Navy tests catlike catamaran
Nimble Australian model has 770 fewer crew, moves twice as fast
By Tara Copp Scripps Howard News Service Scripps Howard correspondent Tara Copp
can be reached at coppt@shns.com
December 18, 2002
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NORFOLK, Va. - On a finger-numbing December morning, the Navy's new experimental
high-performance catamaran, the HSV-X1 Joint Venture, is minutes from blastoff.
Four water jets fire, churning the water below into a white, steaming froth. The ship's loading bay and helicopter pad start to vibrate. Special tabs direct the water jets' flow, shoving the 313-foot ship diagonally away from the pier. It glides through the speed-limited channel. No tugboats required.
And blastoff! The X1 leaps from 10 to 38 knots in 36 seconds and starts eating up distance across the Chesapeake Bay.
Even at that speed - one knot is about 1.15
miles per hour - the captain is reigning in the X1: It can go 45 knots, or almost
52 miles per hour. At full speed, each jet sprays out enough water to fill an
Olympic-sized in 1.8 seconds.
The X1 is lean, fast, and trying hard to become part of the Navy's future.
To the crew, comparing the X1 to the USS Inchon, Naval Station Ingleside's recently retired mine warfare command ship, is like comparing a "bus to a Corvette."
To a civilian, the X1 looks like a space ship on water. Two blade-sharp curvy hulls slice the waves, giving the X1's underbelly a bulbous "m" shape. A saucer-like main deck and sky deck ride atop an open cargo hold, and the ship's command and control center is on the uppermost level.
In June, its very similar successor, the HSV-X2, is scheduled to arrive in Ingleside as a temporary mine command ship replacement for the Inchon, which had a top speed of 23 knots.
"It great. It's different. It moves. You take it out without hesitation," said Petty Officer 2nd Class Jackie Acosta, a reservist who had been stationed with the Inchon for the past four years.
She and Petty Officer 3rd Class Jenny Robles, who served as a reservist on the Inchon for the past two years, are aboard the X1 to learn how the ship can stand in for the decommissioned mine warfare command ship - and how their 80-member reserve unit can remain intact, reattached to the X2.
Even as they examine the possibilities of the X1, memories of the Inchon tug at them. Both brought their old USS Inchon hats along for the two-week reserve duty.
"We're still proud, it's still a part
of ourselves," Acosta said. But the X1's performance lights up Acosta's
eyes.
"It took the X1 45 minutes to get here," Acosta said. "It would've
taken the Inchon all morning."
'This is a different world'
The learning curve aboard the X1 is steep. With only 30 crew compared to the
Inchon's 800, Robles and Acosta said they're learning a lot of additional skills
"You don't just know your rate - you know the rates of a lot of people.
Yeoman. Engineman, navigator," Robles said. " On the Inchon you have
a whole navigation crew, you have anywhere from 10 to 12 people up on the bridge.
Here you have two people command the bridge and you can get under way."
Petty Officer 2nd class James Soto, who was also a reservist aboard the Inchon, said the X1 "is pretty awesome in comparison."
"On the Inchon," Soto said, "they used to call anchor detail and three hours later we'd be throwing lines over. Here we do it in 15 minutes."
Soto's family still lives in Corpus Christi. They taped and clipped all the news of the Inchon's June decomissioning for Soto, who commuted regularly from Fort Worth to see them and spend weekends aboard. With the X2, Soto said, he sees hope that he will be able to continue his reserve duties in Corpus Christi.
"I think it would be smart to make this the new mother ship of the mine warfare command because of its quickness," Soto said.
The X1 is a fast ride, but it's not a smooth one. The ship shudders throughout the whole ride.
Fifteen-year veteran Mess Management Specialist 1 Eddie Clark has served as a chef for the submarines the USS Buffalo and USS San Francisco. On the X1, he says, "I've gotten sick a couple of times, especially with rough seas."
The platform
The Army and Navy have leased the HSV-X1 "Joint Venture" from Australia
since September. Both services are studying the ship to learn how it might help
their missions.
"Combining speed with this kind of platform - I can't think of any other like this," said Stephen Benson, an analyst with Adroit Systems, which has contracted with the Navy to study the X1's capabilities.
Before the Army and Navy acquired it, the X1 was a catamaran ferry in Australia. The ship caught the Navy's eye when it saw the Australian Navy using it during the East Timor conflict. The water jet propulsion system is similar to the technology on most Jet Skis. Diesel fuel powers an engine, which turns an impeller, which starts the flow of water through the boat's four rear jets.
Docking flexibility
But using the jets on a catamaran body to acquire speed and agility on a large
Navy ship is new - and still in the proving stage.
That's what the X1 was doing on the Chesapeake Bay on Thursday.
The X1's mission that day: to show Navy
weapons researchers how its maneuvering can ease it backward, and sideways,
into a pier, called "Med mooring," because of the lack of usable pier
space in the Mediterranean Sea.
After that, the crew demonstrated how the X1 can sidle up, skin to skin, to
the reserve Military Sealift Command ship "Flickering State" to simulate
a sea-based cargo transfer. As the United States finds fewer friendly ports
overseas , sea-based cargo transfer will become a essential to the Navy arsenal,
said J.D. Rice, a former Marine who was onboard to assess the ship for the Office
of Naval Research.
"You just can't turn a minesweeper like this," said Charles Heath, a manager for process modeling for the Chief of Naval Operations, also on board to observe.
Catamaran and its cargo
The ship's unique interior allows it to serve as many things: a mine warfare
command. A refugee ship. A transport ship. A ferry. A cargo ship.
Unlike many vessels, the cargo hold of the X1 has no bulkheads. The 87-foot span is supported by two inner rows of support beams and an aluminum superstructure at the edge of the flight deck, creating maximum space for a wide variety of cargo configurations. The aluminum base is reinforced to support an MH-60 landing pad above, and the floor on the X2 can carry eight 144,000-pound tanks below. The floor is held together with flexible joints that allow some give as the ship cuts through water.
Even when carrying more than 400 metric tons of cargo, the X1 clips along at 20 knots - faster as it uses up fuel. And it can travel 4,500 nautical miles - nearly 5,200 miles - without refueling, roughly Tahiti to the Panama Canal.
Fewer people, vehicles
Still, Robles and Acosta wonder if the X1 could really handle all the mine warfare
command tasks the Inchon did. Neither the X1 nor the X2 will be able to carry
the same complement of helicopters, personnel or tanks.
But the Navy is actively trying to reduce the size of its personnel and ships - so the X1 fits in well.
Capt. Philip Beierl has run the X1 through a series of mine warfare tests.
Compared to the Inchon, it can't carry as many helicopters or people, "but part of what we're about is figuring out how to do things with fewer people," he said. "If we had three or four of these, we could do less with each one, but we could be in more places."
Demonstrations, research
The strategy for the X1 right now is visibility - showing the different forces
how it could be useful to them - showing them how they could use the ships'
speed, and that the ship's open, modular format allows it to carry cars, cargo
and tanks for multi-force usage.
Hence the "Joint Venture" name; and that's why both the Army and Navy are sharing the ship right now, a few months each at a time.
The Navy is paying $21 million to lease the X2 for the next three years, to do much of the same - to research its strengths and weaknesses, to use the platform to consider new ways of delivering weapons and performing missions, without having to dedicate significantly more money to build its own ship line.
For example, on Thursday's voyage some of the observers concluded that the ship's ramp would have to be strengthened, and that cargo loading and unloading needs to be improved.
Sometimes, when a weakness like the ramp is found, "we write that although the current configuration can't do this, with the right technology, we could," said J.D Rice, a combat logistics engineer.
No one can question the maneuverability of the ship, but technology is developing all the time," Rice said.
'There's just no limit'
When the X2 arrives, it'll be a registered Navy ship, but not commissioned.
Its time will be shared between Norfolk and Ingleside. And it'll keep the "X"
identification during its three-year lease. But like the "Joint Venture"
it will also get a name.
There will likely never be a fleet of "X2s" , but the people studying and promoting the ship hope to learn enough of its strengths and weaknesses so that if the Navy decides to pursue this body type in future vessels, the research and development process will be cheaper. And the X1's performance makes its riders wonder at its potential.
Today
The Navy's new experimental high-performance catamaran is lean, fast, and trying
hard to become part of the Navy's future.
Thursday
The HSV-X2 cataraman's arrival could be a strong signal for South_Texas military.