Austal USA launched the Navy’s Auxiliary Floating Dry Dock Medium (AFDM) 15 on July 28. This is the first AFDM built in over 40 years and the largest vessel launched into the Mobile Channel to date. At 12,000 tons, 694 feet long and with a deck working area of 90,800 square feet, AFDM is the largest vessel launch Austal USA’s test and activation team has coordinated and executed in the company’s 26-year history.
Let’s look at those stats again:
Displacement: 12,000 tons
Length: 694 feet
Lifting capacity: 18,000 tons
Armament: none
For reference, a Flight III Arleigh Burke DDG is 509.5 feet and weighs 9,700 tons.
She is now the only AFDM the Navy has. Just one. A single point of failure.
When it comes to this segment of the “unsexy but important” part of maritime power, AFDM are not the big boys. That category belongs to what we now call Auxiliary Floating Docks, Big (AFDBs) that were built in WWII. Some still live on in other roles today, 80 years later, but none of them are working for the U.S. Navy.
What can an AFDB handle? Let’s use USS AFDB-2 as an example of her type—which has an interesting story we’ll get back to down-post.
Displacement: 38,500 tons
Length: 927 feet
Capacity: 90,000 tons
Armament
14 × 40 mm (1.6 in) guns
14 × 20 mm (0.79 in) guns
Never forget that names mean things. AFDBs have not always been called that. They were first called Advanced Base Sectional Docks (ABSDs). Someone decided to rename them, and with that, they avoided the question, “Advanced Base? What advanced base?”
Of course, in the last Great Pacific War when the American Navy was contested at sea, a foundational capability, in line with what we discussed on the last Midrats Podcast was being able to do maintenance, in volume, forward, in an expeditionary manner.
Now it is time to get ready for that war. We do not need one AFDM on the West Coast praying no one looks at her sideways and that someone pulls heavy lift ships out of a hat to bring damaged ships to her.
No. We need a lot of AFDMs. We should also consider if we need need AFDBs as well, ones that you can pull a 1,106-foot, 100,000-ton Ford CVN onto if needed. If you have a battle damaged CVN, focusing on the “N” here, wouldn’t the prudent thing to do is to have another option besides, “Tow the holed and listing girl for a few weeks to Pearl and then we’ll evaluate her…”
Think about it.
Whatever more we buy, they need to be designed to be forward, and they need at least a rudimentary ability to defend themselves against air and surface attack by the entire menagerie of attack drones we know will be hunting the open Pacific.
As Winston said: Don't argue the matter. The difficulties will argue for themselves.
We’ve been there before. We will need to be there again.
For almost criminal reasons, our new AFDM are specifically designed to “…operate in benign threat environments“. Read it yourself on the last page. I smell accountants and non-battleminded budget trolls behind this foolishness.
We know that we have to be able to repair forward or we will not win a war against the People’s Republic of China’s navy should we find ourselves at war in the next few years west of the International Date Line.
We have allowed those tasked with stewardship of our maritime power to hand-wave this way in the hope that war will not come. Almost criminal.
In the last Great Pacific War, the great anchorage at Ulithi came under attack, twice. ABSD-2 and ABSD-4 both came under attack in 1945 while in the harbor at Manus Island. ABSD-2 ate a torpedo.
If we are serious about fighting…and winning…the next Great Pacific War, we will build more floating dry docks, larger ones, and we shall arm them and take them where they are needed—in harm’s way.
Oh, and we should properly name them as well. We should make ABSDs great again. Words mean things. They focus the mind.
We expect them to be in an Advanced Base. It is in their name. And they’re going to be armed, so they shall be USS. They shall be commanded by Engineering Duty Officer Captains.
There.
We can do this. History will not wait for us.
Cut steel.
Just a small historical note: The first commander of AFDB-2 was Commander Joseph Rochefort. The Same Commander Rochefort of HYPO Fame. This was his "reward" for demonstrating the Redmond brothers in Washington were incompetent glory hounds.
Common sense, relatively inexpensive force multiplier.... no wonder we have so few.