Military Logistics International (May/June)

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Volume 6 Issue 3 May/June 2011

Guided weapon support Libyan campaign logistics

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CONTENTS Front cover: A USAF C-130J practices air dropping. Such techniques have enjoyed an operational resurgence in Afghanistan.

(Photo: USAF) Editor-in-Chief Francis Tusa. ft@shephard.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)20 7284 0331 North America Editor Scott R Gourley. srg@shephard.co.uk Tel: (707) 822 7204 Editorial Assistant Beth Stevenson. bcs@shephard.co.uk Contributors Claire Apthorp, Angus Batey, Henry Canaday, Peter Donaldson, Nicholas Fiorenza, Tim Ripley, Richard Scott

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EDITORIAL COMMENT What does it take to get change?

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NEWS • Senior USAF leadership acknowledges ECSS challenges • Cassidian parachute system awarded operational certification • Australia set to receive MRTT aircraft • JP5 fuel stocks delay Swedish air operations

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SUSTAINING THE LIBYAN AIR WAR Logistics support has massively influenced the international air campaign over Libya, Tim Ripley reports.

Production Manager David Hurst. dth@shephard.co.uk Sub-editor Adam Wakeling Advertising Sales Executive Mark Ludlow. ml@shephard.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)1753 727009 Publishing Director Darren Lake CEO Alexander Giles

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Chairman Nick Prest Subscriptions CDS Global, Tower House, Lathkill St, Sovereign Park, Market Harborough, Leics LE16 9EF, UK Paid subscription contacts: Tel: +44 1858 438879 Fax: +44 1858 461739 Email: shephardgroup@subscription.co.uk Military Logistics International is published six times per year – in January/February, March/ April, May/June, July/August, September/ October and November/December – by The Shephard Press Ltd, 268 Bath Road, Slough, Berks, SL1 4DX, UK. The 2011 US Institutional subscription price is £65. Airfreight and mailing in the USA by agent named Air Business, c/o Priority Airfreight NY Ltd, 147-29 182nd Street, Jamaica, NY 11413. Periodical postage paid at Jamaica, NY 11431. US Postmaster: send address changes to Air Business Ltd/Priority Airfreight NY Ltd, 147-29 182nd Street, Jamaica, NY11413. Subscription records are maintained at CDS Global, Tower House, Lathkill Street, Sovereign Park, Market Harborough, Leicestershire, LE16 9EF, UK. Air Business Ltd is acting as mailing agent.

Articles and information contained in this publication are the copyright of the Shephard Press Ltd and may not be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publishers. No responsibility can be accepted for loss of or damage to uncommissioned photographs or manuscripts.

10 WIDER, DEEPER, LONGER Support for guided weapons is continuing to develop as the range of operational options grows, Francis Tusa finds.

13 AN OLD SKILL, REDISCOVERED In remote regions that are away from main supply routes, air deliveries are essential in allowing forces on the ground to be fully mobile. Francis Tusa reports on the importance of this resupply method.

23 SMARTER INFRASTRUCTURE They might be humble structures, but FOBs are a major logistics driver on operations in Afghanistan.

Several militaries are now seeing what they can do to lower the FOB logistic burden, discovers Francis Tusa.

17 MOVING THE STORES As operations continue to be expeditionary in nature, there is an ongoing need for cargo-handling equipment as part of the logistics chain, Claire Apthorp explains.

25 GROWING AFLOAT Asia is starting to increase the reach of its navies by enhancing its afloat support shipping. Adam Baddeley examines the recent developments.

20 FUSION IN THE SKIES As air forces are increasingly searching for flexibility in their fleets, a number are considering combining tanker and transport capabilities, Peter Donaldson reports.

DEPTH FORWARD 28 LIFELONG PROVISION Henry Canaday talks to Maersk’s Bob Bowers about the company’s shipping operations and maintenance work for the US DoD.

DTP Vivid Associates Ltd, Sutton, Surrey, UK Printed by Williams Press, Maidenhead, UK

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Volume 6 Issue 3 | May/June 2011 | MILITARY LOGISTICS INTERNATIONAL

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EDITORIAL COMMENT

‘Liam Fox gave the oil price as one reason why the UK defence budget was in such a state.’

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET CHANGE? here are enough similar phrases to describe the same process: ‘Insanity is defined as repeating the same behaviour and expecting a different result.’

‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.’

The first is widely, but possibly falsely, attributed to Albert Einstein; the second, with more certainty, to Karl Marx. But they do seem very apt when one considers the endless problem of fuel on the battlefield, and how this burden can be reduced.

The steady and entirely predictable rise in the cost of oil – up 50% in a year, with a recent headline figure of $120 per barrel – has seen many defence budgets suffering. The UK Secretary of State for Defence, Liam Fox, gave the oil price as one reason why the UK defence budget was in such a state, while operational fuel costs have also impacted on French defence spending over the past few years.

Then comes along the Libyan operation, which, by its very nature – a no-fly zone with a requirement for endurance and time-on-station by aircraft and ships – is going to be fuelintensive. As oil prices rise, and without any direct increase in operational activities, the cost of the mission will go up for the participants.

The problem is that people have got lazy about fuel, and remain lazy. It would be easy to become very European and shake one’s head at petrol-guzzling US SUVs, and see that as the key fuel logistics problem. However, can anyone seriously point to a European AFV programme where a key, the key design criterion has been fuel efficiency? Easy though it might be to try and point fingers, the blame lies across the world’s militaries as a whole.

None of them have remotely taken fuel efficiency and economy seriously.

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www.mil-log.com

Compare this with the commercial sector, where costs are always to the fore. Consider the fact that the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 both started their design lives when oil was cheap, but airlines still wanted the most fuel-efficient aircraft possible. Also, how many commercial truck operators do not want to squeeze as much out of their fleet as possible, driving each and every percentage in better, cheaper performance?

There will be those who will say that military equipment has other roles and missions, which commercial systems do not have to cover, and these might well require higher fuel expenditures. Perhaps so, but it is increasingly difficult to find real differences between, say, commercial trucks and AFVs – after all, more and more of the automotive subsystems stem from the same R&D. When you look at support aircraft, why should they be operated substantially differently from their commercial cousins? And looking at no-fly zone operations, how different are these from commercial airline flying, regarding engine cycles?

PREDICTABLE SHOCK

Fuel shocks come, and people start to take notice of the cost of oil. However, as soon as the cost drops back down again, all of those studies simply get trashed – what is the point of introducing potentially costly innovations for equipment, when oil is back down at $40 per barrel (as it was recently in early 2009)?

What seems evident is that oil prices, while they might yo-yo somewhat, are not on a downward trajectory – using a historical analysis, there will be a gentle but relentless move upwards.

So why will militaries around the world not make the jump that would see a far wider use of

innovative fuels and power sources, as well as far more fuel-efficient propulsion methods? Yes, aircraft are being tested with biofuels and synthetic fuels, but it still seems to be a sop, a conscience-assuaging practice. Furthermore, alternative fuels do not consider the logistical issue – you want to shift less fuel overall, not more of different types to reduce the logistics tail.

It would be great to think that the current high oil prices, which are noticed when people fill up their cars, would also really force militaries to look at as many systems as they have today, or are planning for tomorrow, and work out how they could make them as fuel efficient as possible.

Francis Tusa, Editor-in-Chief

IN THE NEXT ISSUE G G G G

Contractors Asset tracking systems Aerial delivery Batteries

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NEWS

‘I’ll be frank – fielding of ECSS hasn’t been easy.’

SENIOR USAF LEADERSHIP ACKNOWLEDGES ECSS CHALLENGES In his keynote address at the 27th NDIA Logistics Conference & Exhibition in March, Gen Norton Schwartz, USAF Chief of Staff, acknowledged an uncertain future for the Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS).

As part of the service’s Expeditionary Logistics for the 21st Century (eLog21) transformation campaign, ECSS is an enterprise resource planning effort that promises to transform the air force logistics IT environment by replacing legacy systems with a single-solution set of business processes, software applications and data.

The pilot version of the new system ‘went live’ in July 2010 at Hanscom AFB, near Boston, Massachusetts.

‘ECSS was designed to replace more than 240 Cold War era systems that are still in use today, none of which exchange data with each other very well, if at all,’ Schwartz explained.

Offering a small sample of the legacy programs, he described them as ‘a veritable alphabet soup of disparate and largely incompatible systems, making it hardly a surprise that we

suffer from unnecessary duplication of effort and costly inefficiency.

‘ECSS’s potential to improve air force logistics operations represents a potential quantum leap in supply-chain management,’ he stated. ‘Along with total asset visibility (TAV), ECSS stands to standardise logistics processes and provide an enterprise-wide view of the supply chain, making efforts more efficient and our data more precise.

‘Now I’ll be frank – fielding of ECSS hasn’t been easy,’ he added. ‘It’s been difficult and occasionally frustrating work, largely because it represents a comprehensive transformation in our information technologies to revolutionise our air force supply chain architecture. But the basic [existing] structure is generations old, and is well past the stage where we can hope to yield effective solutions to evolving challenges merely by adding new applications to our disparate systems.’

‘I would argue, as I have to the GAO and others, that we need to replace the basic foundation, even if only one attainable bite at a

time. With TAV and ECSS we would be able to leverage off-the-shelf information technologies that are readily available to us. And once this becomes a more robust capability, the next step – visibility and accountability in the terminal phase of the distribution pipeline (what I call “the final five miles”) – is an equally challenging problem that we must address.’

Acknowledging historical problems on both government and industry sides, he added: ‘The bottom line is that we have got to pull this together – it’s possible. We know it happens in the private sector. I remain committed to trying to husband this through, but I’ll tell you something, given the fiscal pressures we are facing and the lack of performance thus far, you can understand why people on the hill [Congress] and in the building [Pentagon] are sceptical.’

He noted that current plans call for attacking the problem ‘in bites’, through the fielding of four ‘pilot’ efforts. ‘And if we cannot pull it together through those four pilots then ECSS is dead in my view,’ he concluded.

By Scott R Gourley, Miami

CASSIDIAN PARACHUTE SYSTEM AWARDED OPERATIONAL CERTIFICATION

(Photo: Cassidian)

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MILITARY LOGISTICS INTERNATIONAL | May/June 2011 | Volume 6 Issue 3

In mid-March, Cassidian gained operational certification for its ParaLander ramair cargo parachute system. Bundeswehr Technical Centre 61 tested and classified ParaLander as an unmanned aerial vehicle, clearing the way for operational use.

The German Armed Forces have already bought five of the systems, and have stated a desire to use these in Afghanistan to support deployed forces.

ParaLander has been designed to operate, initially, with the C-160 Transall, and can take a payload up to 1,000kg in its current form, although Cassidian is looking to stretch this to around five tonnes in the future. It is also anticipated that it will operate from the A400M. The system, which includes a ram-air parachute, a control unit and a mission planning system, can be dropped from 32,000ft, and can cover up to 50km from the point of dropping, achieving metric precision via GPS guidance.

By Francis Tusa, London

www.mil-log.com

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NEWS

AUSTRALIA SET TO RECEIVE MRTT AIRCRAFT Australia is on the verge of taking delivery of its first two A330 Multirole Tanker Transport (MRTT) aircraft, in the first of a host of deliveries for the platform that are scheduled for 2011.

Speaking to reporters at LAAD in Rio de Janeiro on 13 April, Damien Allard, MRTT market development manager at Airbus Military, said that the first two aircraft for Australia were ready to be delivered, while the next two of the five aircraft ordered were expected to follow by the end of the year.

In addition, the first aircraft assigned for Saudi Arabia had its first flight in March, and was also expected to be delivered this year, as was the first example for the UAE. A total of 28 A330 MRTT aircraft have been ordered across four air forces, with the UK’s order of 14 currently the largest on Airbus Military’s books.

Allard used the press conference to emphasise the versatility of the aircraft, noting that as the A330-200 wing was large enough to hold all the fuel needed to ensure the MRTT was a high-performing tanker, there was no reduction in its ability to carry passengers or cargo.

He argued that this therefore allowed the aircraft to fulfil missions that would otherwise by carried out by three different types.

‘This makes the aircraft a true game-changer.

In the context of the budget cuts across the world, this rings a bell for decision-makers. The MRTT is clearly an aircraft for the future – it is a benchmark in tanker transport because it is a truly versatile platform,’ Allard said.

Out of the four orders received so far, the MRTT fleets of Australia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE will be fitted with Airbus Military Aerial Refuelling Boom Systems, which allow the refuelling of receptacle-equipped aircraft, such as the F-16 Fighting Falcon.

For probe-equipped aircraft, such as the Eurofighter or Tornado, the A330 MRTT is fitted with two Cobham 905E under-wing hose and drogue pods. Allard said that those systems would be controlled by an operator console in the cockpit, which features an enhanced video monitoring system.

Allard also highlighted the capabilities of the A400M transport aircraft, but would not be drawn on what specific regional opportunities the company was targeting with the platform. He said that while a global market of 400 aircraft has been forecast, it was too early to detail any Latin American sales campaigns.

By Tony Skinner, Rio de Janeiro

NEWS ON THE WEB A new C-130 shadow in the sky 25 April 2011

Raytheon wins radar maintenance, operations services contract 25 April 2011

General Dynamics selected for US Army OPTARSS II contract 25 April 2011

Northrop Grumman wins logistic support services contract 20 April 2011

US DoD awards LifePort $45.5m contract 19 April 2011

Boeing, Australia announce order for fifth C-17 Globemaster III 19 April 2011

US Logistics wins new contracting channel via FEMA 18 April 2011

Cubic wins seat on US Army OPTARSS II ID/IQ contract 14 April 2011

General Dynamics selected for $565m infrastructure services programme 14 April 2011

All these stories can be found at www.mil-log.com

JP5 FUEL STOCKS DELAY SWEDISH AIR OPERATIONS Swedish Air Force flight operations have been held up following the deployment of eight JAS 39 Gripens for the first operational tour of duty in support of the no-fly zone above Libya. The reason for this delay was because the fuel at the airbase was different from that normally used by the aircraft.

The aircraft were supported by a C-130 with inflight refuelling equipment, and were based at Sigonella in eastern Sicily.

However, due to Sigonella being a USN air station, it stocks JP5 fuel, while the Gripen www.mil-log.com

normally uses Jet A1, a commercial fuel. JP5 is a variant of kerosene specifically designed for use onboard aircraft carriers, where the fire risk has to be kept to a minimum, which is not as much of a concern for commercial aviation.

Until additives to covert JP5 to Jet A1 could be taken to Sigonella, as well as the equipment to do the work, the Swedish Air Force was left to source commercial jet fuel elsewhere. The fuel issue added two to three days onto the time required to get the Gripens in the air.

By Francis Tusa, London

(Photo: Försvarsmakten)

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OPERATIONAL REPORT

Logistics support has massively influenced the international air campaign over Libya, Tim Ripley reports.

SUSTAINING THE uring the Cold War, the UK and Italy were often referred to as NATO’s ‘unsinkable aircraft carriers’ because of the huge investment made by the alliance in airfield infrastructure in the two countries. Ultimately, the great NATO and Warsaw Pact stand-off never turned ‘hot’, and it was not until the Balkan crisis of the 1990s that alliance air forces started to make use of the extensive airbase network in Italy.

NATO’s reinforcement airbase infrastructure in the country, and elsewhere across the Mediterranean, was activated again in March 2011 as the Libyan crisis escalated. The availability of well-developed and equipped airbases within range of Libya was a significant factor in allowing alliance air power to respond within hours of the UN approving international intervention to protect civilians in the country.

Since then, NATO and allied air forces have been moving to sustain their contingents involved in Operation Unified Protector to allow the mission to remain active for several months.

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STRIKE ONE

After the UN Security Council decided to authorise ‘all necessary means’ across Europe and North America, air forces started to raise notice to move several units, and began active preparations to forward deploy forces to within striking distance of Libya. The pressing need to intervene, in order to blunt a Libyan government armoured drive on Benghazi on 19 March,

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meant that the US, UK and French governments agreed that offensive air operations would have to begin even before the deployment of forces got under way.

‘We had to get bombs on target in a matter of hours, so launching from home bases was the only option, using extensive air-to-air refuelling support,’ a UK air planner told Military Logistics International. ‘We brought Tornado GR4s up to eight hours’ readiness, and once the Paris conference took the political decisions, we gave the go-ahead to launch, which occurred later in the evening.’

In the US, similar preparations were being made early on 19 March to launch three Northrop Grumman B-2A Spirit stealth bombers from Whiteman AFB in Missouri to fly across the Atlantic and strike Ghadames airbase, south of Tripoli. In France, the air force was ahead of its British and American allies, and launched a package of 14 Dassault Rafale and Mirage 2000 fighters, backed by Boeing KC-135FR tankers, to hit a Libyan government tank column south of Benghazi late on the same day.

By operating from their home bases, the French, British and Americans were able to benefit from the in-place mission planning, communications, ordnance preparation and logistics infrastructure. Although this required extensive air-to-air refuelling support to strike at Libya, speed of response was considered far more important at this point in the campaign.

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FORWARD FOOTING

Even before the first wave of French, UK and US strikes were under way, allied nations were mobilising air force units for deployment to the Mediterranean region. Italy agreed to open eight of its airbases to allied forces, and by late on the evening of 19 March, Canadian, Danish, Spanish and US combat aircraft were landing at bases in-country. Over the following few days, Norwegian, Dutch, UK and more US aircraft were heading south to join the allied operation in Italy. French aircraft were deployed to Solenzara on Corsica in order to bring them closer to Libyan targets.

Some were more fortunate than these USAF personnel – rather than setting up tented camps, many air forces hired villas and hotels for accommodation. (Photo: USAF)

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OPERATIONAL REPORT

Operation Unified Protector has shown the value for countries large and small in having outsized airlifters to help operational deployments, as this Qatari C-17 illustrates. (Photo: USAF)

LIBYAN AIR WAR The Canadians had the furthest to come of any participating allied nation. Their six Boeing CF-188 Hornets were airborne across the Atlantic on 18 March, and were led by two Airbus CC-150 Polaris tankers on their first operational air-to-air refuelling deployment. After a brief stopover at Prestwick airport in Scotland, the Canadian contingent was at its forward operating location at Trapani, Sicily by the evening of 19 March.

Units deployed from European bases were accompanied by at least one Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules carrying support equipment, personal luggage and ground personnel.

Combat aircraft that were carrying their missiles and bombs generally flew to Italy, so that they could be turned around quickly for their first operational sorties. At this stage, all the air forces concerned had either been deployed to Italian bases during the Bosnia and Kosovo crisis, or had visited the country during routine exercises, so they were very familiar with the airfields that they were heading towards.

The availability of Italian NATO bases meant that fuel supplies were readily available via the alliance’s network of pipelines, and the Italian Air Force was able to provide fuel bowsers.

COMFY QUARTERS

The vast majority of incoming allied air force personnel were also housed off-base in hotels and leased villa complexes, which reduced the need to deploy support equipment such as tents, field kitchens and portable toilets. The one exception to this was the US, which deployed its air units to established US airbases at Aviano and Sigonella in Italy, Souda Bay in Crete and Morόn in Spain.

Incoming personnel were either housed in existing on-base accommodation, or when this was not sufficient, temporary measures were taken. At Aviano, the local economy did not have enough hotel rooms to house the 1,000+ USAF and USN personnel arriving at the base, and therefore a huge tent city was built and sports halls were turned into sleeping accommodation. www.mil-log.com

As the operation began to settle into a predictable battle rhythm, the deployed air force detachment started to develop a routine. Visiting crews were generally housed in NATO-standard hardened aircraft shelter complexes, so that they were able to conduct routine flightline maintenance and pre-flight checks in relatively comfortable environments.

Regular C-130 shuttles were established in order to bring in national-specific spares and munitions on an almost daily basis. This proved a key requirement because, unlike fuel, NATO does not have its own munitions stocks that alliance nations can draw upon. The operational tempo meant that ammunition consumption forced several nations to up their airlift requirements, with the UK and Canada using their own Boeing C-17 Globemasters, and other European NATO nations requesting support of NATO Heavy Airlift Wing C-17s. The Netherlands also resorted to hiring an Antonov An-124 in order to move supplies for its F-16 detachment in Italy.

NON-NATO SUPPORT

Operation Unified Protector and its predecessor, the US-led Odyssey Dawn, have also seen the deployment of aircraft from a number of nonNATO nations. Jordan, Qatar, Sweden and the UAE all deployed fast jets to the Libyan mission, and, with the exception of Sweden, it was the first time that they had sent combat aircraft on an overseas operation.

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OPERATIONAL REPORT

Getting their aircraft to within striking distance was a challenge in itself for the Arab air forces, which had no experience of expeditionary air operations. The UAE Air Force and Air Defence made use of Etihad Airways Airbus A330 aircraft to move personnel and equipment from Al Dhafra airbase, just outside Abu Dhabi, to Decimomannu in Italy, in order to stand up its F-16E/F and Mirage 2000-9DAD detachment. While the Qatar Emiri Flight’s C-17s accompanied the country’s Mirage 20005EDAs on their transit to Crete, these two deployments highlighted the contribution that an oil-rich Gulf state’s ‘sovereign aviation assets’ can make to its military capability in a time of crisis.

The Qatar Air Force’s lack of experience in high-intensity air operations was also underlined by the deployment of a French Mirage 2000 detachment to Souda Bay to partner the Gulf air arm for its missions over Libya. The two services’ ground engineers work closely together, and French Mirage 2000-5 aircraft also fly alongside Qatari jets on operational missions, according to French Air Force sources.

For the Royal Jordanian Air Force, its F-16A deployment to Aviano allowed it to tap into the expertise of the USAF’s 31st Wing F-16 squadrons.

INFLIGHT REPLENISHMENT

A major feature of allied air operations over Libya has been the reliance on air-to-air refuelling to support almost every type of aircraft involved in the campaign.

The distances between allied airbases on the northern Mediterranean coast and Libya means that air-to-air refuelling is essential if fast jets or ISR assets are to have any meaningful time on station over or near the country.

This is not an unusual situation for most NATO air forces, and they have trained and equipped their main combat units to operate at such distances. An unusual feature of the Libyan campaign, however, has been the heavy reliance on national air-to-air refuelling assets.

The rushed launch of the campaign meant that

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The loadmaster of a Canadian C-17 confers with Italian ground crew at Trapani, Sicily.

(Photo: Canadian DND)

there was little time to get a full-up combined air operations centre (CAOC) to control the air assets. In the first two weeks, the campaign was run by US Africa Command, which had to ‘borrow’ the CAOC of US European Command at Ramstein in Germany because it did not have its own.

Rapidly deployed liaison detachments from participating air forces arrived at Ramstein over the first week of the campaign, but the CAOC staff were ‘maxed out’ just organising daily operations before they could do much forward planning, according to allied air force officers involved in the Libyan campaign planning. As a result, there was little time to build a multi-national tanker plan into the daily air tasking order. Then on 31 March, the whole Libya CAOC operation was transferred to NATO’s CAOC 5 at Poggia Renatico in Italy, resulting in further stress on the air campaign planners.

Until well into April, national tanker operations were the norm, with some exceptions for Norway and Denmark, who were able to come to arrangements to take fuel from USAF tankers.

By the first week of April, the USAF’s 313th Air Expeditionary Wing was providing more than 80% of fuel passed in the air to allied jets. It then had more than 30 KC-135R and McDonnell Douglas KC-10A Extender tankers at bases in the UK, Germany, Spain and Greece to support the Libyan operation.

In an operational first, Italian Air Force KC-130J tankers were in action within the first week of the campaign, supporting combat

MILITARY LOGISTICS INTERNATIONAL | May/June 2011 | Volume 6 Issue 3

operations against Libya, as the service’s Boeing 767 tankers had yet to be declared combat-ready.

FUTURE CAMPAIGN OPTIONS

ACM Stephen Dalton, Chief of the UK Air Staff, declared on 3 April that the RAF was planning on the basis of a six-month-long campaign.

Several other air forces announced that their commitment was limited to three or six months.

It seems that the uncertain outcome of the Libyan conflict has led participating air forces to begin envisaging that their commitment will transition to become enduring in nature. This has significant implications in logistic terms. After several weeks, replacement aircraft will have to line up, so that the original machines deployed to Italy can be rotated home in order to undergo more intense maintenance than can be carried out at forward bases.

Weapon resupply issues are likely to emerge for several NATO nations involved in air-toground operations. Ground or ship resupply must be an option to ease the burden on air transport fleets, particularly as most NATO air forces simultaneously have to support the ongoing campaign in Afghanistan.

The Libyan campaign has refocused the attention of defence planners across NATO on combat air power after previously giving prominence to Afghanistan. In the coming weeks and months, the implications of the Libyan crisis for logistic support of air operations will become clearer. MLI www.mil-log.com

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MUNITIONS SUPPORT

‘The stockpile and use rate equation is not one that any armed force is exempt from.’

WIDER, DEEPER, s the drive to reduce costs continues in defence ministries, no area is being left untouched as planners seek to maximise the return on every penny or cent spent. This is as true for guided weapons (GW) as anything else.

Many of these were designed and produced during the Cold War, and the intention was that few, if any, would ever leave an ammunition bunker, aside from those expended in training.

However, with the current pace of operations for many countries, this is no longer the general order of affairs. Defence ministries have to consider how they procure, and then support, GW in an environment where operational use is the norm, not the exception.

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A BUSY YEAR

‘Looking specifically at the UK, the main drive over the previous 12 months has been to create a unified support environment (USE) for all UK support activities,’ an MBDA spokesperson told Military Logistics International. ‘There are in

essence four primary themes to this approach.

[The first is] organisational arrangement – that is how to best organise ourselves (jointly with the MoD) to deliver an effective, efficient outputbased service. Secondly, we are looking at ways of organising the transverse aggregation of support activities across all the GW products – that is looking at how similar activities can be joined together to achieve economies of scale.

‘Another theme has been entitled the unified support solution. With this, we are looking to drive through commonality, convergence and efficiency in the way GW support is delivered. Finally, we have been looking at efficiency savings.’

This USE activity is part of the wider and much-discussed Team Complex Weapons (TCW) initiative, which is a long-term partnering agreement between the MoD and MBDA, covering a range of weapons and sovereign capabilities. During the course of 2011, this proposition will be developed jointly with the

ministry, with an expectation to ‘go live’ some time during the second quarter of 2012.

Pascal Gendre, group director of customer service and support at MBDA, said: ‘Looking at France, we have worked a lot to move from a simple supplier-to-customer relationship to one that reflects a long-term partnership approach.

This partnership is not yet formalised, and not at the same level in France as it is in the UK. ‘To get closer to our customers in France, and again in a move to show we are more than just a front-end supplier of equipment to an end user, we have began to get more closely involved with some of the French forces academies and centres of expertise, such as the French Naval Academy. This is an approach we are currently pursuing with the intention of extending this to all three of the country’s services. Through developing shared knowledge and understanding, we will obviously be able to get much closer to the customer and his day-to-day needs.’

SUPPORT UP FRONT

Sagem/MBDA AASM air-to-ground weapons are prepared for loading onto Rafale aircraft for missions over Libya. (Photo: CEMA)

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Operational stresses and strains are, and will continue to be, a major driver for GW support.

The conditions in Afghanistan and Iraq are now well known to be quite extreme regarding the range of temperatures (the average for the former is 30°C, 25°C for the latter, with Iraq also having some very humid conditions as well), and both are also known for the harshness of the dust.

The distances from home bases have resulted in efforts to place GW support capabilities into theatre. US Army Materiel Command has established forward repair activity sites in Iraq and Afghanistan, and these carry out the inspection and support of both ‘dumb’ and guided ammunition natures. Since 2010, the US Third Army has started to set up GW support facilities in South West Asia. One such www.mil-log.com

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MUNITIONS SUPPORT

LONGER

Support for guided weapons is continuing to develop as the range of operational options grows, Francis Tusa reports.

The operational environment is a major factor affecting GW reliability, so extra support efforts are required.

(Photo: MLI)

in the Gulf region was established to repair and check out Hellfire missiles.

The reason for establishing the sites was that Hellfires were being declared ‘defective’ by troops in the field, and then were sent back to Anniston Army Depot, Alabama, only for a large number of ‘no fault founds’ to arise. If there were any problems, they tended to be as a result of www.mil-log.com

faulty storage or handling, both of which could be readily corrected. The new forward test and repair facility means that many damaged Hellfires can now be examined and repaired in as little as 30 minutes.

The harsh environmental conditions also mean that after 1,000 hours of captive carrying, the seeker domes of the laser-guided Hellfire can

become sand-blasted and opaque, requiring a replacement part. These, too, can be forward repaired, saving time and cost in shipping missiles back to the US. An expansion of these capabilities is likely, both in the short term, and as part of longer-term GW support concepts.

The UK is also starting to see what can be done to support a panoply of GW systems

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MUNITIONS SUPPORT

‘What can be done to keep supply chains operating potentially over a decade and more?’ closer to the front line. Task Force Helmand told MLI that there are now over 230 different munitions types deployed in-theatre, with well over 20 major, sophisticated weapons systems. Many of these have been bought under the UOR system and, as a result, there has been little thought about how many of them should be supported. Furthermore, the range of storage needs for ‘dumb’ and smart munitions and natures, such as flares, means that there are difficulties in accommodating all of these in one munitions management plan.

The fact that munitions in Afghanistan are frequently deployed to FOBs and kept in sub-optimal conditions has added to the problem. Although many that are deployed forward tend to be ‘dumb’, the Javelin missile is a ‘weapon of choice’, and is used down to the lowest tactical level.

Rather than risk expensive weapons falling into disrepair, plans are afoot to try to undertake preventative work, as well as remedial support in-theatre. This would mirror the moves to establish an Equipment Sustainability System Regeneration Capability for armoured fighting vehicles and other equipment types at Camp Bastion, which started full-time work this year.

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

‘Optimisation of stockpile management is one of the recent “big wins”, we think,’ Gendre told MLI. ‘There is a definite need from the customer’s point of view. We have put a lot of study and analysis into this, both theoretical and empirical, and it is clear that a scientific stockpile management approach will not only enhance product safety and reliability, but it is also an area where customers can make major savings as well. Here, we are talking about savings in terms of avoiding unnecessary servicing as well as savings in terms of significantly increased product life.’

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The US is now servicing missiles far closer to the point of use. Here, a facility to support Hellfire is inaugurated in mid2010 at a location in the Gulf region.

(Photo: US DoD)

There is always going to be an uneasy balance between finance ministries, which will see GW stockpiles’ optimal position as being as small as possible, and the military, which will have as close to a diametrically opposite position as possible. How many munitions should a defence ministry buy to meet its requirements over ever-increasing timelines?

The reason for asking this question returns to a never-ending issue – the nurturing of supply chains that can be fragile, and which require careful management. As commented upon above, the life cycle of guided weapons is not getting shorter, and so decisions for smaller production runs today can mean munitions shortages tomorrow if corners are cut.

So how do NATO countries match up when it comes to guided weapons and long lives? Take the MBDA Storm Shadow/Scalp EG cruise missile as one example. The UK bought just under 800, France just over 500 (of which some will be converted into the Scalp Naval cruise missile), Italy 200 and Greece some 90.

However, to put this into some perspective, the RAF has launched at least three missions from the UK to fire these missiles at Libyan targets, with the first raid in mid-March, and at least 30 are believed to have been fired, if not more. French Scalp EG rates are slightly

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lower, if the reports from the French MoD are to be believed.

These numbers might not look that large, but taking into account training and trials, as well as other operations, the UK might well have fired over 100 of the missiles. This may only represent 15% of the total off-take, but it shows how a stock can be eaten up gradually. If the Libyan mission sees attacks against regime targets, as opposed to tactical ones, Storm Shadow use rates could well rise further, and the overall arsenal shrink yet more. What planners have to ask is how long cruise missile stocks might last if operations such as Libya become the norm, rather than the exception.

To put it another way, Italy’s 200 Storm Shadows would have shrunk by over half on UK use rates, and Greece would have run out of weapons – this when the missile has at least another 20 years’ life in those arsenals. As another point of consideration, the UK has fired 15-20 submarine-launched Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles so far in operations against Libya – France has only ordered 50 submarinefired Scalp Naval variants.

THE RIGHT STUFF?

Reports from mid-to-late April 2011, denied by several NATO defence ministries, suggested that a limiting factor for the pace of operations was a shortage of guided weapons. Certainly, when countries such as Norway and Denmark – both active in air-to-ground operations – have only ordered low hundreds of Joint Direct Attack Munitions, and have been using them in training since the early 2000s, it should come as no surprise if these stocks might have been running short.

All of this points to the need to engage with industry in ensuring that supply chains are not allowed to cool and die over time.

The problem is that with shrinking defence budgets, how many finance ministries, themselves facing harsh fiscal conditions, are willing to pay for things today that will only come into play as an insurance policy some time in the future? MLI www.mil-log.com

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AIR DELIVERY

Parachuted supplies drift down towards a US FOB in Afghanistan. (Photo: US DoD)

In remote regions that are away from main supply routes, air deliveries are essential in allowing forces on the ground to be fully mobile.

Francis Tusa reports on the importance of this resupply method.

AN OLD SKILL, REDISCOVERED he pace and intensity of operations in Iraq and then Afghanistan has caused forces deployed in those theatres to re-examine, and then reintroduce, a resupply skill that has ebbed in and out of fashion – air delivery.

This is the provision of supplies by fixed-wing aircraft, sometimes by landing on strips and pushing stores out of the back, but more often by dropping cargo on parachutes from higher altitudes.

‘Air drop is the perfect tactic to support the ground commanders in counter-insurgency [COIN] operations,’ Maj Tyler Kern of the USAF Air Mobility Division (AMD) told Military Logistics International. ‘Air delivery allows ground commanders the freedom of movement to operate in remote areas away from main supply routes where ground convoys cannot

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move freely or sustain themselves. Reducing the number of convoys also reduces the threat to ground forces from IED attacks, in turn increasing freedom of movement. “Any time and anywhere” logistics feeds the fight during COIN operations.’

FALLING FAST

For most Western nations involved in recent operations, Iraq provided an initial ‘kick’ to reexamine air delivery, but Afghanistan has pushed such flights to the fore.

‘This mission started after the need was expressed by units in Afghanistan. The request was then relayed to the French Air Force [FAF] and required us to go beyond the initial operating framework planned for actions in 2001 and 2002 [to support the forces engaged

in Afghanistan],’ Lt Col Franck Flammier, the French airlift group commander at Dushanbe, Tajikistan, told MLI. ‘The main idea regarding dropping is that you only need to drop somebody or something when you have no other alternative, and no capability to land the aircraft in the vicinity of the relevant area, in order to minimise the risks to personnel.

‘The idea was to support elements inserted in OMLTs [operational monitoring and liaison teams], and to be able to support forces as closely as possible at any time, by day or night, in visual or instrument meteorological conditions, should the standard logistic chain fail. At that time, the only solution was night drops using NVGs. This type of delivery was immediately tried, but it did not fully meet the requirements.

In order to increase delivery precision, the

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‘Air drop is the perfect tactic to support the ground commanders in COIN operations.’

Air delivery/air drop of supplies has gone from being a tactical sideline to a major aspect of combat operations in Afghanistan.

(Photo: US DoD)

FAF developed, on its own, a new capacity – HALO drops [high altitude, low opening]. The first drops occurred during August 2008.’

The French forces have now used the technique for support and replenishment for more than two years as a complement to the ground logistic chain. This type of delivery is used to provide support to the isolated units of Task Force Lafayette in FOBs and combat outposts in Kapisa and Surobi provinces, while reducing the risk to convoys from IEDs and to aircraft from surface-to-air weapons.

‘The UK has been active in Afghan airdrops since 2006,’ Sqn Ldr Gareth Burdett, officer commanding B Flight, 24 Squadron at RAF Lyneham added. 24 Squadron is the operational conversion unit for the UK’s Hercules force, and every pilot is trained in the required roles, including air delivery.

‘The approaches to air delivery vary between brigades [deployed to Afghanistan], but there has been a consistent upward swing in the demand for aerial delivery since that time,’ he said. ‘Iraq really initiated the capability, and we

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used it to resupply mobile patrols in the deserts of east and south Iraq. But in Afghanistan, on Herrick IV [May-November 2006], 16 Air Assault Brigade identified the need for air delivery, and the new kit [the C-130J] and computer that it had could provide this capability very well. Generally, the recent genesis of UK air drops follows the development of the C-130J. A lot of clearances were prioritised to get the capability operational.’

But he added that despite the new-found interest in air drops for supplies, ‘the drawdown of the UK operational area in Helmand has made them slightly less attractive – but it still is a vital component. Recently, we’ve been doing a lot of air drops in support of the USMC in areas which Task Force Helmand was responsible for previously’.

USING THE RIGHT TOOLS

Burdett told MLI that the RAF’s C-130J is at the heart of the UK’s air delivery operations.

‘Currently, the quantity of UK air drop in Afghanistan does not call for a C-17 capability –

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the C-130 fleet easily meets the demand, and the J has the capacity and capability for the role,’ he said. ‘The C-130J has earned its spurs in the air delivery role – it’s the “white van” of the air transport fleet. If you do your job well, then no one notices the Hercules fleet, but they do notice if you’re not there!’

The RAF uses a range of delivery means, as Burdett explained. ‘We have a system called “small stores”. This is anything really. The utility is that you can drop stores at very short notice onto a very small drop zone (DZ). It’s ideal for engineering spares, ammo and small volumes of stores. We would classify small stores drops as ranging from 30-300kg. There is no need for [an aircraft] role change at all. You could have 70 passengers and some small stores bundles, drop those and then take the passengers to a different destination.

‘Then there is the container delivery system [CDS],’ he said. ‘They’re called containers, but they aren’t – they are bundles of different stores, packaged together. We can carry 16 in one lift.

It’s on a pallet with a cardboard crumple system and a parachute on each.

‘It’s very flexible – you can drop one container, or up to 16t in 20 containers, or as little as

The French Air Force has adopted a high-altitude delivery tactic to provide supplies with accuracy to widely dispersed forces.

(Photo: SIRPA Air)

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PUTTING IT INTO PERSPECTIVE

400kg. It does require a dedicated role change down the back of the aircraft, so it is less flexible for short-notice tasking.’

‘For military operations over Afghanistan, all the HALO drops for French forces are done by C-160 Transall tactical cargo aircraft belonging to the airlift group, based at Dushanbe airport,’ Flammier added. ‘HALO can also be carried out from the FAF C-130s, although it has not been done so far over Afghanistan.’

About 30 HALO deliveries have been completed by the cargo aircraft of the Dushanbe airlift group for an approximate total of 80 pallets, representing a total load of 70t. A C-160 can drop four pallets, each weighing more than one tonne, in two runs.

MINDFUL RE-USE

‘The main difference between the USAF and other air forces in Afghanistan, is that the US uses several types of aircraft. C-130s execute about 60% of the Combined Air and Space Operations Center’s AMD-directed air drop missions, with the C-17s executing the remainder,’ Kern explained. ‘However, the number of bundles and weight dropped is closer to 40/60 respectively. For current operations, the

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The mid-January 2011 USAF headline was stark and loud: ‘Afghanistan airdrop levels set record in 2010’. The story described how in 2010, some 27,400,000kg of cargo was air delivered in support of operations. This was up from 14.6 million in 2009, 7.5 million in 2008 and 3.7 million in 2007. Clearly, a steady progression in air drop with a doubling every year.

And these figures do not include air delivery operations by other players in Afghanistan. The RAF told MLI that from January 2010 to January 2011, some 281,000kg of cargo was delivered by air via RAF C-130 aircraft. The French and Italian air forces have also been involved.

But it makes some sense to put a historical overlay on these.

To take the USAF figures, 27,000,000kg across a year amounts to an average of 74.7t a day. So what? Well, these are the air delivery figures for a range of operations from the late 20th century: • Stalingrad (November 1942-February 1943). The stated requirement was 680t per day, but only around 450t were delivered, with a peak of just over 630t per day.

• Berlin Airlift (June 1948-May 1949). The bare minimum requirement to feed Berlin was 1,400t per day, with an extra 1,600t of coal, 3,000t per day in total. After a shaky start, this was achieved, and by the end, 11,800t per day were delivered.

• Dien Bien Phu (March-May 1954). Around 135t per day were required to supply the garrison. Generally, only 90-100t per day were delivered, and much of this was captured by the Viet Minh.

• Khe Sanh (January-April 1968). Average daily lift/drop of 210t, and a maximum of over 270t.

The point to make is not to denigrate the efforts in Afghanistan, but to put them into some historical and logistical perspective. There will be those – rightly – who will point to the fact that the air delivery operations for Stalingrad and Dien Bien Phu were hardly successes. But consider the fact that even these ‘failed’ operations were managing, just, to deliver hundreds of tonnes per day, and do this day-on-day.

Perhaps the point to take away is that while a Ju 52 was lucky to carry 2.25t, and a DC-3/CH47 could carry 3.2t, with modern aircraft taking 14.5-18t (C-130J), and 55-72t (C-17), might there be room for even more use of air delivery on operations? loads for the C-17 and C-130 air drops are the same. We do use the C-17 for our high-volume users and the C-130 for our small demand users. High-volume customers request a large amount of supplies in each order.’

Another advance is the development of lowcost air drop (LCAD) equipment. This is a more accurate and flexible air delivery method for resupply of small, mobile forces. Traditional silk parachutes and rigging are both expensive and labour-intensive. LCAD is a one-time use, prepackaged air drop system that uses expired T10 personnel parachutes, and is allowing the high volume of drops to continue with already established tactics and procedures.

‘We also use a low-cost low-altitude (LCLA) form of air drops, specifically, the C-130 LCLA combat air drop, which is accomplished by dropping bundles weighing 80-650lb, in prepacked expendable parachutes. The “low-cost” term reflects the relative expense of the expendable parachutes compared to their more durable, but pricier, nylon counterparts.

“Low-altitude” alludes to the relative height

that bundles are released from the aircraft – between 300 and 500ft above ground level.

This is a significant step forward in our ability to sustain those engaged in combat, and it is also more accurate than traditional, higher-altitude air drop methods and cuts down on “stray bundles” that can land away from the DZ,’ Kern said.

ON THE MONEY

The issue of air delivery accuracy has been to the fore for air forces on operations today.

‘When we started, perhaps we were not as accurate as the ground forces would have liked,’ Burdett admitted. But keeping operational details carefully vague, he added: ‘We aim to minimise the load spread, and put the load as close as is safe to the FOB/patrol, so that it becomes easy for them to clear the DZ. We recognise that ground forces have to operate in areas with mines and IEDs, so DZ clearance is an issue.’

For the RAF, the means to do this have been simple, according to Burdett. ‘Wind is the variable we have to deal with – the longer

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‘Air drop is an intrinsic part of UK operations in Afghanistan. People have rediscovered the utility of air delivery.’ that a load is exposed to this, the less accurate the delivery will be,’ he said. ‘So we bought an element of the US precision air delivery system.

A sonde is thrown out that traces its path in the sky as it falls, and it broadcasts that back to the aircraft so that we can see what has happened as it drops. We can then apply that data to our drop. It isn’t fully “precision”, as the load isn’t guided, but it is still very accurate.’

‘Meteorological conditions are no longer a limitation, since the aircraft does not descend to drop at medium or low altitude,’ Flammier said. ‘The only serious limitation could be thunderstorms in the vicinity of the DZ and the resulting non-predictable winds that would distort the dropping calculations made by crew.

‘Personnel in charge of the delivery add stabilising and extracting chutes, a barometric release system and to finish with, the main chutes. It is important to keep in mind that no electronic device is fitted, that it is just a wellmastered free fall, and that all the dropping equipment can be re-used for future deliveries.’

Kern agreed about what affected air delivery in Afghanistan, but differed on how to deal with it. ‘Wind – it still plagues air drop operations,’ he

concurred. ‘But conventional balloon data and GPS sondes do not meet the tactical requirements of current operations. The USAF Weather Agency has made dramatic advances in forecasting with their four-dimensional wind modeling that informs crews on the air mass, but a real-time, tactical solution is still missing.’

IN SHORT SUPPLY

All interviewees commented on two aspects of air delivery that are often forgotten.

‘With air drop missions increasing, rigging supplies and commodities to fill the loads are in short supply, but the customer is always asking for more,’ Kern said.

‘The air delivery “reverse supply chain” is no longer an issue of education,’ Burdett explained.

‘Army units understand the need to get the air drop kit back to us. But it’s all very well getting our parachutes returned to us, but if it means that someone loses a limb doing it, then we’ve failed.’

And then there are those indispensible helpers. ‘47 Air Despatch Squadron [Royal Logistic Corps] are intrinsically linked to organising the air drop role,’ Burdett outlined.

British soldiers recover rations air dropped at night by an RAF Hercules near Musa Qaleh.

(Photo: UK MoD)

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The C-17’s massive payload means that when mass is needed, many tens of tonnes can be delivered. (Photo: US DoD)

‘They source the stores, build the load and come on the mission with us as well. 47 AD see it through from end to end. We couldn’t do air drop without them.’

‘The record-breaking efforts start with heroic efforts by the sustainment brigades and parachute riggers and end with the aircrews and DZ control teams,’ Kern added.

HERE TO STAY

‘Looking to the future, air delivery may develop by way of adapting the load dropped to the forces on the ground, in real time,’ Flammier concluded. ‘Those missions could have something in common with close air support missions, with DZs listed during the preparation phases or timely DZs given to the crew members by a JTAC [joint tactical air controller].’

‘The bottom line – air drop provides the capability to deliver critical supplies into the most remote regions of the world with little to no infrastructure,’ Kern said. ‘Air drop allows combined forces land component commanders the freedom to manoeuvre and arrange forces as needed.’

‘Air drop is an intrinsic part of UK operations in Afghanistan,’ Burdett concluded. ‘Whether the next major operation is COIN or not, it is very likely that it will be expeditionary, requiring the reach of air drop and air transport to sustain deployed forces. People have rediscovered the utility of air delivery.’ MLI www.mil-log.com

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CARGO HANDLING

MOVING THE STORES

The Terex AC 35t crane has been acquired under the C Vehicle Fleet PFI. (Photo: ALC)

As operations continue to be expeditionary in nature, there is an ongoing need for cargo-handling equipment as part of the logistics chain, Claire Apthorp explains. eploying the right cargo-handling and storage equipment on airfields and main operating bases (MOBs) is a fundamental aspect of efficient military operations. As with all defence equipment acquisition, the successful deployment of it comes down to a delicate dance between capability and affordability. Ensuring that basic logistics equipment has high readiness, sustainability and the lowest possible through-life support and maintenance costs, enables the most efficient equipment to be fielded, vitally freeing up strained defence budgets for the acquisition and support of more ‘glamorous’ equipment.

‘A consideration of the logistical implications of each potential equipment acquisition is vital,’ Hamish Knox, managing director of ALC, told Military Logistics International. ‘Because of the substantial costs involved in support, if you can’t do this part cheaply, you ultimately limit the amount of frontline equipment you are able to field.’

As a result, the past decade has seen a greater push within the UK MoD to deploy cargo-handling equipment that can be easily sustained through the existing military logistics

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system, in order to keep maintenance costs as low as possible, and drive forward logistics capability at the same time. In 1998, the ministry initiated the C Vehicle Private Finance Initiative (PFI) in order to reduce the amount of equipment needed, and to reduce spares holdings while increasing availability. The programme also aims to field new and more capable assets without taking on the full risk of ownership that comes with procurement programmes.

TURNKEY JV

Provided by ALC, a joint venture between Amey and Babcock International Group, the C Vehicle PFI is a 15-year, £600 million ($1 billion) contract that provides and maintains a worldwide fleet of deployable engineer construction plant and rough-terrain mechanical handling equipment for the MoD. It also provides a full range of support services to ensure that every element of the contract

The JCB 541 telescopic handler. (Photo: JCB)

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‘High supportability means that we need to take a pan-defence approach and introduce commonality.’

(SDSR). ‘What’s emerging through SDSR is that there is going to be spare capacity within land command, and our object is to increase the RAF’s utilisation of this spare capacity,’ Knox said. ‘Doing so means that the RAF gets new equipment without any additional cost to the MoD.’ Another major way that the C Vehicle PFI programme is achieving cost reduction is by exploiting the value of fielding equipment that is as near to COTS as possible. Under the initiative, as it pertains to cargo handling, it is supplying rough-terrain telescopic handlers (the JCB 524 and 541) and Terex AC 35t and 55t cranes, as well as providing integrated logistic support for the MoD-owned rough-terrain container handlers. Being primarily commercial equipment, these vehicles have significant value for the MoD, and the full risk of ownership is essentially being taken up by ALC, which is responsible for the whole-life costs, and from whom the MoD effectively The HMRTF is able to unload a standard 24ft container buys the capability. of pallets in 20 minutes. (Photo: JCB) ‘By implementing these cross-service vehicles, we are removing the ‘One of the key concerns, as far as the barriers that come with having multiple vehicles cargo-handling side of things goes, is getting available with similar capabilities,’ Knox explained. around the high equipment utilisation across the services,’ Knox explained. ‘High supportability means that we need to take a pan-defence DEFT HANDLING approach and introduce commonality of equipBefore the initiation of the C Vehicle PFI and ment between the three UK services. We are the selection of its 524-50 and 541-70 rationalising in order to minimise the different telescopic handlers by ALC, JCB was working types of equipment with similar capability. By on the development of the High Mobility Rough reducing down to similar lines, the actual logTerrain Forklift (HMRTF) for the British Army to istics support cost becomes relatively low.’ replace ageing cargo-handling equipment.

‘The main requirement was to be able to unload a standard 20ft container of pallets in FEELING THE PINCH 40 minutes,’ Ian Talbot, sales and marketing Like most suppliers to the armed forces, manager at JCB, told MLI. ‘In the HMRTF we ALC is feeling the pressure to implement achieved this in 20 minutes, and importantly, cost-reduction initiatives as required by we also designed it to fit inside a container for the Strategic Defence and Security Review works as efficiently and effectively as possible, including spares, a technical documentation service and provision of training for operators and maintainers.

Since its inception, the programme has reduced the original equipment fleet of 3,800 to a permanent fleet of approximately 2,000 without any loss of capability, and equipment availability has been simultaneously increased to over 90%. Efficiency has also been gained by the reduction of rough-terrain forklift models from four to one, lowering training and support costs through greater commonality of parts and instructional courses.

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transport, making strategic lift and movement much easier.’

Following the MoD’s pulling of the plug on the programme and the switch to the C Vehicle PFI, JCB has continued to develop the HMRTF, with a lot of interest from other countries. In the end though, with the vehicle being so specialised, unlike more general machines with wider application, the forklift is only in production on demand.

‘However, we put a lot of lessons learned from the HMRTF vehicle into the development of the High Mobility Engineer Excavator (HMEE) for the US Army, and focused greatly on high-mobility machines,’ Talbot said. Although the HMEE does have a forklift, its primary role is engineering work, but this focus on high speed has relevance to the cargo-handling market, as the ability to keep up with main forces is an operational advantage for logistics vehicles and the militaries who field them.

However, lift and reach remain a central focus of development for JCB – the JCB 524-50 Loadall telescopic handler, procured through ALC for the British Army, has a 9.5m reach, and a lift capacity at full reach of 1,250kg.

‘The main limiting factors include the physical properties of reaching something at length, and also the height of the machine,’ Talbot explained.

‘If you think of trying to unload a Chinook or C-130, you have the ramp, and the top of the ramp is the really crucial angle, so we’ve designed and patented a roller system underneath the fork frame so that you can reach into the aircraft, or container, and lift the full weight at full reach.’

A major benefit of acquiring equipment from companies such as JCB is the commercial cross-over of their military vehicles, a major benefit in terms of both cost and the supply of spares and support to deployed vehicles. ‘We offer full support to our vehicles,’ Talbot said.

‘We have a worldwide dealer network that our customers can plug into in the areas in which they are operating. Or else, in the example of the British Army vehicles, we provide parts to Multipart Defence who is the ALC contractor.’ www.mil-log.com

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CARGO HANDLING

The Air Pallet Rack system provides the ability to stack pallets up to three high, increasing warehouse capacity or adding entirely new storage capabilities. (Photo: Ban-Air) SPRINGING TO THE RESCUE

Force multiplication was a major consideration behind the development of the Enhanced Protection Systems (EPS) Springer, which is currently being used as a logistical utility mule by British forces, where it delivers vital equipment to frontline troops. It is designed especially for the rugged, desert conditions of Afghanistan, and was developed in response to a UOR issued by the MoD. As a light forces carriage platform, the Springer is used to transport combat supplies from helicopter landing sites to FOBs, as well as providing battlefield commanders with additional transport capabilities on the front line.

‘The initial UOR requirement was for a one tonne pallet vehicle, and for a vehicle with an initial dry weight of 800kg – that was quite a tall order,’ Terry Carpenter, director of EPS, told MLI. ‘Actually what we have produced in the Springer is a vehicle that can carry a 1.2t payload cross-country – and when we say cross-country, we mean severe cross-country.’

Within EPS’s product line, the Springer is soon to be superseded by the Springer 2, which is based on the same platform as the original, but with enhanced performance. ‘We’ve significantly increased the power output from the engine. It’s got a better gearbox, cooling system, starter motors and alternators, there’s more torque and the payload stays the same, but you can carry it a lot faster,’ he said.

‘Importantly, the wheels are all 16-inch, whereas on the original Springer, the rear wheels were 12-inch and the front were 8-inch, so with the new version you don’t have to worry about wheel adaptors if you have a spare go down.’

BACK AT MAIN BASE

Ultimately, the key to a successful MOB and airfield is efficiency. The nature of MOBs, in particular, means that there is often a great requirement for flexibility on the side of industry www.mil-log.com

immediate deployment using a standard or allterrain forklift, the system allows operators to store things off the floor, keeping them safer and more accessible, and the system’s flexibility means it can be constructed according to customer requirements. ‘The largest we have ever installed had 1,900 bay positions that took three months to install, and we also provide smaller systems that take around two weeks,’ Rhodes explained. ‘In terms of construction, we can either provide installation manuals for selfinstallation (if the logistics of getting our people in to install it are too difficult), or we send an installation supervisor who can be supplemented by local people – in Afghanistan this would be military personnel.’

Ban-Air can also adjust aspects to suit particular customers, something it is currently working on for the RAF, which requires a slightly different sized bay. The system is reusable and can be dismantled, then reinstalled at new sites, and is delivered in-theatre via military or commercial cargo planes.

Getting the basic handling and storage equipment in place on airfields and MOBs is a vital step in being able to capably keep the front line supplied. This equipment provides the building blocks for a military that is able to meet the complex challenges it faces, and provides warfighters with the supplies they need to carry out efficient, battle-winning operations. MLI

to provide the right equipment to meet the unique needs of each base, and cargo storage is a significant part of this. Requirements of this type are rarely uniform, yet solutions still need to be implemented as quickly as possible in order help armed forces get the most out of the storage space available.

‘We noticed some years ago that there is and always has been a considerable amount of congestion at floor level in MOB storage facilities, and this greatly compromises the efficiency of operations,’ Gerald Rhodes, business development manager at Ban-Air, told MLI. ‘Basically, we noticed that the operators were quite inefficient at trying to identify a piece of cargo to load onto aircraft because the storage area wasn’t well planned, and pallets were spread around the floor. There might be a particular pallet in the corner of a building, and many pallets had to be moved in order to get at it and put it on the aircraft.’

The company’s Air Pallet Rack grew out of this awareness, in particular for the efficient storage of aluminium 463L and Air Lines of Communication aircraft pallets. The system provides the ability to stack pallets up to three high, increasing warehouse capacity or adding entirely new storage capabilities. The system is constructed from heavy bolted steel with the ability to replace damaged parts and reconfigure as needs change, with durable, exterior-grade galvanised finishes to provide protection from harsh weather conditions. It can also be fitted with steel sheeting panels to weather-proof loads.

The JCB 524 has also been provided to the MoD Providing efficient handunder the C Vehicle Fleet PFI. (Photo: ALC) ling for pallets ready for

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MULTIROLE AIR SUPPORT

The RAF’s TriStar fleet has shown the flexibility of the MRTT concept, with tanking capabilities and freight/passenger options. (Photo: MLI)

hen the USAF announced its selection of the Boeing KC-46A on 24 February, the statement made no mention at all of the aircraft’s ability to carry cargo and passengers.

The first paragraph read: ‘The Department of the Air Force announced today the award of an engineering and manufacturing development contract valued at more than $3.5 billion for the KC-46A aerial refueller to Boeing Company of Seattle, Washington.’

It went on to quote Michael Donley, Secretary of the Air Force, who said: ‘Many factors were evaluated during the tanker selection process…

Gen [Norton] Schwartz [USAF Chief of Staff] and I are confident in the fact that when our young pilots, boom operators and maintainers receive this aircraft, they will have the tools they need to be successful at what we ask them to do.’

Not mentioning the KC-46A’s logistic transport mission is oddly reminiscent of the old conflict between the former Strategic Air Command and Military Airlift Command over how to make the best use of aircraft that are inherently capable of performing both tanker and transport roles.

While Boeing does talk about the multimission capabilities of the 767 NewGen Tanker– saying that it ‘delivers significantly more fuel, cargo, passengers and patients than the current KC-135 tanker in a wide-body airplane, with a narrow-body footprint that affords the air force invaluable flexibility for a variety of operations’ – the aerial refuelling role takes centre stage.

Unlike the KC-767A, from which it is being developed, the KC-46 is not even labelled as a tanker transport. Without labouring this point any further, it probably says more about USAF internal politics than it does about the validity of the multirole tanker transport (MRTT) concept, which is very much in the ascendant internationally because of the flexibility it offers military planners.

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FUSION IN THE SKIES As air forces are increasingly searching for flexibility in their fleets, a number are considering combining tanker and transport capabilities, Peter Donaldson reports.

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GRANDFATHER RIGHTS

Precise numbers on the KC-46A’s cargo capacity in weight have not been made public, www.mil-log.com

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MULTIROLE AIR SUPPORT

‘I always have the option, if I need to supplement airlift, to switch roles.’

but its immediate predecessor, the KC-767A, will carry 19 NATO standard 463L pallets on its main deck, which offers 230 cubic metres of cargo volume. In a passenger-only configuration, it has FAA certification to carry up to 200 passengers in airline-style seats that are mounted on military cargo pallets. In a typical combi setup, it will carry 100 passengers and ten 463L pallets. According to Boeing data, the KC-767A has a maximum fuel capacity of just over 73,000kg, 3,175kg less than that of the 767-200ER on which it is based.

KC-46A NewGen Tankers are set to replace 179 of the USAF’s 400 KC-135 Stratotankers, which have a maximum fuel load of 95,000kg.

Although generally thought of as a pure refueller, the Stratotanker has a deck above the refuelling system that can carry a mixed load of passengers and cargo. Depending on fuel storage configuration, it can carry up to 38,000kg on six pallets or 37 passengers, according to the USAF. The aircraft not selected for KC-X has, however, enjoyed considerable success in other markets. The Airbus A330 MRTT has been chosen by the air forces of Australia, France, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the UK. This aircraft carries all of its 111,000kg of fuel in the wings, leaving the cabin free for cargo, and enables simultaneous tanker and transport missions.

Configured for cargo, it will carry up to 34 NATO 463L pallets, 26 of them on the main deck and eight on the lower deck. A typical combi configuration might be five 463L pallets and 136 palletised seats.

RAF EVOLUTION

Delivery of the first UK RAF A330 MRTT under the Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft programme is scheduled for late 2011. Despite the controversial Private Finance Initiative under which the aircraft is being procured, the programme survived the October 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, and the 14 aircraft under contract will begin to replace a total of 24 TriStars and VC10s. The three TriStar variants will be withdrawn from service www.mil-log.com

Canada used its CC-150 Polaris tankers to deploy F-18s to Trapani in Sicily for operations over Libya. (Photo: Canadian DND)

beginning in 2013 as the A330s come on stream. Meanwhile, plans call for the VC10s to operate only as tankers before being withdrawn by 2013.

Notably, the VC10 C1Ks and the TriStar KC1s are themselves dual-role tanker transports.

The majority of the VC10s are K3 and K4 tankers whose passenger transport duties, according to the RAF, are limited to carrying ground crew and operational support personnel.

The C1K variant, however, can carry either 150 passengers, 20,500kg of freight on pallets in the floor-strengthened cabin or up to 76 stretchers. The aircraft can also carry 70,000kg of fuel in their eight original tanks.

Following an upgrade that saw the addition of 43,900kg capacity under-floor fuel tanks, the TriStar K1s and KC1s can carry a total fuel load of 139,700kg, which they can use themselves or give away to receiving aircraft. Even though the aircraft can only use one of its two hose-drum refuelling units at any one time, on a typical refuelling flight from the UK to Cyprus or Gander in Canada, the TriStar KC1 can support up to four fast jets, while carrying up to 31,000kg of cargo and/or passengers, according to the RAF.

The KC1 variant has a freight door and roller conveyor system for outsize palletised cargo, which the K1 lacks, although this aircraft can carry up to 187 passengers in the rear cabin. The passenger-only C2 and C2A versions seat 266.

CANADIAN COMBINATION

Canada is a recent returnee to the MRTT concept, having converted two of its fleet of five CC-150 Polaris (Airbus A310) passenger and cargo transports to tanker transports. Germany also operates the type, which is only available as a conversion of an existing aircraft because A310 production has ceased.

Canada’s aircraft restore a strategic aerial refuelling capability that was lost when it retired its CC-137 (Boeing 707) fleet in 1997. The Polaris tanker transports were central to Canada’s deployment of seven CF-188 Hornets to Trapani in Italy to take part in the ongoing NATO operations over Libya, as Maj Gen Yvan Blondin, Commander of 1 Canadian Air Division, explained to Military Logistics International.

‘We used two tankers to take them across and kept them in-theatre for operations,’ he said. ‘We sent two C-17s to give them

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MULTIROLE AIR SUPPORT The KC-10 Extender was the first aircraft to be able to undertake simultaneous tanking, freight and passenger operations. (Photo: US DoD)

enough to be able to operate for the first seven days. That’s with people, parts and equipment to settle in.’

The exact mix of aircraft varies between deployments. ‘It’s always dependent on what’s available at the other end,’ Blondin said. ‘If you are getting into a place where you already have some telecommunications and IT equipment, then you need to bring less. If you’re going into an austere base where you need to bring everything, then you need more. In this case, with the F-18s deploying into Trapani, we had to have another two C-17 loads of equipment.’

As a transport aircraft, the CC-150 Polaris can be configured for passengers, freight or as a flying hospital for stretcher cases, or any combination of these. It can carry up to 194 passengers or a load of up to 32,000kg. As a tanker, each aircraft can transfer up to 36,000kg to receiving aircraft over a range of 4,830km, according to Canadian Department of National

Defence figures. One Polaris can ferry four Hornets non-stop across the Atlantic.

This kind of deployment, however, does show up some of the limitations of a relatively small aircraft. The Polaris MRTT can carry some people and equipment while configured as a tanker, but meeting the logistic requirements for Libya still demanded additional dedicated cargo aircraft. The extra fuel tanks in the cabin put a significant restriction on cargo capacity.

‘You can put a few suitcases, a few parts, a few tools, a few people in there,’ Blondin said. ‘But we are talking about maybe ten or 15 more people, not 100.’

SWAPPING ROLES

The two converted aircraft, modified by Lufthansa Technik in Germany, are generally kept in the tanker configuration, as their normal mission in Canada is to support NORAD air defence fighters. ‘But I always have the option, if I need to supplement airlift, to switch roles,’ he

A Royal Saudi Air Force A330 MRTT before the final fitting of refuelling equipment. The RSAF is one of four customers who have selected this flexible aircraft. (Photo: EADS)

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said. The conversion process itself takes about five days, but it is fairly flexible for me, so long as I can plan it in advance.’

Sometimes, however, plans change. ‘We were planning, a few weeks back, to supplement our airlift capability with a combo Airbus,’ he explained. ‘Now that we have switched into the operations over Libya, we need the tanking capability. The two tankers ended up being what we need with the F-18s, but it is also needed from a NATO perspective. We [NATO] have lots of tankers that can tank with the [boom], but to have the basket capability available to some of the allies ended up being a godsend to the operation. We are refuelling USN EW platforms, the French and the Brits, as well as Canadian F-18s.’

When they are eventually released from the Libyan operation, the Polaris tankers could find themselves converted to the transport role to support Canada’s drawdown from Afghanistan.

As Canada considers its options for providing tanker support to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is equipped for boom rather than probe and drogue refuelling, a larger MRTT capable of simultaneous tanker and transport operations is to be discussed in Ottawa this year. The leadership will ponder whether to request an F-35 variant with a probe, rather than a receptacle to suit the CC-150s, add booms to them, or go to a more capable aircraft such as a 767 or A330. ‘Well certainly it is an option, especially for a small air force like Canada,’ Blondin added. ‘We can’t afford to have dedicated fleets that only do a certain role, so the more flexibility that we can inject into our fleets, the more options it gives us.’ MLI www.mil-log.com

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BASE TECHNOLOGY

‘ExFOB 2011 is intended to investigate further into concentrated solar power, as well as stationary vehicle power.’

SMARTER INFRASTRUCTURE rmed forces have used fixed, defended positions since time immemorial – as just one such example, the military history of the Roman Empire can be written in the story of its forts and fortifications. But as operations have developed in Iraq, and now Afghanistan, the role of the forward operating base (FOB) or patrol base (PB) has developed beyond that of a simple, static facility. And this means that there has had to be a reassessment of how these are made up and operated.

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They might be humble structures, but FOBs are a major logistics driver on operations in Afghanistan. Several militaries are now seeing what they can do to lower the FOB logistic burden, discovers Francis Tusa.

WIDER FOOTPRINT

Brig James Cowan pointed out in his presentation to the Defence Logistics conference late last year how the military landscape had changed in southern Afghanistan when he commanded the British Army’s 11 Light Brigade on Operation Herrick XI (October 2009April 2010).

‘The footprint of PBs has been expanding in the UK area of operations over the past few years, as we seek to establish wider security coverage,’ Cowan said. He pointed out that at the end of Operation Herrick IX (April 2009), there were 55 UK bases in Helmand Province. This grew to 76 by October 2009, reached 105 in April 2010 and hit 132 in November 2010.

The logistics implications of these bases are wide, but simple – each FOB/PB has to be supported with fuel, water and food, and this means combat logistics patrols are needed to deliver bulk supplies. A UK MoD study from 2009 highlighted that, although FOBs accounted for only 3% of actual fuel usage, they ate up some 25% of the fully burdened fuel costs when the issues of force protection and delivery were taken into account. So anything www.mil-log.com

FOB power issues can be addressed from the supply and demand sides. Here, a Selex Galileo Observer surveillance system is trialled. (Photo: Selex Galileo)

to reduce fuel costs, as just one example, would be a major logistical benefit.

STEP-BY-STEP APPROACH

Via several mutations and avenues of approach, this led to the FOBEX 10 programme, which saw the demonstration of a range of different technologies and systems aimed at helping to

reduce the power requirements of a typical FOB. This is not the entire picture of FOBEX, as is made clear by the MoD’s explanation: ‘The FOBEX programme… is trying to treat the FOB as a system that will allow industry to apply a systems engineering approach to it. All aspects of an FOB are being examined, from helicopter landing aids to low-power laundry solutions.’

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BASE TECHNOLOGY

However, power requirements are a key factor within FOBEX, according to the MoD. A particular strand of the programme, called POWERFOB, was initiated to allow the ministry to seek ideas and technology that could either reduce the energy requirements of a base or provide alternatives to the current diesel generators. The MoD said that any alternative systems had to provide a similar level of electrical power, with the same degree of robustness/ resilience, and remove the logistics burden of transporting fuel to the base.

CASTRUM CREATED

A wide range of industry expertise has been involved in FOBEX, but one consortium has brought together nine companies, led by Finmeccanica Battlespace Solutions (BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, IBM, Paradigm, Marshall SV, MIRA, Hertel and NSC), seeking to provide a systems solution to the FOB. The Castrum consortium has been looking to help reduce the fuel logistics footprint from all sides of the equation. On the one hand, through use of technologies such as BAE Systems’ Intelligent Energy Manager, power output can be optimised – it is well known that today, people tend to add generators at random to provide power at bases, with the result that few operate at their peak efficiency. Rolls-Royce, the producer of the British Army’s Field Electrical Power Source range of mobile generators, also offers better power management options for FOBs. On the other side of the equation, plans are being tested to reduce the power demands of an FOB. Low-power surveillance systems have been tested by Selex Galileo, and other elements of camp infrastructure are also being examined. Marshall SV deployed low-use ablutions blocks, all containerised, that reduce water usage from 25,000l per week to 5,000, and cut consumption in laundry facilities by 80%. A containerised incinerator not only burns waste, but the energy generated can then be used to heat water – another logistics saving. In a country such as Afghanistan, water can be the

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Trials lead to fielding. ZeroBase ReGenerator solar panels, trialled in the US, have now been deployed on operations in Afghanistan. (Photo: US DoD)

second-largest logistics burden behind fuel, and often well ahead of ammunition.

Other suppliers have been involved with FOBEX, displaying technologies such as conformal solar panels and other non-traditional power-generation sources (a key driver within FOBEX). The MoD is keen on solar and wind generation, as well as power-from-waste.

The aim of these alternative technologies is to ‘power a typical FOB (50KW) using no diesel at all’.

FOBEX is feeding ideas and concepts into the UK’s Generic Base Architecture, which is seeking to create a series of scalable options for operations. These see FOBs as ranging from austere and potentially transitory, through to having the complete range of services. As Cowan explained, a Level 0 FOB would be ‘as you find it’, with no infrastructure. Level 1 would be ‘austere’ with minimal add-ons, which would mean that it would not be suitable for 365-day inhabitation, and base administration would detract from operations. Level 2 is the minimum level to permit year-round operations, while Level 3 would take the longest time to establish with the largest range of facilities, but would require the lowest base administration, a saving in manpower.

PARALLEL EFFORT

The UK’s FOBEX efforts are linked with the Canadian Department of National Defence, as well as the USMC. The latter’s effort is the Experimental Forward Operating Base

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(ExFOB), and it has been running since 2009. Technologies demonstrated in ExFOB 2010 were subsequently deployed on operations in Afghanistan.

Initial research went into basic powergeneration technologies, such as solar panels (some integrated into tentage), efficient tent insulation and low-power lights. These developed into trials in the Mojave Desert in July 2010 of 300W solar-power generation, enough for a company-sized FOB, as well as solar battery chargers. When deployed to Afghanistan, the collection of these technologies saw two PBs entirely powered by renewable energy sources, and a third saw a reduction in its diesel consumption by 90%.

The next stage, ExFOB 2011, is intended to investigate further into concentrated solar power, as well as stationary vehicle power – specifically how to produce power more efficiently than running a vehicle’s engine. This can require over 3.5l of fuel per hour, which compares very unfavourably with generators for the power load required.

Both the MoD and the USMC say that these trials are likely to continue, as technologies will evolve, and the requirement for FOBs/ PBs will endure across the range of military operations. The one question that has yet to be answered, however, is how flexible a large number of the technologies being trialled under FOBEX/ExFOB will be if forces are deployed in theatres where solar power cannot be relied upon. MLI www.mil-log.com

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SUPPORT VESSELS

New wine in old bottles – New Zealand was able to take an old oiler, HMNZS Endeavour, and make it compliant with modern maritime regulations. (Photo: Australian DoD)

ven if the trend in naval affairs is supposedly towards ‘brown-water’ operations, those close to the littoral, there is still a constant – to operate effectively, any navy worth its salt must have afloat support if it is to be able to project, independently, combat and political power overseas.

However, the need for this support is even more pressing for ‘blue-water’ fleets that are expected to project and sustain a presence for many weeks. Asia now sees the two kinds of operation coming together.

There is certainly a desire and need to operate further afield as countries’ economic interests outside the region swell, and political interest grows overseas. A number of Asian naval vessels were deployed in order to extract their citizens from Libya this year, including the Xuzhou, a Chinese Jiangkai II-class frigate, and the Choi Young, a South Korean KDX-II destroyer. Both were deployed on anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden or off the Horn of Africa. India also sent two destroyers and the Austin-class dock amphibious transport INS Jalashwa.

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LEADING FROM THE FRONT

Amongst those Asian navies seeking to provide support for naval forces far from main bases, India is the most active in this arena, and the frequency of its operations is increasing. The country recently completed a five-day exercise in the South China Sea with Singapore (2,900km as the crow flies), sending the INS Delhi, the Rajput-class destroyers Ranvijay and Ranveer, the oiler Jyoti and the corvette Kirch, with some 1,400 personnel aboard. www.mil-log.com

GROWING AFLOAT Asia is starting to increase the reach of its navies by enhancing its afloat support shipping. Adam Baddeley examines recent developments.

There is recognition within the Indian Navy (IN) that at-sea support is an absolute necessity. The IN commissioned the fleet tanker INS Deepak on 21 January 2011, and it is the first of two ships ordered under a $233 million contract with Fincantieri signed in 2007 and 2009.

VAdm Arun Kumar Singh (retd), former commander-in-chief of the Eastern Naval Command at Visakhapatnam, stated that while the IN has two fleet tankers, with another pair on order, a total of 12 are needed. The vessels currently in service are the Jyoti, a Project 15966M merchant tanker sourced from Russia, and the smaller Aditya, built locally, with the IN also being obliged to acquire merchant tankers as an interim measure.

More vessels demanding additional capacity are on their way. The IN is also in the process of renewing its amphibious capability to replace the INS Jalashwa at Visakhapatnam, which it acquired in January 2007. In March, India issued an RfI for four vessels up to 200m in length that are able to carry armoured vehicles and

main battle tanks, a marine battalion and have decks for heavy-lift helicopters. The IN is also seeking ten landing craft that can carry loads of up to 55t.

India’s first Indigenous Aircraft Carrier, INS Vikrant, is now expected to be delivered to the IN in 2014, where it will join the INS Vikramaditya, formerly the RFS Admiral Gorshkov, which is due by December 2012.

Other forms of forward-deployed support are also being provided. India already has a floating dock based in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, with a lifting capacity of 11,500t, and it now has detailed plans for a second with an 8,000t capacity.

ANZAC AUXILIARY AUGMENTATION

Australia’s decision to acquire the RFA Largs Bay – a Landing Ship Dock (Auxiliary) that was declared surplus to requirements by the UK in October 2010 – underlines a renewal of interest in the area, even if there is the making of a capability gap until the new Canberra-class vessels arrive in 2014.

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SUPPORT VESSELS

India has ambitions for naval force projection, and has bought two advanced auxiliary oilers from Fincantieri.

(Photo: Fincantieri)

Australia’s announcement that it is acquiring the Largs Bay was accompanied by the decision to pay off the modified Newport-class landing ship HMAS Manoora early.

The choice was taken after the Australian government received an A$20 million (US$22 million) estimate to rectify serious corrosion issues and engine problems, with the latter expected to take 12 months to fix. HMAS Kanimbla, her sister ship, is unlikely to resume operations until mid-2012, if at all, while the heavy-lift ship HMAS Tobruk is due to be paid off late next year.

This would have made the Australian Defence Force’s new ANZAC Ready Response Force wholly reliant on the HMNZS Canterbury multirole ship for support in the short term.

Largs Bay was acquired in response to this shortcoming, and will serve as an interim and training capability until the two Canberra-class amphibious assault ships enter service in 2014 and 2015. HMAS Canberra was launched on 18 February 2011 at Navantia’s El Ferrol shipyard, and it will be taken to Australia for completion, including the construction of the superstructure at BAE Systems Australia’s Williamstown facility.

New Zealand’s HMNZS Endeavour has recently been converted into a double-hull tanker, although it is planned to be replaced from 201316 with a similar or more capable vessel if funding permits.

The Dalian shipyard is currently working on refurbishing the former Soviet carrier RFS Varyag, which has been renamed Shi Lang, and it is believed it will become operational for training purposes as early as this year, but more probably 2012. A second indigenous carrier is also planned for construction at Dalian.

However, these ships are not all that is on China’s shopping list. It is also reported that the country has committed to acquiring three to six Type 081 helicopter carriers, and from November 2011, two Type 071 dock landing ships should also become available.

What is missing from China’s naval construction boom are reports of the necessary support ships. One reason why RAS might not be so important is the country’s ‘string of pearls’ strategy, linking sea lanes from Sudan to Hong Kong with naval bases along the way. China has been able to secure significant changes in policy from a variety of Asian countries.

Although the Pakistani government signed a 40-year deal with the Port of Singapore Authority in 2005 to manage the port of Gwadar, there is also an agreement for the Chinese Navy to use

the facility, close to the Straits of Hormuz. With economic investment in Africa as well, China could also start to arrange similar deals in east African ports.

TENTATIVE STEPS

Malaysia had been widely expected to opt for logistics vessels or multi-purpose support ships (MPSS) in its tenth five-year plan (10MP), although in December 2010, Defence Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said that this had been cancelled. Instead, the navy has traded this aspiration to ensure that it secured sufficient funding for six 99m, second-generation patrol vessels, sometimes called ‘littoral combat ships’ that are designed to support its interests in areas such as the Spratly Islands where tensions have been ratcheted up amongst the various claimants.

In 2009, Malaysia lost the tank landing ship KD Sri Inderapura, the Royal Malaysian Navy’s (RMN’s) biggest support vessel, in a fire. The capability gap has been plugged by leasing an Alligator-class ship, LST Hyangro Bong, from South Korea as an interim replacement. The

DEMANDING DRAGON

China’s replenishment at sea (RAS) requirements are about to expand exponentially with the advent of its carrier force. There will, however, be delays in production of the first of two 50,000-60,000t indigenous carriers, as the CICChangxing shipyard has reported that it is short of skilled workers. This has inevitably led to programme slippage, and now the first carrier will be delivered in 2014.

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‘A number of Asian naval vessels were deployed in order to extract their citizens from Libya this year.’

RMN can also call upon KD Mahawangsa, a 4,300t MPSS. The acquisition of three MPSSs was previously seen as central to the navy’s aspirations under the 10MP, and based around a landing platform dock (LPD) rather than a helicopter assault ship. Adm Abdul Aziz Jaafar, Chief of the RMN, was reported in 2010 as saying that this was the service’s top priority.

The withdrawal from significant overseas deployment by Malaysia is, in part, related to issues associated with the transfer of 17 vessels in support of the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency in the mid-1990s. These have not been replaced, and over time this has impacted on the ability to deploy six ships off the Malaysian coast, which explains the willingness to trade off the MPSS for a five-year procurement budget of $357.9 million.

South Korea has established a number of links with regional navies in the field of support.

In Indonesia, Daewoo has worked with domestic dockyard PT PAL to provide a series of four 125m-long LPDs. The last of the class, Banda Aceh, completed sea trials in March 2011. The

The first of the Indonesian Navy’s newest class of amphibious support ships, Makassar, built with the assistance of South Korea’s Daewoo. (Photo: PT PAL)

ship can carry up to 500 troops in overload, and has vehicle decks that can carry up to 40 vehicles, including tanks.

MOVING STEADILY

In March, Singapore’s RAdm Harris Chan took control of Combined Task Force 151 in the Indian Ocean with the 25-strong command team based on the USS Mason, and the country also headed the task force from January to April 2010. The Singapore Armed Forces have dispatched a second ship to help the antipiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden.

HMAS Canberra after launch at El Ferrol in Spain. The amphibious assault ship’s superstructure will be completed in Australia. (Photo: Australian DoD)

www.mil-log.com

While larger navies, such as Malaysia, have postponed support-ship plans, others, at least for the moment, are continuing with theirs. The Philippines are reported to be in final negotiations to acquire a multirole vessel that is similar to the RMN’s logistic support ship KD Mahawangsa, albeit with roughly two-thirds the displacement, not least to support its ongoing efforts in the Spratlys.

The Royal Thai Navy's aircraft carrier, the HTMS Chakri Naruebet, based at Sattahip naval base, is designed for force projection, but only in Thai waters where it is tasked with disaster relief and amphibious warfare support.

Its most recent task was to support flood relief in the southern Thai province of Songkhla, where it was reported that it managed to be on station within ten hours of receiving orders. The HTMS Similan, a Chinese-built 35,000t oiler, also provided replenishment support for the corvette HTMS Pattani on the anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden, where it returned in January.

Many Asia-Pacific navies have the aspiration and need to conduct blue-water operations, if only to secure economic rights around outlying islands. In an increasing number of cases, they have acquired the necessary principal surface combatants, in no small part for reasons of prestige, but have not invested in the support mechanisms to use them effectively. With lead times of at least five years when buying off the shelf, and perhaps many more for local designs, a number of capabilities acquired on the combat side simply cannot be supported at distance from home bases. MLI

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‘A tremendous opportunity exists to bring energy efficiency to current fleets.’

LIFELONG PROVISION Henry Canaday talks to Maersk’s Bob Bowers about the company’s shipping operations and maintenance work for the US DoD.

aersk Line Ltd (MLL) has been supporting the US military since 1983 in a variety of maritime roles, as Bob Bowers, the company’s senior director, maritime technical services, explains.

‘MLL integrates the marine maintenance community with the government customer, leveraging commercial networks and experience to obtain the best service for military customers.

Our key programmes include operations and maintenance of Fast Sealift Ships for the US Maritime Administration, special mission ships for Military Sealift Command (MSC) and US Army watercraft.’

The MLL US-flagged, government-owned fleet includes eight Fast Sealift Ships, two converted ships for ammunition pre-positioning and four large ro-ro ships that can carry up to the equivalent of 1,800 HMMWVs, as well as more than 25 other vessels normally on commercial charter. MLL’s corporate heritage stems back to its Danish parent, but the US subsidiary has adapted to meet specific national requirements for ship operations and maintenance.

Bowers expanded on what MLL is able to bring to the ship operations and support piece for the DoD. ‘We are a ship owner and operator and have the ability to pull from years of operating experience to make lifecycle decisions and recommendations for our customers. We can reach back into the Maersk family of companies to bring forward innovative marine technologies.

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‘A recent example is a contract with the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division, to apply advanced waste heat recovery (AWHR) technology to MSC ships. AWHR systems capture energy from the hot exhaust of ship engines and use the heat as a source of power to reduce fuel consumption.

‘MLL’s parent company, AP Moller-Maersk Group, fitted its first AWHR system nearly a decade ago and has installed it on much of its 1,300-ship fleet. Maersk has worked with leading component manufacturers to hone the technology, design and operation of the system, and now installs AWHR on every new ship it builds.’

COMMERCIAL CROSSOVER

Energy efficiency will only become more and more important, Bowers predicted: ‘[It] will remain a key issue. Commercial and government customers are seeking equipment and processes that drive down fuel consumption, reduce emissions and improve reliability. New ship design and equipment are making great leaps in fuel efficiency. A tremendous opportunity exists to bring energy efficiency to current fleets.’

Bowers continued on the theme of how the commercial and military markets are affected by the same trends, and what MLL can bring to the defence customer to help ease this problem.

‘There is a significant overlap between commercial and military ship technology.

Hull, mechanical and electrical systems are almost identical, which makes outsourcing a low-risk option from a mission perspective, and potentially very high value from a cost standpoint. The navy or coast guard can achieve significant cost benefits by drawing on the available commercial marine maintenance capability across the globe, as opposed to

MILITARY LOGISTICS INTERNATIONAL | May/June 2011 | Volume 6 Issue 3

maintaining their own infrastructure and staff.’

Bowers sees MLL’s international experience as a major advantage when it comes to service provision for a customer like the DoD. ‘European countries incorporate aspects of “classification”, used in commercial shipping, as a cornerstone of maintenance,’ he explained. ‘[This] uses ship classification societies such as Lloyd’s Register, Det Norske Veritas or the American Bureau of Shipping to survey and inspect the condition of ships, ship systems, safety equipment and pollution-control equipment. In serving our US military customers, MLL incorporates this classification tool but adds the follow-up needed to act on the results of surveys and inspections.’

So MLL brings international experience to the task of ship operations and support, and this is not just for its own products or vessels, as Bowers explained.

‘We provide maintenance management services for a variety of US Army vessels stationed in Yokohama, Japan. Under this contract, we are responsible for the upkeep and readiness of over 30 watercraft.’

And what of the future as a service provider to the Pentagon in the maritime arena?

‘We see the DoD looking for support providers that can extend the life of its assets, allowing it to defer investment in new systems and equipment,’ he concluded. ‘Operating budgets will get tighter, and contractors will be measured against more stringent cost metrics.

Fixed-price contracts are likely to increase.

Where cost-plus contracts remain, the DoD will incentivise contractors to control overhead costs.

These trends were spelled out in the Dr Carter [Ashton Carter, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics] memo, and we expect to see their impact.’ MLI www.mil-log.com

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