In the Navy's practice, classes of vessels are known by the name and the letter-and-number designation of the first ship in a class. Today, five classes of amphibious warfare ships are in active service and one is under construction (for more details, see Summary Box 1):

• Tarawa class (LHA-1) amphibious assault ships were introduced in the late 1970s, combining the capabilities of several older types of amphibious ships into one. They are among the largest amphibious vessels, with a displacement of about 40,000 tons, and can carry 1,700 troops and large amounts of cargo and vehicles. They also have a docking well--a large opening and ramp to the sea in the back of the ship--to launch landing craft and amphibious vehicles. Each LHA carries an air wing comprising 30 CH-46 Sea Knight and CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters, as well as six AV-8B Harrier short takeoff and vertical landing jets. In its "sea control" configuration, an LHA can carry up to 20 Harrier aircraft and six helicopters (a more capable force than British aircraft carriers deployed during expeditionary operations in the Falklands War). Tarawa class LHAs are now about 26 years old, on average. Although they have been modernized with new combat systems and other equipment during their service lives, they have gotten heavier. That increased weight threatens to destabilize the ships' center of gravity, making further improvements virtually impossible.
  
  
• Wasp class (LHD-1) amphibious assault ships are based on a modified design of the Tarawa class LHAs. They carry a similar number of troops but more cargo and fewer vehicles. However, they have more space to support aircraft operations as well as a redesigned docking well that can accommodate more landing craft than the LHAs can. They also have better defensive capabilities than LHAs. The average age of Wasp class LHDs is 9; given their intended service life, those ships will be a core component of the amphibious warfare fleet for the next quarter century. Seven LHDs are operating with the fleet and an eighth is under construction. That ship (LHD-8) is intended to replace the Belleau Wood LHA, which is scheduled for retirement in 2007. Unlike the other ships in its class, the LHD-8 will have gas turbines and a hybrid electric propulsion system instead of being driven by steam.
  
  
• Austin class (LPD-4) amphibious transport docks are the oldest ships in the amphibious warfare force, with an average age of about 36. They are less than half the size of the Tarawa class LHAs and Wasp class LHDs, displacing about 17,000 tons. Austin class LPDs can carry about 800 troops, a substantial amount of cargo, and a moderate number of vehicles. They also have a docking well to launch landing craft and amphibious vehicles. The principal difference between these amphibious transport docks and the similar dock landing ships (described below) is that the transport docks have a permanent flight deck to support helicopter operations. However, any deployment of helicopters on an Austin class LPD would require the support of an LHA or LHD to provide maintenance and other support for the helicopters on a continuous basis.
  
  
• San Antonio class (LPD-17) amphibious transport docks, which are under construction, are due to replace Austin class LPDs over the next 10 years. They will be larger than their predecessors and have more space for vehicles and aircraft. (San Antonio class LPDs are discussed in more detail in Chapter 2, along with several new types of amphibious warfare ships that the Navy has proposed.)
  
  
• Whidbey Island class (LSD-41) and Harpers Ferry class (LSD-49) dock landing ships are two variants of the same design. Both types of ship can carry about 450 troops apiece. They also have slightly larger vehicle storage areas than the Austin class transport docks do. Harpers Ferry LSDs are considered the cargo variant of dock landing ships: they have 10 times the cargo storage space of the Whidbey Island class but only half the carrying capacity for landing craft in their docking wells. LSDs are relatively young ships. The Harpers Ferry class is about 8 years old, on average, and the Whidbey Island class is about 15 years old.

In the past, amphibious warfare ships were organized into 12 amphibious ready groups--usually of three ships each--that operated independently of other ships in the Navy. Each ready group carried one Marine expeditionary unit. Under a plan announced in 2003, the Navy has begun reorganizing its fleet so that three surface combatants (a cruiser, a destroyer, and a frigate) and one attack submarine operate with each amphibious ready group. The resulting task force is called an expeditionary strike group, or ESG (see Figure 1-3).

Figure 1-3.

Source: Congressional Budget Office based on information from the Navy.

The Navy says that a combined force of amphibious warfare ships and surface combatants is far more capable of responding to a variety of low- to mid-level crises than is either group of ships alone.⁽⁴⁾ Surface combatants offer the ability to strike targets from long range with Tomahawk missiles and the ability to provide air defense for a fleet. Amphibious warfare ships provide the means to go ashore and conduct operations on the ground.

Together, the Navy's amphibious warfare ships can carry about 35,000 troops. However, because at any time some of those ships are in long-term maintenance or the early stages of training cycles, not all of them are available to deploy and conduct military operations. Within a few days, the Navy could respond to a crisis with three to six amphibious warfare ships--the two closest forward-deployed ESGs. In the first six to 10 weeks of a crisis, about half of the Navy's amphibious warfare ships could be mustered for combat operations--about six ESGs, or six battalions, for a total of about 13,000 troops.

The Maritime Prepositioning Force

In addition to its amphibious warfare ships, the Navy has 16 maritime prepositioning vessels, organized into three squadrons of five or six ships apiece. Each squadron carries enough vehicles, equipment, and supplies to equip and sustain a Marine expeditionary brigade for 30 days. The ships, most of which are leased cargo vessels, are operated by the Navy's Military Sealift Command and are forward deployed at ports in the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the western Pacific.⁽⁵⁾

Unlike amphibious warfare ships, maritime prepositioning ships do not carry troops and do not have a forcible-entry capability. They require a secure port at which to unload equipment and an airfield where the troops of a MEB can fly in from the United States, meet up with the equipment, and assemble into a fighting force. Thus, maritime prepositioning ships are intended to provide follow-on forces that deploy to a theater after the assault troops on amphibious warfare ships have secured an area.

That capability is designed to allow three large Marine Corps units to be available for combat operations in a relatively short time.⁽⁶⁾ The Marine Corps expects that if a port and airfield have to be seized beforehand, the first MEB getting its equipment from a maritime prepositioning squadron will not be ready to operate for eight weeks. But if the port and airfield are already available, such a unit can be ready in two weeks. That was the case early in the first Gulf War: because ports, airfields, and an assembly area all existed in Saudi Arabia before the outbreak of hostilities, the MEB associated with the maritime prepositioning squadron in Diego Garcia was ready to begin military operations within two weeks after the ships of the squadron were ordered to leave their berths.

Conducting an Amphibious Assault Today

Although they have not done so for half a century, the Navy and Marine Corps retain the capability to mount an opposed amphibious assault. Such an operation would be complex, involving aircraft carriers, surface combatants, mine-clearing ships, and support ships as well as amphibious ships. According to the Marine Corps, the minimum force to launch a forcible-entry operation is a Marine expeditionary brigade. To muster a force of that size, the Navy and Marine Corps would bring at least two forward-deployed expeditionary strike groups to the theater of operations, followed by additional ships and marines from ports in the United States. Once assembled, the combined group of ships would be called an amphibious task force, and the troops on board those ships would be considered the "assault echelon."

Before troops were sent ashore, enemy forces in the target area--particularly ships or missiles that could threaten the assault force--would be attacked as much as necessary by the Navy's carrier-based aircraft and by guns and missiles on the surface combatants and submarines.⁽⁷⁾ In addition, ships capable of conducting mine-clearing operations would need to cut a path through any minefield that might prevent the marines from landing on shore.

When the marines were ready to conduct their assault, they and their equipment would be transported to the beach with helicopters, air-cushion landing craft (known as LCACs), or amphibious assault vehicles (light tanks able to "swim" ashore). Helicopters would operate from the large flat-deck amphibious assault ships (the LHDs and the LHAs) as well as from the amphibious transport docks (LPDs). Amphibious assault vehicles and LCACs would operate from all types of L-class ships. Although the amphibious assault vehicles would go ashore and stay there, the LCACs would make repeated trips back and forth from the ships to the beach, ferrying whatever needed to be brought in for the operation. In addition, the short takeoff and vertical landing aircraft carried on LHAs and LHDs would provide close air support to the marines on the ground. Carrier-based aircraft could also perform that role unless they were occupied with other tasks.

Current procedures call for the assault echelon of marines carried in L-class amphibious ships to either land on enemy territory and seize a lodgment (a piece of territory taken to set up a base of operations) or land on allied territory and immediately carry the fight to the enemy. In either case, the reinforcements in the "assault follow-on echelon" would require a deepwater port and a nearby airfield to be landed. Maritime prepositioning ships, carrying equipment and supplies for the reinforcing units, would dock at the port and offload their "unit sets" of cargo. The marines associated with those sets would fly into the nearby airfield, move to the port, prepare the equipment coming off the ships, assemble into units, and only then launch offensive operations. That process is referred to as reception, staging, onward movement, and integration.

Once in combat, the reinforcing Marine units would receive supplies from shore-based supply depots at the lodgment that had been built up from the stores located in the ships' holds. Such depots are known colloquially as "iron mountains," referring to the large amount of military equipment, fuel, food, water, ammunition, and supporting services necessary to conduct a military campaign.

Peacetime Missions of Amphibious and Maritime Prepositioning Ships

Because the Navy's amphibious ships are highly versatile, they have been used to respond to a variety of crises, particularly humanitarian operations. Between the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 and 2000, amphibious ships conducted at least 55 operations, such as providing disaster relief, evacuating U.S. citizens or government personnel from unstable countries, and taking part in military operations in Iraq, Bosnia, Haiti, and the former Yugoslavia. Although amphibious ships usually deploy in groups, it is common for the ships of a group to separate once they reach their forward-deployment area and then conduct simultaneous operations or exercises. That practice--as well as the large size of amphibious ships and the supplies and equipment they carry--makes such vessels well suited to respond to low-level crises.

The Navy's maritime prepositioning ships also respond to crises, though much less frequently. Such ships spend most of their time moored at their ports overseas, but they provided support to U.S. troops in Somalia during the early 1990s and have furnished bottled water for several disaster-relief operations around the world. The future size and composition of the maritime prepositioning squadrons are the subject of much debate within the Navy and the Marine Corps. Both services want to expand the capabilities of those squadrons dramatically as part of their vision for sea basing (described later in this chapter). Such enhanced capabilities could make maritime prepositioning ships even more capable of responding to low-level crises, possibly freeing up amphibious warfare ships for other operations.
 

Requirements for Amphibious and Maritime Prepositioning Forces

Although the number of maritime prepositioning squadrons in the Navy has remained constant since they were introduced in the 1980s, the number of amphibious warfare ships has declined steadily since the end of the Cold War. In the past, the Navy determined the number of L-class ships it required by the amount of amphibious lift (transport capacity on amphibious ships) it considered necessary for wartime. More recently, however, the Navy has also begun to stress the forward presence provided by expeditionary strike groups as the essential measure of capability. That stress appears to reflect, at least in part, the Navy's vision of using its future maritime prepositioning ships to provide more forcible-entry capability in conjunction with L-class ships, thus rendering the amount of forcible-entry capability on L-class ships alone less significant.

Amphibious Lift

The most common measure of the capability of the amphibious force is the amount of lift it provides, expressed in Marine expeditionary brigade equivalents. That measure focuses on how much force can be delivered on the ground in the event of a crisis or conflict. It does not reflect the day-to-day availability of the amphibious force in peacetime or its distribution around the globe.

Maritime prepositioning ships are not considered amphibious lift ships--even though together they carry enough equipment and supplies for three full MEBs--because they do not carry the troops associated with that equipment (except for a small security and maintenance staff) and cannot conduct amphibious assaults. Instead, they are considered sealift ships and are not included in the total expeditionary warfare capabilities of the Navy's battle force, which are measured only in terms of amphibious lift.

The Marine Corps argues today, and has throughout the 1990s, that its requirement for lift by amphibious warfare vessels is 3.0 MEBs. However, resources have not been made available to build enough amphibious warfare ships to reach that level. The Navy and Marine Corps officially say that their "fiscally constrained" goal for amphibious lift is 2.5 MEBs. (For more details, see Box 1-1.)
 

Amphibious lift capacity is determined by more than just the number of troops that ships can carry. Because those troops operate with trucks, armored vehicles, artillery, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, landing craft, and supplies, amphibious lift is measured in five categories, or "fingerprints":

• Number of troops;
  
  
• Vehicle storage area (expressed in thousands of square feet, or "vehicle square");
  
  
• Cargo storage area (measured in thousands of cubic feet, or "cargo cube");
  
  
• Number of places (or spots) on the decks and in the hangars of amphibious ships to park vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, expressed as CH-46 helicopter equivalents;⁽⁸⁾ and
  
  
• Number of spots inside the ships for LCACs.

Today, the amphibious warfare force has enough cargo cube, helicopter spots, and LCAC spots to meet the Marine Corps's 3.0 MEB requirement. However, it is substantially short with respect to vehicle square. The force can carry enough troops for 2.5 MEBs but only enough vehicles for 1.9 MEBs. Thus, the effective capability of the force is 1.9 MEBs of amphibious lift. That figure is down slightly from the capability in recent years because of the decommissioning of some older amphibious ships and delays in commissioning their replacements. (As noted above, maritime prepositioning ships provide another 3.0 MEBs of sealift, for a total lift capacity of 4.9 MEBs.)

Expeditionary Strike Groups

The other principal measure used to evaluate how many amphibious warfare ships are needed is the number of what used to be called amphibious ready groups but are now called expeditionary strike groups (see Figure 1-3). Both the 1997 and 2001 Quadrennial Defense Reviews discussed amphibious ships with respect to the number of ready groups--rather than the overall amount of lift--that they provided. In both reviews, the numerical requirement for amphibious ready groups remained at 12. In 2000, the Navy released a 30-year shipbuilding report that advocated increasing the number of amphibious ships to create 15 ready groups.⁽⁹⁾ By contrast, the most recent long-term Navy report, which proposed a 375-ship fleet, did not envision increasing the number of amphibious ships from the current level.⁽¹⁰⁾ However, legislation introduced in the Congress in 2003 would have included 15 amphibious ready groups in the 375-ship fleet.⁽¹¹⁾

With its existing force, the Navy can keep about 2.7 ESGs forward deployed at any given time. The group that is based in Japan, which includes four amphibious ships, is considered to provide full-time forward presence by virtue of its being based overseas. The remaining amphibious ships are divided between the Navy's Atlantic and Pacific Fleets into a total of 11 ESGs. Because of the time needed for ship maintenance, crew training, and transit to deployment areas, those remaining amphibious ships are sufficient to keep one ESG forward deployed full time and another deployed for six to eight months of the year.

Recently, senior Navy officials have discussed reducing the number of ESGs to eight and making up the shortfall in forward presence by employing a form of crew rotation known as Sea Swap. The Navy has experimented with Sea Swap on several types of surface combatants: instead of having one crew deploy and return home with the same ship, the ship remains forward deployed while crews rotate in and out every six months. In between their deployments, the crews train on ships that remain in the United States.⁽¹²⁾

Sea Swap may be more difficult to apply to amphibious ships than to surface combatants, however, because of the logistical challenges of coordinating predeployment training between the Navy crews and the marines who serve on board an amphibious ship.⁽¹³⁾ Nevertheless, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Vern Clark, has ordered Navy analysts to study the issue, and some experimentation is likely to follow.⁽¹⁴⁾

If the Navy adapted Sea Swap to its amphibious ships and then reduced the number of expeditionary strike groups, it would be setting aside the importance of overall amphibious lift on L-class vessels--the traditional measure of amphibious capability. (Because amphibious lift is a wartime measure, it is determined by the overall number of L-class vessels in the fleet, not by whether the Navy employs a rotational crewing policy.) No decision has yet been made, so in this analysis, CBO did not assume that the Navy's ESGs would use crew rotation to increase forward presence. However, one of the measures discussed in Chapter 4 shows what effect Sea Swap would have on the forward presence provided by ESGs if the concept was applied to amphibious ships.
 

The Navy's and Marine Corps's Vision for Sea Basing

The impetus behind the Navy's desire to increase its battle force to 375 ships and to expand the capabilities of its expeditionary warfare fleet is its "transformation vision," called Sea Power 21.⁽¹⁵⁾ That vision rests on three key concepts: Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing. Sea Strike represents the Navy's efforts to support joint campaigns by projecting offensive power from and through the world's littoral (coastal) areas. That power could take the form of strikes from carrier-based aircraft, from naval guns, or from missiles launched from surface combatants and submarines; information or electronic attack warfare (such as disrupting an enemy's communications); or landings or assaults by Marine Corps ground units.

Sea Shield is the defensive counterpart to Sea Strike. It encompasses the capabilities that defend or screen Navy ships at sea from attack, protect joint and allied forces operating on shore from air or missile attack, and protect the United States from both conventional and unconventional threats. As now conceived, Sea Shield would eventually include theater and perhaps national missile defense systems.

Sea Basing is considered by many defense officials to be the most transformational of the three concepts: it envisions that future landings of Marine units ashore will be conducted, supported, and sustained from ships at sea. Today, such an operation would be supported primarily from supply depots on land, located either at an existing base provided by a host nation or in a lodgment seized during the assault. Future sea-based operations would forgo putting "iron mountains" of supplies, fuel, and ammunition ashore and instead keep them at sea, rearming and replenishing Marine forces operating on shore only when needed. Although the entire fleet would play a role in the "sea base," the most important platforms would be the Navy's amphibious warfare ships and future maritime prepositioning vessels.⁽¹⁶⁾

Navy and Marine Corps planners hope that under this concept, Marine units in the follow-on echelon could conduct the major portion of the reception, staging, onward movement, and integration process on board ships at sea and thus become operational more quickly. Marine units would fly directly to the sea base, assemble into combat units, prepare their equipment for combat while on board the ships, and launch attacks directly at inland targets from the sea base, which would operate over the horizon, out of sight of land. No port and airfield would need to be taken to support the introduction of either the assault or follow-on assault echelons, at least during the initial "seize the initiative" phase of an attack on enemy territory or a defense of allied territory. (Further follow-on forces would still require an airfield and port.) Moreover, forces ashore could withdraw back to their ships and reorganize to attack a new target, again operating solely from the amphibious warfare and maritime prepositioning ships of the sea base.

Potential Advantages of Sea Basing

The Marines refer to that new style of naval expeditionary warfare as "operational maneuver from the sea" (OMFTS) and "ship-to-objective maneuver" (STOM). Those two key concepts implement the Marine Corps's vision of fast and flexible forces. The Marines argue that OMFTS and STOM will afford a landing force significant advantages at the operational and tactical levels of war, such as:

• Faster deployment and operations;
  
  
• More maneuver space and thus greater unpredictability about where U.S. forces might be;
  
  
• More uncertainty on the part of the enemy and therefore more disruption to its strategy and operations; and
  
  
• Faster destruction of enemy forces, either because they disperse to cover the wide area where U.S. forces could land (and thereby allow themselves to be defeated piecemeal by arriving ground forces) or because they try to concentrate against U.S. forces (and thus become vulnerable to U.S. air and missile strikes).

The Marine Corps believes that none of those advantages are possible without sea basing. The increased speed of operations, the greater maneuver space, and the confusion of the enemy are facilitated by keeping the logistics support for Marine ground forces at sea. No time is wasted in seizing a lodgment and setting up a supply depot. Ground operations against tactical, operational, or strategic objectives can proceed almost immediately once the sea base has assembled.

In addition to the operational and tactical advantages associated with conducting OMFTS and STOM from ships, sea basing has two other significant benefits. First, it eliminates the need to ask a host nation for permission to use a base, thereby giving U.S. combatant commanders greater freedom of action and allowing more-independent operations that do not depend on the politics of other countries. Proponents of sea basing argue that such independence will be critical in the future because the United States will be less and less likely to gain access to overseas bases if it must conduct a military operation.⁽¹⁷⁾ Those proponents cite several recent examples: Turkey's denial of access to the Army's 4th Mechanized Infantry Division for a northern front against Iraq, and Saudi Arabia's refusal to let U.S. forces use facilities in that country during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.⁽¹⁸⁾ If that trend continues, they argue, sea basing will allow the United States to bypass such requests for permission by having everything it needs in terms of support at the sea base, which (unlike a land base in a foreign country) is "sovereign U.S. territory." The Marine Corps Commandant, General Michael Hagee, has described a sea base that would have permitted the military to launch the war against Iraq without using Kuwait: "We come into the [Persian] Gulf, we do the arrival and assembly, we do the reception, staging, onward movement and integration at sea."⁽¹⁹⁾

Second, proponents argue that a sea base is less vulnerable than a land base to attack from cruise and ballistic missiles. Because ships at sea are constantly on the move, detecting, tracking, and targeting them is inherently more difficult than targeting a fixed land base. As cruise and ballistic missiles proliferate among potential U.S. adversaries, that advantage of sea basing becomes increasingly apparent, supporters say.

Potential Drawbacks of Sea Basing

Four counterarguments exist to the points in favor of sea basing that proponents cite. First, although supporting relatively small military operations from a sea base may prove feasible in time, military operations such as the division-sized or larger attack on Iraq from Turkey planned for Operation Iraqi Freedom may be too big to be launched and sustained from a sea base. The Defense Science Board, which endorses the sea-basing concept, stated in a 2003 report: "Forcible entry from modern seabases . . . represents a substantially greater challenge than the amphibious operations of World War II and Korea."⁽²⁰⁾

Second, although today land bases appear more vulnerable than sea bases to ballistic and cruise missiles, that may not always be the case. New short-range ballistic missiles with maneuvering reentry vehicles and radar and infrared seekers could be accurate enough to attack ships at sea.⁽²¹⁾ Arguably, sea bases might be at greater risk than land bases from ballistic and cruise missiles because they are more concentrated, meaning that a missile strike could disable or destroy a vastly greater proportion of material and capability for a military operation than would be the case with a land base. (During the Falklands War, for example, the sinking of the Atlantic Conveyor, which carried 14 helicopters and all of the tentage for Britain's landing force, "was a crippling blow to British strategic plans for the campaign.")⁽²²⁾

As described in the next chapter, current designs for the new ships necessary to support the sea-basing concept would make those vessels some of the largest and most detectable ships in a theater of operations as well as the least survivable if hit by enemy fire. The Government Accountability Office (formerly the General Accounting Office) has also reported that the Navy may be underestimating the threat posed by cruise missiles and may be overly optimistic about its ability to defend against that threat.⁽²³⁾ In addition, if an enemy is sophisticated enough to have cruise and ballistic missiles in sufficient quantities to threaten a land base, it is also likely to have the weapons and ability to severely disrupt the continuous airlift of supplies from a sea base to troops on land.

Third, opponents of sea basing might question the likelihood that the U.S. military would attempt an amphibious assault in the future when it has not done so since the Korean War. Although maintaining current amphibious capabilities--which can be used for various purposes other than opposed amphibious assaults--may be advantageous, it is less clear that all of the Navy's amphibious forces should be prepared to fight from a sea base.

Finally, sea basing might prove to be too expensive for what in the end could be a modest capability. The total amount of resources needed to carry out the sea-basing concept is highly uncertain. Because that concept has not been fully fleshed out, CBO has not attempted to estimate the total cost of building a sea-based amphibious force. However, implementing that concept would involve developing a variety of new technologies, ships, and aircraft, some of which would require technological advances whose feasibility is not yet clear (see Box 1-2). The Defense Science Board has stated that fully realizing the sea-basing vision could potentially cost tens of billions of dollars.⁽²⁴⁾
 

The Possible Scope of Sea Basing

Some supporters of the overall concept of sea basing argue for more-modest capabilities. They state that rather than try to conduct multiple battalion- or brigade-sized operations from a sea base, the military could use such a base for seizing a lodgment that would serve as a base for more forces brought ashore to conduct larger operations. One or two battalions could be deployed by air behind an enemy's shore defenses and then move toward the sea in conjunction with supporting operations from U.S. forces at sea. That approach differs from a more traditional amphibious operation in which marines assault a beach directly and try to seize a lodgment head-on. The more modest approach to sea basing would simply enhance the traditional amphibious assault capability in which the Marine Corps specializes. It would not try to fundamentally change the way Marine forces operate and fight.

As described by many senior Navy leaders, the sea base would comprise the entire fleet. For example, Admiral Clark has written that "sea bases will consist of numerous platforms, including nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, multi-mission destroyers, submarines with Special Forces, and maritime pre-positioned ships."⁽²⁵⁾ That would be true inasmuch as carriers, destroyers, and submarines would continue to perform many of the missions that they do today, such as projecting power ashore from the sea through the use of carrier-based aircraft, Tomahawk missiles, naval gunfire, and the insertion of special-operations forces. But, as discussed above, the transformational character of sea basing lies in how it would change the way the Marine Corps assembles and projects forces from the sea and the way the Navy supports and sustains those forces. The most important ships involved in those changes would be existing and future amphibious warfare ships and especially the proposed Maritime Prepositioning Force (Future) ships.⁽²⁶⁾

At the moment, proponents of the more expansive view of sea basing hold sway, primarily because of the strong advocacy of that concept by senior Marine Corps and Navy leaders. The strength of that advocacy is reflected in the Navy's future plans for its amphibious warfare and maritime prepositioning forces.

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