The Strategic Influence of Amphibious Assault Ships
David Axe discusses the strategic influence of amphibious assault ships like the Fort McHenry (LSD 43):
While carrier strike groups won’t be going away any time soon, the increasing use of amphibious assault ships for SysAdmin missions raises awareness of their strategic influence. These platforms serve as hubs for the interagency and government-NGO-foreign nation partnerships that characterize these missions:For decades, the U.S. Navy built its forces and operations around large nuclear aircraft carriers equipped to wage major conventional wars, especially against the Soviet Union. When the Cold War ended, the 100,000-ton, $5-billion-per-ship carriers remained — but without a serious enemy to fight. Meanwhile the traditional concentration of naval forces around carriers left vast swaths of sea vulnerable to pirates, smugglers and insurgents. The Africa Partnership Station breaks the carrier’s death-grip, pushing small groups of vessels into troubled regions where they can help local navies secure their own waters.
Has anyone seen any after-action reports or lessons-learned studies examining how these missions navigated the interagency, government-NGO and international coordination challenges? I’d expect to see a great deal of innovation coming out of these operations, with important consequences for the larger movement to improve our SSTR capability.International teamwork was evident throughout Nowell’s command. His chief of staff was French navy Cmdr. Bertrand Daniel. African officers, including Ghanaian navy Cmdr. Samuel Walker, served as permanent liaisons. At port stops, Fort McHenry hosted local security forces for training events — 1,500 in all — and debarked sailors, Marines and aid workers from U.S. AID and Catholic Relief Services, among other groups, to do training and humanitarian work ashore. Off the coast of Senegal, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with their base on Fort McHenry, deployed buoys to study climate change.
Previous OSD posts on this theme:
Not, Decidedly a 20th Century Arms Race
USS Peleliu Humanitarian Mission
