Posted: 4/6/2010 2:13:05 PM EDT
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Simple straightforward question, how much whompass could the US navy deliver to a foreign shore?
Lets assume perfect conditions with all US amphibious assets and the troops and equipment to fill them starting in the same location. How much, how quickly could be delivered to some foreign shore 1000 miles away? |
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Quoted:
Simple straightforward question, how much whompass could the US navy deliver to a foreign shore? Lets assume perfect conditions with all US amphibious assets and the troops and equipment to fill them starting in the same location. How much, how quickly could be delivered to some foreign shore 1000 miles away? Do you mean all in a single simultaneous landing, or do you mean spread out over multiple sorties? |
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If all we have to do is blow stuff up, no holds barred, then a fuckton in a jiffy.
But if we have to just blow up certain stuff while leaving other stuff unharmed and then occupy an area without killing too many people... then the answer is enough and fast enough, but too much and too slow for the American media. 
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The US Navy currently operates 2 Tarawa class LHAs and 8 Wasp class LHDs, each capable of transporting and landing roughly 1800 Marines, then there are the 9 amphibious transport docks (San Antonio, Cleveland, and Austin classes) carrying an average of about 800 Marines each, and finally we have the 12 dock landing ships of the Whidbey Island and Harper's Ferry classes carrying about 500 each. ETA: for the math challenged that means the rated transport capacity of US Navy amphibs is 10 x 1800 + 9 x 800 + 12 x 500 = 31,200 Marines. |
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Quoted:
Simple straightforward question, how much whompass could the US navy deliver to a foreign shore? Lets assume perfect conditions with all US amphibious assets and the troops and equipment to fill them starting in the same location. How much, how quickly could be delivered to some foreign shore 1000 miles away? The Navy can deliver a bunch of Marines and all their stuff in about two days. |
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12 aircraft carriers and all the amphibs, strike groups, and submarines? 1 carrier alone can take on any countries air force outside a very few. There's alot of Marines to storm ashore and take whatever remains. Spoke with a Finnish Air Force O-1 in aircraft maintenance, apparently the Finnish Air Force has 60 F/A-18s He said he was blown away that each of our carriers has 200 airplanes! I politely told him more like 90 
But shit like that puts it into perspective |
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I suppose one could go to GlobalSecurity.org, look up all the ships we currently possess (active and reserve fleet), check out the specs on them, see how many people and/or how much equipment each can accommodate, then roughly calculate our maximum sea lift capabilities.
But I'm too lazy to go through all the trouble to do that. 
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The real limiting factor are the maritime prepositioning ships. Those are USNS, and several are leased, so the limitations there are well known.
Unless the Marines capture a working port or an airport with large ramp and international size runways they are limited to less than a brigade. In the absence of both, even that brigade would take all the navy and army landing craft , mobile lighters, and landing ships to support in combat. |
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An honest reply from anyone truly knowledgeable would most likely be classified. A wild guess would be just that. Actually anybody who was truly knowledgeable would easily be able to give a detailed and accurate unclassified answer. Add up all the in service amphibious ships, take out the about 1/3 that are in yard periods, Assume all the rest are gathered together for a single operation. Assume for the sake of argument, add in all the various MSC operated or contracted ships in the various pre-positioned squadrons, the Army Medium Brigade Afloat program (or what ever that ended up being called), add up all the MARAD ships in various reduced operational status lay-ups, etc. That will give you an extremely accurate top number on the capability. Note the above assumes that there is about 6 months to a year available and/or there is a current Op-Plan or Op-Ord covering the targeted location. Planning Embarkation Rehearsal Movement Assault Movement - Anything in western Pacific is going to take at least 3 weeks after embarkation on west coast, Southeast Asia about 4 weeks, IO 6+ weeks Assuming you are going full bore you need Crane Ships to offload containers, etc, big SL-7s, other T-AK(x) classes, etc Add it all up and maybe just maybe you could land a small division over the beach. the days of the massive seaborne invasion are over. What you can find on the high end is the Marines or Army establishing enough of a airhead, beachhead or port so that the big ships and big airplanes can come in. Planes bring in troops, and ships bringing in the heavy initial and follow-on supplies. Smaaler operations over the beach or by helo are more feasible and can be undertaken much more quickly by an at sea PhibGru of some kind. all the information is out there, you just need to be a little knowledgeable to know where to start looking. |