establish a deputy program manager position to help transition any of the technologies the three companies competing for T-Craft are working on, into whatever programs of record PEO Ships has, she added.
“There’s some material technologies, propulsion technologies, skirt technologies, and other things that we are working on that they are very interested in,” Cooper said. “We are working a partnership with PEO Ships so that they can carve off anything they want to.”
ONR has also stipulated that the T-Craft effort will only move forward into Phase 3 in collaboration and concurrence with PEO Ships, Cooper noted.
The current contract, or task order, is for 24 months.
Because the original contract awards to the three companies (and Navatek, Ltd.) were indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ)-type contracts, ONR can, in the end, ask one company to build a full prototype demonstrator and the other companies to deliver some small component that might support one of the other acquisition programs, Cooper said. “Because we structured it this way we have a great deal of flexibility in the end, once we have gone through the technology development phase of Phase 2.”
A big deliverable out of Phase 2 will be a construction plan and cost estimates for Phase 3. And Phase 3 is the production design, construction, testing and demonstration, she added.
ONR will have a competition for phase 3, Cooper said.
“Our plan all along has been to downselect to one large scale prototype demonstrator, and that would consume the budget available,” she said. “But we do have the flexibility, and in concurrence with the Navy and PEO ships, they might opt to ask one or more of the companies to continue their work under the IDIQ. I could envision some specific work going on, maybe not the demonstrator, by more than one company.”
Cooper added that the requirement for T-Craft to be amphibious has driven the three remaining companies to a solution of a vessel that transitions to an air cushion vessel. “They each have unique propulsion systems. They have three material solutions–looking at an all composite ship, all aluminum ship and an all titanium ship.”
“We have a very complex mechanical drive system. That complexity lends itself to investigation of the feasibility of electric drive options for a ship this size…nominally 80 meters,” she explained. “Typically for a standard steel mono hull, electric drive at that size…that technology is not mature enough.”
Weight reduction, size allocations, and other efforts enable ONR to consider electric drive for a standard steel monohull that size, Cooper said.
“But because of the mechanical complexity of the T-Craft, the requirements of the T-Craft, it affords us the opportunity to look very seriously at electric drive options or hybrid electric drive options. So we see this as a real future,” she added. “The Navy is seriously looking at an all-electric ship. There is an electric ship program office. There are three different architectures they are considering in the future, some near-term, some far-term, and we are investigating all of those for T-Craft as well.”