Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF) 2010 Ship Systems for Seabasing Missions

摘要

Present day maritime prepositioning combines the advantages of sealift capacity and endurance with airlift speed to deploy a Marine Corps Air and Ground Task Force (MAGTF) with 30-days supply to an objective area. However, the ships of the current Maritime Prepositioned Force are basically floating warehouses with the ability to conduct only administrative offloads in port or in-stream. In addition, the current squadrons of MPF ships are scheduled for lease renewal or replacement beginning in 2009. Their replacements should take advantage of design innovation to provide more robust and versatile capabilities. These significantly enhanced capabilities and the concepts of operation they support must be well-suited to meet the demands of the national military strategy in the 21st century. In order to achieve these capabilities, numerous specific innovations in ships, equipment and operations are needed. A concept design of the MPF 2010 ship was developed under the auspices of a project sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and directed by the Center of Naval Analysis (CNA). The innovative design aspects proposed for the design are discussed in this paper. This paper characterizes the various ship configurations, cargo handling systems, and ship-interface integration techniques incorporated in the MPF 2010 concept design, using the ship as a defined platform to demonstrate the feasibility and operability of the various innovative cargo handling and load-out interface systems proposed. Each of these systems has been studied and evaluated from a concept design perspective and no advanced or complex technologies have been found to be necessary or advantageous. It is concluded that the MPF 2010 concept design proves the feasibility and viability of achieving the seabase mission requirements of the Marine Corps for the military strategy of twenty-first century. However, it is recognized that further design analyses, including analyses of the economics of the total ship systems, need to be conducted within the context of an evolving mission requirement.