Saturday - January 19, 2002
Military Impotence with Maritime Prepositioning
With the recent speculation that the corrupt and
not so friendly Saudi Arabians are contemplating asking us to leave the military
bases in their territory, the United States military may be about to learn of
one of its most glaring weaknesses. Since the late 1980's our military stopped
pretending that they have the ability to force their way into where we are not
wanted and began a new way of thinking. That is, since some time after the
Korean War the US Navy and the US Army have had a dearth of amphibious shipping.
These ships cost a lot of money after all, and they don't have the same panache
as submarines and aircraft carriers. We need more of those as well, but when it
comes time to work on the budget, it's easy for Congress to dismiss amphibious
shipping, and it's easy for the Admirals to dismiss amphibious shipping to
protect their vital carriers and submarines and cruisers. It was mostly the
Marine Corps that kept shouting about the need for amphibious
shipping.
So I said that they stopped pretending. In the
late 1980's they completely gave up the pretense of having a forced entry
capability and started relying on Maritime Prepositioning in the Marine Corps.
The Army had a slightly similar program. A Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF)
was the idea that we can take all the tanks, trucks, artillery pieces, tools,
parts, food, fuel, etc. that a regimental landing team would ordinarily use and
buy an extra set and load it onto a squadron of civilian ships. Then if the US
ever needs to respond rapidly to an overseas conflict all we do is fly the
troops into a port facility and have their gear offloaded in that port at the
same time from squadrons of ships. I recall that we have about four of these
squadrons located around the
world.
There's nothing really wrong
with this plan, and I'm proud that I was one of the ones assigned in the early
days to create the aviation logistics plans for this deployment scenario. The
MPF concept worked very well in the Persian Gulf
War.
But notice the weakness yet? All
of this gear is kept on civilian, non-combatant ships. They must land in a port
that we already control, or is controlled by an ally. If we do not control the
landing point, we cannot use our only large force projection plan! We can't go
to war unless no one is shooting at
us.
The only way we can land Marines in
a hostile country is at the Battalion level. Notice how in Afghanistan we had no
troops in large numbers except for two battalion landing teams. That's not so
much because that's all we want there as it is likely because it is all we are
capable of sending.
Observe also that
we may become unwelcome guests in Saudi Arabia. If we also lose the support of
Kuwait and Bahrain, the nearest friendly port will be Diego Garcia in the Indian
Ocean and we will have no land based tactical aircraft anywhere near the middle
east, except in Turkey.
So what am I
getting at? If we need to kick doors down, we can't. Our military power is
weakened significantly by relying on others to help us. For decades the insane
arguments of the US Air Force have been that we don't need aircraft carriers,
and the Elder Bush administration using Dick Cheney's stewardship of the Defense
Department killed the navy's A-12 attack aircraft program and curtailed carrier
construction. Our air campaign over Afghanistan, primarily by the
press-relations-deficient Navy, was adequate for such a small foe, but in the
face of a capable, or even large enemy, we would have strained to get the
aircraft needed for the job.
What do I
recommend? First, as always, disband the US Air Force and return it to
operational and administrative control by the US Army. This will make the main
US air power more supportive of the ground forces. Next, build more carriers.
Lots of carriers. Next we need the ability to land forces in large numbers onto
hostile shores or hostile lands. We need the ability to land two or three Marine
Corps and Army divisions with all their equipment, backed by sufficient
sea-based air power, onto enemy soil and hold the landing area until re-inforced
by the very heavy forces of the army's heavy divisions. We may never need to use
this capability, but all the better. We cannot afford to be without this
capability. We cannot continue to rely on the graciousness of erstwhile allies
when the security of our nation is at stake.
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