Marines Clamor for Long-Range Artillery at Sea: DD-21 demise triggers new round of complaints about lack of fire support.

Plenty of blame is going around these days about why the Marine Corps will have to wait many years before the Navy can supply long-range artillery fire from surface ships. Tomahawk cruise missiles are fine, Marines assert, but they do not provide the steady, hammering firepower that Marines want behind them as they penetrate enemy territory.

The carping got louder in recent weeks, prompted by the Navy's decision in October to abandon the DD-21 next-generation surface combatant program. Many Marines saw this move as further evidence that the Navy is falling short in its commitment to modernize sea-based artillery. Some Marine officers, however, conceded that they also had themselves to blame, because they should have articulated their needs more clearly and more emphatically.

The Navy has had no surface fire-support platforms since it retired the Iowa class battleships in the early 1990s. The Marines, however, do not want 16-inch battleship guns, but rather an ensemble of advanced guns and missiles that can meet ambitious requirements for range and accuracy.

The Corps' war-fighting doctrine is based on the notion that while Marines land ashore and prepare to engage the enemy with their own land-based weapons, they will need fire support from naval guns on ship decks as far away as 200 nautical miles from the coast.

Today, the best the Navy can do is 13 nautical miles. It will be at least four to seven years before any of a number of long-range capabilities planned for the future is ready for use in the fleet.

"In the world we are going to live in, that fire support will be absolutely necessary, said Marine Maj. Gen. William A. Whitlow, director of expeditionary warfare. "Until you get your forces ashore, your fire support has to come from the sea," Whitlow said in a speech to the National Defense Industrial Association's expeditionary warfare conference, in Panama City, Fla.

Currently, he lamented, "We don't have the fire support." That is a shame, he said, given the type of war the United States now is fighting in South Asia. "You can't shoot $1 million missiles against the guy in the tent and then run back to the United States and reload," said Whitlow. "You don't have enough of them, and you can't afford it."

With the dollars available in the budget, he said, "We need to continue to develop and field adequate surface fire systems to support forces ashore, naval or otherwise."

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated that the Navy would need about $2 billion to pay for the development of the fire-support systems that the Marines want--not including the cost of the ships.

Fire support only is useful if it comes in high volume, Whitlow said. "It rakes things like volume fire to rip the enemy's hearts our.

"Most people don't care if it comes from a gun tube or a [missile launcher], as long as we have it in sufficient quantity."

According to the Marine way of war, he said, "one precision round doesn't do it." Artillery fire is necessary, said Whitlow, "even though it stirs up a lot of dust and turns up a lot of rock."

But Whitlow stopped short of blaming the Navy for this problem. He said that the Marines share some of the responsibility. "One of the things we haven't done well in the Marine Corps is to more clearly define what volume fire is," he said. "It isn't an expensive missile or round. ... Is it more than 10 rounds? Less than 200?

"We have to get a better definition. We have to get away from a strike mentality [as opposed to volume fire]."

In the Marine Corps, Whitlow said, "We haven't done a good enough job defining the specific requirement."

Retired Navy Vice Adm. Henry C. Mustin, said that the Marines should be more explicit about how many guns, how many missiles, how many destroyers and cruisers they need to meet their requirements. "Until those numbers are developed and supported analytically, promulgated and understood by the Defense Department and Congress, you are not going to get anywhere," Mustin said at the conference.

But not all Marines agree that they are to blame.

Lt. Gen. Emil R. Bedard, the Marine Corps' deputy commandant for plans, policy and operations, said that the requirements were laid out unmistakably, several years ago. The problem is that they keep getting changed.

"We have defined our requirements very, very clearly," said Bedard. However, "over the past 10 to 15 years, we have moved the goal-posts."

A case in point is the land-attack Standard missile, which the Navy was expected to acquire as a near-term weapon, until a more advanced missile is developed. The LASM originally was intended to hit soft targets, such as artillery and small vehicles. Subsequently, said Bedard, "within the Navy, we went ahead and changed the requirement that LASM be capable of killing tanks. LASM was not designed to kill tanks."

The LASM was scheduled to be deployed in 2004, but the Navy recently suspended the program. A Navy spokeswoman said at press time that the service had not yet decided whether to fund LASM in fiscal 2003 and beyond.

"The kind of fire support that the Marines need for maneuver ashore in the littorals is not the tactical Tomahawk," said Bedard. "It's the kind that comes from a gun." Today, "We don't have it [even though] the requirements have been articulated. ... We have a hard requirement for a gun. We are not going to fall off from that requirement."

The leadership of the Navy, said Bedard, should stop "abandoning programs that have been worked on for four to five years.

DD-X Program

The DD-21 cancellation was bad news for many Marines, because that destroyer came with two 155 mm gun systems per ship. Those guns would fire long-range guided projectiles from 200 miles out.

To replace the DD-21, the Navy started the so-called DD-X program, which aims for a broader family of ships, from large destroyers to small combatants and missile-defense ships. DD-X, however, is only a research program and does not include ship production.

There has been a torrent of speculation as to why the Navy cancelled DD-21. Among the most obvious reasons, said several experts, is that a single-mission ship is hard to justify in an environment of tight shipbuilding budgets.

Scott C. Truver, vice president of national security studies at Anteon Corp., said in a recent interview that the Navy was pressured to change the program in order to meet emerging requirements for missile-defense missions. "Land attack [alone] is less desirable than tactical and operational flexibility, and theater ballistic-missile defense," Truver said.

The cost of the ship, at nearly $1 billion each, made the DD-21 program unpalatable to Navy leaders who were trying to fund other shipbuilding and aviation programs viewed as more pressing. Both the size and the cost were factor that weighed heavily, said Rear Adm. Thomas J. Wilson, the Navy's director of surface warfare.

Marine Maj. Gen. G. Nash, director of operations, observed that the "joint sea services are great teammates until they go into the budget wars."

Bedard, meanwhile, said the problem with DD-21 was that it was raking on too big a risk by pushing technologies that are not yet proven. The ship, for example, was supposed to be the first electric ship in the Navy and the first surface combatant to operate with a crew of less than 100 sailors.

"DD-21 was a great idea. But we hung so many bells and whistles on it that it was beginning to sink," Bedard told the conference in Panama City. Officials said that the DD-X program will continue to fund the development of the 155 mm gun, even though the design of the ship is yet to be determined.

"We don't tell the Navy how to build a ship," Bedard said. 'We tell them what our requirement is, and they have to figure out how to do it."

Whitlow noted that the debate over naval surface fire support has been going on for many years. Dozens of letters written by the current and former commandants of the Marine Corps have circulated around the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, but the lobbying campaign has not proved effective thus far.

There are several naval surface fire-support systems that the Marine Corps said it needs. The only one that is available today is the 5-inch, 54-caliber projectile, fired from 5-inch guns aboard Arleigh-Burke destroyers and other vessels. This weapon has a range of 13 nautical miles.

The capabilities that the Corps wants but does nor have include:

* The Extended-Range Guided Munition (ERGM), a GPS-guided projectile expected to have a range of 63 nautical miles. It is scheduled to be operational by 2006.

* The Tactical Tomahawk, a GPS-guided, more sophisticated version of the current Tomahawk cruise missile. It is scheduled to be in operation by 2004.

* The 155 mm long-range land-attack projectile, which is now part of the DD-X program. That weapon will not be ready until at least 2012.

* The Advanced Land-Attack Missile (ALAM), with a range of more than 200 nautical miles. This weapon was supposed to be part of the DD-21 program. A draft requirements document was issued, but subsequently cancelled.

* The land-attack Standard missile. LASM was intended as an interim system until ALAM was deployed. A Navy source said that, "while new work on the program has been suspended, no official word has been issued by the resource sponsor canceling the program.

The Marine Corps also is planning to field improved land-based artillery and air-to-ground weapon systems. These include:

* The lightweight 155 mm towed howitzer. This is a newly designed weapon, scheduled to be operational in 2005.

* The High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), based on a wheeled chassis. It is slated for deployment in 2008.

* The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The Marine Corps version of JSE with vertical takeoff and landing capabilities, is scheduled to join the fleet by 2011.

As the DD-X program takes shape, it appears likely that the former DD-2 1155 mm gun will be retained as a subsystem in the new ship. That means that contractors will continue development of both the gun (with a 50-round magazine) and the long-range projectile.

The DD-X solicitation issued in November specifies that the ship should be able to operate at speeds of about 30 knots. The desired missions for DD-X include: land-attack, air-dominance, undersea and surface dominance and mine-warfare operations.

It is less clear what will happen with the ALAM. The Navy's land-attack office is expected to begin funding the program in fiscal year 2004, sources said.

If the Navy funds the program, it is likely that Raytheon and Lockheed Martin will compete for the award. Raytheon is the prime contractor for LASM and Lockheed Martin makes a naval version of the Army tactical missile, known as NTACM.

Lockheed Martin is hoping that the uncertainty about LASM will open the door for the company to resurrect NTACM as an alternative weapon.

When the Navy originally committed to buying LASM as an interim system in 1998, it rejected the NTACM as too expensive. Industry sources at the time said that the main reason why the Navy had picked LASM was to sustain the production line of the Standard missile, which is the cornerstone of the Navy's theater missile-defense capability. Then director of Navy surface warfare Rear Adm. Rod Rempt specifically recommended LASM, over NTACM.

In 1998, the Navy asked Raytheon to start producing LASM by converting the Standard air-defense missile to a surface-to-ground strike weapon. LASM, fitted with an advanced warhead and guided by GPS and its own inertial navigation system, could hit targets up to 150 nautical miles inland, Raytheon said. Lockheed claims that NTACM has a range of 185 nautical miles.

There are approximately 1,200 rounds in the U.S. Navy's inventory available for LASM retrofit.

But even if the Navy cancels LASM, officials said that the requirement for a long-range land-attack missile is not going away.

"We sure hope LASM goes forward," said Raytheon spokeswoman Sara Hammond. "It's the only near-term fast strike missile in development." She said the missile completed a critical design review in October and is on track for a flight test in the spring of 2002.

The NTACM is identical to the Army tactical missile, with a couple of minor internal modifications, said a Lockheed Martin source. "The requirement is still there, so we believe that NTACM is still a candidate."

The Lockheed official said that the Navy's nuclear submarine community appears to be interested in NTACM as a weapon that could be launched from Trident submarine missile tubes. To make it work from underwater, the NTACM would have to be fir in a special capsule, to keep it dry until it reaches the surface.

NTACM would cost $426,000 apiece, according to Lockheed. The General Accounting Office said in a May 2001 report that LASM probably would cost $400,000.

The idea of adapting an Army missile for naval operations is not new. In February 1995, the Navy fired Army tactical missiles off the fantail of the USS Mount Vernon. The launch platform was a heavy truck with a launcher box on the back. Testers drove the launch vehicle onto the fantail of the Mount Vernon, took the ship 75 miles out to sea, off San Clemente Island, in the Pacific. The missile is reported to have hit a parked trailer on the range in the island. Following that experiment, Lockheed engineers fired the missile from the Navy's Mk 41 vertical-launch cell at White Sands Missile Range.