CDR Salamander - Do we need to re-think the Light Replenishment Oiler (T-AOL) Program?

So, half a decade after we started the program to design our next oiler, all we have is this circa-1998 MS Paint graphic.

We have what we have. Let’s look at where it started.

The TAOL program (referred to in some documents as the NGLS or Next-Generation Medium Logistics Ship program) was initiated in the Navy’s FY2021 budget submission. The program envisages building a new class of CLF ships (or a family of CLF ship designs) that would be smaller and individually less expensive to procure than the Navy’s current CLF ships. Figure 1 shows a sketch of a Navy notional TAOL design concept. The Navy states that the TAOL is planned to be, “a new class of ships to augment the traditional Combat Logistics Force (CLF) to enable refueling, rearming, and resupply of Naval assets— afloat and ashore—near contested environments via ship-to-ship operations and ship-to port operations in support of Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment (LOCE), and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO). Augmenting the traditional CLF, NGLS will provide a flexible, responsive platform to move fuel, personnel, equipment, and supplies between ships, advanced bases, ports, and dispersed nodes of the seabase; sustaining afloat (Surface Action Group) and ashore (Expeditionary Advanced Base) requirements.”

The theory behind the T-AOL program is that future logistics requirements will shift toward a “smaller, more numerous” fleet to support dispersed operations, and sees it operating in littoral areas and contested environments, offering a smaller, more flexible, and more responsive logistical platform compared to existing large tankers.

The “existing large tankers”—there’s the rub—we’ll get to that in a minute.

That is the theory of the case for T-AOL. Sounds about right for the thinking of 2020/21.

Place and time is important. Does it really reflect what recent combat operations tell us we need to “complement” existing tankers?

The Maritime Gods of the Copybook Headings have had a field day since this concept became an official program—especially when it comes to the centrality of an effective auxiliary fleet to support a fighting fleet forward.

• The Red Hills fuel crisis in Hawaii makes getting the volume of fuel needed in the Pacific to support combat operations much more difficult.

• Real world, not theoretical, combat operations in the Black Sea, Eastern Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf have proven that even third and fourth-rate naval powers can send the full-spectrum threat—from low-and-slow attack drones to anti-ship ballistic missiles—to any ship that gets inside its envelope. Poorly defended or inadequately escorted ships that wander close to shore are little more than floating monuments to arrogance.

• Access to safe and close logistics hubs and ready access for foreign ports cannot be assumed. Other nations may not share our national interests, nor have secure facilities outside the range of the enemy’s precision long-range fires.

• Our strike groups need to take their supplies with them, and in contested environments, the units will be many and the demands will outstrip the supply for everything from fuel to weapons. Putting all your goods in one basket is a risk, but you have to have baskets that can carry what you need.

• LOCE and EABO are not looking as good as they briefed half a decade ago. The case for molding the USMC and CLF around them at the expense of other missions is wearing very thin in the face of the reality of combat that we have all seen unfold since they were put forward.

When will the T-AOL show up? Released earlier this month, the 2027 Shipbuilding Plan is our best datapoint as to the progress of the program, but besides having a “1” in the FY31 column, nothing more is mentioned. The program has shifted to the right, again.

By the time they appear, will they still be the sole answer to our most pressing challenge when it comes to getting beans, bullets, and fuel to the fight?

How many WorldWars lengths of time will it take for this program to serve the fleet? It’s looking like at least four at this point from when the program started. As the world’s largest navy continues to experiment and innovate with short development cycles, we continue to demonstrate why we are the world’s second largest navy.

This is an auxiliary, a small one at that, not a nuclear submarine. Look what previous generations did with completely new systems in radically new platforms no one even thought of a decade earlier. They did it with slide rules.

Back to the now. A lot has happened in the maritime world since 2021 that should inform how we structure the CLF. Do we need small capacity oilers? Sure, I can see that. It sure does distribute risk where you get close. Ships will be hit. They will be sunk.

But you have to get across the planet first before you get close.

Can we assume that the “Light” part means they will have a substantially smaller capacity and will carry it into the fight much slower?

We do have one oiler in production, that has its own problems, but its in production. Generally known as the John Lewis class oiler, it is referred to as the T-AO 205 class oiler in the plan.

The T-AO 205 class oiler is the replacement class for the current fleet of Henry J. Kaiser (T-AO 187) class oilers, which are reaching the end of service life. T-AO 205 class oilers will be the primary refuel asset to Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs) and other afloat forces and will provide vital Navy intra-theater replenishment capabilities. These capabilities enable credible logistics support for global presence and wartime missions. These ships are produced by General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego, CA. The first five T-AO 205s (hulls 205-209) have delivered with T-AO 210 planned to deliver in the summer of 2026. 31Navy plans to procure 20 of these ships. The 2024 block buy contract created opportunity to deliver remaining ships ahead of the planned delivery schedule with significant cost savings for Navy as well provide GD NASSCO’s industrial base with a stable workload through FY35.

The 205’s carry 162,000 barrels of oil at 20 knots. How much will the “Light” carry? How fast?

100,000? 120,000? 80,000?

18 knots, 20 knots?

Of course, we don’t know any of this a half-decade after the start of the program because we continue to use an ossified and accretion-encumbered system to design and build ships that has failed us over and over during the last three decades. We continue the failed policies and procedures of the past, and yet expect different results.

Even worse, like LCS, we continue to shape our fleet by chasing the shadows of fleeting fashions and trends ungrounded in sound military experience, but instead by personality, exciting “pick me” theorists, and by some leaders’ desire to be seen as visionary people. Not solid stewards of maritime power, but “transformational visionaries”.

Meanwhile in a parallel but very real universe, the world continues to demonstrate what is needed. We continue to ignore the clear requirement as we demand our carriers and surface combatants race from one hemisphere to another.

The WWII and Cold War generations got it right: we need fast and big to feed the fleet on the high seas.

It isn’t an “either/or” but an “and”.

This year, from the Caribbean to the Arabian Sea, those who needed the US Navy to go wherever they needed to be appreciated the value that came from the Supply Class AOE/T-AOE. We only have two left.

Fast combat support ships were envisioned the last time the US Navy faced a serious challenge on the high seas. That concept was reinforced by proper understanding of what would be required should we have to fight the Soviet Union. Too many have forgotten that in the Jesus Jones Era. Those same demands for global power projection, learned through experience in WWII and the Cold War, are back with the challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China

Though an atom-powered CVN can outrace a fast combat support ship, she is the only thing we have that can keep up with our conventionally powered escorts when they need to be the firstest with the mostest, all while carrying 177,000 barrels of oil at a top speed of 25 knots, along with ammo and dry stores.

Are the T-AOLs really the only answer to what the 2030s Navy needs, or are they General Berger oilers running on bureaucratic inertia?

Again, I can—if I squint—see a case for them, but only as part of the answer, not the future’s foundation, and unquestionably not what the big fight will demand. Regardless, it is something we won’t even see until over a decade after it was the glimmer in OPNAV’s eye.

History is back, and she has unfinished business for all of us. Build the T-AOL, sure…but we need a new AOE class, sooner rather than later.

And yes, I called it an AOE and not a T-AOE for a reason.

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