FEATURE ARTICLE

January 2005

Navy Salvage and Diving Teams Essential to ‘Sea Base’ Concept

by Roxana Tiron

U.S. Navy and Marine Corps plans to deploy floating bases are predicated on the notion that ships and aircraft will be able quickly to ferry or fly troops and their supplies to the fight.

But the services will remain highly dependent on access to ports and beaches until sea bases become operational. And that is where the Navy’s salvage and diving teams would play a significant role, said Navy Capt. Jim Wilkins, director of ocean engineering and the supervisor of the service’s salvage and diving teams.

Dependence on ports and beaches can make the force vulnerable, because a determined enemy could impede or deny access to channels, harbors and berths, said Wilkins. That reinforces the importance of salvage and diving teams.

It is going to take years and considerable investments to make sea basing fully operational.

The current technology cannot support a sea base as the only means to launch an operation, said Wilkins. Until the Navy can deploy advanced “connectors,” such as heavy-lift fast helicopters and high-speed logistics vessels, any operation launched from the water still is going to depend on ports and beaches, Wilkins told a recent conference in Panama City, Fla., hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association.

Traditionally, the Navy has had the responsibility for salvaging U.S. government owned ships and, when it is in the best interests of the United States, privately owned vessels as well. Rescue and salvage ships save battle-damaged combat ships from further harm and tow them to safety.

Even though they would be instrumental in clearing ports and beaches, salvage units are not addressed adequately in doctrine, war gaming and operational plans, and are bit-players in major fleet exercises, Wilkins charged.

“It is a problem,” he added. “Not only are salvage forces not included in the sea basing doctrine, and admittedly there may not be an awful lot of sea basing doctrine, but there is not an awful lot of discussion and dialog” about the salvage forces.

He said the Navy needs to “dramatically” improve its approach to the salvage and diving teams, because in the next 15 years, the service will not be able to rely on connectors that do not exist, he said.

“Until we can divorce ourselves entirely from having to take ships and small craft to the beach and the ports ... we are going to need salvage forces,” Wilkins told National Defense during the conference.

As a result, he explained, operational fleet forces need to be aware of salvage and diving capabilities and learn how to operate together.

The Navy has several hundred divers and salvagers, said Wilkins. The service has two mobile units, four Safeguard ARS-50 class salvage ships and five T-ATF Powhatan fleet ocean tugs operated by the Military Sealift Command, he said.

“Between those salvage ships, the four ARS and the five T-ATF, and the mobile diving and salvage units, we have some very capable forces,” he said. “We also have a significant amount of heavy salvage equipment.”

That heavy-duty equipment, stockpiled at strategic locations in the United States and around the world, is capable of salvaging large ships, he said. “We call that the emergency ship salvage materiel pool,” he added.

While salvage and diving teams train as much as possible, they also need to learn how to work with the fleet at large, something that does not happen often, he stressed.

The Navy needs to recognize the value these teams bring, said Wilkins, especially when U.S. forces have restricted access to ports. “What we may find ourselves in is a major salvage problem, while all the while we have to get this massive throughput of logistics to the beach.”

Wilkins said the Navy’s campaign analysis for its 2006 program objective memorandum (POM) does not give salvage forces any visibility beyond the occasional emergency tow of a destroyer, frigate or cruiser hit by a mine or torpedo.

“That was the full scope of what the campaign analysis recognized salvage forces were going to be used for,” he said. “With respect to the salvage force lookout for 2012 and beyond ... they weren’t trying to have the fidelity that would describe what Navy salvage forces should be.”

Wilkins ventured that salvage and diving forces could be instrumental in harbor and channel clearance, amphibious operations, battle damage assessment and casualty towing.

Last June, Adm. Vernon Clark, the chief of naval operations, convened a classified session to take a look at fleet commanders’ salvage plans for current and future operations, said Wilkins. “With the exception of the little bit of work that has been done in the campaign analysis, to the best of my knowledge there is no pulling on the assumption that the connectors are not going to be there.”

Most of the major fleet exercises test the Navy’s significant investment programs, Wilkins said, but ignore salvagers and divers.

“When a salvage incident occurs, our salvage teams need to be ready. That is why we need to be careful to make sure that we exercise them properly” to be able to support military missions, he stressed.

While many of the concerns Wilkins expressed should serve as fodder for internal Navy homework, he said industry also has a key role to play in developing heavy-lift technology that is lightweight and transportable.

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