by Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
A new variant of the Navy’s classic, if even timeless “well-deck” for amphibious attack has now hit the ocean, as the Navy’s third America-class amphibious assault ship launches into the ocean from its floating dock.
Following the first two new America-class amphibs, the USS America and USS Tripoli, groundbreaking and now operational ships bringing new air-attack dimensions to amphibious war, the Navy and HII have a launched a cutting-edge third America-class amphib bringing the classic well-deck to amphibious warfare. Both the USS America and USS Tripoli are capable of deploying with as many as 15 5th-generation F-35Bs, bringing previously unprecedented stealthy 5th-generation air attack and sensing to evolving concepts of amphibious warfare.
The third America-class ship, called the USS Bougainville has now “hit the sea,” bringing a sea-basing kind of manned-unmanned teaming, ship-to-shore, amphibious attack by launching manned and unmanned amphibious vessels from a well-deck. The USS Bougainville will also incorporate next-generation aviation, yet bring-back the timeless ability to attack land from the ocean, if in a different way than it was thought of historically. A photo and an announcement related to the launch of the USS Bougainville was published by HII, the America-class amphibious assault platform ship-builder.
A 2014 paper from the Marine Corps Association, the professional journal of the U.S. Marine Corps, points to sea-basing as a foundation upon which the Navy will shift away from traditional amphibious warfare.
“Seabased operations enable Marines to conduct highly mobile, specialized, small unit, amphibious landings by stealth from over the horizon at multiple undefended locations of our own choosing,” the paper writes.
In effect, future “ship-to-shore” amphibious attacks will look nothing like the more linear, aggregated Iwo Jima assault. A Naval War College essay on this topic both predicts and reinforces this kind of modern strategic thinking.
“The basic requirements of amphibious assault, long held to be vital to success, may no longer be attainable. Unlike the Pacific landings of World War II amphibious objective areas could prove impossible to isolate,” the paper, called Blitzkrieg From the Sea: Maneuver Warfare and Amphibious Operations, states.
The essay, written in the 80s during the height of the Cold War, seems to anticipate future threats from major-power adversaries. Interestingly, drawing from some elements of a Cold War mentality, the essay foreshadows current “great-power” competition strategy for the Navy as it continues its transition from more than a decade of counterinsurgency to a new threat environment. In fact, when discussing its now-underway “distributed maritime operations” strategy, Navy leaders often refer to this need to return its focus upon heavily fortified littoral defenses and open, blue-water warfare against a near-peer adversary—as having some roots in the Cold War era.
In recent years, the Navy has continued to pivot intensely toward the greater use of unmanned systems, sea basing and expeditionary operations, often with the thought that big-deck amphibs such as the USS Bougainville can function as “mother ships” or floating bases from which to launch and operate large-scale amphibious assault operations. Concepts of operation for how an amphibious assault have been evolving rapidly with fast-emerging new levels of autonomy, unmanned systems and AI-enabled command and control. Several years ago, the former director of Naval Expeditionary Warfare, Maj. Gen. David Coffman talked about the explosion of unmanned systems throughout the Navy and Marine Corps in terms of shifting tactics and Concepts of Operation. He said he could envision a time when a large big-deck amphib were able to operate and perform command and control over hundreds, even thousands of surface, air and undersea drones.
Future amphibious warfare, as he saw it, will not appear similar to the kind of linear, condensed assault of Iwo Jima in WWII but rather be more symmetrical, disaggregated, multi-domain and driven by long-range weapons and AI-enabled unmanned systems.
This thinking is likely one reason why the Navy made sure to bring a “well-deck” back to its amphibious assault ships with the third America-class amphib. The first two, the USS America and USS Tripoli, were built with extra hangar space and specific configurations to optimize aviation and leverage the range, stealth and attack advantages arriving with the F-35B and upgraded MV-22 Osprey helicopter.
Kris Osborn is President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
