FEATURE ARTICLE

April 2007

Brown-Water Navy begins hunt for new riverine combat craft

By Breanne Wagner

To patrol Iraq’s Euphrates River — which is peppered with 79 islands that offer hideouts for insurgents and weapons caches — the Navy is relying on a squadron of small boats that used to belong to the Marines.

The small craft turned out to be valuable in Iraq, said Marine Corps Maj. Dan Wittnam, former commander of a small craft company. They helped the Marines covertly evade the enemy and uncover mortars among the numerous islands, Wittnam told National Defense.

“We took [weapon] contact 60 different times and only one person died,” said Wittnam, who served in Iraq from September 2004 to April 2005.

The Marines’ experience in Iraq offers useful insight to Navy operators who are now taking over river patrol duties. The Navy’s first riverine squadron — stood up in spring 2006 — deployed to Iraq last month.

Some time after 2010, the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command plans to buy a new small boat that will be tailored to specific Navy needs. But for the foreseeable future, they will continue to operate the Marines’ boats, which are called small unit riverine craft, or SURC, said Capt. David Balk, assistant chief of staff for science and technology at the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command.

This will ensure “commonality of training,” he said, allowing all three planned riverine squadrons to become familiar with it.

Balk said the riverines will get 12 additional SURCs in the next few years because the Marine boat program was “terminated before all craft were bought,” he said. The Navy requested funding in its 2008 emergency war budget for two command and control craft that will cost $858,000 each. The service also wants two multi-mission craft — priced at $960,000 — for transport and patrol. It wants eight assault boats — pegged at $858,000 each — for armed fire coverage. Once the Navy receives them, the riverine fleet will have 36 boats, 12 for each squadron.

The Navy will then request funding for the new craft in the fiscal year 2010 budget. “There are two pots of money, one to finish out the SURC buys and one in the out year budget for the new platform,” Balk explained.

He hopes to get the new boat at “the end of the useful life of the SURCs,” estimated to be eight years.

The future craft will meet unique Navy needs because the service will have an expanded mission. Balk said that it will be a larger force than the Marine small craft unit, will patrol further upland and will have multiple boat detachments.

Wittnam said the sailors will have the same skills as the Marines, but an important difference is that the Navy has access to different technology.

“They have unmanned aerial vehicles that can be launched from aircraft and unmanned boats,” a useful capability for that mission, Wittnam explained. It would have been helpful to have those platforms to see approaching insurgents or to fly over head and find out where weapons caches were hidden, Wittnam said. He explained that the enemy hid ordnance among the 79 islands.

“The Navy is also adding a better command and control structure,” Wittnam remarked. He felt that his team could have benefited from better C2 and satellite communications.

The riverines are going to receive better armor protection on the bows of the current fleet to fix a problem the Marines experienced. “We grabbed a lot of humvee armor and put it on the front because there were a number of hits,” Wittnam said.

When asked what he would suggest for the new boat, Wittnam pointed to an acoustic radar antenna that can capture and magnify shots to make a positive identification of a weapon.

Balk said the riverine units are just starting to generate requirements.

The Naval Sea Systems Command put out a request for information in July 2006, said Aluminum Chambered Boats chief operating officer Tim Metz, whose company plans to compete for the contract.

Aluminum Chambered Boats, Bellingham, Wash., and Northrop Grumman are jointly developing a concept, Metz said. “All of our boats are shock mitigating, extremely fuel efficient, highly maneuverable and have a hull design that allows them to go twice as far with half the gas,” Metz said. Northrop Grumman is developing the weapons and sensors.

ACB will propose a craft that only needs 12 inches of water to take off. The existing SURC needs twice that amount of space — two feet — and if it slows down, it needs three to four feet, said Wittnam.

Metz also pointed out that his craft passed the Coast Guard’s boating safety tank test without a foam flotation device thanks to its sink resistant hull design.

The boat is also survivable, Metz said. “Even if the bottom of it is shot out, you could still turn on one engine and get out of the water,” he said.

This could be particularly important for the riverines, when attacked with a range of weapons. A small craft in Iraq in 2004 nearly sunk when the bottom was shot out.

“It was hit by a rocket propelled grenade and it was barely able to recover,” Wittnam said.

Cmdr. William Guarini, commander of riverine squadron one, told National Defense that the riverine boats need an advanced communications suite and a friendly-force tracker.

In addition to the ACB/Northrop concept, the Navy is also looking at the Combat Boat 90 H, built by Swedish boat maker Dockstavarvet, Wittnam said. The CB 90 has several versions. For example, the CB 90 HCG was delivered to the Greek coast guard, while the CB 90 HEX is currently in production for the Royal Malaysian navy, a Dockstavarvet document said.

The combat boat is an aluminum fast assault craft and is capable of transporting 20 soldiers and cargo at more than 40 knots, the document said. The craft also has a low hull for shallow water driving.

It is fitted with two 12.7 mm machine guns and can withstand 7.62 mm fire, similar to the SURC capability. Wittnam said his boats sustained damage from lesser caliber rounds. The SURC has GAU-17 armor protection and can be mounted with .50 caliber guns or MK-19 grenade launchers. The Swedish boat can be fitted with missile and mortar systems, the Dockstavarvet Web site said.

The craft is also touted by the company for its low profile, with a height of less than 15 feet. It can be transported by land or by air, the Web site said.

This asset could help the sailors when moving the boat. Wittnam explained that boats were always transported on land at night and were covered with camouflage to avoid detection, but “we had some problems hooking them up with the trailer, which was a civilian trailer.”

The future platform will likely feature an engine with low thermal and audible exhaust like the SURC. A boat with a low radar signature and small target area — a smaller boat —would also help make it even stealthier.

Aluminum Chambered Boats said the Navy is looking at its 32-foot bow loader. The SURC is 39 feet long, according to a Navy fact sheet.

Please email your comments to BWagner@ndia.org

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