A survivability assessment of the transformable craft in an operational environment

Abstract

Seabasing is developing as a dominant concept for military operations in the 21st century and will be at the core of joint operations abroad. To enable an effective seabase, the Office of Naval research is leading an effort to design and develop a seabase connector known as the Transformable Craft (T-Craft). The T-Craft is intended to provide "game changing capabilities" for seabasing operations--substantially outperforming any seabase connector in the Navy's current inventory. Through the use of simulation, state-of-the-art design of experiments, and advanced data analysis, this research modeled and analyzed over 430,000 seabasing missions by varying the number of T-Craft, their capabilities (e.g., speed), the types of weapon systems carried, tactics, escort mixes, and threat level in order to determine which combinations obtain the highest survivability and throughput rate for the T-Craft. As a result of the research and analysis, the following were found: (1) the presence of escorts (at least two LCS in the scenarios we examined) is critical when a threat exists; (2) the operating speed of the T-craft must be determined by the operating capabilities of the escorts; and (3) the shoreline threat remains a critical area in ensuring T-Craft survivability.