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Old 04-18-2019, 10:13 AM
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Cool U.S. Navy Should Think Big To Take Advantage Of Wider Panama Canal

U.S. Navy Should Think Big To Take Advantage Of Wider Panama Canal
By: Craig Hooper - Aerospace & Defense / Forbes - 4-18-19
RE: https://www.forbes.com/sites/craigho.../#3a4b0f865e01

Photo link: https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/9...y-1200x800.jpg
The hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) transits the Panama Canal. COURTESY U.S. EMBASSY PANAMA/RELEASED

Few constraints have informed U.S. naval thinking longer than the humble lock chambers on the Panama Canal. But after new, larger “Post-Panamax” locks went into service in mid-2016, American naval ship designers are being slow to unlock the potential inherent in the bigger Panama Canal's super-sized dimensions.

From the day the Panama Canal opened in 1914, America has relied upon the Canal to quickly shift military vessels from one coast to the other. But the Canal also imposed an unalterable rule in U.S. naval vessel design. Most naval ships simply had to fit through the canal. The original Panama Canal dimensions were immutable; Navy ships were built to comply with the canal's original 320 meter length, 33.53 meter width, and 12.56 meter depth limitations, as well as meet a height constraint imposed by the Bridge of the Americas at Balboa.

From the early 1900’s, U.S. Navy ship designers toiled to cram as much combat power as possible through the Panama Canal’s locks. America's massive, 45,000-ton Iowa-class battleships, built at the height of World War II, were so big they they had only mere inches of clearance on either side of the canal. America didn't dare to defy the Panama Canal restrictions until until 1945, with the commissioning of the first Midway-class aircraft carriers.


Today, only America’s biggest and most valuable surface combatants (aircraft carriers and big-deck amphibious vessels) are permitted to exceed the design constraints imposed by the Panama Canal. Virtually all other U.S. Navy surface ships were designed to fit through the canal, with their dimensions constrained primarily by the Panama Canal’s original 33.53-meter limit in vessel width, or beam.

While many U.S. Navy combatants have smaller beams, vital mid-sized military ships push right up against the original Panama Canal beam limits (the San Antonia (LPD 17) class amphibious vessels are 32-meters wide, the Independence (LCS 2) class is 31.6 meters wide, the Lewis and Clark (T-AKE-1) class replenishment ships are 32.3 meters wide, as are most of the rest of America's sealift and logistics vessels).

Navy ship beam no longer needs to be constrained by the Canal. But while the Panama Canal has grown, America's naval vessels have not.

Welcome To The Post-Panamax World:

Photo link: https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/9...3-1200x675.jpg
USNS Montford Point (ESD 1), on the right, emphasizes the vessels's broad 50-meter beam in operations off Saipan. U.S. NAVY PHOTO/RELEASED

In 2009, the Panama Canal Authority established new, far larger dimensions for New-Panamax/Post-Panamax locks. In mid-2016, new locks opened the canal to ships as large as 427 meters in length, 55 meters in width and 18.3 meters in depth. Today, supersized container ships, tankers and passenger ships use the new locks to move between the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans.

Despite having years to prepare for the new locks, American ship designers have been slow to exploit these new dimensions. The future John Lewis (T-AO 205) class oilers will stick to old parameters, sporting a 32.2 meter beam. Flight II LPD amphibious assault ships are expected to be 31.9 meters wide. America's next family of logistical support ships do not appear to be treading beyond the safe confines of old Panamax dimensions.

There is no evidence that naval tastemakers, when responding to new U.S. Navy vessel requirements, are exploring anything but old Panamax dimensions.

The 32-meter limit on ship width is now an arbitrary limitation, and the Navy need not be constrained by it.

The American Navy has tinkered with larger-beam ships. The enormous Expeditionary Mobile Bases and Expeditionary Transfer Docks sport fifty-meter beams. But both platforms are, at this point, struggling to live up to expectations, suggesting that there is more work for American ship designers to do in translating the potential of new, larger-dimensioned ships into real at-sea combat performance.

America’s Navy has lived within the limitations of the Panama Canal for so long that those old dimensions risk constraining innovation.

One barrier is an intellectual one; senior naval taste-makers, steeped in long-standing, Cold War-era constraints, are simply far less likely to quickly grasp the potential in new, larger, warship designs.

There is a fiscal constraint as well; new designs cost money. Most of America’s naval design expertise has been focused on meeting the legacy design limitations imposed by the old Panama Canal. And while reams of World War I, World War II and Cold War-era risk-reduction data exist to help naval designers understand the behavior of smaller hull designs, information informing the behavior of larger-dimension non-flat-deck warship hulls is limited. Expanding that library costs money the U.S. Navy may be reluctant to spend.

Proposals sporting new, larger dimensions are uncompetitive, disadvantaged in today's lowest-cost-technically-acceptable environment. The costs of proving out new, larger hull designs cannot compete against a proposal to employ a more familiar Panamax compliant hull design.

In addition, America’s military maritime infrastructure has been built around the smaller "old Panamax" dimensions. U.S. ship manufacturers and maintainers have lived with old Panamax dimensions for so long, retooling facilities to meet the larger dimensions may prove to be difficult and costly. Ship maintainers have few drydocks available to fit larger vessels. Charlestown-based Detyens Shipyards, a center for U.S. Navy auxiliary ship maintenance, is unable to dry dock vessels with greater than a 33.5 meter beam.

Even channels in militarily-useful ports may need widening to expand beyond old Panamax constraints.

But as the maritime world slowly adjusts to the reality of larger, post-Panamax ships, the potential posed by wider, deeper-draft combatants and auxiliaries merit additional attention. Creative industry surveys and targeted exploratory studies can do a lot to drive industry interest in risk-reduction experiments, building a national apatite for new-Panamax surface combatants and auxiliary ships.

The U.S. Navy--with support from the U.S. Congress--has an obligation to encourage shipbuilders look beyond the timid exercises of cost-minimization and to really flesh out the new opportunities a new and bigger Panama Canal might offer. That, or the U.S. naval establishment must prepare to handle the public panic when China starts producing surface combatants and auxiliaries sized for the new realities of a Post-Panamax world.

About the writer: I evaluate national security threats and propose solutions.
I offer blunt, uncompromising guidance on national security solutions, bringing complex security issues and oft-neglected defense topics to the attention of interested policymakers and the general public. I have focused on maritime, homeland defense and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) challenges for over a decade, spanning from academia to the defense industry. Currently working for a consultancy just outside of Washington, DC, I served as an executive for naval shipbuilder Austal USA, helping deliver the Littoral Combat Ship and Expeditionary Fast Transport to the U.S. Navy. Previously, I taught at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey California, and earned a doctorate in Immunology and Infectious Disease from Harvard University. In my spare time, I support think-tank studies, discuss naval matters at NextNavy.com or write about the Navy, publishing op-eds and papers in places like the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, the Naval War College Review, the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings and beyond.
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