WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy’s amphibious ships are as much of a Swiss Army knife as the Marine expeditionary units that deploy aboard them. They function as miniature aircraft carriers, launchers for small watercraft, and global transports for thousands of personnel and their accompanying vehicles and weapons.
But fears that these ships must do more to justify their sustainment costs are driving a new directive in the latest update to the Marine Corps’ strategy.
A June update to Force Design 2030 calls, in part, for a “holistic mothership experimentation campaign plan” that addresses how the Corps’ prized amphibious ships might house and launch unmanned aircraft and vessels, along with an undefined array of other warfighting technology.
“Amphibious warfare ships are the cornerstone of maritime crisis response, deterring adversaries, and building partnerships,” the document states. “In the future, amphibious warfare ships will offer even more capability, serving as ‘motherships’ for a variety of manned, unmanned, and human-machine teamed systems.”
By Oct. 1, the document directs, the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory will develop that “mothership experimentation” in order to investigate new gear configurations that further the service’s goals.
“Given the exponential growth of anti-access and area-denial capabilities, coupled with the increasing range of sensors, and expanding weapons-engagement zones, we will begin experimenting with amphibious platforms as motherships to distribute and extend the range of our capabilities,” the updated document explains. “These platforms will host a variety of manned, minimally-manned, and unmanned systems — air, surface, and subsurface — to sense and enable our forces with the aim of confounding adversaries and complicating their ability to target the joint force.”
Shon Brodie, director of the Corps’ Maritime Expeditionary Warfare Division, told Defense News this exploration of new missions and configurations for amphibious ships is in part an expansion of a longtime tradition. The amphibious transport dock Portland, for example, was used to recover the Artemis I mission’s Orion spacecraft from the Pacific Ocean following its successful NASA mission.
But he also acknowledged ongoing efforts of Marine Corps leadership to communicate why the service still needs the ships.
“By leaning into [the mothership concept], you’re demonstrating the increased value of the amphibious warfare ship,” Brodie said. “And you’re recognizing that you have to equip the force in it in a different way, in a modern way.”
‘Hiding in plain sight’
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger has said the service needs no fewer than 31 amphibious ships, a statement members of the Expeditionary Warfare Division vigorously defended. That minimum requirement is down, under budget duress, from the 38 ships the service said it needed until 2019.
The last two Defense Department budget requests have pushed for the early decommissioning of several Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships, while throwing the brakes on plans to invest in new San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks to replace them. Rather than defending amphibious ships, the Navy has backed funding for newer ship classes and long-range weapons.
For its part, the shipbuilder HII in June 2022 demonstrated what a mothership role for amphibious ships might look like when it launched, operated and then recovered a large-diameter unmanned underwater vehicle from the waterline-level well deck of a San Antonio-class amphibious ship.
“As the unmanned community examines the range and depth of support platforms that are out there, there’s a lot of assets that are hiding in plain sight that can be put to use now in their current form to support tests and demonstrations,” said Jim Strock, an independent consultant specializing in naval expeditionary capabilities and requirements, and the former director of the Marine Corps’ Seabasing Integration Division.
Strock supports the Corps’ pursuit of a mothership role for amphibious ships, but contends the service should increase the aperture. While amphibious vessels remain in high demand for training and deployments, which competes with experimentation needs, he noted the service also has access to a variety of expeditionary sea-basing ships built to serve as lily pads for launching missions and storing equipment.
“I would hope that senior leadership would be looking at innovative uses of alternative platforms to help compensate for shortfalls in amphibious ships in the near term,” Strock said.
The next steps in developing “mothership” tasks for amphibious ships involve reviewing literature on concepts and experimentation, then assessing how many Marines and sailors are needed onboard to monitor and operate additional systems, Brodie said. While drones of various kinds are the most likely add-ons to amphibious ships, Brodie noted, these additions are likely to prompt corresponding upgrades to make the platforms more survivable, more lethal and more self-sustaining.
“In a distributed environment, the more I can have that ship operate independently and not be dependent upon other assets, the better it is,” he said. “But then there’s the cost. It’s a balance. … You’re almost building an ecosystem. Anytime you make a change to a ship, it has a corresponding change to the whole system.”
