Army watercraft will be a backbone logistics in the Indo-Pacific. This includes the Joint Logistics Over the Shore Operations as pictured above in Exercise ‘Talisman Sabre 2023'. (US Army/Major Jonathon Daniell)
The US Army's project for the Department of Defense (DoD)-wide Regional Sustainment Framework (RSF) will be establishing watercraft hubs in the Indo-Pacific region, a service official announced on 7 August.
Regional watercraft sustainment hubs would help the army not be “limping back across the Pacific or back across the Atlantic” when it is operating vessels in the contested environment of the Indo-Pacific, Lieutenant General Heidi Hoyle, G-4 deputy chief of staff, said during a panel at National Defense Industrial Association's Emerging Technology Institute conference in Washington, DC. Though an action officer working group convened for the first time this week, early contenders for the hub locations are Japan, the Philippines, and Australia, she told Janes.
Watercraft hubs are where “the greatest opportunity” lies for the army, she said in an interview with Janes. There is a tyranny of distance in the Pacific that means any mishaps have a multiplied effect, she explained. “It's not the time it takes to repair, [it's] the availability of berths, availability of dry docks. It's kind of operationally, from an industry perspective, what capabilities they can give us, but then, on the other side, it further just avoids that whole transportation piece,” Lt Gen Hoyle said.
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