CDR Salamander - Old & Busted: Loyal Wingman - New Hotness: Loyal Escort

Do we have that rare intersection of unmet-need, essential requirement, and unexpected answer?

Maybe. We’re not the first, but we kind of wandered into it on yesterday’s Midrats Podcast.

I’d like to set the table first.

A saying I first heard in my 30s, and that with each passing year appears to be more and more a fact of life in the opinion arena, is that once you are tired of saying something is when people are finally starting to listen.

Both here in writing and the UNCLAS Read Board Podcast, along with the Midrats Podcast, one requirement that needs to be addressed as we prepare for a Great Pacific War, and that continues to rise to the top of my list, is to Arm the Auxiliaries.

The accountants won the battle decades ago, I know. We’ve assumed too much about our supremacy at sea for too long, I know. We’ve been exceptionally lucky, I know.

We have long been told that there are not enough destroyers to escort auxiliaries, support, and supply vessels on the high seas, I know. We do not have frigates designed to perform escort duties across the threat spectrum, nor shall we have them in sufficient numbers in the foreseeable future, I know. I understand USNS compared to USS.

I don’t care. I can’t change the past, I can only work on the now and plan to make the future better.

Many of our auxiliaries are, in some strange self-delusional cope, “configured for, but not fitted with”—built with the structural reinforcement, utility connections, and physical space required to receive military weapons, sensors, or specialized defensive systems later, but without having those systems permanently installed. Indeed, the systems are not even in a warehouse somewhere, nor are there any personnel assigned to run and maintain them should they be needed. Other critically important auxiliaries don’t even have that cope. They only have hope.

This state of affairs is inviting tragedy and disaster. We all know this, yet we continue on, just taunting fate.

There is not yet a legal mandate to address this. I’d like to see someone in authority clearly state that there is an ethical issue here, but I’ve yet to see it.

In the next layer down, I am just speaking for myself. Morality refers to personal or cultural beliefs about right and wrong, and I’m OK with that. On Sunday’s Midrats, I had the urge to put a marker down, and so I did at about the 32 minute mark.

OK. Stated and noted. “No ability to defend yourself” is the ‘what’. “It is immoral” is the ‘so what’. What is a realistic ‘now what’ to close the reflection model?

Last month we heard this,

Today, the U.S. Navy announced its plans to procure 30 Medium Unmanned Surface Vessels following the completion of Phase I at-sea testing marking a key milestone for the program and demonstrating the Department’s commitment to deliver asymmetric capability to Fleet warfighters to counter evolving threats.

We’ve been waiting for this for a while. What does this offer?

Let’s look at Saronic’s 180’ Marauder. As described by Saronic,

Marauder is a 180' Autonomous Surface Vessel (ASV) designed to host and deliver significant capabilities across complex maritime environments. Capable of carrying up to 150MT in four 40' ISO containers, eight 20' ISO containers, or other modular payload configurations, Marauder is Saronic's premier platform for logistics and at-sea payload deployment.

You can do a lot with that kind of square footage. We have already figured out six-ways-to-Sunday how to militarize ISO containers.

If the aviation side of the house can have Loyal Wingman, then we surely can have our Loyal Escort.

Why not? What other options will be available sooner?

Yes, the long pole in the tent that I would like to have briefed first are:

• Sensors

• Communication

• Control

• Where is the man-in-the-loop CIC? (Don’t say remote; it must be aboard the escorted ship or ships)

• Sustainment

Those are workable.

Again, as we covered in the podcast, this is not an area defense solution. Just a basic self-defense to give an auxiliary a fighting chance like the Neosho had. It cannot cover every threat, but it can address some of them. The first iteration will be inadequate, but by taking and working with inadequate sooner, we have the better faster.

Even the better won’t be the ideal solution, but we are not going to see an ideal solution. We have to contend with available solutions, and that is fine.

Make no mistake, the need for sealift to head west of the International Date Line in the event of war will be greater than our ability to properly escort them, and this simple fact will be true for the foreseeable future.

We can take action to mitigate the risk.

Until better solutions can be found, I can see this as an acceptable one.

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