Coastal Riverine Squadron

[exNavyOffRec]

Yep. Any watercraft can have a launcher on it if the launcher is man-portable. Stinger. SMAW. Javelin. Whatever you fancy that day.

During the first gulf war there was a program where people would join as an undesignated Seaman and be assigned to something called the stinger program, all they did is stand watch on UW ships with a portable stinger, not sure how effective it would be at all, but after doing that for like a year they had a guaranteed follow on A school.

 

[Hair Warrior]

During the first gulf war there was a program where people would join as an undesignated Seaman and be assigned to something called the stinger program, all they did is stand watch on UW ships with a portable stinger, not sure how effective it would be at all, but after doing that for like a year they had a guaranteed follow on A school.

As a defensive/FP measure, it’s probably not that effective. As an offensive/asymmetric warfare capability, why not use it?

 

[exNavyOffRec]

As a defensive/FP measure, it’s probably not that effective. As an offensive/asymmetric warfare capability, why not use it?

The kids mom was not pleased with his recruiter, expressed it frequently on how she didn't like her son sitting on the bow of a ship for hours on end.

Now the kid when he came back thought it was the coolest thing ever, basically sat out there and took pics of whatever he saw.

 

[Hair Warrior]

The kids mom was not pleased with his recruiter, expressed it frequently on how she didn't like her son sitting on the bow of a ship for hours on end.

Now the kid when he came back thought it was the coolest thing ever, basically sat out there and took pics of whatever he saw.

Eval bullet says:
- Single handedly maintained accountability for a $38,000 weapon, while employing air warfare capabilities at sea in a combat zone.

 

[HokiePilot]

I did my dissociated sea tour as the Admin Officer at a CRS squadron. We were getting the Mk VI patrol boats as I was there and we were sending people all over the country to get crews trained up on them.

They were neat platforms, but I'm not sure what the Navy really wanted out of them. There was talk about using them for SOH transits. We had some in Guam, but I'm not sure what they actually did down there. They were limited to about 24 hour endurance. There were some racks for the off duty crew and a small galley, but the fuel situation tied them to a port or support vessel.

The stumbling block was just the SWO culture. It just doesn't consider individual action. Lack of individual unit experience at the LTJG level. As I was leaving, they decided to make the OICs baby COs. Which I think was going to help. But I left the squadron and the Navy just as they were taking them on their first deployment. When I left, there was talk about a rule that they couldn't get underway without a CO qualified officer onboard. It turns out the only officers in the command who were CO qualified were the CO, XO and a reserve O-5. I don't know what ended up happening with that. I remember thinking that a Farsi Island incident could have happened again. Nothing was done to prevent it.

It could have worked with a larger community and a RAG like program. Maybe even a weapons school, but it was too small to justify that.

 

[Hair Warrior]

The stumbling block was just the SWO culture.

As Jocko puts it: “All problems are leadership problems.”

Give them to NSW or the Marines. Both cultures have no problem putting an O1-O3 into combat in command of a platoon, surrounded by some quality NCOs. Heck, the SWCC community alone would probably love to have them, and 12 hulls is not an unmanageable number. Six in Coronado, six in Little Creek, of which a few are probably in maintenance or refit anyway.

 

[AllAmerican75]

Time to break out Brown Water, Black Berets and discuss how short-sighted SWOs are in their pursuit of their Mahanian, Guerre d'Escadrille, deep blue water fantasies. Paging @BigRed389.

Big Navy loves to decimate anything not immediately aligned to the current view of strategy - its amazing. 20 years of patrol boat / coastal / littoral expertise now no longer in favor so let's kill it. Harkens back to Helo CSAR being destroyed in 70-80's.

It's amazing how the Navy rejects anything that has to do with real world kinetic combat.

Just like after Vietnam when we decided that we no longer needed an asymmetric coastal and riverine capability despite all of our years of experience in Southeast Asia and the many Pacific Island chains telling us otherwise. Very similar things happen to our mine warfare ships and capabilities. We practically shut down the passages between multiple island chains during WW2 with an aggressive offensive mining plan. In fact, mines sank more Japanese tonnage than submarines or surface ships did.

The more things change. . .sigh

This strikes me as being very short sighted. Sure, modern military strategy is (wrongly) based on supporting a specific budget (mo' money fo' mo' ships) rather than a militarily strategic goal (how to beat China in WWIII) but the lack of geographic and historic understanding here is tragic. In WWII P.T. boats failed to be particularly effective in their primary mission, but were quite effective in their use in reconnaissance, search and rescue, and best of all harassing enemy supply lines. The Japanese hated them because they pulled significant combat power away from the primary strike fleets. On the other side of the world German "E-Boats" were credited with sinking over 100 merchant ships, 12 destroyers, 11 minesweepers, 8 landing ships, a submarine and a host of smaller craft.

As @Hair Warrior noted, the primary fighting ground in a near peer war with China is almost perfect for small boat action and the PLAN has, I think, nearly 200 small attack craft. But...all that said...WWII PT boats were considered a stop gap measure while the blue water fleet was built to full strength even though the navy didn't let them go once the big fleet was ready. They were, in fact, too valuable. It seesm to me that the better route would be to slap a few launchers on it.

We'll get to learn these lessons again, no doubt. In whatever future conflict we find ourselves in, we'll realize we should never have let the skillset atrophy, we'll scramble to shove active duty Sailors and officers and many Reservists into the role, and then we'll junk it all immediately thereafter.

As Jocko puts it: “All problems are leadership problems.”

Give them to NSW or the Marines. Both cultures have no problem putting an O1-O3 into combat in command of a platoon, surrounded by some quality NCOs. Heck, the SWCC community alone would probably love to have them, and 12 hulls is not an unmanageable number. Six in Coronado, six in Little Creek, of which a few are probably in maintenance or refit anyway.

The issue is that the SPECWAR and the USMC communities don't want the boats. At the beginning of OIF, we inherited the riverine mission from the Marines because they couldn't support it but desperately needed the support on the river. SPECWAR used to own PCs and many other riverine units in the 1980s and 1990s but got rid of them because they also couldn't support it and had to become lighter and more flexible. This is a Surface Navy mission but because it's not "sexy" to the admirals and Congress the powers that be pay no attention to it until it's needed.

The problem lies in the Surface Navy's inability to think beyond a deep water fight and see smaller ships and patrol boats as anything other than rag tag gunboats. We'll learn a hard lesson if we ever have to face Russia or China. I would not want to be anywhere near a swarm of Houbei-class missile boats or Tarantul-class missile corvettes. It would be a bad time.

 

[Hair Warrior]

At the risk of beating a dead horse that I think we collectively killed about 6’ish months ago...

What if they create a splinter off of the SWO community by establishing a new URL designator for Expeditionary Warfare Officer - for all things coastal, riverine, and brown water. They can be part of the larger surface community while gaining and maintaining an entirely separate area of expertise, kind of like how pilots and NFOs make it work.

If you make it a new designator, and not merely an AQD of NOBC, it will form its own training pipeline and organizational culture by necessity. We don’t have a lot of 180X METOC or 184X CWE officers in the Navy - but their skill sets are sufficiently unique and valuable that they necessitate their own track.

 

[AllAmerican75]

At the risk of beating a dead horse that I think we collectively killed about 6’ish months ago...

What if they create a splinter off of the SWO community by establishing a new URL designator for Expeditionary Warfare Officer - for all things coastal, riverine, and brown water. They can be part of the larger surface community while gaining and maintaining an entirely separate area of expertise, kind of like how pilots and NFOs make it work.

If you make it a new designator, and not merely an AQD of NOBC, it will form its own training pipeline and organizational culture by necessity. We don’t have a lot of 180X METOC or 184X CWE officers in the Navy - but their skill sets are sufficiently unique and valuable that they necessitate their own track.

I am more than happy to beat this particular dead horse. Sadly, nobody listens to me because I'm just a lieutenant and now I'm a "quitter" in the eyes of the SWO community apparently.

 

[Pags]

At the risk of beating a dead horse that I think we collectively killed about 6’ish months ago...

What if they create a splinter off of the SWO community by establishing a new URL designator for Expeditionary Warfare Officer - for all things coastal, riverine, and brown water. They can be part of the larger surface community while gaining and maintaining an entirely separate area of expertise, kind of like how pilots and NFOs make it work.

If you make it a new designator, and not merely an AQD of NOBC, it will form its own training pipeline and organizational culture by necessity. We don’t have a lot of 180X METOC or 184X CWE officers in the Navy - but their skill sets are sufficiently unique and valuable that they necessitate their own track.

There's only so many dollars to go around. Does the USN want FFGs or PCs? Before you answer "both!" remember that to build big things it takes a long time and that our current limited resources are probably better spent on building big things and the little things can happen quicker.

And the USN hates weird little vestigial communities without clear cut missions. The ACDU career paths just don't work that way.

 

[Hair Warrior]

There's only so many dollars to go around. Does the USN want FFGs or PCs? Before you answer "both!" remember that to build big things it takes a long time and that our current limited resources are probably better spent on building big things and the little things can happen quicker.

FFGs only. Donate the PCs to a NATO/ANZUS.

The 12x Mark VIs are already built. It's a sunk cost. Put six each in Coronado and Little Creek. Maybe shelve some of those into dry dock for "break glass" crises and keep a couple hulls in the water for training, exercises, concept development, etc.

And the USN hates weird little vestigial communities without clear cut missions. The ACDU career paths just don't work that way.

I actually disagree with this statement on a couple levels.

"USN hates weird little vestigial communities" - Isn't HR officer a weird little vestigial community? And medical service corps officers? Strategic sealift officers? Cyber warfare engineering officers? Why the difference between AEDO and AMDO, when the non-aviation EDO is just one big EDO and not EEDO/EMDO?

"without clear cut missions" - I think if we look at the 2+2 state adversaries in relation to the SCS, Philippines, Senkakus, SOH, GOO, Danish Straits, Baltic, Dardanelles, and Norwegian coastline, I don't see how there isn't a clear and present need for small inshore watercraft across the continuum of military operations. One with niche capabilities, e.g. personnel recovery in a contested littoral domain, sUAS ISR, NSW support, asymmetric warfare (shoulder-launched counter-air/ surface-to-surface missiles), and counter-FAC/FIAC.

 

[Pags]

FFGs only. Donate the PCs to a NATO/ANZUS.

The 12x Mark VIs are already built. It's a sunk cost. Put six each in Coronado and Little Creek. Maybe shelve some of those into dry dock for "break glass" crises and keep a couple hulls in the water for training, exercises, concept development, etc.


I actually disagree with this statement on a couple levels.

"USN hates weird little vestigial communities" - Isn't HR officer a weird little vestigial community? And medical service corps officers? Strategic sealift officers? Cyber warfare engineering officers? Why the difference between AEDO and AMDO, when the non-aviation EDO is just one big EDO and not EEDO/EMDO?

"without clear cut missions" - I think if we look at the 2+2 state adversaries in relation to the SCS, Philippines, Senkakus, SOH, GOO, Danish Straits, Baltic, Dardanelles, and Norwegian coastline, I don't see how there isn't a clear and present need for small inshore watercraft across the continuum of military operations. One with niche capabilities, e.g. personnel recovery in a contested littoral domain, sUAS ISR, NSW support, asymmetric warfare (shoulder-launched counter-air/ surface-to-surface missiles), and counter-FAC/FIAC.

You can't just put something on the shelf for free.

The potential roles for this boat/community sound neat but neat isn't going to win the next war for USN. If other services (USMC, USA, SOCOM) see need then they should fund it. There's a reason the USN historically hasn't had a use for small craft.

Those communities you described are Staff/RL so different animals from URL.

 

[Hair Warrior]

We needed small armed watercraft in the Solomon Islands campaign of WW2. We needed small armed watercraft in the Vietnam war.

In terms of cost-benefit tradeoffs: It costs less money to dry dock 12 small boats than it does to make everyone in the Navy watch ~2 hours of videos about the dangers of alcohol. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be alcohol-aware, but c’mon we can find the money.

Edit: I would be fine if we gave them to the USCG. I just think it’s dumb to let them go to a foreign navy.

 

[Pags]

We needed small armed watercraft in the Solomon Islands campaign of WW2. We needed small armed watercraft in the Vietnam war.

In terms of cost-benefit tradeoffs: It costs less money to dry dock 12 small boats than it does to make everyone in the Navy watch ~2 hours of videos about the dangers of alcohol. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be alcohol-aware, but c’mon we can find the money.

Edit: I would be fine if we gave them to the USCG. I just think it’s dumb to let them go to a foreign navy.

Yeah, it costs more than you think to shrink wrap and care for expensive gear then you think. And then the cost to unwrap them and get them working again. It's not the same as unwrapping a personal watercraft at the end of winter. So do you do this with boats that have been assessed as not useful in your scenarios or do you buy new boats when the need emerges? Buying some newer boats that can be COTS with war $ is better than taking current money that can be better used elsewhere to build the blue water fleet we need.

As you rightfully pointed out, in the last blue water fight we had there was a limited need for small craft. Once the war moved past the solomons the need for small craft largely went away. And as others have said the PT boats didn't really work as intended.

It's a niche capability that is only needed in very specific scenarios and that can be relatively quickly met if needed.

 

[Renegade One]

There's only so many dollars to go around.

You ain't seen nuthin' yet...