Navy's high-speed vessel aids relief effort.

Among the flotilla of U.S. Navy ships delivering relief supplies to the hurricane-devastated Gulf Coast earlier this fall was a strange-looking vessel that may have a big future.

The ship was the HSV-2 Swift, which may be a forerunner of a next-generation fleet of fast, shallow-draft American-built transports capable of operating close along the shorelines of the world's hot spots.

The Swift is a high-speed vessel built by Incat Tasmania Pty Ltd., of Hobart, Australia, and leased to the Navy in 2003 by Incat and its U.S. partner, Bollinger Shipyards, of Lockport, La. The first-year value of the lease was $21.7 million. The lease can be extended to four years and 11 months if all options are exercised.

The Swift's role in the recovery effort was to help re-supply other Navy ships in the Gulf Coast area, Navy Capt. Patricia Sudol told National Defense. She is program manager for sealift, special missions, small boats and craft at the Naval Sea Systems Command, headquartered at the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.

"The Swift is being employed as a small shuttle ship to replenish larger, deeper-draft combat logistics ships that do not have the capability right now to get into certain ports," Sodol said.

"This enabled the USS Artic, for example, to remain on station, providing provisions to the other ships supporting the hurricane relief effort." Those included the USS Bataan (LHD-5), USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7), USS Shreveport (LPD-12), Tortuga (LSD-26) and USS Grapple (ARS-53).

During the transfer of supplies, the Swift went "skin-to-skin" with the larger vessels, Sodol said. "Approximately 175 pallets were craned off the flight deck."

Originally built as a car ferry, the Swift is a wave-piercing catamaran, a two-hulled, multi-decked craft with the length of a football field. She has a mission bay with 15,500 square feet of vehicle and module space. Her crane can launch and recover small boats. Her vehicle ramp is sturdy enough to accommodate M1A1Abrams tanks. A 4,000-square-foot flight deck has an adjacent hangar for two MH-60S Knighthawk helicopters. She can carry up to up to 250 combat-equipped Marines resting in airliner-style seats and up to 605 tons of cargo.

Propelled by four sets of Caterpillar 3618 marine diesel engines, gas turbines and water jets, she can cruise at a top speed in excess of 45 knots.

Yet the Swift's aluminum hull draws only 11.15 feet of water. This allows her to operate in the shallow coastal waters of the Gulf of Mexico--or similar regions anywhere in the world. In the two years since the lease began, the vessel has provided transit support during the invasion of Iraq, participated in exercises off the coasts of West Africa, Honduras and Norway and provided tsunami disaster relief in the Indian Ocean.

"The Swift's high speed makes it extraordinarily responsive, compared to other vessels," Sodol said. "The higher payload requires fewer trips than a smaller high-speed craft, and the shallow draft enables it to enter ports and use small piers that are inaccessible to deep-draft ships."

The Navy currently is using the Swift to explore the utility of HSVs in performing two primary missions--mine warfare command and support and expeditionary operations.

The Swift serves with the Navy's Mine Warfare Command, headquartered at Naval Station Ingleside, in Texas, as an interim replacement for the Navy's only mine countermeasures command and support ship, the USS Inchon (MCS-8), which retired in 2002. She also participates in expeditionary warfare experiments, exercises and demonstrations, operating from Little Creek Amphibious Naval Base, Va.

Two separate, 42-person crews trade off operating the ship. A Gold Crew, based at Little Creek, concentrates on expeditionary missions. A Blue Crew, from Ingleside, focuses on mine warfare.

Unlike the planned Littoral Combat Ship--another small, fast vessel being developed by the Navy--the Swift is not intended to do battle. But she is armed for self-defense, with an MK 96 stabilized-gun weapon system that provides 25 mm chain gun and 40 mm grenade machine gun firepower, as well as an MK 45 "Snake Eyes" weapon system with an MK 19 40 mm grenade machine gun.

Before she was deployed for hurricane-recovery duty, the Swift was completing a series of detailed instrumentation trials, Sodol said. Those trials focused on sea keeping, structural response, propulsion performance and motion-induced interruptions. The Swift also has been helping develop risk-mitigation strategies for the Littoral Combat Ship and other future small ships.

The Swift is one of four HSVs currently leased by U.S. military services, all of them Australian-built, Sodol said.

Until recently, no U.S. shipbuilders made such ships. In May 2004, however, the Navy awarded Lockheed Martin Corporation and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works separate contracts to design and build up to two Littotal Combat Ships each. In June of this year, the keel was laid for LCS 1, to be named Freedom, at the shipyard of a Lockheed Martin subcontractor, Marinette Marine, in Marinette, Wis.

Earlier this year, the Navy christened an experimental Littoral Surface Craft, dubbed X-Craft, at Nichols Brothers Boat Builders in Whidbey Island, Wash. X-Craft, officially named Sea Fighter, is an aluminum catamaran that the Navy plans to use in testing the hydrodynamic performance, structural behavior, mission flexibility and propulsion-system efficiency of high-speed vessels. She is the first catamaran designed and built specifically for the Navy.

The services have been experimenting with catamarans since 2001, when the Navy's Military Sealift Command signed a two-month "proof-of-concept" contract for the WestPac Express, a 331-foot passenger ferry constructed by Austal Ships, of Henderson, Australia. The Navy assigned the vessel to the III Marine Expeditionary Force, based on Oldnawa. Its mission was to move troops throughout the Western Pacific, from Korea to Thailand.

That worked so well that the Navy in 2002 signed a three-year contract to continue the WestPac's services. This summer, it renewed the deal for an additional 18 months.

Also in 2001, several components of the Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard combined their resources to lease the Joint Venture (HSV-X1)--a 313-foot catamaran--from Incat. The Navy tried her out for six months, then turned her over to the Army, which has been operating her ever since.

During the early days of the war in Iraq, the Joint Venture acted as a floating forward staging base for Marine anti-terrorist security units and Navy Sea, Air and Land (SEAL) teams. In 2004, while the ship operated in Korean waters, two Black Hawk helicopters landed on its flight deck, the first such landings on an Army vessel since the Vietnam War. In 2002, the service took delivery of a second Incat catamaran, U.S. Army Vessel Spearhead, known as Theater Support Vessel-X1. The 380-foot Spearhead spent 14 months in the Persian Gulf supporting operations by all five services, military contractors and the U.S. Special Operations Command.

The services like the catamarans so much that they are considering a joint project to launch an American-built fleet of similar vessels. The Army would like to have a fleet of 12 theater-support vessels, or TSVs, by 2012.

The Navy and Marines have identified "a critical capability gap" for a similar vessel that they call a "high-speed connector," according to a fact sheet published by the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, in Quantico, Va. The connector "will play a crucial role in all phases of sea-based operations from deployment through rehabilitation and reconstitution," the fact sheet said.

Because of the similarity of these evolving programs, the Defense Department decided to merge them into a single effort. In January 2005, the Navy established a Joint High Speed Vessel program within the Naval Sea Systems Command.

The JHSV will bridge the capability gap between the transport aircraft operated by the Air Force and other services, on one hand, and large Navy cargo ships on the other.

"Aircraft may transport faster, but carry significant less payload than ships," Sodol said. "Slow-speed, larger ships have much greater capacity, but lack the speed and austere-port access offered by the JHSV."

As is typically the case with joint projects, the program's staff includes Marine and Army, as well as Navy, personnel, explained Sudol, who manages the effort.

This year, the program office is focused on getting approval for an initial capabilities document, outlining specific requirements for the vessels, she said. The current timeline: A request for proposals is scheduled to be released in 2007, a production contract awarded the following year and the lead vessel to be delivered in 2010 or 2011.

"The cost [of each ship] will depend largely on its requirements once approved," Sudol said. The JHSV is envisioned as having greater payload and range than today's vessels, she added. Nevertheless, "we anticipate the average cost [per ship] to be well under $200 million. The contract would be awarded under full and open competition."

Although the program is joint, both the Army and Navy are procuring ships separately. Thus far, the Army has budget for five, and the Navy for three, she said. Additional vessels could be ordered at later dates.

"Just as the ships will be funded by separate branches, they also will be crewed and maintained by those branches," Sudol said. The nature of those crews is still to be decided, she added. "Civilian mariners certainly will be one of the approaches evaluated."

Whether the Pentagon, the administration and Congress ultimately decide to fund the high-speed vessel program is an open question, industry insiders agreed. The Navy has seen its fleet shrink from nearly 600 ships during the Reagan era to 290 or so currently and is having trouble funding other, higher-profile programs.

The high-speed vessel's advocates pointed out privately that it is particularly useful in the war on terrorism and humanitarian missions. And, they added, at $200 million a copy, it is a bargain, compared to $5 billion a pop for an aircraft carrier.

HSV-2 SWIFT IN BRIEF

SHIP TYPE: Aluminum-hulled, wave-piercing catamaran

LENGTH: 321.5 feet

BEAM: 88.6 feet

DRAFT: 11.15 feet

PAYLOAD CAPACITY: Approximately 605 tons

CARGO DECK: Approximately 28,740 square feet

MAXIMUM SPEED: More than 45 knots

RANGE: More than 4,000 miles

SELF-DEFENSE CAPABILITY: MK 96 w 25 mm/40 mm stabilized gun; MK 45 "Snake Eyes" weapon system with MK 19 grenade machine gun

NORMAL CREW SIZE: Approximately 42

CONTRACTOR: Bollinger/Incat USA LLC, Lockport, La.

CONTRACT VALUE: $21.7 million (First year value). Current lease can be extended for four years, 11 months if all options are exercised.