By Stelios Kanavakis - Senior Defence Analyst
The US Navy is planning to transform every surface unit into a “floating
armoury”, which will be capable of firing weapons under the distributed
lethality concept. In an A2AD environment, especially in the Asia-Pacific
theatre or areas such as the Persian Gulf or the Black Sea, surface
units will have to use most of their weapons defending them, leaving
fewer payloads for offensive operations. |
The
House Armed Services Committee considered these issues in the H.R. 4909
– FY17 National Defence Authorization Bill and ordered the Navy
to take the next steps in addressing them.
US Navy’s attack submarines are the type of units that can use
their full package of weapons against enemy forces. According to the
committee, although the Virginia Payload Module (VPM) of the Virginia
Block V submarines is a capability that will be retained, the retirement
of some of the VPM units in the future will leave a serious gap.
The House Armed Services Committee also considered that a factor restricting
the availability of a large package of weapons for offensive operations
is the difficulty of the surface units to reload their launchers with
new missiles. Weapons replenishment is even harder in the Asia-Pacific
area of operations, where the distances to and from ports are very long.
For these reasons, the committee calls the Navy to review the alternatives
that would result in an increased striking capability. As such, the
committee wants the Service to conduct a research on the possibility
of integrating the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System on the Landing Platform
/ Docks or other striking options on amphibious units. That would be
in line with the Navy’s concept of distributed lethality.
The committee expects the Secretary of the Navy to brief its
members on the findings of the research, by 1 October 2016.
The innovative idea of distributed lethality has gained great support
from the Navy in a period of tight budgeting. The Service will have
the ability to increase its strike capabilities not by building new
ships but through equipping with more weapons its current platforms.
It will be a paradigm shift for the Service and the personnel given
the current situation, where every unit is designed to do a specific
job within the fleet and officers and crews are trained for respective
contingencies. |
