5/8/2013

A multi mission fast patrol vessel | Stephen Martin

MARITIME

DEFENSE

SYSTEMS

INTERNATIONAL

THE RIGHT TIME FOR SEAWOLF

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Over the past decade, the use of fast boats by criminals and terrorists worldwide has been

growing. This poses a serious challenge to authorities, and presents a serious threat to the

national security of all maritime nations. Additionally, during the past forty years globalization

has seen a dramatic increase in maritime traffic engaged in containerized shipping of goods

worldwide. This has allowed an accompanying dramatic increase in the shipment of illicit

material and human smuggling. The global economic downturn and austerity measures taking

effect worldwide have only conspired to highlight the maritime threat.

As early as 2005, world navies including the Unites States began multi-billion dollar programs to

address these threats by creating a new class of smaller vessels that can operate in littoral waters.

The littoral zone is the part of a sea, lake or river that is close to the shore. In coastal

environments the littoral zone extends from the high water mark, which is rarely inundated, to

shoreline areas that are permanently submerged. It always includes this intertidal zone and is

often used to mean the same as the intertidal zone. However, the meaning of "littoral zone" can

extend well beyond the intertidal zone. The use of the term also varies from one part of the world

to another, and between different disciplines. For example, military commanders speak of the

littoral in ways that are quite different from marine biologists.

MDSI has set out to approach the global market with a vessel that can robustly satisfy a

variety of operating climates, water conditions, and mission requirements, while realizing that

customers have to do more with less funding. This approach is realized in Seawolf.

Speed was always a major requirement for naval and coast-guard patrol boats, and in recent

years, boats were introduced with cruising capability beyond 50 knots. However, in a rush to

market these faster boats, manufacturers took the path of least resistance, simply placing large

engines into lightly designed hulls formed of fiberglass and/or other composite materials. This

has proven to be a failure. In a number of instances, these vessels have ripped themselves apart

when subjected to operational stresses.

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Problems plaguing those vessels include poor performance, maneuverability, and difficulty in

maintaining them at forward operating locations. Additionally, the high cost of training crews,

and operating these complex platforms, combined with very high maintenance requirements have

left customers worldwide frustrated and standing on the beach. These problems were

compounded when once again industry offered fixes that were only modest improvements in

performance, and maneuverability, while further degrading the endurance of these vessels.

Interception boats, operated by coast guards and customs authorities, usually require higher

speeds, while navies engaged in coast guard and counter-insurgency activities (Israel, Sri-Lanka,

India, Philippines, Indonesia etc.) have different missions and requirements. Resulting from

initial experience with +50 Knots vessels, some navies have reversed their requirements for

higher speed, in a more balanced approach favoring improved maneuverability.

Another military application is the fast attack boat, designed for defensive and offensive

operations in littoral and brown water. The mission of such boats requires speed,

maneuverability and load carrying capability which is different from the common patrol missions

associated with fast patrol boats.

Seawolf employs a design that is tested and proven. New technologies in the construction of

Seawolf, such as Friction Stir Processing and Intelligent Laser Processing will enhance this

design and insure that our customer’s investment realizes a significant return by enhancing

economic and national security postures.

In 2006, the tradecraft demonstrated by terrorists in staging maritime attacks led then-Coast

Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen to raise the issue among policymakers, the boating

community, and involved agencies. While a host of port security initiatives had been enacted in

the wake of 9/11, none specifically addressed terrorist use of small vessels—those with

displacements of less than 300 gross tons. The admiral’s quest was to find consensus for rational

improvements to the homeland-security architecture to head off terrorists’ abilities to carry out

Cole-style attacks in American waters or smuggle a weapon of mass destruction into a U.S. port.

Seawolf’s ability to perform multiple missions precisely mirrors and complements the U.S.

Navy’s development of littoral combat vessels with multi-mission packages.

Most ships involved in reported cases of sanctions-busting or illicit transfers of arms, drugs and

equipment that could be used in the development of missiles and weapons of mass destruction

are owned by companies based in the world's richest countries. The ships are primarily

commercial lines based in Germany, Greece and the US.

It is time to rekindle the effort to improve security on the nation’s waterways, before enterprising

terrorists take advantage of existing weaknesses and use small vessels to reap a deadly harvest on

American shores.

Sitting along or operating in America’s expanse of coastal waterways are hundreds of potential

terrorism targets: cruise ships, military vessels, chemical plants, highway bridges, oil terminals,

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and a plethora of other critical infrastructure. A waterborne bomb attack on any of those

constitutes the first of four small-boat terror scenarios that DHS envisions. Other scenarios are:

Using a small vessel as a delivery vehicle for a weapon of mass destruction; employing boats to

smuggle terrorists or materials into U.S. waters; and using a small vessel as a platform for an

attack with a standoff weapon, such as a shoulder-launched missile. Each brings with it a host of

challenges for deterrence and prevention. With so many small vessels in operation, so large an

expanse of waterways, and such a paucity of law enforcement resources, it is extremely difficult

to detect suspicious activity and conduct the needed intercept and protective activities.

Seawolf provides the missing element critical to any realistic attempt to craft an effective

defense against small-vessel threats. That element is resources: The people, vessels, sensors,

barriers, weapons, and other equipment needed to generate situational awareness and guard the

nation’s waterways to any significant degree.

Maritime law enforcement professionals know that today there simply are not enough boats,

aircraft, and personnel to provide an effective deterrent to a determined and savvy terrorist. By

the Coast Guard’s own measures, it has only half the fixed-wing, rotary-wing, and patrol-boat

operating hours it needs to carry out its statutorily mandated missions, including the suite of

homeland-security functions. Coast Guard leadership estimates (informally) that roughly 10,000

more personnel are needed to adequately handle contemporary workloads. Other federal, state,

and local agencies fare no better; if anything, in the current economic climate states and local

agencies are even more resource-poor than their federal counterparts.

Seawolf will provide customers with a visible presence and point defense to act as a strong

deterrent, denying terrorists the ability to strike at will and thereby greatly reducing the

attractiveness of well-guarded targets.

Stepped-up homeland-security measures in recent years have failed to address maritime

vulnerabilities. The country's inland and coastal waterways abound with potential targets for

terrorists in small boats. Among them: Ships at harbor, such as these cargo vessels in the Port of

Miami.

Due to the global economic downturn and austerity measures taking place, the global naval

vessels market, which consists of corvettes, frigates, destroyers, amphibious ships, and aircraft

carriers, is expected to witness a marginal increase from 2013 through 2023. At the same time

the naval vessels market is seen as very strong for smaller, highly capable vessels that are

economical to operate.

Despite the high fiscal deficit of North American countries, this region is expected to account for

the largest share of the naval vessels and surface combatants market during the forecast period.

Strong economic growth, territorial disputes, domestic unrest and the large troop size of regional

forces will create a significant demand for naval vessels in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Note: Much of the language and information in this paper is culled from numerous studies and

reports. It is offered here for educational purposes only.

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ADDENDUM

The following series of charts and articles are included to provide an overview of worldwide

investments in new maritime technology such as Seawolf would provide. Additional charts

demonstrate the threats that Seawolf would be deployed to address.

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U.S. Navy Littoral Combat Ships

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The (smaller, faster, cheaper) future of sea power We have the world's largest navy. They have speedboats and machine guns. What now?

By Drake Bennett

April 19, 2009

IN THE PAST few years, with the US military battling vicious insurgencies, first in Iraq

and now in Afghanistan, there has been plenty of talk about the nettlesome nature of the

challenges it faces: "irregular warfare" and "asymmetric threats" are the catch phrases of

the day. A military long oriented toward stopping Soviet tanks on the plains of northern

Germany and facing down potential adversaries with the promise of nuclear annihilation

has had to retool, both physically and mentally, to combat opponents that are as elusive

and tenacious as they are low tech and loosely organized.

The Army has transformed its counterinsurgency strategy, moving away from a reliance

on "shock and awe" to a suppler set of tactics that play off of local culture, political

fissures, and the leverage that development aid can provide. If Iraq and Afghanistan have

taught us anything, it is the limits of overwhelming military might.

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Still, when most of us think about irregular warfare, the images we have are Fallujah, or

eastern Afghanistan, or perhaps Vietnam. But as the recent standoff with three Somali

pirates highlighted, asymmetric battles aren't just limited to land. And though the Maersk

Alabama incident ended unequivocally in the favor of the US Navy, the image of a 9,200-

ton guided-missile destroyer called into action against a lifeboat only drove home the

sense that this isn't really what today's US Navy was built to do.

In fact, the front-page coverage of the piracy problem comes in the midst of a broad

debate over the Navy's identity - what its mission should be, how it should be armed, how

its sailors should be trained. At its heart is the question of just how concentrated our naval

power should be, whether it makes sense to rely as much as we do on a relatively small

number of immensely powerful, cutting-edge weapons platforms. Some voices, both in

and out of the Navy, are arguing that it needs, in essence, to spread itself thinner, to rely

less on the might of its aircraft carrier groups and to field instead a fleet of smaller, faster,

cheaper ships.

The worry is that, despite its unquestioned preeminence on the high seas, the American

Navy may not be equipped to protect us from some of the smaller scale but still lethal

maritime threats we face. Piracy is one of them, but it's hardly the most dangerous:

seaborne terrorism, nuclear proliferation, drug smuggling, and human trafficking are

others. Almost all of them have taken on a new urgency as the seas grow more crowded,

and at a time when military planners have to worry as much about stateless threats as

more traditional opponents. And in a climate in which the Pentagon budget the Obama

administration proposed two weeks ago seeks to shift billions of dollars from the

development of big-ticket weapons systems to the unmanned drones, special-forces

teams, and other measures vital to counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the

pressure on the Navy to change is only likely to grow.

"Terrorism, insurgencies, eight years after 9/11, the US Navy is still not built and

equipped and trained to deal with them," argues John Patch, a retired Navy commander

now teaching at the Army War College. "They don't have a hammer to hit this nail."

Within military circles, there is a sense that the Navy, traditionally the most conservative

of the services, is playing catch-up. But it has started to make changes, commissioning

smaller warships meant to operate in coastal regions, developing new submarines (and

retrofitting some old ones) to deliver SEAL teams to potential hot spots, using aerial

drones to gather intelligence and experimenting with unmanned patrol boats, and

ramping up a program that gives young officers intensive training in the history, politics,

and culture of the countries to which they will be deployed.

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Some officers and experts, however, caution that, alarming as they may seem, irregular

threats should not be the Navy's primary concern, and focusing too much on them may in

the end distract from larger-scale developments with global implications - the fast-

growing Chinese navy, for example, and the tensions it is creating in the Indian and

Western Pacific Oceans.

Still, finding the right mix of responses for a grab bag of dangers is not a new problem for

the US Navy. And in facing today's asymmetric threats, it can draw on a tradition of

irregular warfare that stretches back - through the riverine patrols of Vietnam, the PT

boats of World War II, and the expeditionary force that quashed the Philippine

independence movement a century ago - all the way to the Navy's campaign in the early

years of the Republic against the North African Barbary pirates.

The Navy has long fought in the "irregular environment," says Rear Admiral Philip H.

Greene Jr., director of the Navy Irregular Warfare Office. "We have a legacy of

engagement, and we're very proud of the mix of forces that we now can bring into this

environment."

Perhaps nowhere is American military dominance clearer than in its Navy. As large as the

13 next largest navies combined, it boasts 11 aircraft carriers to Russia's one - the Chinese

navy, despite its rapid recent growth, has none. While most nations' navies restrict

themselves to patrolling territorial waters, the American Navy rules the open seas,

steaming forth from bases around the globe.

The size and structure of the Navy are legacies of the Cold War. Overwhelming naval

power, American strategists thought, was vital to countering the superiority of Soviet

ground forces in Europe - in theory it would allow the United States and its NATO allies

not only to overwhelm the far smaller Soviet navy, but to take the fight to the Soviet

homeland with carrier-based planes. At the same time, our fleet of nuclear-missile-armed

submarines wandered the world's oceans to ensure that even a devastating nuclear attack

on the United States wouldn't wipe out our ability to respond in kind.

This mission was offensive, rather than defensive, and left little room for smaller seaborne

threats, even if those threats were aimed at the Navy itself. Stephen Flynn, a national

security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, served as a Coast Guard patrol boat

captain in the 1980s, and recalls being called in to guard a guided-missile cruiser in

Norfolk harbor when the Navy was worried about a potential terrorist attack on the vessel.

"They were asking me how I was going to protect the Navy," he says.

But the Navy's attitude changed with the 2000 Al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole in the

Yemeni port of Aden, when two suicide bombers in a skiff full of explosives blew a hole in

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the hull of the American destroyer. The Navy instituted a "force protection" training

program for sailors, teaching them to use small arms and chase down shipboard

intruders. Ship defenses that had been focused on missiles, torpedoes, and aerial attack

were augmented with weapons to take out smaller, close-in threats. In particular, the

Close-in-Weapon-System, a robot-guided Gatling gun installed on most American ships to

shoot down missiles and attacking aircraft, was modified to take out incoming watercraft

as well.

In the years since, other fighting forces have helped perfect the art of asymmetric naval

warfare. While the Tamil Tigers are today near defeat, for years they inflicted heavy losses

on the Sri Lankan navy with a fleet of fishing trawlers and freighters, and speedboats used

in suicide attacks. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, has

wreaked havoc on the Nigerian oil industry with a ragtag flotilla of small craft, crippling

offshore oil platforms, blowing up pipelines, and kidnapping and killing oil company

employees and Nigerian soldiers.

The Iranian navy has built much of its fleet around what naval strategists call "swarming

tactics," employing loose packs of light, fast boats that quickly converge on larger ships in

sneak attacks. And in a massive 2002 war game that pitted an unnamed rogue Persian

Gulf military "Red Team" against the US fleet, the Red Team, led by a retired Marine

lieutenant general named Paul Van Riper, was able to sink 16 US vessels - including an

aircraft carrier - in a matter of minutes using coordinated attacks of swarming small craft

and cruise missiles.

The US Navy has taken steps to respond to these sorts of threats. It is developing what it

calls the Littoral Combat Ship, a fast craft a third of the size of a destroyer meant to

operate in the near-shore waters where irregular navies usually are, and with the capacity

to carry and put ashore dozens of Humvees full of troops. Like many US Navy programs,

it has been plagued by cost overruns, but in his 2010 Pentagon budget recommendations

Defense Secretary Gates ordered three of the ships and set the goal of eventually buying

55.

And, as the Somali pirate hostage standoff drove home, among the best assets the Navy

has in asymmetric situations are the SEALs. Founded by President Kennedy as the Navy's

unconventional warfare and clandestine arm, they got their start carrying out

counterinsurgency missions in Vietnam and have become perhaps the best known of the

military's special operations forces. And while today they often operate far from water -

tracking Taliban leaders in the mountains of Afghanistan, among other missions - the

Navy has in recent years been working to find ways to better incorporate them into naval

missions.

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The new Virginia class nuclear submarine, for example, has the capability to stealthily

deploy SEAL and other special-forces teams using a small sub piggybacked onto it, and

some older Ohio class submarines have been retrofitted with a similar capability. The

number of SEALs is set to grow in coming years, and the Marines, too, are expanding their

special-forces ranks.

Seeing the success of drones in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Navy has also begun deploying

its own - a drone launched from the USS Bainbridge destroyer gathered crucial

intelligence during the Somali pirate’s standoff.

The Navy is also testing unmanned boats as a possible solution to the problem of how to

patrol vast stretches of water like the ocean off Somalia.

Navy officials are also quick to point to their efforts to work collaboratively with the other

American maritime branches like the Coast Guard, with its expertise at boarding ships

and interdicting smugglers. Rear Admiral Greene emphasizes efforts to reach out to local

governments and navies in areas of concern like the Gulf of Guinea, to take advantage of

local knowledge and to try to help address the political roots of regional instability. To

further facilitate these collaborations, the Navy has greatly expanded its Foreign Area

Officers program, which gives young officers an intensive education in the language,

politics, and cultures of countries to which they will be posted.

Still, those naval scholars and officers most concerned about asymmetric threats see these

changes as little better than a face lift. The Littoral Combat Ship may be smaller and

cheaper than a destroyer, but it's still a large and very expensive ship - too big to be

maneuverable in a truly littoral (i.e. near-shore) environment and probably too expensive

for the Navy to be able to afford more than a few dozen. A better solution, argues Milan

Vego, a professor of operations at the Naval War College, would be to take that money and

spend it on a larger fleet of smaller, simpler ships - lightweight corvette warships, for

example, and patrol boats that are updated versions of the Swift Boats that plied the rivers

and deltas of Vietnam. That way the Navy could be in more places at any one time, which

makes sense in a world in which many threats are diffuse and individually weak rather

than concentrated and powerful.

"We have too few ships, and the ships are too big," Vego says.

Some have suggested reshaping the organizational structure of the Navy to take better

advantage of these smaller ships and the tasks they're suited for. In an article in the

current issue of Proceedings, a magazine put out by the US Naval Institute, a Navy

commander and historian named Henry Hendrix argues that the Navy should no longer

be oriented around its mammoth aircraft carriers, which he argues are of limited

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usefulness, enormously expensive, and vulnerable to the types of torpedoes and missiles

smaller navies increasingly possess.

Instead, he proposes creating a new category of warship group called the Influence

Squadron that would combine two transport ships and a destroyer with a Littoral Combat

Ship, a patrol boat, and the M80 Stiletto, an even smaller, highly maneuverable craft. The

squadrons would patrol the world's coastlines, chasing pirates, interdicting arms

smugglers, and carrying out the Navy's traditional public relations task of providing a

highly visible reminder of the reach and ubiquity of American sea power.

Such a change would also demand a basic shift in thinking among naval officers, argues

Martin Murphy, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Long accustomed to the freedom of maneuver and broad buffer that comes with operating

in open water, much naval doctrine isn't well suited to the messiness of irregular coastal

fighting. The sheer cost of the ships that make up much of the fleet, Murphy adds, have

made leaders reluctant to put them in situations where they might be lost or damaged.

To operate in the coastal environs where irregular threats tend to cluster, officers and

strategists would have to grow more comfortable with the uncertainties that entails.

"In shallow water, there are plenty of obstacles, and surprise and deception are much

easier to deploy against a ship. Electronic sensors are not likely to be as effective," he says.

"It requires a different attitude about risk."

Because of the cost of any warship and the length of its lifetime in service, changes like

those Vego and Hendrix propose would be long-lasting. And some thinkers in the Navy

are reluctant to fundamentally reshape the force to face problems that may prove

ephemeral or immune to military solutions.

Others worry that an undue focus on asymmetric threats could obscure other increasingly

symmetrical threats. "I also think we've got to keep focus on the big picture," says Ron

Christenson, a retired rear admiral who's now an executive at Lockheed Martin. And the

big picture, he and others argue, is China.

"They're announcing they're going to go big, with submarines, aircraft carriers, and long-

range missiles," he says. "And that threatens only one major power in the world, and

that's us."

Drake Bennett is the staff writer for Ideas. E-mail drbennett@globe.com.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

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Narcotics Trafficking, Transnational Crime and Terrorism are all interrelated activities.

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ANNEXES

Attached to this paper are two documents that further establish the requirement for Seawolf and

offer a clear insight into the global market for sales of Seawolf.

1. Maritime Security Operation: The French Perspective Oudot de Dainville is Chief of the French Naval Staff

2. Military Offsets & In-country Industrialization Market Insight Top 20 Military Offsets

Markets

Dominik Kimla – Industry Analyst

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company.

US: +44 (0) 20 7343 8383 • enquiries@frost.com • www.frost.com