Why Are Navy Helos Getting Marginalized?

The Navy’s new budget suggests that the humble Navy helicopter has fallen out of favor.

Traditionally, the simple ole’ helicopter has been one of the more effective means for surface ships to pursue Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) and Anti-Swarm operations. The run-of-the-mill helicopter remains critical for surface combatant resupply, personnel transfer and (sometimes) ISR. It adds flexibility. But a glimpse at the Navy’s proposed budget suggests the simple Navy helo is being de-emphasized. The MH-60R (a surface warfare and ASW asset–see pic above) was cut, the Firescout zeroed out, and even heavy-lift CH-53K production sliding right (again).

It’s quite a mysterious come-down. For the rotary-wing crowd, gone are the heady days when the Congressional Budget Office used “available helicopter hangars” as a measure of fleet strength (other principal measures of surface fleet strength in CBO studies are usually the intrinsic number of surface combatants themselves, followed by the number capable of providing long-range fleet air defense, the number of VLS cells, long range guns, and ASW suites.).

While VLS cell numbers and Ballistic Missile Defense capabilities have become the primary quantitative focus of most mainstream naval strategists today, the reduction in helicopter hangars available within the surface combatant fleet and consolidation of helicopter support onto larger platforms has been comparatively overlooked.

It’s all somewhat odd, because the helicopter remains an integral part of naval warfare. Every young Navy out there is looking for a naval helicopter. Rotary wing airframes support every aspect of modern war at sea, and it is one of the key areas where the U.S. has a real advantage over almost everybody else.

Unless helicopters are facing an overwhelming tactical overmatch from small, undersea-launch-capable surface-to-air missiles or portable swarm-ready weapons, the advantage of having a cost-effective, dispersible, well-understood and highly mature platform available to operate across a range of different naval platforms seems difficult to deny.

But the Navy’s FY-15 budget documents do a pretty good job of sidelining the humble helicopter–denying the value of a tried-and-true, always-in-demand asset.

Hangars Leave The Fleet:

The underlying reason for the helicopter cuts is that the number of US surface combatants with helo hangars is in precipitous decline. The Navy is slashing the available numbers of cruisers and other helo-ready surface combatants–in numbers far beyond what is getting added back by vessel recapitalization.

The numbers are stunning. In 2007, the CBO estimated the overall US helicopter hangar number at around 150. Today, if the budget stands, we’ll eliminate over 50 of those hangars in the space of a few fiscal years. The the two-helo hangar FFG-7 class will be totally eliminated in FY 15, and 11 two-helo hangar cruisers are set to be put “into ordinary”, leaving the fleet with a serious shortfall in smaller combatants ready to support helicopters.

Deleting at least 52 hangars from the surface combatant fleet in FY-14 and 15 (11 CGs, 9 Active FFG-7s and 6 NRFA FFG-7s) is…worth thinking about a bit. Aside from reducing the flexibility of the force, deleting these hangars make it harder to incorporate new UAV platforms and, possibly, employ other interesting capabilities.

Once shed, hangars won’t be quick to come back. In FY 15 only 4-6 hangars come back to the Fleet via 2 Indy and 2 Freedom Class LCS. And overall, with the Littoral Combat Ship is being delayed/cut–all while being artificially constrained by a CONOPS that limits LCS helo ops to a single helo (I suspect the INDY Class can accept two MH-60s easy, thus the 4-6 number above)–no help is in sight.

Additional Burke Class buys won’t add much either–the shift from the Flight IIa Burkes is imminent, and there are rumors are that the Flight III Burkes will sacrifice one of the Flight IIa’s two hangars for power generation or something.  (Remember, of the DDG-51 Class Destroyers, only DDGs-79 and up have helicopter hangars.)  DDG-1000 adds two.

The only hope to add helicopter hangars quickly is via the MSC Fleet (add hangar-space to the T-AO(X)s) or through the incorporation of some extra amphibs. The addition of AFSBs is a good step, but, remember, while these bring utilitarian aviation-ready goodness to the fleet, they’re awfully slow (18Kt max speed) and more of a stationary in-theatre asset than combatant or fleet escort. But the hangars available on the MSC’s logistical support fleet might be useful if the lawyers allowed ’em to carry (and rearm) combat helos.

Adding back this capability depends upon the Navy’s commitment to old-school rotary wing craft. But…if the FY-15 budget is any guide, something has happened to dramatically reduce the importance the surface fleet places on organic helicopter support.

Helos in Fleet Operations:

Larger task forces are increasingly reliant upon the larger big-decks for helicopter support, leading me to wonder if the surface combatant community is quietly distancing themselves from the old-school rotary-wing workhorse.

It’s only logical–helos have nowhere else to go. Despite the planned “bulking up” of the number of CVN escort ships, the remaining hangar-equipped surface combatants will be in short supply, siphoned away by special missions. For example, independent employment of BMD-capable surface combatants in BMD “national mission” roles will, in time, inevitably draw from the supply of DDG-51s with  hangar space—early-Flight Burkes are unlikely to be dedicated to solo BMD patrols (or really any really useful “presence” patrol at all in tense areas with an undersea/swarm threat (see comments below).

It makes the big-deck the only logical place for the Navy’s helicopters to be housed. And that shift in community means the helicopter fleet may have been left without a committed champion, ripe for marginalization and–as we are seeing–defunding.

The reinvigoration of the CVN’s long-range strike mission makes the condensation of rotary wing assets to the carrier look like a relatively short-term fix. Just as MH-60R-equipped Maritime Strike Squadrons are getting nice and comfy aboard their carriers, they’ll be tossed out–as anti-A2/AD strategists realize that a short-range rotary wing craft makes a poor fit for a big deck CVN prepping for long-range anti- A2/AD strike missions.

I am willing to bet that moving the helo to the big-decks has stripped the humble helo of champions. I fear that the helo is becoming an expensive, labor-intensive piece of “un-owned, in-common” equipment whose operating costs are best foisted upon “Somebody Else’s” O&M budget.

Remedies:

Barring some game-changing tactical threat (missile overmatch or, oh, lasers!!), rotary-wing airframes will remain an important part of the naval arsenal. Even though rotary-wing manned/unmanned airframes will become more efficient and evolve technically over time, the fleet will still benefit from the flexibility of having a good number of hangars (with organic, rotary wing assets) dispersed throughout the small-combatant fleet.

What are the options for rehabilitating the humble helo?

The first thing to do is to make sure the helicopter remains an organic component of certain surface combatants (the accountant-warriors among us will scream and gnash their teeth, but I think commanders are more prone to think harder about using assets that are under their direct command). I appreciate the efficiencies that come with keeping wings on carriers, but I like the idea of some surface combatants “owning” their own helos.

The second thing to do is to get more hangars out into the fleet. To do that, I’d ensure that the Indy LCS Class’s ability to support rotary wing craft is not being artificially throttled. The LCS draft CONOPS has reduced the LCS aviation requirements to one manned and one or two unmanned systems “depending upon the mission”.  This, in my opinion, is largely in deference to the space limitations of the LCS-1 seaframe; LCS-2—if the mission bay is utilized for maintenance and storage–offers far more aviation capability that, under the current CONOPS, goes unused.  The requirement to maintain a 23 person AVDET (28-31 required for around-the-clock aviation operations) means that the ship may have a more difficult time conducting other operations; therefore, the Navy should be encouraged to support mission sets that leverage the full utilization of all the Indy Class aviation capability—an almost exclusive focus on aviation, or a solely “rotary-wing-based mission module”, so to speak.

Assuming a helo can withstand the accelerations on a trimaran LCS at a high sea-state, inclusion of a helicopter recovery system (RAST, etc) aboard LCS might also support flight operations over a larger range of sea states.

Also, when operational, the Indy Class elevator to the mission bay is an enormous force multiplier. Bolstering the elevator (expanding the footprint and max allowable weight) should become a priority in future—capability to store and service larger, more sophisticated “higher-endurance” platforms or other UAVs outside the hangar will prove less of a burden to the slimly-manned ship.

Third, unless there’s a compelling operational argument, I’d be loathe to sacrifice hangar space on the Flight III Burkes for power generation equipment (hopefully sanity will prevail, but, these days, one never knows!). As much as I like lasers and power generation, a hangar makes the ship far more useful in a wider range of missions.

If helicopters are too much of a burden or aversely impact the larger surface combatant mission (constraining, say, certain EM emissions), then it might be useful to eye the helicopter-destroyer hybrids in service in Japan–something simple that can support a carrier strike group, yet be of low-enough value to operate at the margins of the escort screen, pushing significant rotary-wing support forward. And perhaps, as the idea of a flotilla mother-ship advances, then an amphib could be used as a home-base as helos are distributed to the tiny flotilla combatants.

Also, possibly, let’s get the lawyers to reconsider deploying combat-ready helicopters from MSC ships–last time I checked, they usually have nice hangars, and with the T-AO(X)s in the design phase, there might be an opportunity to add some cost-effective hangar-space and weapons storage capability. Don’t knock it! Simple civil-spec ships can contribute on a tough battlefield–After all, let’s just take a moment and remember how useful the humble, two-helo HMS Endurance was back in 1982–and how her embarked choppers helped sink a sub–during the Falklands conflict.

And, finally, I’d keep working with the Army to improve interoperability between Army rotary-wing assets and Navy platforms. Army/Navy collaboration in rotary wing support makes sense, but without adequate hangar support at sea, that collaboration gets far, far harder.

Conclusion:

It’s easy to neglect something that is so ubiquitous. There’s nothing special about helicopters anymore, and they’re just part of the boring old routine of Navy life. They’ve faded into the background.

It’s a shame–helos are important parts of the surface warfare arsenal, and to see them moving away from being organic surface combatant assets to something that belongs more to the big-deck folks…it feels wrong, and it moves the helicopter away from being an integral piece of the surface warrior’s consciousness.

As an example of how the helicopter is being disconnected from the surface warfare community, I’d go and compare, say, early reports on LCS mission modules with ones produced today. Early reports cite the enormous importance of helos in fighting the LCS mission package. Later ones barely mention the helo (which is, for me, particularly amusing, since the helo is the most successful component of any LCS mission package).

Failure of the surface warfare community to highlight the support brought by rotary-wing assets means the Navy may overlook a strength that, in the past, united the fleet. We forget that the humble helo facilitated the U.S. Fleet’s acceptance of new and modest platforms—i.e. the FFG-7 Class–at a time when the FFG-7 itself was facing the same sort of criticism now leveled at the LCS.  But the FFG-7 brought helos forward at a time when the Navy needed ’em, and that set the stage for the support FFG-7s still enjoy today.

Tagged as: helicopters, MH-60, Seahawk