Tending to a Distributed Maritime Operation: The Ongoing Need for More Navy Tenders
The MOC
September 12, 2023
Former submarine tender ex-USS Mckee (AS 41). Photo from Navy Site.
Center for Maritime Strategy
Dr. Steven Wills
Many elements of the U.S. Navy suffered extreme reductions at the end of the Cold War but none more than the destroyer and submarine tenders designed to service the globally deployed fleet from advanced bases. Tenders were the product of a pre-World War II shortage of appropriate naval bases in the Pacific and proved their worth in the hard island-hopping fight from 1942-1945. Tenders operated in the Cold War both as repair ships but also as support vessels for the emerging nuclear and guided missile components of the Navy. Tenders were easily modified to serve in a variety of repair and service roles and were extremely robust ships with long service lives.
The end of the Cold War, and with it the availability of secure basing worldwide for the U.S. Navy, as well as a desire for a “peace dividend,” proved to be nearly the end of the U.S. Navy tender force. In the present, only two submarine tenders continue to serve the fleet (USS Frank Cable and USS Emory S. Land,) both homeported forward in Guam. The Navy’s distributive maritime operations (“DMO”) concept already demands more combat logistics ships to supply a more physically separated naval force. Secure repair facilities are also scarce in the Indo-Pacific theater, as was the case in World War II. The Navy will need more tenders to facilitate the kind of campaign it envisions in the Indo-Pacific, Arctic, and other theaters. Few such vessels are currently planned.
Global Fleet, Global Repair
The Navy recognized the value of tenders attached to the fleet early in the 20th century during the global cruise of the Great White Fleet from 1907-1909. Small vessels, such as destroyers and submarines, could not sustain long voyages over extended periods without regular maintenance and repair beyond what individual crews could manage. The Navy converted a number of vessels, including old monitor-type warships, and bought others to serve as submarine and destroyer tenders in Europe for World War I, and for the Pacific and Asiatic Fleets in Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. Tenders were essential to the World War II advance across the Central and Southern Pacific regions as secure ports for repairs outside Pearl Habor and Australia were nearly non-existent. Fleet repair bases such as Ulithi Atoll and Manus depended on tenders to augment the repair capacity of the small number of floating drydocks that could be moved to forward locations. These bases and tender repairs were vital in getting ships with light or minimum damage back into combat and for prioritizing the movement of ships with more significant damage back to Pearl Harbor or the United States. The Navy’s expeditionary repair effort with multiple repair ships was housed within special service squadrons created by Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Chester Nimitz in November 1943. Special Service Squadron Ten remained at sea from its commissioning in January 1944 through the end of the conflict.
While downsized after World War II, the tender fleet continued to service parts of the fleet in both Europe and the Pacific. Tenders had to change as well and the Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization Program (“FRAM II”) program modified tenders to work on nuclear-powered submarines. Destroyer tenders continued to serve as an intermediate (middle) repair facility for deployed ships but often lacked the facilities and trained personnel to work on Cold War systems such as guided missiles.
The Navy ultimate decided to move that “middle maintenance capability” between what the ship’s crew could accomplish on their own and what only a shipyard facility could manage to facilities ashore. Second Fleet Commander Vice Admiral Hank Mustin thought that changed spelled the end of the destroyer tender force. The destroyer tender ranks dwindled over the 1980s, as a result. The change in submarine ballistic missiles, from the shorter-range Polaris and Poseidon missiles to the longer-ranged Trident 2, made possible reductions in the forward sub tender force as well, as the new Ohio-class boats in the 1980s could operate directly from the United States and did not need so much direct tender support. The end of the Cold War and the advent of the Ohio-class boats obviated the need for forward-based tenders and bases like Holy Loch in Scotland where tenders serviced Polaris and Poseidon boats closed.
Into the Post-Cold War and Resumed Great Power Competition
The end of the Cold War brought with it a large reduction in the size of the fleet but more so in the auxiliary force which decreased from 115 to 52 vessels in just four years (1994-1997.). Tender numbers dwindled over the 1990s and early 2000s from 18 destroyer and submarine tenders in 1990 to just two such ships in 2023. Over the same post-Cold War era, the Navy consolidated the intermediate repair activities ashore to a smaller number of locations with fewer trained technicians. This change reduced fleet access to this vital “middle” level of repair and pushed more work on an equally diminishing number of naval and civilian shipyards.
That “middle rung” that was pushed ashore from the tenders and then further reduced has strained the Navy’s ability to keep ships properly maintained and ready for surge operations. Further changes to the Navy’s deployment and readiness in breaking the traditional 18-month deployment cycle in the early 2000s have served to worsen readiness, especially access to middle maintenance by the fleet. With both tenders and shore-based middle maintenance in badly reduced circumstances the Navy faces severe challenges in supporting not only the current fleet, but its proposed, larger, and distributed fleet of both crewed and uncrewed ships, submarines, and aircraft.
A New Tender Fleet for Distributed and Uncrewed Operations
The Navy needs to rapidly reconstitute its tender fleet for potential combat operations in remote areas with a distributed and uncrewed force. Just as 20th century tenders serviced short-ranged warships and submarines, modern tenders could service the proposed fleet of navy uncrewed platforms. Replacement batteries, sensors, and weapons, as well as repairs to small combat drones would be an important tender mission. The Navy’s fleet of crewed ships has not faced a peer opponent in battle since 1945, and just as in World War II, warships with light to medium damage will need tender support, and those with severe damage requiring voyage repairs necessary to at least allow them to return to a secure repair facility. There are many options in tender platforms, including the LPD-17 and Expeditionary Support Base ships as potential tender hulls, as well as commercially purchased ships. These ships will need new capabilities like additive manufacturing, and many skilled technicians to keep vast fleets of drones operational in remote areas like the Indo-Pacific and the Arctic.
Tenders are not ship killers and figure little in the projected missile salvo battles contemplated by naval leaders and Department of Defense analysts, but they are essential to the kind of operations the Navy says it will undertake in combat. And they are missing from the fleet inventory with only two tenders proposed in the current 30-year shipbuilding program, as replacements for Cable and Land. The Navy needs to build a lot more tenders.
Dr. Steven Wills is the Navalist at the Center for Maritime Strategy. His research and analysis centers on U.S. Navy strategy and policy, surface warfare programs and platforms, and military history.
Dr. Steven Wills, Navalist