JHSV Update

When the Spearhead class transports (Joint High Speed Vessel, JHSV; now referred to as Expeditionary Fast Transports, EPF) came into the Navy, ComNavOps severely criticized them for lacking any useful mission or purpose.  As you recall, the JHSV was intended to be a fast intra-theater transport and was to be operated by civilian crews under the Military Sealift Command.  Unfortunately, as reported by DOT&E, problems have plagued the class.[2]

 

Joint High Speed Vessel - No Mission, No Purpose, No Need

See the following posts for background information, issues, and concerns:

 

“JHSV”

 

“More JHSV”

 

“JHSV Update”

 

“Joint High Speed Vessel Missions”

 

DOT&E Report:  “Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV), Follow-on Operational Test and Evaluation (FOT&E) Report”

 

 

Now, some 10 years later, ComNavOps’ concerns about the lack of a mission have been validated. 

 

The twelve Spearhead Class Expeditionary Fast Transports (EPFs) currently in the battle fleet have enormous potential, but these small “theatre” transports have failed to capture the imagination of fleet sponsors. They’re not getting integrated into innovative day-to-day operations, and the Military Sealift Command hates the cost of maintaining these underutilized and poorly understood auxiliaries.[1]

 

Now, the Navy is quietly semi-retiring the vessels after less than ten years service.

 

Last year, two of the fast transports, the nine-year-old USNS Spearhead (T-EPF-1) and the seven-year-old USNS Fall River (T-EPF-4), were consigned effectively to the scrapyard, placed in an ignominious “Reduced Operating Status 45.” Reduced Operating Status 45—where the ship needs 45 days to get underway after an activation order—is the maximum amount of time a ship can be placed in reduced operating status and still remain “counted” as an active member of the battle fleet.

 

Rumors suggest that all the Spearhead Class Expeditionary Fast Transports outside of the yet-to-be-built medical variants may well be on the budget chopping block this year and consigned to storage status.[1]

 

This is, now, the third instance of the Navy [very] early retiring ships/classes that just a few years ago were claimed to be revolutionary and vital to the future of naval combat and dominance:

 

• LCS
• Mobile Landing Platform (MLP;  now referred to as Expeditionary Transfer Dock, ESD)
• Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV; now referred to as Expeditionary Fast Transports, EPF)

 

How can multiple ships/classes be so vital and then so useless in just a matter of a few years?  It all goes back to the complete lack of a Concept of Operations (CONOPS).  None of these classes had a CONOPS, none had a mission, and now they’re being dumped due to the lack of a mission.

 

How many times do I have to say it?  You can’t build a successful ship design without first developing a detailed CONOPS.

 

How many times can the Navy make the same mistake before they start paying attention to CONOPS before design?

 

How many abject failures can the Navy have before Congress starts removing Navy leaders?

 

 

 

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[1]Forbes website, “The 2023 Defense Budget May Sink More Navy Ships Than Pearl Harbor”, Craig Hooper, 22-Mar-2022,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/craighooper/2022/03/22/the-2023-defense-budget-may-sink-more-navy-ships-than-pearl-harbor/?sh=2318eab61fbe

 

[2]DOT&E, “Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV), Follow-on Operational Test and Evaluation (FOT&E) Report”, Sep-2015,

https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Science_and_Technology/16-F-0250_(REPORT)_Follow-On_Operational_Test_and_Evaluation_(FOT&E)_Report_on_the_Joint_High_Speed_Vessel_(JHSV).pdf

Joint High Speed Vessel Missions

As reported by the Pacific fleet commander’s website [1], the Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV [5]), USNS City of Bismarck, has been conducting training missions with partners in the Pacific region.  From the beginning, ComNavOps wondered what kind of combat useful mission a JHSV could perform and could never find a satisfactory answer (see, "JHSV" and "More JHSV" and "JHSV Update").  Well, with JHSV ships now actively serving, the question is being answered. 

 

Let’s see what kind of actual missions the ships are training for.  The current training mission, running from July of this year through December, is Koa Moana 21 which involves exercising with the Republic of Palau.  From the fleet commander’s website,

 

Koa Moana, which means “Ocean Warrior,” is designed to strengthen and enhance relationships between the United States and partner nations in the Indo-Pacific region, improve interoperability with local security establishments and serve as a humanitarian assistance survey team afloat in support of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command strategic and operational objectives. [1]

Okay, that was, I hope, just the usual buzzword garbage and doesn’t really indicate what the ship was doing.  Fortunately, the website provides a few more specifics:

 

Participants, like the USNS City of Bismarck crew, take part in exercise activities that enhance interoperability necessary during humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations. These include engineering projects on the island of Peleliu and the capital island, Babeldaob. Other capabilities exercised as part of Koa Moana include medical, maritime law enforcement and explosive ordnance disposal.

During one interagency law enforcement training event, the crew of USNS City of Bismarck, U.S. Marines and agents with the Palau Narcotics Enforcement Agency conducted training with a team of canine working dogs.

 

USNS City of Bismarck performed various other functions during Koa Moana, providing the Marines involved with a base of operations that includes berthing, flexible meal times, communications support, including secure communications, and working spaces for exercise planners. [1]

 

 

So, the exercise/training involves: 

• humanitarian assistance
• disaster relief
• engineering projects
• medical
• law enforcement,
• explosive ordnance disposal
• drug enforcement dogs
• berthing for non-crew members
• providing meals at flexible hours for non-crew members (take that, McDonalds!)
• communications
• rooms for planners

Um …      Where’s the combat training?  How is this helping the US Navy prepare for combat?

  

Now, I understand that the US military engages in peacetime activities that don’t involve combat – whether they should is a separate topic – but when the resources of a half year exercise involve no combat training one has to begin to question the wisdom of the effort.

JHSV

As a reminder, the JHSV was ?apparently? intended as an intra-theater, high speed transport.  I say ‘apparently’ because, like all Navy ships, it had no pre-design CONOPS that I could find.  Further, the high speed aspect is quite constrained.  From Wikipedia,

 

One disadvantage of the ship's design is instability in rough seas and at high speeds. At 10 knots in calm sea states, the hull can roll up to four degrees to each side, while conventional ships would roll very little, which would increase if the ship goes faster in rougher conditions, raising the possibility of seasickness. To achieve its top speed, the ship has to be traveling in waters not exceeding sea state 3 (waves up to 1.25 m (4.1 ft) high). At sea state 4 it can travel up to 15 knots, travel only 5 knots in sea state 5, and has to hold position in any sea state higher; while this might be seen as an operational limitation that can delay its arrival to port facilities, the ship was intended to operate closer to shore rather than in blue-water conditions. [2] [emphasis added]

 

Thus, in the open oceans of the Pacific theater, the high speed is something that is only sporadically available which is not exactly a sterling quality for an open ocean, intra-theater transport vessel.

 

Has the Navy built an entire ship class that has no combat value?  As ComNavOps noted when the JHSV program first began, it would appear so.  Even worse, it appears the Navy may have built an entire ship class with only limited peacetime use, as well.

 

This would seem to be another example of building a ship and then trying to find a use for it and, as we have seen with the Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB), it turns out that there is no use – at least, no combat use.  So, why are we building such vessels?  If something doesn’t enhance our combat capability we shouldn’t be touching it.

 

The JHSV is another useless, wasted ship class.  When will the Navy learn? 

 

 

 

 

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As a reminder, the Spearhead class has a range of 1,200 nautical miles and can transport up to 600 tons of troops and material.[3]  The JHSVs cost a little over $200M each.[4]

 

 

 

 

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[1]Commander, Pacific Fleet website, “Expeditionary fast transport ship supports Marines during Koa Moana”, Leslie Hull-Ryde, 9-Nov-2021

https://www.cpf.navy.mil/News/Article/2838387/expeditionary-fast-transport-ship-supports-marines-during-koa-moana/

 

[2]Wikipedia, “Spearhead-class expeditionary fast transport”, retrieved 9-Nov-2021,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spearhead-class_expeditionary_fast_transport

 

[3]USNI News website, “Low Cost Ship Options for U.S. Navy’s Drug War”, Sam LaGrone, 20-Mar-2013,

https://news.usni.org/2013/03/20/low-cost-ship-options-for-u-s-navys-drug-war

 

[4]Government Accountability Office, “Defense Acquisitions - Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs”, Mar 2012, p.93

 

[5]Since renamed expeditionary fast transport by the Navy in a public relations attempt to make everything ‘expeditionary’ without actually changing anything, so … T-EPF, but we’re going to stick with JHSV.

JHSV Update

The Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV) is a class of high speed intratheater transport that is being looked at for a variety of additional missions and tasks.  The DOT&E 2015 Annual Report offers a look at the use of the JHSV as transport to/from the Navy’s Mobile Landing Platform (MLP – essentially, the sea base).  Unfortunately, the JHSV was found to be unsuited for connecting with the MLP due to the JHSV’s ramp design limitations.

“JHSV interoperability with MLP (CCS) is not operationally effective since, by design (ramp limitation), it can only conduct vehicle transfers when conducted in sea states with significant wave heights of less than 0.1 meters (approximates a Sea State 1), which are normally found only in protected harbors.”

“JHSV is not operationally effective interfacing with MLP (CCS) for open-ocean, at-sea transfer of vehicles. The JHSV ramp cannot handle the small, but continual, relative movement of the two ships when moored skin-to-skin. Although vehicles were successfully transferred inside a protected harbor, transfer operations at-sea failed.”

More generally,

“The operational restriction of the JHSV’s Safe Operating Envelope (SOE) is a major limitation of the ship class that must be factored into all missions.”

The ships were built a bit too weak and significant bow damage has occurred due to higher sea states, forcing the Navy to strengthen and rebuild the bows of all the ships.  Still, the ship’s main asset, speed, will be subject to limitations.

“To utilize the speed capability of the ship, seas must not exceed Sea State 3 (significant wave height up to 1.25 meters). At Sea State 4 (significant wave height up to 2.5 meters), the ship must slow to 15 knots. At Sea State 5 (significant wave height up to 4 meters), the ship must slow to 5 knots. Above Sea State 5, the ship can only hold position and await calmer seas.”

Some Significant Limitations

The JHSV’s purpose and usefulness has always been questionable, in my mind, and the imposed limitations only add to that doubt.

JHSV - A Bit Short But Not Bad

ComNavOps has previously expressed doubt about the intended role of the JHSV (see, “JHSV”) and nothing has happened to change that.  That aside, the JHSV appears to be largely meeting its designed capabilities with a few notable exceptions.  Frankly, it’s a welcome relief to see a Navy shipbuilding program largely succeed even if the intended role is questionable.

The FY2013 DOT&E report (1) highlights a few shortcomings with a couple related to range being noteworthy.

“USNS Spearhead cannot make the required 23 knot, 4,700 nautical mile light ship self-deployment transit; current analysis shows a 682 nautical mile deficit assuming a 90 percent starting fuel load with an ending fuel load of 10,000 gallons.”

“It appears that USNS Spearhead cannot make the required 35 knot, 1,200 nautical mile, fully loaded (600 short tons) transit.”

“USNS Spearhead is roughly 12.5 short tons over the predicted outfitted weight.”

“The JHSV’s organic container load trailer is not effective for loading 20-foot long metal storage containers. During the IOT&E, the test team took five hours to connect the container load trailer with a storage container and failed to load it aboard the ship.”

On the plus side, the main functions of transporting cargo and personnel and supporting the personnel appear to have been fully achieved.  In short, the vessel appears to have generally met its design goals.  Kind of refreshing, actually, even though I remain doubtful about its usefulness!

(1) Director, Operational Test and Evaluation, FY 2013 Annual Report

More JHSV

Well, the JHSV topic generated more discussion than I anticipated!  Here’s a few follow up thoughts.

Relative to an amphibious transport or a cargo ship, the JHSV offers only a small capacity.  Its benefit lies in the ability to deliver its cargo to otherwise inaccessible ports and, debatably, its speed.  Whether there is a valid need to deliver cargo to marginally accessible ports in the rear of a combat zone is also debatable.  And, before anyone types out a response, whatever future uses the JHSV may be adapted for, the fact is that it cannot perform combat zone deliveries currently.

I can see a possible need for movement of cargo (men and equipment) from a larger ship to a marginally accessible port but it seems like a better option would be to design an actual cargo ship to do that.  In that regard, as a simple unloading vehicle, the need for high speed seems highly questionable.

Moving on, the origins of ship classes fascinate me.  Understanding the factors that lead to a ship class’ design is always highly informative and, yet, often lost in the subsequent discussions about the merits and costs of the class.

The LCS, for instance, originated not due to a perceived need for a littoral combat vessel but because the Navy was faced with the end of the Cold War, resulting budget cuts, and a perceived lack of mission.  In other words, the Navy was facing a very real possibility of becoming the neglected step-sister of the services.  In response, you may recall that the Navy commissioned several studies and papers to try to enumerate a role in the post-Cold War era and largely failed.  They then latched onto the concept of “littoral” (though that was a spurious concept as we’ve shown in previous posts) and used that to sell Congress on the need for a new vessel.  Hence, the LCS was born.  The Navy simply wanted hulls in the water (to ensure its slice of the budget pie) and didn’t really care what they looked like or could do.  They’d worry about that later.

By comparison, I have no idea what the origin of the JHSV was.  There was no compelling need spelled out by the Navy and I can see no other budgetary imperative.  If the need was so compelling, why did the Navy so readily downsize the class with little fuss or argument?  If the need wasn’t compelling, as I suspect, than what was the real impetus for the class?  If anyone has any thoughts on this, please share them.

JHSV

The Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV) is beginning to join the fleet and ComNavOps is beginning to wonder what these vessels will be used for.  The stated purpose is intratheater high speed transport of troops and vehicles.  Does this make sense? 

First, let’s take a quick look at the few specs that are available.

Class Size = 10 ships

Speed = 35 kts – 45 kts

Range = 1200 nm

Troop Capacity = 300 seated airline style or 100 in berths

Weight Capacity = 600 tons

Crew = 22 civilian mariners

Cost = $250M each, $2.5B program

Aviation = flight deck for a single medium helo, no hangar

So, back to our question.  How will this vessel be used and does it make sense?  Clearly, this is a non-combat vessel, built to commercial standards, and crewed by civilians.  Thus, the JHSV is not an amphibious assault vessel of any kind.  That leaves peacetime transport.  Do we have a pressing need for high speed transport of a relatively small number of troops during peacetime operations?  I’d be hard pressed to come up with a scenario where that was required. 



JHSV - What Purpose?



I suppose we could also consider its use in a wartime scenario where it operated far in the rear of the naval front lines and acted as a shuttle.  Again, though, is there a pressing need to quickly move 100 – 300 troops far in the rear of a battle zone?

I can see a use for the JHSV as a humanitarian aid vessel but that’s not really a Navy mission.  OK, actually it is an official mission but it shouldn’t be.  I’ll make that a topic for another day.

In short, I don’t see the pressing need for this ship.  Help me out, readers.  What demonstrated need does this vessel fill?