"Once a large-scale conflict erupts between China and the United States, all U.S. military bases in the first island chain could be destroyed, with the danger of losing their foothold."
This is the dire scenario described repeatedly by the U.S. Navy in recent years; to prevent the nightmare from coming true, the Pentagon has mobilized the U.S. business community and think tanks to help them come up with tricks.
The famous U.S. ship design and construction firm "Gibbs and Cox" has proposed the "mobile arsenal platform" (MODEP) concept, designed specifically for this purpose, aimed at inactive and redundant offshore oil platforms converted into a fully armed mobile maritime platform.
The MODEP concept is designed to convert inactive and redundant offshore oil platforms into fully armed mobile maritime missile and supply bases to improve the U.S. Navy's arming and supply capabilities in the Western Pacific.
According to a recent report by the U.S. website "Navy News," at the "sea, air and sky 2024" defense industry seminar held in Washington, the company "Gibbs and Cox" proposed this new maritime armed platform project.
The "Mobile Arsenal Platform" can travel at 5-8 knots, about 200 nautical miles per day, with a total range of 4,000 nautical miles without refueling.
"It is stable in all sea states, even in rough sea conditions."
The Mobile Arsenal Platform also provides 6 MW-20 MW of additional power, 2.3 million gallons of fuel capacity and 8,000 tons of payload capacity.
The Mobile Platform offers solutions to the U.S. Navy's major current challenges.
Since the U.S. has no reliable anti-missile bases in the vast western Pacific, from Guam to the first island chain, and major U.S. Navy ships can be driven thousands of kilometers away from the PLA's "anti-access/area denial" system in wartime, the "Mobile Arsenal Platform" has been specially upgraded to provide powerful weaponry.
This platform has been specially upgraded to provide powerful armament.
Its interior space is much larger than that of a conventional surface ship, enabling it to carry a large number of weapons to carry out urgently needed air defense or strike missions for the US Navy. It can accommodate up to 512 units of MK-41 vertical launchers, which is equivalent to five times the payload of the U.S. Navy's main destroyer, the Arleigh Burke class; it can also accommodate the much larger MK-57 vertical launcher, which is mounted on the Walter Jumbo class destroyer.
"It can also accommodate the larger MK-57 vertical launcher, which is mounted on Jumwalt-class destroyers and is used to launch, among other things, large hypersonic attack weapons or ballistic missiles."
At the same time, when performing anti-missile missions, the "mobile arsenal platform" has a better field of vision, because the height of offshore oil drilling platforms is generally 45-90 meters above the waterline, which is 2-4 times the height of the mast of an ordinary destroyer. Setting up various radar sensors at a higher altitude can obtain "excellent surveillance and visibility range."
More importantly, the "mobile arsenal platform" can also move around and be deployed wherever there is danger. It is more convenient than the current land-based anti-missile system, and it will not be restricted by the country where it is deployed like the land-based system.
In response to the US Navy's concerns about the lack of supply bases in the Western Pacific, the "Mobile Arsenal Platform" can store a large amount of ammunition, fuel and supplies, provide rotation, maintenance and supply for the US Navy's surface warships and nuclear submarines, and refuel various ships at sea. According to the introduction of "Gibbs and Cox", the "Mobile Arsenal Platform" is equipped with two cranes capable of lifting 100 tons, which can reload missiles for the ship's vertical launch device.
This capability to refuel munitions at sea is a "game changer" that U.S. Secretary of the Navy Carlos del Toro has wanted for many years.
Today, the Navy can only do this in quiet harbors because the process of reloading vertical launchers requires the precise raising and lowering of missiles in vertical launch units, a process that is very susceptible to high winds, waves and currents.
Toro has repeatedly called for "prioritizing the restoration of the ability to refuel the vertical launch systems of warships at sea" to "increase the forward strength of existing forces." In his public speeches, he said that in the event of a conflict with China, the U.S. Navy's main warships could easily fire all their missiles in one or two engagements, only to have to abandon combat in order to be refueled -- for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, only a handful of ports in Japan, Guam, Hawaii and California have the capacity to refuel these ships."
However, "naval bases in Japan and Guam could be destroyed by long-range PLA fire or be so insecure that ships resupplying munitions there would be too vulnerable. Refueling in Hawaii would mean that U.S. ships would have to be out of combat in fifteen days or more, and the journey to California would be even worse, taking at least three weeks across the Pacific."
These features of a "mobile arsenal platform" that could be deployed forward in the Pacific and reload the vertical launch systems of U.S. ships are thus clearly very welcome to the U.S. Navy.
The idea of converting oil drilling platforms into maritime military bases has been around for a long time. Already since the end of the Gulf War, the Pentagon was acutely aware that for large-scale military operations it was necessary to rely on the ports of allied countries, which is why it had planned to build floating platforms deployed in international waters as semi-permanent military fortresses.
However, a 1999 study report by the US Office of Naval Research rejected this idea because it had obvious weaknesses such as high costs and vulnerability to missile attacks.
A 2018 US Navy study also mentioned the weaknesses of these types of semi-permanent maritime military installations, although advances in air defense and anti-missile technology help improve the security of such maritime platforms.
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