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The Australian INCAT 046 CAT at rest (left) and underway (right). |
Engineers from the Military Traffic Management Command Transportation Engineering Agency (MTMCTEA), located at Newport News, Virginia, recently participated in an evaluation of the feasibility of using commercial high-speed sealift (HSS) during future deployments. The evaluation was conducted by the Center for the Commercial Deployment of Transportation Technologies (CCDoTT) in cooperation with the U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM), the Maritime Administration (MARAD), the Navy's Military Sealift Command, the Army's Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans, the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Carderock Division, and the Logistics Management Institute (LMI). CCDoTT, acting under the direction of USTRANSCOM and MARAD, was responsible for planning, coordinating, and executing the fiscal year 1998 HSS evaluation. Here is a brief summary of MTMCTEA's participation and the future military potential of HSS.
Need for Improved Strategic Deployment
The Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) is conducting broad studies, projecting to the year 2025, to frame issues vital to the Army's development after 2010. These studies and accompanying wargames show that the Army's present firepower-centered approach may introduce unnecessary future risks, since a future enemy will have time to harden his infrastructure against our firepower, learn to lessen the effects of our firepower by deception, and husband its military strength in preparation for our expected military assault.
A recent example of this was Iraq's dispersal and hoarding of Scud missiles during Operation Desert Storm. Pre-Desert Storm estimates indicated that Iraq possessed only 18 launchers. However, those estimates later were increased to 225. Even though Iraq's Scuds were more of a political than a military threat, a significant percentage of sorties by U.S. F-15E fighters was diverted from strikes on Iraqi infrastructure to "Scud chasing."
As we tighten our purse strings and shrink our military force, battlefield economics will not allow the Army After Next (AAN) to be diverted in such ways. Future conflicts will place greater emphasis on rapid deployment, reduced logistics requirements, precise and directed lethality, joint battlefield integration, and rapid information distribution. HSS is a futuristic concept that may provide one means of attaining such goals, but several things must fall into place in order to realize its potential.
The military must partner with commercial industry to leverage state-of-the-art technology such as HSS for military use to meet the aggressive demands of the AAN. To achieve rapid strategic deployment, the Department of Defense continues to investigate several commercial HSS vessels for possible future military deployment. For example, on 20 July 1998, the Danish high-speed ferry Cat-Link V set a speed record for crossing the Atlantic Ocean of 2 days, 20 hours, and 9 minutes at an average speed of 40 knots—the first Atlantic crossing in under 3 days. The HSS technology demonstrated by this vessel is gaining visibility and popularity in the United States; it represents an expanding market of the future. The objective of MTMCTEA and our partners is to determine whether existing and emerging HSS technologies have a viable military application that can solve future strategic mobility and logistics problems.
A Candidate From Australia
Just what is it that makes HSS so special? The vessel used in the fiscal year 1998 evaluation, the INCAT 046 CAT, was designed and built by INCAT, Inc., of Australia. It is a combined passenger and vehicle high-speed ferry originally designed for commercial freight and passenger service across the Bass Strait between Australia and Tasmania, the longest nonstop, open-sea, fast ferry route in the world (227 miles). With a surface-piercing catamaran hull 91 meters long and a beam of 23 meters, the CAT is capable of cruising at 43 knots (50 miles per hour) with a rated load of 900 passengers and 240 privately owned vehicles.
The ship's transom-mounted waterjet propulsors are driven by four 9,500-horsepower diesel engines. By using vectored thrust from her propulsors, the CAT is capable of precise maneuvering and docking without using tugboats. In addition, it has demonstrated the ability to perform a "crashback" (that is, coming to a dead stop) from 46 knots in just a third of a mile. This is amazing for a vessel of this size, especially when compared to a modern aircraft carrier that requires approximately 2 miles to stop. With these credentials, the CAT was sure to warrant a closer look.
Testing HHS Technology
After completing a season of passenger runs in Australia, Bay Ferries of Canada, Inc., purchased the CAT for commercial service between Bar Harbor, Maine, and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. The CAT departed Hobart, Australia, on 26 April 1998 and arrived in Yarmouth on 20 May. This voyage provided an excellent chance to place instruments on the CAT to recover transportability data; these data would allow engineers to characterize the on-board environment that in-transit military equipment would be required to endure.
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The Australian INCAT 046 CAT at rest (left) and underway (right). |
All photos courtesy of Bay Ferries, Inc.
Before departing Hobart, a representative from NSWC Carderock installed wave-height instrumentation and engineering data recorders provided by MTMCTEA to measure acceleration levels at various cargo stowage locations on the vessel. The recovery of data from those instruments, as well as a military vehicle load evaluation, originally were scheduled for Fort Eustis, Virginia, on 18 May, but transit delays in Tahiti and the Panama Canal forced the cancellation of those activities. So the NSWC Carderock representative recovered the test instrumentation at Yarmouth for data reduction and evaluation. The data are being evaluated by Carderock and MTMCTEA in order to develop future HSS response models and vehicle restraint load factors to be used in designing future military systems and HSS applications.
The military vehicle loading was scheduled to validate the CAT's ability to load and transport military vehicles and to demonstrate its potential military applications to a military audience. Although the transit delay cancelled the loading, LMI and MTMCTEA felt strongly that there was valuable information to be gained from such a test. Therefore, LMI coordinated with the ship's owners and the Maine Army National Guard (MANG) to perform a vehicle load and transit exercise during a normal commercial operation. The MANG cooperated by providing seven military vehicles (four high-mobility, multipurpose, wheeled vehicle [HMMWV] ambulances, two HMMWV softtops, and a 5-ton truck), along with the appropriate soldier support. MTMCTEA sent three engineer-analysts to participate in the loading; they brought experience in transportability engineering, operational exercises, and shipload planning. As planned, the shiploading and transit between Bar Harbor and Yarmouth was performed on 9 June. The vehicles were successfully loaded and restrained during the transit, demonstrating the viability of loading light vehicles aboard this commercial ferry.
The purpose of this evaluation, the first of many planned, was to evaluate the potential of existing HSS technology for present and future military applications. Based on our personal observations and instrumentation analysis, we concluded that—
· The vessel can be used as a viable intratheater tactical marine transport.
· Stronger decks and larger tiedown provisions would be needed to secure larger military vehicles and equipment.
· A redesign in deck heights would be desirable as well. Available deck height on the majority of the vehicle decks is only 77 to 84 inches.
· ISO sockets and electrical outlets (for ISO containers) would be desirable. Currently, there are no ISO sockets on the ship.
· The vessel would require an integral loading ramp for use in unimproved ports or in-stream logistics-over-the-shore operations.
The CAT clearly demonstrated the future potential of HSS, and it could lead to bigger and better things if expanded.
Moving Beyond the CAT
By using composite materials, new drag-reducing hull forms, digital controls, and improved engines with increased fuel efficiency, it may be possible to build a high-speed strategic sealift vessel capable of transporting vehicles and materiel at speeds in excess of 60 knots up to sea state 7. If such a vessel included a troop-berthing area, the reduced transit time could be used for preparation, training, and vehicle maintenance. Complete force packages could be delivered directly to the theater, reducing reception, staging, onward movement, and integration requirements. This would dramatically reduce the time required to transport troops and equipment from "fort to foxhole."
The viability of designing and building a tactical HSS vessel today is a reality. By combining existing HSS technology with passive sensors, composite materials, and a reduced radar cross-section, a high-speed (45 knots plus) tactical marine transport can be built to deliver small force packages within a theater of operations (a maritime equivalent of the Air Force's C-130 transport). An example of such a scenario would be loading a small force package at Ad Dammam, Saudi Arabia, in the afternoon, departing after dusk, and arriving in the Strait of Hormuz by dawn, regardless of sea state. Both natural and man-made obstacles could be avoided by using passive means such as global positioning system navigation and downlinked data from the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, unmanned aerial vehicles, and space-based reconnaissance. In keeping with the AAN philosophy, all of these options should be considered seriously.
Clearly, the INCAT CAT evaluation is a good example of "thinking outside the box" to explore potential AAN applications. A joint working group representing potential military sealift users was able to partner with industry to evaluate emerging commercial technology for future military applications. In fact, MTMCTEA was able to forge several key relationships. For example, MTMCTEA and LMI worked together to establish the viability of loading military vehicles aboard the CAT; MTMCTEA and NSWC Carderock coordinated vessel test instrumentation and data collection to describe the dynamics of the transportation environment; and MTMCTEA, LMI, and the MANG jointly validated the capability to load and transport military vehicles aboard the CAT.
MTMCTEA continues to work with LMI, TRANSCOM, NSWC Carderock, MARAD, and other interested parties to establish transportability engineering criteria for emerging HSS vessel designs, as well as to provide HSS analysis results to future AAN analyses and simulations. As always, MTMCTEA's goal is to optimize force projection by turning today's visions into tomorrow's reality. ALOG
Owen Spivey is on the staff of the Military Traffic Management Command Transportation Engineering Agency in Newport News, Virginia.
He acknowledges John Newman of MTMCTEA, Matt Difiore of LMI, Martin Dipper of NSWC Carderock, and the Maine Army National Guard for their exceptional support in the successful completion of this evaluation and John T.H. Germanos for his guidance in writing this article.