UNITED24 - Make a charitable donation in support of Ukraine!

Military


T-AH(X) / T-AH Future - Program Status

In the mid-1990s work began on the T-AH Future, the next generation of hospital ships. In 2002 the Director, Medical Resources, Plans, and Policy (N-931) asked the Center for Naval Analysis [CNA] to analyze potential alternatives for Navy Medicine's future deployable medical platforms, focusing on the 2015-2025 time frame. Specifically, N-931 directed CNA to:

  1. Analyze future environments in which Navy Medicine will operate
  2. Analyze the medical capabilities required by those future environments
  3. Describe and analyze generic potential platforms that could supply those capabilities
  4. Analyze the requirement-setting process and funding cycle to draw recommendations for Navy Medicine's actions regarding future deployable medical platforms.

An important study in the late 1970s by the CNO, called Feasible Alternatives to Dedicated Hospital Ships [ADHOS], provided a valuable, detailed outline of the characteristics that make a medical platform effective, as well as a methodology for comparison of alternative platforms.

Rather than a conversion, as was the case with Mercy and Comfort, assume that the Navy decides to build a new 1,000-bed state-of-the-art hospital ship. To be on the safe side, say it takes 6 years to design, procure, and build this single large-displacement ship. To have the hospital ship on line in 2015, it would have to be a fully funded line item in the final FY 2009 Defense Budget submitted to the Congress by the President. To accomplish this, Navy Medicine (N9) would need to adhere to the following time line:

  1. In FY 2002 and 2003, prepare the necessary documents (MNS, AOA, ORD, etc.) to justify to the CNO that a new hospital ship will be required in 2015.
  2. In FY 2004, get the hospital ship placed on the Navy's 5-year POM that is submitted to the PA&E within OSD.
  3. In FY 2004, assign someone to work closely with N81 to get the hospital ship approved by OSD. If successful, this will mean the hospital ship is in the Future (Five) Year Defense Program (FDYP) sent to the President in 2004.
  4. Each following fiscal year from 2005 to 2008, the FDYP will be reviewed by PA&E. N9 needs to justify its case for a hospital in each of these fiscal years, perhaps with updates to the NMS, AOA, and ORD to reflect changes in the threat or mission. In the first few fiscal years, it may not be hard to keep the hospital ship in the FDYP, but the justification will come under very close scrutiny in 2008.
If the MNS and AOA indicate a requirement other than a single large new ship, such as building six smaller hospital ships or converting a retired Navy ship into a single hospital ship, the proposed time line would be somewhat shorter than the one discussed here.

In fact, the Navy has yet to proceed to the first step. This suggests that as of the year 2008, a new hospital ship was plausible no sooner than the year 2020.

In mid-2004 Vice Adm. Michael L. Cowan, the Navy surgeon general and chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, said the most visible symbols of Navy medicine, the hospital ships Comfort and Mercy, likely will be retired in the coming years. "They're wonderful ships, but they're dinosaurs," he said. "They were designed in the '70s, built in the '80s, and frankly, they're obsolete," Cowan said. As an alternative to Comfort and Mercy, options are still being studied to include trauma treatment spaces aboard the Navy's next generation of amphibious ships, he said. The argument is that combat medicine is better done on the battlefield than on a ship at sea, and the trend toward smaller, more flexible and more mobile hospitals on land will continue.



NEWSLETTER
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list