Description
The Arsenal Ship was developed initially as a demonstration program to provide a large increase in the amount of ordnance available to ground- and sea-based forces in a conflict, particularly during the early days. The Navy envisioned that the ship would have a large capacity of different missiles, including Tomahawk and Standard, and space for future extended range gun systems. The ship could also have a sea-based version of the Army Tactical Missile System. This ship could greatly increase capabilities in littoral operations to conduct long-range strike missions, provide fire support for ground forces, defend against theater ballistic missiles, and maintain air superiority. The Arsenal Ship has the potential to provide substantial fire support to a variety of missions in regional conflicts without the logistics burden of transporting both delivery systems and ammunition to the shore and forward areas. The Arsenal Ship is expected to carry a large number of VLS cells but without the sophisticated command and control and radar equipment found on Aegis-equipped ships. The ships would be theater assets that will operate under the authority of the joint Commanders-In-Chief (CINCs) and receive their targeting along with command and decision information from other assets. This ship will rely on other military assets, including surface combatants, to provide the targeting information and connectivity necessary to launch its weapons. The Arsenal Ship would server as the magazine for a distributed sensor network. A unique aspect to the Arsenal Ship is that all the command and decision functions would be made off board. Thus, the Arsenal Ship will not be fitted with long range surveillance or fire control sensors, but will be remotely controlled via robust data links. The data links will be secure, redundant and anti-jam in order to provide high reliability in the connectivity of the Arsenal Ships in high jamming operational scenarios. The overall program is an attempt to leverage the significant joint investment in Link 16 and CEC. Early in arsenal ship's life this control will be exercised through an Aegis platform. As the theater connectivity matures, the Arsenal Ship would accommodate a more robust set of controls from a wide variety of sources that would include JSTARS aircraft, AWACS or an E-2 with Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) and, a soldier or a Marine on the ground or a command post ashore. This concept allows for remote missile selection, on-board missile initialization and remote launch orders, and provides remote "missile away" messages to the control platform.
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