Comments on: Keeping Marines Off the Beach

By: Malina

Malina — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:07:55 +0000

Hey. Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
I am from Mauritius and , too, and now am writing in English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “Excessive sweating stop your sweating problem; today.“
Thank you very much :o. Malina.

By: leesea

leesea — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:45:44 +0000

I read that the Marines expect the EFV to spend only 20% of its time at sea. To my way of thinking, the EFV is far too costly already and too much of that cost is for waterborne operations. The Marine have or will have good AFVs (MRAP lite or similar) which should be lifted from ship to shore in high speed lighterage, discharged to proceed as a land warfare vehicle. The speed of modern lighters should more than compensate for the supposed stealthiness of the EFV. I am not talking about LCACs or the follow-on hovercraft here. The French Navy is already testing at revolutionay hispd cat the L-Cat and there are much more capable hovercraft which could be used.

By: Byron Skinner

Byron Skinner — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:51:13 +0000

Good Morning ohwilleke,
You rise some good points and I would like to address a couple of the. The EFV is not an AFV. A Navy survey of amphibious landing at Iwo Jima and Okinawa in WWII showed that most of the amphibious landing craft never made it off the beach. Those that did made it only a few hundred yards before being taken out. The Marines attempted in 2006 in the Anbur to use the AAAV7 with deadly results, dead Marines. None of these aluminum skinned vehicles are a match for PRG’s and that includes the Stryker, which has been a $3.5 billion loser for the Army. At $10 million a pop the EFV is just to expensive for the limited roll it would play in ay future amphibious assault.
The LCS. I have to disagree with you on the price. If past experience is a guide the $400 million is a base price. I of the impression that the size of this vessel is way to large for the “Green Water” mission the Navy has planned. Ships more the size of WWII Destroyers at 1,500–1,800 gt. and Escort Size Destroyers of less the 1,500 gt. performed the inside fight very well. This should be the gross tonnage that the Navy should be looking for.
What ever the decissions made the LCS is still way into the future. Even if a ship can be settled on and a price arrive at and production started it would be at least 2015 before the first LCS’s would be pt into the fleet. Like the CV-22 and the F-22 the LCS development program has taken to long. If I recall the Sea Shadow has been around for nearly 20 years now. We are at war now and need these systems 8 years ago, not 8 years for now.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner

By: ohwilleke

ohwilleke — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:31:26 +0000

The $10 million a unit number is probably a realistic planning number for the EFV. It is high compared to a roughly comparable non-amphibious Stryker (a hair under $1 million each with inflation) plus the cost of a fleet of landing craft. But, you get increased functionality.
But, the $400 million per unit for the LCS is not only a first in class, but a first in ship concept price, which led to a lot of meddling in the procurement process. This is unlikely to be matched in subsequent units of the winner of the contest between the two currently contending models, particularly in light of the fact that LCS quantitites are contemplated to be in the several dozens. I suspect that something closer to $100 million to $200 million per unit is a likely mass production scale cost.
One good place to cut is the MV-22, which is a need, but is turning out to be a narrower niche than anticipated mostly because of its small payload. There are definitely MV-22 missions that aren’t equally well served by a helicopter or a C-27 (both of which have far lower acquisition costs per unit), but not enough to justify more than one or two of them per amphibious group.

By: cain97

cain97 — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:26:11 +0000

Lots of great ideas regarding combating pirates, etc. Still, it seems like the overall opinion is that the EFV needs to be scrapped. Performing well deck training and operations, I could see no way that we would actually conduct operations where the EFV would really come in use. The A dozen lightly armored traks from the back of a sitting duck (LSD/LPD) at $10 mil a piece seems like a waste of money. CIWS/RAM, etc are spray and pray, no matter how many you stick onboard.
This is one area where the Marines really need to rethink a core mission area. They are so flexible in other areas, this one really needs to be pushed. Sunk cost bias is one of the great failings with our current “peace-time” procurement system.

By: byron Skinner

byron Skinner — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:31:13 +0000

Good Afternoon Charles,
You idea of using FFG’s (Perry Class) frigates as tenders has been done before by the Navy in the 90’s when the Hurricane Class Spec. Ops. boats were attached for support and refueling to FFG’s for deployments across the Pacific. It kinda worked and kinda didn’t. One of the issues was that the Hurricanes didn’t have any laundry facilities and they had to use the FFG’s which over loaded the system.
There are two problems with using the Perry’s as LCS at 4,200 gross tons. they are about 50% to big and they are being decommissioned because of age and lots of use. The Perry’s that are left are much in demand for drug operations on the west coast of South America and in the Gulf of Mexico. Now that the Gulf od Mexico is changing operational control from SOUTHCOM to NORTHCOM I would guess the demands on the FFG’s will increase.
The tender concept worked well for the U.S. Navy during the Second World War in the Pacific where they served as mobile basing, refueling, rearming and resupply points for submarines, PT Boats and Seaplanes. As the war moved so could these vital facilities. The Pirates are mobile and in order to contain them we also have to be mobile. The problems faced in the South Pacific are not unlike what we are seeing today in the Gulf of Aden and off the East Coast of Africa.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner

By: Charles

Charles — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 09:50:28 +0000

Bring back those little Patrol, Coastal boats, and as someone said before assign them to tenders and such.
Always wondered why we couldn’t turn the FFGs into some sort of interim LCS…but that’s another thing for another time.
As for EFV it’s always nice to testbed techs; but if government knew nothing would come of it why put out?

By: Byron Skinner

Byron Skinner — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 03:54:29 +0000

Good Evening ohwilleke,
You have some workable ideas but I see a few problems. First off like all insurgents how do you separate the pirates from the fisherman. The only way that I can see is to board the suspected vessels and look, see. Traditional but effective in sorting the bad guys from the good guys. This would be difficult after an AH64 Apache attack. There would be little but floating fiberglass and blood on the water. Also the intelligence guys wouldn’t be all that happy either.
Secondly, we don’t have any LCS’s and at $400 million a copy I think we would run into the same problem we have with the Burkes, to expensive to risk, the pirates are a problem now. They are taking an average of four prizes a week in the Gulf of Aden and more yet off the East Coast of Africa now and it appears that their infrastructure for information and mission planning ability is getting better. If al Qaeda are not yet currently involved with this operation, and there is every indicator, that they are they soon will be. Pirates are better investment with a higher return then the stock market or oil futures.
Thirdly is cost, we already have the Tarawa’s and are retiring them with about 1/3 of there service life unused. What the Tarawa’s bring to the table is a tender, WWII concept, that can plant itself in open water and operate, no friendly port is required. The Tarawa’s come already equipped with a wet well that could hold and transport six open ocean patrol boats, barracks facilities for 400 Marines, Soldiers or Spec. Ops., a large brig, a 74 bed hospital with two operating theaters, flag facilities (you know this would require both a general and an Admiral), a robust air defense ( downstairs would be covered by SSN’s), and of course upstairs there is a flight deck with operating UH-1’s, AH1’s, SH-60 and CV-22’s and AV-8’s VTL’s everyday operations, If AH64’s, CH-47 or H-60 for a land operation were wanted, fly ‘em on board. Everything needed is right there.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Open ocean fast patrol boats are currently being made by Northrop Grumman for other countries, they are an off the shelf item. The weapons package that I proposed again is off the shelf and would in effect make these patrol boats sea going AC-130’s.

By: Ed

Ed — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 02:14:17 +0000

The Soviets looked into building submarines designed as landing ships a number of times. Project 621 and 748 were the most ambitious and would have carried a few hundred troops as well as two dozen vehicles (tanks, APCs, trucks, etc).
With the NY Times calling for a cancellation of the Virginia-class, those shipyards would have a lot of idle capacity.

By: pedestrian

pedestrian — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:12:42 +0000

Here is another question. If the old Amtrack vehicles are to remain in service while EFVs are eliminated from the budget, how is that going to survive in the environment like Iraq? Of course there are MRAP-ATV to be in service, but will those be enough in quantities? What about brown water afairs like Vietnam War where there are lack of bridges forcing vehicles to cross or engage a cross river battle? I think EFV has other roles. One last question. If the Amtrack vehicles are no longer useful, what is the point of keeping those now? Why not trash them away now to save maintenance fees and just give M-2/M-3 to the Marines?