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| Sea Control Ship. |
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| V/STOL Support Ship. |
The Navy is about to be down to 10 aircraft carriers.As the Enterprise (CVN-65) transits the Mediterranean Sea for the last time on its way home to Virginia for retirement and inactivation, the Navy is bracing for a new reality — starting Dec. 1, it will have only 10 aircraft carriers.
The key to maintaining an effective and responsive Navy is being able to both project power through regularly scheduled rotations and add surge forces when needed, Navy spokesman Lt. Cdr. John Fage told Inside the Navy on Oct. 16. But with just 10 ships in the fleet until the Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) delivers in 2015, Program Executive Officer for Aircraft Carriers Rear Adm. Thomas Moore told ITN in an August interview that surging becomes much more complicated and risks long-term damage to the fleet.
“The demand signal is not likely to go down any time soon, and so we’r working pretty hard within in the maintenance community, and [Vice] Adm [Kevin] McCoy and his whole team at [Naval Sea Systems Command] and the shipyards, are looking real hard at what we can do to make sure we hand these ships back over to the combatant commanders and the operators ready to go,” Moore said. “And so we’ve been very successful with that, but we’ve been very honest with them about what we can and can’t do. And to be honest with you, more of it at this point is, the combatant commanders say ‘I want X number of carriers’ and we say ‘I can give you Y.’”
Bad times in the land of the big blue machine, but a solution is already here...IF the Navy and Marines are bold enough to see where it leads.
Its time to man and deploy an LHD as a Sea Control Ship (more properly called a V/STOL Support Ship). Strip an LHD of its embarked Battalion Landing Team, add a Reinforced Harrier Squadron from the USMC and maybe add a rotary anti-sub helo detachment with a couple more multi-role MH-60s and get them to sea.
It would provide a smaller punch than a full sized carrier battle group BUT it could maintain big carrier rotations AND it would be good enough for MOST scenarios.
Besides, it can't hurt to try...the worst that could happen is that the Sea Control Concept would be confirmed as a success or failure.
NOTE: This concept dates back to the 70's...and yes every LHD/LHA has the sea control mission as part of its operating concepts, but it has never been realistically deployed as one. That's what I'm calling for especially since the Navy will be down to 10 carriers.