Problem for a diver underwater: remove a large nut solidly holding a damaged destroyer propeller onto its shaft. Solution: tighten a wrench onto the nut, and light off a small explosive charge fixed to the outer end of the wrench. The wrench goes around, and off comes the nut.
This is but one of thousands of examples of real ingenuity displayed by the operating forces in making mobile support work. Have we displayed equal ingenuity in refining the broader concepts of mobile support?
There are some who contend that since Civil Engineer A. C. Cunningham’s proposal in 1904 for a “movable base,” we have gone a long way indeed. Many specialized stores ships have been developed. We have ships that repair only electronics equipment and others that specialize in diesel engines. It has even been proposed that a recreation barge or “liberty ship” be added to the mobile support force. Tonnage of supplies transferred at sea has steadily increased. Many new devices for shipboard materials handling have been developed by the Naval Supply Research & Development Facility at Bayonne, New Jersey, and some have been installed on ships. And so on.
And then there are others who feel that mobile support is only a tool through which tactical pressure against the enemy can be sustained and that this tool does not meet the requirements of modern naval warfare. It requires too large a proportion of our limited men, money, and ships to operate. Worse, it is not sufficiently flexible or efficient to cope with the demands of a widely ranging, atomic-age Navy.
To clarify some of the issues involved is the basic aim of this paper. Perhaps we may also discover some desirable refinements in our practice of mobile support. Maintenance, personnel, hospitalization, etc. will be omitted from the discussion which follows, and this paper will be limited to the supply element of logistic support.
Systems for Logistic Support
To project the naval power of a nation against a distant enemy is not a simple matter. But to sustain that power in being is an even tougher problem. For brevity and levity one might say there are four major systems by which a fleet may be sustained in distant waters:
1. SPANISH—the system used by Columbus when he loaded his ships for the probable duration of the expedition and relied on providence for whatever, supplementary supplies could be obtained along the way.
2. BRITISH—a system characterized by reliance on strategically located, strongly fortified bases, flung across the world from Gibraltar to Singapore.
3. GERMAN—the system whereby specific supply ships are assigned to support specific combat ships, and are loaded accordingly in a “horizontal” manner—e.g., with a number of different types of stores.
4. AMERICAN—the system whereby supply ships are loaded in a “vertical” manner for the general use of all combat ships. Thus, one supply ship carries general stores, another ammunition, another electronics material, and so on.
For a number of sound reasons, the United States Navy must place major reliance on the “American” system of supply support when operating in distant waters. Within the framework of this fact, let us examine the basic concept or “model” of how our system works.
At the outset let it be stated that the mobile support force is only one link in a logistic chain. It receives supplies, stores them in the forward area, and delivers them to combat ships. One cannot design a proper mobile support force without carefully studying the endurance of the combat ships in various types of stores, without knowing the time it takes to replenish supplies from the United States or other rear area source, or without knowing the standard or level of support required by the military situation. An LST can be loaded to meet 90% of the electronics material needs of a very sizeable fleet provided customer ships carry their full allowance of repair parts aboard and do not try to fill allowance shortages from the LST, and provided the LST can be replenished from the United States on a regular thirty-day schedule with a known lead time of ninety days or so. Should any of the provisos be changed, a ship considerably larger (or smaller) than an LST would be required.
Here we come across a basic defect in our present mobile support planning. We have no way of accurately estimating the level of support most suited to a given military situation. And this is definitely not good. If it takes 2,000 men and ten ships in a mobile support force to fill 85% of the requisitions of a combat fleet; it could very easily take 4,000 men and twenty ships to raise the support level to 95%. Modern war is a war of scarcity. Would the fleet commander be wiser to insist on the 95% level, or wiser to accept the lower support level and use the extra men to man some additional destroyers or cruisers?
Is there a practical method of handling this problem? I think so. But it will first require a major change in our present thinking about levels of supply effectiveness.
When we say the mobile support force has a “90% gross supply effectiveness,” we mean that of every hundred demands made on it, ninety are filled immediately and the remaining ten either cancelled or sent back to the United States for later shipment as fleet freight. Obviously not each of the hundred demands is equally important from a military standpoint. We can do without canvas covers but not without gun barrels or recoil springs. One method of improving our present system would be to classify every item in the supply system by its relative military importance. The classification cannot be exact, will probably be rather inaccurate when initially made, and will be grossly inappropriate to many military situations. Nevertheless, it would be a long step forward if every item in the supply system were coded to indicated whether it were:
Essential, Important or Desirable from a military standpoint. An essential item might be one whose lack would result in an immediate impairment of combat effectiveness, such as a 5-inch shell, or a magnetron, or basic foodstuffs. Important items might be those with considerable military value, but which would either be replaced by an item on the essential list or else done without for some fixed period (say six months). Examples might be repair parts which could be readily fabricated in an emergency, or milk, or paints, or projection lamps for the motion picture machine. Desirable items would be the remaining, rather large, number of items in the supply system which—in a pinch—the fleet could do without indefinitely. Typical examples would be luxury ships store merchandise, desk blotters, the extensive sizes and shapes of screwdrivers, etc.
At present, an across-the-board supply effectiveness does not give us the greatest military return for our efforts. By classifying supplies as shown above, we can concentrate attention on the most important items and achieve a considerably greater military capability for a given amount of effort.
Furthermore, I have in mind an even more far reaching benefit to be derived from such a classification. There seems to be no logical reason why we cannot measure the loss of military capability that will result from any supply effectiveness of less than 100% in essential items. Lack of essential electronics items will result in inoperative equipments; lack of essential medical supplies will result in higher casualty rates. These things can be measured. They can be expressed in numbers. They can be presented in such a way that the fleet commander can realize that a 70% supply effectiveness in essential aviation items means that 6% of his aircraft are inoperative awaiting parts.
Such knowledge narrows the area of judgment considerably. Much more intelligent decisions can be made if the fleet commander can be told the cost in combat men and equipment of any given level of supply effectiveness. He can weigh this cost against men and equipment required by the mobile support force to achieve various levels of supply effectiveness and reach a rational decision as to what balance should be struck. There are advanced mathematical techniques which can be used to help make this decision.
For purposes of this paper, I have enormously simplified the actual problem of determining military value and military cost. The fact that the problem has been simplified does not make it insoluble, however. The fact of the matter is that it is solved every day by every military commander, usually in an intuitive manner that may or may not give the best answer. Modern war undoubtedly demands optimum use of our resources. We must therefore learn how to measure the military value of those resources and to weigh their military cost. The practical problems are great, and the road to knowledge untravelled. But travel it we must, sooner or later.
A Refinement from the German System
Returning to the model of the mobile support force, we see that it serves as only one unit in a rather complex logistic system. On the opposite page is sketched the system as it now exists in the Western Pacific. Question: are the ships in the mobile force properly designed to perform their function in this logistic system? I believe that, unfortunately, they are not.
The function of the force is quite simply to receive supplies, store them, and later transfer them to combat ships. None of our supply ships is efficiently designed for these functions. The installation of materials handling gear afloat has lagged behind our knowledge of what should be done. When one sees paint stored behind wooden shoring, men handling boxes by hand up and down narrow passageways and ladders, and reefer crews working all night to make ready for a replenishment at sea the next day, it is small wonder that reenlistment rates are low and frustration sets in. There is no reason why materials cannot be handled as easily and efficiently afloat as they are ashore. We need clear, unobstructed spaces below deck—spaces that are designed as storerooms rather than as inconvenient crannies. We need lightweight, non-rusting bins and drawers of an aviation design that can be altered in size or shape at the twist of a storekeeper’s hand and without the necessity for screwdrivers or other tools. Above all, we need horizontal and vertical conveyors to stop the terrific waste of man-hours which now goes into moving boxes in the same way that Chinese coolies move them. An excellent summary of what we need to do in improving fleet issue ships was presented last year in this magazine.1 It is time we took a cold, hard look at our reasons for proceeding so slowly in doing anything about this situation.
Better storage and materials handling equipment will economize on manpower and improve our rate of underway transfer, but will do nothing about a more fundamental problem. Basically, mobile replenishment ships serve as delivery wagons. They should be designed as such. They need speed to get to the combat ships in a hurry when needed. They need clear decks to handle stores just as a delivery truck needs an unobstructed bed. They need to transfer stores to combat ships with gear that is far more rapid and efficient than anything we have yet installed afloat. And perhaps most important, they need to be loaded so as to provide a reservoir of the proper size in the logistic system. It is not a sensible thing to put 2,500 measurement tons of general stores on a ship which will issue only 200 measurement tons a month. It is not a sensible thing to send an AE carrying 3,600 tons out on a replenishment operation when all it will issue is 300 tons. In short, we don’t need a huge truck to deliver a two-pound package, and we don’t need a warehouse full of material to run a corner grocery.
Although the calculations are too extensive to give here, it can be shown that under practically any set of assumptions regarding lead time, composition of combat forces, tempo of warfare, and so on that one cares to make, we could realize large savings by replacing our existing AE’s, AO’s and AF’s with one species of the so-called “one stop replenishment ships”—AOR’S loaded with about 10^% food, 21% ammunition, and 685% petroleum products. Suitable AOR’s could be obtained by conversion of the Mispillion class fleet oiler’s or by new construction. Seventeen AOR’s could replace 27 conventional ships under one set of assumptions; 22 could replace 39 conventional ships under another set of assumptions; and so on.
Similarly the use of separate AKS(T) types carrying electronics, ordnance, and ships parts materials is not justified by the logistic facts. These parts can and should be carried on our AKS’s.
In summary, supplies in a mobile support force should be carried in only two ship types: AOR’s with food, oil, and ammunition, and AKS’s with all other material. This proposal will reduce the number of ships and men we need to do the job. It will speed up underway replenishment. Most important, it will give us a logistic flexibility which is considerably greater than we now have. In modern warfare this additional flexibility could very easily spell the difference in our capability of sustaining hunter-killer groups ranging over thousands of miles of ocean and carrier task forces which can devote only a few precious hours to replenishment.
Thus we incorporate the very desirable “horizontal” loading concept of the German system into our mobile support operations. Let us next turn to the question of whether we should incorporate an element of the Spanish system into our operations.
A Refinement from the Spanish System
To sustain operations, a large combat ship must carry in stock upwards of 43,000 items (exclusive of aviation material). The quantity carried of any one item might be enough to last the ship two weeks, or it might be enough to last 200 years. Therefore, since any item might have to be replenished at any time, the mobile support force must provide back-up support for practically all of the 43,000.
A more rational logistic system would be to load each combat ship with enough of the small cube items to last between shipyard overhauls, and to replenish only the large cube items for the mobile support forces.
To gain an idea of the savings possible, let’s take a typical CVE. She might carry in stock some 7,000 items of general stores. But some 81% of the space required for these stores is taken by a mere 190 bulky items. It should be feasible to load enough of the other 6,810 items to last from one shipyard overhaul to the next. Thus, the number of items we have to carry in the mobile support force can be significantly reduced. Not only do we make the mobile support force operations more efficient, but the entire Navy supply system benefits from the elimination of many thousands of requisitions for 25ff worth of material. This is because the small cube items are usually cheap. We replenish them much too frequently now.
It has been suggested that this concept of loading major combat ships be termed “endurance loading” to signify that the ships will require replenishment of only a few hundred items while deployed for wartime operations. Active efforts are being made at the present time to implement this concept. Eventually this desirable feature of the Spanish system of logistic support is incorporated into our own operations.
Minimization of British System Elements
Finally, a brief comment on the use of bases. Unlike the British, we do not have a worldwide system of strongly fortified naval bases. This puts our mobile support concept into more jeopardy than might be thought.
The requirements of a fast carrier task force for both oil and ammunition are very large—so large that it is often impractical to store afloat the necessary back-up stocks. The advent of atomic-powered carriers may make the oil situation worse rather than better, since DD’s will presumably no longer be able to fuel from the carriers and hence will require more frequent replenishment by the mobile support force. The advent of nuclear weapons may help ease the ammunition situation, but it seems unlikely to be of great assistance since we will probably also require conventional ammunition for a long time to come.
Thus we face the fact that we must either provide storage ashore for oil and ammunition in the immediate vicinity of combat operations, or else we must set up such a long logistic pipeline to some remote rear base that we lose the flexibility so necessary to cope with the thousand and one unforeseen requirements that arise without notice in war.
There are some who would say at this point, “If you need to store oil and ammunition ashore, you need a base. And if you have a base, you might as well store everything ashore and reduce the number of ships in the mobile force to the minimum necessary to deliver supplies.”
This line of reasoning will give rise to what Rear Admiral Henry Eccles has so aptly named the “logistic snowball.” It is fantastic how 200 men put ashore to tend warehouses will require cooks, who in turn will require galleys and men to build them, who in turn will require vehicles and equipment and men to repair them, and so on. As an example, we have one naval station now which could undoubtedly carry out its mission with only a couple of hundred men—if these men did not have to be fed and housed, if they did not have their dependents with them, if they had no Navy Exchange facilities, and so on. As it is, the Navy must support more than 2,500 people at this station—some ten times the number which a naive logistician might estimate to be required for its mission.
It is clear that the most economical, and most flexible, logistic support system is one which will reduce to a minimum our reliance on bases. This minimum presently appears to be use of shore facilities for storage of limited amounts of ammunition and petroleum products. The concepts of “minimum” and “limited” should be stringently enforced, for it is all too easy to put a movie exchange ashore, then a warehouse to handle fleet freight, then a receiving barracks, and so on, until we have on our hands a major base which is large enough to offer a tempting target to the enemy, which drains thousands of men away from more useful military tasks, and which will provide a major roll-up problem when it comes time to move on to another theater of war.
Conclusion
In summary, it appears that the American system of logistic support is a good one. It could be improved by a better understanding of the role played by the mobile support force and by redesigning the supply ships in this force to carry out their role as only one specific link in a long and complex logistic chain.
More specifically, we should use endurance loading of our combat ships so that they will need only a few items while deployed. We should determine which of the items are essential, which important, and which merely desirable. We need a method of determining what level of supply effectiveness is required for each of the three classes of items and allocate only enough ships and men to the mobile support force to meet that level of effectiveness. The large number of different types of supply ships in the mobile support force should be reduced to two only: AOR’s and AKS’s—and these ships should be designed from the keel up to carry out their mission efficiently. Finally, we should reduce our dependence on bases to the point where they function only to provide storage for limited amounts of ammunition and petroleum products which cannot be stored afloat.
These refinements in mobile support concepts and practice will result in a far more economical logistic support system and may well give us that extra margin of flexibility which could be crucial when the chips are down.
1. See “Mobile Support for Total War” by Captain Arthur F. Spring in the August, 1955 Proceedings.