In the shipbuilding area, the Navy is proposing to build a fourth Mobile Landing Platform, a ship that serves as a base for amphibious operations and which, if needed, can handle transfers from large warships to small landing craft. Three have been ordered in a program that costs about $1.3 billion. The first is not expected until 2015.
One, however, is to be configured to handle a bigger role as an Afloat Forward Staging Base. According to one report, it would be reconfigured to include a hangar and flight deck that would allow heavy helicopters to be flown in a mine-countermeasures role.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told the House Armed Services Committee in February that this new version “will fulfill an urgent combatant commander request for sea-based support for mine warfare [and] Special Operations Forces . . . and other operations.”
The CRS study asks, “What are estimated costs of the Navy’s proposed Afloat Forward Staging Bases? How will the AFSBs be used?”
House and Senate committees have also raised questions about the Undersea Mobility Program and procurement of “dry combat submersibles.” These are mini-submarines that would allow Navy SEALS to glide underwater close to targets, leave through an airlock and swim the final distance. The current SEAL delivery system is called “wet” because it exposes personnel to the water from the start.
SOCOM, which has procurement authority for such equipment, reduced research funding for the dry submersible. But the House Armed Services Committee reversed that decision, citing the “present anti-access and area-denial challenges,” particularly in the Asia-Pacific area. It added $35 million to the SOCOM request for fiscal 2013, putting the total at $61.4 million.
At the same time, the Senate Armed Services Committee raised questions about the Shallow Water Combat Submersible research program, in which the contractor failed to meet engineering requirements, delaying the program for several months. Equipped with a silent electric motor, the submersible is expected to be able to covertly deliver six SEALs with supplies. The current vehicle is also an electrically propelled, torpedo-like craft that carries four SEALs and two crew members wearing breathing apparatuses.
Both the House Armed Services and Appropriations committees voiced their concern that the “highly perishable and technical operational expertise for wet and dry combat submersibles resident within the Naval Special Warfare community have not been fully exercised and utilized in recent years.”
The real questions are these: How are all these Special Forces capabilities in all the services being integrated? How many overlap? How many are needed, and how many can this country afford?
For previous Fine Print columns, go to washingtonpost.com/fedpage
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