https://www.defensenews.com/na...n-it-even-get-there/

The US Army is preparing to fight in Europe, but can it even get there?


WASHINGTON — With Russia’s reemergence as a menace in Europe, the U.S. Army has been laying the foundations to fight once again on the continent it defended through most of the 20th century. But if war were to break out tomorrow, the U.S. military could be hard-pressed to move the number of tanks, heavy guns and equipment needed to face off with Russian forces.

And even if the Army could get there in numbers, then the real problems would start: how would the U.S. sustain them?

The U.S. sealift capacity — the ships that would ultimately be used to transport Army equipment from the states to Europe or Asia — is orders of magnitude smaller than it was during World War II. Combine that with the fact that the commercial shipbuilding industry in the U.S. is all but gone, and the U.S. can’t launch the kind of massive buildup of logistics ships it undertook during wartime decades ago.

Among the ships the country has for sealift and logistics forces, the Government Accountability Office has found a steady increase in mission-limiting equipment failures, which raises questions about how many might actually be available if the balloon goes up.

The ships the U.S. counts among its ready stock available for a large-scale contingency are 46 ships in the Ready Reserve Force, 15 ships in the Military Sealift Command surge force, and roughly 60 U.S.-flagged commercial ships in the Maritime Security Program available to the military in a crisis,

The 46 Ready Reserve Force ships, overseen by the Maritime Administration, are old and rapidly approaching the end of their hull life, as are many of the senior engineers who are still qualified and able to work on the aging steam propulsion plants.

This is setting up a struggle to get more funding into sealift as the Defense Department realigns itself for the potential of largescale combat operations after 17 years focused on small wars.

Spotlight on logistics

The decline of U.S. surge capacity has been raising alarm bells in Washington as the National security structure comes to grips with facing dual threats from China and Russia, and has spurred efforts in Congress to try and get the Navy moving on a new class of logistics ship — also suggesting a look on the open market for used commercial ships to bridge the modernization gap.

But the list of issues the Ready Reserve Force faces in the meantime is ponderous. And solving them is going to mean the Navy, on the hook for the funding, will have to spend a lot of money on ships that largely stay in port during anything but national emergencies. This at a time that the Navy is trying to buy a new class of ballistic missile submarines, frigates and a new large surface combatant.

Shaking the dust off its long-range logistics plans has been a priority in the Army. A recent Navy report to Congress from March estimated that about 90 percent of all equipment used by the Army and Marine Corps in a major contingency would be transported by sea and the Army has been practicing moving large numbers of troops and equipment to Europe.

In 2017, the Army deployed two heavy Armored Brigade Combat Teams to Europe back-to-back, including their state-side heavy equipment, and is looking to move even larger groups in the future. But if the Army is to get in any large-scale fight in Europe, it has to start thinking big, said Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and analyst with consulting firm The Telemus Group.

“The American people far too often seem to believe that we could fly everything we needed over to Europe but that’s just not the case,” Hendrix said. “We’ve been practicing with Brigade Combat Teams but if we needed to respond to a large-scale contingency with Russia, you’d be looking at the need to move a corps — two or three divisions.”

Goddamned steam

Of the 46 ships in the ready reserve force, which combined with Military Sealift Command’s 15 roll-on/roll-off container ships makes up the U.S. surge fleet, 24 are steam operated. Steam is largely obsolete in the commercial world that the U.S. relies upon to keep its emergency stock of trained mariners employed and in seagoing careers. And the hulls themselves are rapidly approaching the end of their useful service life.

“The average age of this fleet is 43 years,” said the maritime administrator, retired Rear Adm. Mark Buzby, in a recent interview. “They are some old girls that have served well. They aren’t commercially viable anymore but they are militarily useful because of their configuration, deck strength, height of their hulls that can take large equipment that wouldn’t fit in commercial designs.”

Of the 46 ships in his reserve force, about 23 or 24 need urgent attention, Buzby said. The Navy has a plan that includes a mash-up of service-life extensions, new-build replacements (the most expensive option) and buying used ships from the commercial market that can measure up to the task. But a used ship could cost anywhere from $75 to $100 million, even before the needed retrofitting and modernization bill that would accompany such a purchase, he said. A Navy estimate found that some ships couple be purchased and repurposed for more like $30 million.

Related to the issues of recapitalization are a heap of personnel issues. A recent report to Congress from the Maritime Administration estimated that among active mariners the agency would have just barely enough personnel to man the reserve force up front, and if they needed to start rotating crews during sustained operations, the numbers quickly fall short.

The Maritime Administration, part of the Department of Transportation, estimates it has 11,768 qualified mariners with unlimited credentials available to crew the Ready Reserve Force, a number that just barely exceeds the needed total of 11,678 to operate both the reserve and commercial fleets at the same time.

But that comes with a big catch: this service is entirely voluntary.

“Maritime Workforce Working Group estimates that there are sufficient mariners working in the industry to activate the surge fleet if the entire pool of qualified United States citizen mariners identified by MWWG are available and willing to sail when required,” the report reads. “This assumption is of paramount importance given the voluntary nature of mariner service.”

Furthermore that number is just what it would take to activate the ships and operate them for a little while. If the nation needed to sustain a largescale effort, it would soon begin to falter.

“We are about 1,800 mariners short for any kind of long-term sustainment effort,” Buzby said. “We believe we have enough today to activate all the ships we would need to activate … But anything less than an all-of-nation effort … where everyone who went out to sea, stayed at sea, we start to run short of people as we rotate.”

And inside that pool of mariners, there is a growing issue forced on the Ready Reserve by its steam plants.

All junior engineers come out of training certified to work on steam plants, but the opportunities to actually work on steam are limited to non-existent in the commercial sector. That means most of the operational experience junior engineers get in their day jobs is with more modern diesel systems unless they are actually working for either Military Sealift Command or Ready Reserve Force, opportunities which are of course limited.

Some issues are being addressed by doubling up on engineers when the steam ships are operating to get the hours they need in to stay qualified, but the net result of the problem is that there are lots of junior steam plant engineers and a big group of greybeards, and few in between.

“Most of my senior steam engineers are in their 50s,” Buzby said. “There is a whole block of them who came up when there still was a lot of steam ships, but they’re all going to be retiring soon.”

Congress stepping in

It’s a problem that Congress and the military, with little fanfare, are starting to focus on.

In the 2018 and 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress freed up authorization for the Defense Department to buy up to seven commercial ships, built anywhere in the world, that could recapitalize the Ready Reserve Force.

The kicker, however, is that Congress wants the secretary of the Navy, prior to purchasing more than two of the new ships, to submit a plan for a new class of new-build sealift ships.

“In order to procure more than two such vessels, the secretary would need to certify that the U.S. Navy has initiated an acquisition strategy for the construction of no fewer than 10 new sealift vessels, with the lead ship anticipated to be delivered by not later than 2026,” according to the explanatory statement released by Congress.

The 2019 NDAA also requires the Navy to submit a business case analysis for getting the Ready Reserve recapitalized.

Ultimately if the U.S. is serious about great power competition, it has to get serious about its logistics fleet, said Hendrix.

“It is a growing strategic problem we are facing right now,” Hendrix said. “We don’t have the capacity for great power competition if we don’t have the enabling force — logistics trains and sealift — we need to sustain operations on that scale.”

I thought the US had switched to focusing primarily on prepositioning equipment in Europe. Hence the large stockpiles of vehicles, supplies, and weaponry around the continent.

This helps eliminate the need to bring in as much of the equipment via ships... As long as we can fly in the troops to man it, much of the stuff they need is already waiting over there.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I thought the US had switched to focusing primarily on prepositioning equipment in Europe. Hence the large stockpiles of vehicles, supplies, and weaponry around the continent.

This helps eliminate the need to bring in as much of the equipment via ships... As long as we can fly in the troops to man it, much of the stuff they need is already waiting over there.

I recall reading that our armored division in Europe was brought back home. Perhaps im remembering that wrong.

We do have pre-positioned equipment....but it can never be what would be required for a near-peer major conflict.

We hit them with overwhelming air-power and limited ground assets to secure a foothold, establish ports and airfields and give a few weeks time for the pre-po equipment then the 1st (of the) Armored Div to arrive. That will secure a foothold, but unless we have all these ships loaded and steaming with a corps, we'll get bogged down and maybe tossed out on our asses.

Great article, I like how they mentioned most people think we can just fly it all.

How many M1 tanks can a C-17 fly?
How many Bradleys?

Assuming the soldiers, gear, and other rolling stock fit in the same planes with the armor (it won't), given the above, how many C-17s to lift an Armor Brigade?

Bonus question: how many C-17s do we have?

About 8-10 years ago the Army had pulled a lot of tanks out of Europe. The ones that were left were some of the oldest ones in the fleet (I had heard it was down to a couple hundred). Then 4 or so years ago they started pumping tanks back into Europe. Some of the newest ones in the fleet.

Definitely circling back around to keeping some heavy forces over there.

quote:

How many M1 tanks can a C-17 fly?

I'm going with one Alex.

Why Europe....like Putin is going to roll into Poland

That being said our Merchant Marine is no where near prepared and has been left to rot.

But seriously....why is Russia the priority over China? Russia is a Regional power...nothing more.

Europe (as a whole) has a ~1.1M active military contingent ....why are we worried?

It’s time for Europe to provide security for themselves. Maybe the hordes of young muslim male refugees will help defend their new homes from the russkies.

And only two Tanks can be hauled in a C5 Galaxy, fwiw.

Operating with old equipment? Check out the USCG.

quote:

Originally posted by 46and2:
And only two Tanks can be hauled in a C5 Galaxy, fwiw.

My understanding was the C5 could only realistically handle 1x M1 Abrams due to weight.

In any case, an Armor Brigade has 180 armor vehicles (half tanks, half Brads) and at 1 tank per AC and 3 Bradleys per...we ain't airlifting much. That doesn't cover the artillery, engineer, and sustainment battalions either (though I'm infantry I didn't mention them...we're easy to fly around...they sometimes don't even bother to land ).

We can strike a shithole country fast and hard, but a sustained fight takes a big build up.

EDIT: Another thing about Pre-Po gear. It all has to be stored and maintained and that is all "just in case" gear not in units being trained with, so you'd need double the high cost tanks etc....or start pre-positioning units all over the world again.

quote:

But seriously....why is Russia the priority over China? Russia is a Regional power...nothing more.

The Communist Chinese have shown much better judgement - even impulse control - than Putin. They also have a viable economic and influence-building strategy, which means they're less apt to resort to force to get what they want.

quote:

Originally posted by Deqlyn:

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I thought the US had switched to focusing primarily on prepositioning equipment in Europe. Hence the large stockpiles of vehicles, supplies, and weaponry around the continent.

This helps eliminate the need to bring in as much of the equipment via ships... As long as we can fly in the troops to man it, much of the stuff they need is already waiting over there.

I recall reading that our armored division in Europe was brought back home. Perhaps im remembering that wrong.

No, you’re right. They more or less shut down graff (shit hole training area in a shit hole part of Germany) they also reduced the us military foot print and consolidated things and brought a bunch more stuff to the Kaiserslautern area (near ramstein air base)
Graff was where a bunch of armored units were. It’s still used for training but when I left in ‘12 they were starting the draw down

Two of our Tanks are *just* within the hauling capacity of a C5:

Nice pic! I wonder what kind fuel range it had with that load? I’ve only flown them with a few helos and us “crunchies” inside.

I dunno. Back when I was in (Gulf War) my walking around numbers were 62tons for a dry M1, 65tons combat loaded, so two bone dry tanks is damn near 100% at the C5 capacity.

But I've not flown in one like that.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: 46and2,

quote:

Originally posted by Strambo:

Bonus question: how many C-17s do we have?

C-17's are small and short range; they don't go far without an airborne drink.

The majority of the US airlift isn't handled by the US military, but by the civil reserve aircraft fleet (CRAF) carriers, with the bulk of the logistical long range support in civil chartered aircraft.

So lets recall WWII and how close the German U-boat fleet (Operation Drumbeat) came to crippling us during the early stages of the war. Given the advanced capability of modern submarines now have, as well as modern aircraft, how practical (or survivable) would a sealift be?

If we are planning on having time to fly our tanks, IFV's, and ground troops over to the area one plane at a time, we have already lost.

quote:

Originally posted by limblessbiff:

quote:

Originally posted by Deqlyn:

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I thought the US had switched to focusing primarily on prepositioning equipment in Europe. Hence the large stockpiles of vehicles, supplies, and weaponry around the continent.

This helps eliminate the need to bring in as much of the equipment via ships... As long as we can fly in the troops to man it, much of the stuff they need is already waiting over there.

I recall reading that our armored division in Europe was brought back home. Perhaps im remembering that wrong.

No, you’re right. They more or less shut down graff (shit hole training area in a shit hole part of Germany) they also reduced the us military foot print and consolidated things and brought a bunch more stuff to the Kaiserslautern area (near ramstein air base)
Graff was where a bunch of armored units were. It’s still used for training but when I left in ‘12 they were starting the draw down

Graf is the one of the busiest ARMY bases in Europe. I've been in and around there since 2014. It hosts the Enduring European Equipment Set (Training set), multiple Schools and Joint/Combined exercises, plus some BDE and BN HQs. Additionally, it hosts rotational troops. Granted, it no longer has a Division HQ and troops stationed there, but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets some new residents soon.

quote:

Originally posted by 46and2:
I dunno. Back when I was in (Gulf War) my walking around numbers were 62tons for a dry M1, 65tons combat loaded, so two bone dry tanks is damn near 100% at the C5 capacity.

But I've not flown in one like that.

We've since added on more armor and electronics with the M1A2 version and other upgrades. The Wikipedia weigh of an M1A2 is 73 tons.