This move also serves to further strengthen the ties between the various countries involved with theU.S.in order to build a “regional order” that can effectively counter Chinese military expansionism
The U.S. Department of Defense recently said it plans to establish a global network of combat platform maintenance centers, starting in the Asia-Pacific region in five countries for a pilot period.
This model will then be extended to NATO allies covered by the U.S. European Command and Latin American partner countries covered by the Southern Command in 2025 and 2026, respectively.
Photo: US REGIONAL SUSTAINMENT FRAMEWORK
The current model
Ships, aircraft and armored vehicles as well as other equipment stationed in the Asia-Pacific region that require periodic overhaul must be returned to U.S. workshops.
This practice, however, takes time and manpower and can affect the efficiency of combat readiness.
At the same time, U.S. shipbuilders have also been criticized for delivery delays. There used to be 13 shipyards in the United States, but currently at least nine are closed and ship repairs require long lines.
To address these problems, the U.S. Navy has previously set up repair shops at its bases in Yokosuka and Sasebo, Japan, and the ship maintenance group of the U.S. Navy's Western Pacific Logistics Brigade Command, based in Singapore, has signed ship maintenance agreements with shipbuilders in Vietnam, India, Australia and other places. However, these measures are mainly in response to routine maintenance of non-combat ships. In February, U.S. Secretary of the Navy Del Toro visited some shipyards in South Korea and Japan to discuss maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) for U.S. ships.
The change of pace
The U.S. Department of Defense now wants to pursue a project to establish maintenance centers in different locations around the world. The project manager, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Maintenance and Security Lohman, said at a conference organized by the U.S. Naval Institute that military logistics is shifting from a traditional reactive model to an active model that provides solutions to problems before they occur.
The U.S. Department of Defense has also released a new Regional Assurance Framework (RSF), which explicitly addresses the use of allied defense industry facilities to maintain U.S. military equipment, with the goal of improving readiness by creating a decentralized network for maintenance, repair, and overhaul to gain an advantage in an adverse logistics environment. In this context, the U.S. military has greatly accelerated the pace of building maintenance networks in the Asia-Pacific region.
The initiative is critical to operations in contested environments where traditional methods of retrograding materiel for repair and maintenance are increasingly untenable. The Regional Sustainment Framework has three primary goals:
Prevail in a Contested Logistics Environment: Optimize and align weapon system product support strategies to establish a viable distributed MRO ecosystem.
Enhance Military Readiness: Collaborate with the defense industrial base and allies and partners to build regionally-focused sustainment strategies that increase readiness and deter aggression.
Strengthen Regional Partnerships: Develop sustainment strategies promoting joint/allied regional MRO to expand repair network capacity across warfighting domains.
"Aligned with the National Defense Strategy (NDS) and the National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS), RSF underpins the Department's effort to develop distributed MRO capabilities closer to the point of need by collaborating with allies and partners, as well as the U.S. and international defense industrial bases, to support the Joint and Combined Force."
Under the newly announced plan, the U.S. military forces will establish military maintenance centers in five countries - Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and the Philippines - to maintain, repair and overhaul U.S. ships, aircraft and armored vehicles near their areas of operation.
Lohman said this would not only solve the problem of “wear and tear” on equipment, but also take care of equipment damaged during the conflict. The negotiations are not yet concluded and the Pentagon is expected to release more details later.
Of the five countries mentioned above, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines are U.S. allies; Singapore is an important U.S. security partner, and the U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship is frequently docked there for maintenance.
In addition, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Singapore all have advanced shipbuilding and aircraft manufacturing/maintenance facilities, and South Korea, Japan, and Singapore have invested in large shipyards in the Philippines. Therefore, the establishment of military maintenance centers in these five countries is easier to achieve on both the political and technical levels.
It is worth noting that, in response to the new U.S. regional safeguard framework, shipbuilders from Japan, South Korea and Australia have swung into action. In June this year, South Korean Hanwha Group spent $100 million to acquire the U.S. shipyard in Philadelphia, then Hanwha Marine and the U.S. Navy signed a ship repair agreement. On Sept. 2, the U.S. Navy's 40,000-ton support ship “Wally Schaefer” entered Hanwha Marine's Juchi shipyard for repair.
At the same time, the Japanese side also hopes to repair U.S. warships at the local shipyard.
This year, Australia plans to provide maintenance services to the U.S. Navy's Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines for the first time.
According to the U.S. military, in the Pacific region, fighting must overcome distance, maritime area, time and scale and other challenges. First, a military maintenance network will be established in the Asia-Pacific region, with the aim of improving the efficiency and readiness of U.S. military equipment maintenance in the region.
This move also serves to further strengthen the ties between the various countries involved with theU.S. in order to build a “regional order” that can effectively counter Chinese military expansionism.
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