Command Ships: Fighting from the Maritime Operations Center Afloat​

By Admiral James G. Foggo, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Dr. Steven Wills

It is not surprising that the venerable USS Mount Whitney (LCC-20) is yet again on the U.S. Navy’s list for decommissioning, this time in 2027. She and her sister ship, USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19), are the Navy’s only ships capable of supporting a full Joint Task Force staff or a Maritime Component Commander’s staff on an afloat platform. The Navy’s command ships play a critical role; when they are gone, their absence will be felt across both the fleet and the wider joint force.  

The Navy champions distributed maritime operations (DMO) by which the numbered fleets can aggregate forces in one maritime zone of interest or distribute forces across a larger swath of ocean. Likewise, the Navy has standardized command and control of the numbered fleets under the Maritime Operations Center (MOC) concept. The purpose of Mount Whitney or Blue Ridge is to give the Fleet Commander options as to where they locate their staff during combat operations. Flagships have full Maritime Operations Center (MOC) capabilities which, in the case of Mount Whitney, are combat proven in a heavy coalition operating environment.  

Homeported in Gaeta, Italy, a short distance from U.S. Sixth Fleet headquarters in Naples, Mount Whitney is always ready to embark the U.S. Sixth Fleet Commander and staff during high intensity real-world operations or exercises. Many nations—even friendly ones—do not allow the kind of war planning needed by U.S. commanders at the outset of a crisis. Mount Whitney provides the capability to rapidly go to international waters and conduct the war planning process. Once underway, the ship can deploy to the vicinity of hotspots under protection of Sixth Fleet’s forward-deployed Aegis destroyers or a transiting Carrier or Expeditionary Strike Group. By contrast, shore-based headquarters are immobile, fixed targets dependent upon local power grids and are vulnerable to kinetic or non-kinetic attack.  

Navy leadership would be well advised to revisit this budget driven decision and instead of decommissioning the USS Mount Whitney, program for and build a suitable replacement.  

Background:  

The Mount Whitney has enjoyed a storied career as the command ship of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, headquartered in Naples, Italy. She was commissioned in 1971, but despite her age, she has been well-looked after in terms of material readiness, with frequent and affordable service life extension programs (SLEP) in European shipyards. By doing so, the ship has remained in theater and available for over two decades. With a modest investment in continued SLEPs, the ship’s service life could be extended to 2039 and there is good reason to do so. One need only examine some of her most interesting operations include relief support for the country of Georgia after attack by the Russian Federation in 2008; embark of Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn in support of a UN Security Council Resolution to establish a No-Fly Zone in Libya and neutralized the armed forces of Muammar Quaddaffi in 2011; forward presence in the Black Sea during the Sochi Olympics in 2014 (immediately prior to the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russian Forces); and finally, command and control of Exercise Trident Juncture, the largest NATO exercise since 2002 with over 50,000 Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines deployed to Norway in 2018. 

Platform Versatility: 

It takes a lot of people to run major military operations, even with the aid of computers, modern communications equipment, and artificial intelligence. Twenty four-seven operations require a staff of hundreds of people to pull data and information, conduct analyses and wargaming, and manage the problems of thousands or tens of thousands of other military members whose focus is warfighting. The LCC warships are uniquely designed and equipped with communications gear and additional accommodations to support a staff deployed at sea. No other U.S. warships can support such a large staff (over 500 people can be embarked on LCC class ships) without compromising their own warfare capabilities.  

Reducing the fleet to just one command ship or retiring both without replacement means that it will be unlikely for any naval commander to move their headquarters to sea and retain the same capabilities and capacities they have ashore. Furthermore, in the future, there is no guarantee of U.S. access to appropriate land bases outside the continental United States in the event of a major war against a peer competitor.  

For example, during Operation Odyssey Dawn in 2011, the U.S. Sixth Fleet Commander required a head start on planning for USAFRICOM’s intended No-Fly-Zone over Libya which implied kinetic strikes on Libyan integrated air and missile defenses, and other targets. This would be implemented by a “coalition of the willing” which included neither NATO nor many NATO members such as Italy. One of the stipulations of the Bilateral Infrastructure Agreement of October 1954 with Italy restricted planning for such operations on Italian territory, including territorial seas, unless Italy was also a belligerent. While Italy eventually joined the coalition of the willing in support of NATO Operation Unified Protector, strike planning for Odyssey Dawn was not authorized on Italian soil. The only viable solution for the Sixth Fleet Commander was to embark the staff and those coalition-of-the-willing countries onboard USS Mount Whitney and go to sea. Without this capability, Odyssey Dawn would have been significantly delayed and may not have happened at all. 

Once the ship was in international waters on 14 March, there were no restrictions on strike planning. The first U.S. and U.K. Tomahawk missile strike took place on 19 March 2011, but Italy did not join the wider coalition effort against Gaddafi’s Libyan forces until 30 March 2011 when NATO assumed the leadership of the Libyan effort under the name Operation Unified Protector. The inclusion of Mount Whitney made it possible for earlier U.S. strikes that crippled Gaddafi’s air defense and made possible the no-fly zone authorized by the United Nations on 19 March as well.  

Risk Mitigation: 

In terms of physical risk involved in taking a joint or component headquarters to sea, while any warship is susceptible to attack and those threats continue to increase with new capabilities including ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, and drones, warships at sea are far less vulnerable to damage than fixed bases ashore. Command ships are large electronic emitters and could be targeted as easily as other U.S. navy assets. Like the aircraft carrier however, the command ship is a high value unit and during increased threat conditions, she is normally under the umbrella of an escort. Unlike the shore-based headquarters, the command ship can move and avoid detection. In a war where satellite surveillance is degraded or lost, and long-range communications are limited or blocked, having a fleet commander in situ in a ship specially designed to manage a campaign could provide a critical advantage. 

Warfighting Value: 

Over the past 250 years of naval history, command ships emerge as a relatively new concept and are in fact the first type of Navy ships constructed specifically for the joint mission of command and control and amphibious warfare. All warfare is joint, even in the most remote areas of globe far from land-based combat such as the Arctic, Western Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Mount Whitney’s main battery is not missiles or guns, but rather information and command and control needed to connect naval vessels with the wider joint force. Command ships also serve as vital planning and headquarters nodes: close enough to the fleet should satellite communications be unavailable, while fully capable of supporting a senior commander and their staff.  

In fact, Mount Whitney’s utility is not limited to only the U.S. Sixth Fleet. She has also served as an alternative headquarters for the Commander of Striking and Support Forces NATO in Lisbon, Portugal, the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and forward-deployed command staff from the U.S. Second Fleet and Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Whether in the Indo-Pacific, Arabian Gulf, the High North, or the Mediterranean, future naval engagements will likely be primarily air/sea combat and there is tremendous value in having a maritime commander afloat where the action is. Unfortunately, the U.S. Navy has become balkanized in recent years with decreasing budgets driving competition among the surface combatants, submarines, and amphibious and support vessel components of the fleet. There is more to naval warfare than air and missile strikes, and amphibious operations by themselves. In a peer competitor war, senior fleet commanders may need to be with their forces to best coordinate high-end combat operations. Command ships give them the ability to be with the fleet when needed. If information is one of the most powerful weapons in modern warfare, then a command ship offers a formidable battery. 

Options for Replacing Blue Ridge and Mount Whitney 

There are options for replacing the existing, aging command ships from vessels currently under construction. Examples include the LPD-17-class ships constructed by Huntington Ingalls in Pascagoula, Mississippi, the Expeditionary Sea Base (ESB) being built by General Dynamic NASCO in San Diego, and the National Security Multimission Vessel (NSMV) being built by Hanwha’s Philly Shipyard. The LPD-17 is a combat-hardened and proven warship capable of simple modifications to support the mission of a command ship. The NSMV has room for more people, and is three knots faster than the ESB, but both ships have roughly similar operational ranges. Most importantly, the construction lines for all three classes of ships are still “hot” and easily leveraged. Moreover, the nation needs more auxiliary ships not considered since the end of the Cold War including tenders and hospital ships, such that any of the aforementioned shipyards could be included in the replacement effort. 

Conclusion 

Whether in response to political restrictions on war planning, a need to coordinate joint and combined forces, or just operations in remote environments where mobility is of immense importance, command ships will be of vital need in the coming decades. Rather that retire the existing vessels like Mount Whitney without replacement, the navy must act to retain not only the muscle of warfighting potential like submarines, carriers, and destroyers, but also the brains of the operational level of war resident in its Maritime Operations Centers that may be required to go to sea. 

Admiral James Foggo (ret.)  is the Dean of The Center for Maritime Strategy.
Dr. Steve Wills is the Navalist at The Center for Maritime Strategy.

The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.