The Commandant of the Marine Corps this week argued the Pentagon’s acquisition process has slowed down procurement of the brand new Landing Ship Medium (LSM) vessels and he favors modifying regulations to permit more innovation.
Speaking at a Brookings Institution event on May 23, Gen. David Berger was asked about how he thinks the Defense Department is proceeding on his vision for smaller and more quite a few amphibious ships.
He responded it shouldn’t be going in addition to he hoped as a result of others attempting to add other weapons that make the platform costlier.
“Not satisfactory. The challenge, and it’s not to position blame on anybody…the smaller ships, which we all know we want, they enter a process within the Pentagon of, okay, what’s it you would like, what capability do you would like, and by the point it comes out, the opposite side is everybody’s piled on every kind of additional things on there that you just don’t need,” Berger said.
“And it comes out to be super expensive and beyond what you would like. And then you definitely wargame it and you have got discussions and, six months later, you find yourself doggone pretty near where you began from. You lost a 12 months,” he continued.
The commandant said the method has frustrated him because he “couldn’t discover a method to navigate through that process any faster. And now we’re back where we form of began from.”
The LSM is planned to be 200 to 400 feet long, in a position to transport 75 Marines and their equipment, travel upward of three,500 nautical miles, and have the option to hold as much as 10,000 square feet of cargo. The Marines said they need nine LSMs to field each of the three planned Marine Littoral Regiments (MLR). The Marine Corps wants 35 LSM-type ships to cover the 27 vessels for 3 MLRs and eight more to account for maintenance schedule requirements.
The Marine Corps is pushing to get this 35 LSMs along with a minimum of 31 traditional amphibious ships.
Nevertheless, the Navy and Marine Corps may only procure 18 LSMs as such, with the remaining nineteenth through thirty fifth ships including a combination of other craft offering similar capabilities.
In January, Marine Brig. Gen. Marcus Annibale, director of expeditionary warfare (OPNAV N95), said the services agreed the primary 18 LSM-type ships needs to be the LSM itself. The remaining of the vessels could possibly be other craft closer to the Stern Landing Vessel the Marine Corps is contracting to check LSM concepts or the Spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transport ships also being considered for LSM testing ( , Jan. 17).
Berger underscored if there isn’t any check placed on the acquisition system, others in the method will add more weapons and defensive systems to platforms just like the LSM, ultimately making it too expensive to field as envisioned.
He also said LSM and amphibious ships overall are a main example of where he sees the Pentagon needs to maneuver more quickly for future Marine Corps capabilities.
Berger noted a Brookings study from 1976 he read recently noted there have been 64 amphibious ships on the time, in comparison with 31 now.
“We’d like the [LSM] to maneuver stuff around. So in some areas like that [we] can’t go fast enough.”
Berger also argued Congress could help the Pentagon and the services by improving the speed and simplification of acquisition, “one among the drags that we’ve got.”
He said Congress could also help the military unlock funds despite adding some risk, compared to enterprise capitalism pushing private sector innovation.
Berger said DoD currently has “whatever the other of that’s.”
He hopes Congress can modify regulations to assist the Defense Department find ways to unlock funds, but acknowledged there must be non-overbearing oversight to counter that added risk.
“But don’t penalize us for the…toilet seat and golden hammers of 30 years ago, because then we didn’t have a pacing challenge, now we’ve got to maneuver.”
Berger said he even favored allowing combatant commanders to get investment funds over the services themselves.
“Give the combatant commanders a method to put money into funds, or using funds to maneuver quickly, because that’s where the laboratory is, in my personal view.”
He said if regulations should not modified to extend innovation inside DoD and “if we keep the identical framework in place that was put probably for all the proper reasons when the oversight wasn’t to the degree it must have been, if we don’t change that, we’ll fall behind. Nevertheless it comes with risk.”