Army watercraft fleet gains strategic importance amid Pacific tensions

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Hey everyone, and welcome to Weapons and Warfare, a show made for folks who want to know more about the U.S. national defense

Our goal here is pretty simple. We want to help you have an informed conversation about what's happening with America's military

So for Straight Arrow News, I'm your host, Ryan Robertson, and we're starting this week with the U.S. Army and a mission you might not know that it has

Believe it or not, this is not a Navy vessel. It's an Army landing craft

You see it says it right there, U.S. Army. And as army leadership continues to reshape their force with an eye on a potential conflict in the Pacific

the importance of the army's fleet of watercraft just continues to grow

Think of the U.S. Army in action, and it's likely tanks and helicopters are part of the picture

Identify! Fire! And while they're not as connected with the country's oldest branch of the military

Watercraft play a crucial role in the Army's power projection, especially in places like the Indo-Pacific

It responsible for moving supplies equipment and troops in deep ocean water shallow coastal waters inland waterways even rivers I liken it to having a bunch of different tools in the toolbox that we can employ in that dynamic distribution network that I just described Sea lines of

communication, airlines of communication, and ground lines of communication. And watercraft will be a connector of many of those different other modes and bringing that to bear. Colonel

William Arnold is the chief of transportation for the U.S. Army's Transportation Corps

At this year's AUSA Global Force Symposium in Alabama, he led a session focused on the future of Army watercraft, acknowledging while the Army's current fleet of vessels is aging, it's still capable of meeting mission demands and at some point integrating with emerging tech

We're looking for help to understand how can we do littoral mapping without having to put mariners in the water to go figure out what beach gradients are

for example, to see if we can beach one of our watercraft. We're looking for capabilities that are out there to do that rapidly

be able to use AI to feed decisions back into the mariner populations

before we decide we're going to bring any vessel or any capabilities to a beach, for example

According to the Government Accountability Office, here's what the Army has at its disposal and what's on the horizon. Eight logistics support

vessels that are capable of delivering vehicles and general cargo. 17 LCUs, that stands for

Landing Craft Utility. Those are capable of delivering 350 short tons of cargo or 320 combat

equipped personnel. Next up, nine LCMs, that's Landing Craft Mechanized. Those carry troops

cargo and equipment There are six small tugs for repositioning other watercraft and 30 modular causeway systems for a total of 70 watercraft Plus the Army is expected to acquire 13 new maneuver support vessels by 2036

So that capability right there is really a new capability that we're bringing in that can maneuver in the tactical zone

and maneuver forces very rapidly in and around the littoral areas. Brigadier General Shane Upton of the Army Futures Command tells us Army leadership is also looking to industry partners and embracing the opportunities autonomous vessels offer a force with a growing list of responsibilities while experiencing potentially tighter budgets

We're going to put autonomous boats in the water as the Army, and we're going to pair them with those mariners

and have them learn the collaborative behaviors, how to command and control them

give us an assessment and feedback from a soldier that does this

for the United States Army in a forward theater. Chief Warrant Officer Nicholas LaFerrety

with the Army's Combined Arms Support Command says it's about embracing the idea of doing a lot more with less

We're open to tiers of autonomy on our current craft, how we can just take one step up the ladder to potentially reduce that load and make those warfighters lives a little bit more focused, right? Let their focused energy be on the threat at its hand

For all that's different between the Army and Navy's fleets, there are parallels, especially in terms of maintenance

According to that GAO report we talked about earlier, the Army's watercraft fleet experienced a significant drop

in its fully mission-capable rate, falling from 75 in 2020 to less than 40 in 2024 Major General Michael Laylor of the Army Tank Automotive and Armaments Command is backing a push for 3D printing in the field to turn things

around. The idea is fix forward, deliver forward, and this particular level of maintenance in

watercraft is ripe for it because no two watercraft is all you know out there. Many of you

who are near and dear to your heart, none of them are the same. They're snowflakes. And so there's all sorts of nonstandard parts that could be advanced manufactured

And honestly, it's a great ground for expansion of technology and solving problems

So what's next? How does the Army's fleet overcome its maintenance issues

and stand ready for action in the Pacific should the call come

First, General Laylor says, like the Navy, the Army is actively looking for allied partners to help bridge the gap

We are, next year, going to expand our ability to contract maintenance to other countries that we haven't used before

Predominantly, we've been west coast, east coast, Hawaii, Japan, Korea. Now we're going to see us expand to Guam, Singapore, Philippines, Australia, you name it

I've been to most of them in the last six months, trying to drum up some business, and business will be good

As for adding watercraft, in March, then Deputy Chief of Staff for the U.S. Army Pacific, Major General Jeffrey Vanantwerp, told Stars and Stripes in a conference call, quote, that leased vessels provide a pretty phenomenal capability and a pretty high level of readiness

No word yet on how many, if any, vessels have been leased