Joint team builds bridge to seabasing
Marine Corps News
Story Identification #: 2005520101413
Story by Cpl. J. Agg
MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. (May 19, 2005) -- A key piece of equipment for the Navy’s new high-speed vessel, the Joint Venture High Speed Vessel XI, was tested here for the first time May 10 at Marine Corps Air Facility Quantico by a joint team of Army, Navy and civilian scientists, engineers and program officers.
The viability of the Lightweight Modular Causeway System, a lightweight, inflatable bridge capable of transporting an M-1A1 Abrams main battle tank from the aft of the HSV up to 120 feet to a bare coastline, was successfully demonstrated, bringing the Navy/Marine Corps team one step closer to the operational concept of seabasing.
The successful LMCS demonstration at Quantico helped to make the Joint HSV, an 11,000-ton, aluminum-hulled catamaran with less than a 12-foot draft, an even more exciting prospect for the Marine Corps as an enabling technology for seabasing, said Lt. Col. Larry Ryder, United States Marine Corps High Speed Vessel program manager.
“This is much more than a logistics capability for us; it is an operational maneuver platform capability for the (Marine Air-Ground Task Force) commander,” said Ryder. “With this type of system, the ship will be able to come up and drop the causeway system in an area like this, where there is a shallow gradient and the ship can’t quite get the ramp ashore, and put tanks, (light armored vehicle) companies, and mobile (combat service support detachments) ashore in a place where the enemy wouldn’t expect them to be. It gives us tremendous operational flexibility.”
In addition to inserting troops and fighting vehicles, the LMCS will also facilitate force service support operations.
“On the logistics side, the same mentality holds,” said Ryder. “In order to deliver sustainment to the forces operating forward, we’re now able to get much closer to them. Instead of having to go into a developed, major port, we will be able to drop the supplies and equipment wherever it is beneficial to the operating force and not have them come back to where we are.”
The first LMCS prototype was built at a 1-3 scale and was demonstrated using a Bobcat S-130 Skid-Steer Loader to simulate the 60-ton M-1A1 Abrams main battle tank. During the demonstration, the LMCS was partially deflated to simulate combat damage from small arms and to show the stability of the system and its ability to carry heavy Marine Corps equipment under adverse conditions.
The LMCS is basically lightweight decking — currently steel, but possibly fiberglass or another composite material in the future — strapped across a series of highly durable, air-filled flotation devices, making the system much lighter than other current causeways and therefore much more suitable to the weight-sensitive HSV.
“The idea is that when this is deflated, unlike the current causeway that is 20-plus tons of steel per section, this will be less than 10 tons and will be compacted into the space of a 20-foot container so that we can put it on a lightweight, high-speed ship without impacting our ability to move Marines and their equipment in maneuver warfare,” said Ryder. “The HSV is very much like an aircraft as every pound you put aboard takes away from speed and payload and puts your draft down. We have to be sensitive to any system we put on the HSV so that we don’t take away from its performance.”
Ryder said the LMCS, if it proceeds as scheduled, will be ready to go when it completes testing and evaluation in 2010.
“If we get the funding, we can have (the LMCS) online when we get delivery of the (High-Speed Vessel) in fiscal year 2010,” said Ryder. “The capability this will give us, if we can get it fully fielded, is tremendous.”
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