Per Mar, Per Terram

 Per Mare, Per Terram

Amphibious Forces for the Future

HMS Albion leading a multi-national amphibious force

            The Amphibious Force is often seen as one of the pillars of British maritime power; along with Carrier Strike and Trident. But with the ever-dreaded defence reviews seemingly never ending, amphibious capabilities are usually the first to go- the Navy has too much pride to get rid of the Carriers and scrapping the deterrent would have disastrous effects on the United Kingdom's global standing. This leaves only the Bootnecks left to cut for major savings. In this article, I'm going to propose a future force amphibious force that shares the burden of amphibious operations between all three services but still leaves us with a truly world class commando force.

Note: For a more comprehensive overview of Britain's future amphibious forces see my series Owning The Littorals

The Current Commandos

            Currently, the Royal Marines 'Commando' units (battalion equivalent) are commanded centrally by 3 Commando Brigade (3 CDO BDE). While technically forming a brigade, the Commando forces don't have enough combat or combat support units to operate as such, with 3 CDO BDE ssentially acting as a deployable HQ in a maritime environment. Under the brigade comes the Commandos, the fighting power of the Corps of Royal Marines.

            Two of the brigades Commandos follow the Commando 21 Structure, these being 40 CDO (forty commando) and 45 CDO (four-five commando). They consist of 6 companies- Command, Logistics and two each of close combat and stand off. The Command Company encompasses HQ functions for the CDO (through both the Main and Tactical HQs), the recce troop and sniper section, the Mortar troop (9 81mm mortars and 4 Fire Control Parties), Anti-tank troop (6 Javelin ATGMs), Heavy Machine Gun troop (6 .50 Calibre HMGs) and the signals troop. The Logistics troop commands all the 'rear echelon' parts of the unit; the 'A echelon', Forward Repair Team, Regimental Aid Post and 'B echelon'.

The commando 21 structure

The two Close Combat Companies provide the bayonet strength to the Commando and are made up of 5 officers and 98 other ranks divided into Company Headquarters and three rifle troops. Each troop consists of a manoeuvre support section (GPMG, Long Range Large Calibre Rifle and formerly a light mortar) and three rifle sections (2 four man fire teams and corporal in command) as well as a small troop HQ. This is complemented by a Fire Support Group and Company Headquarters. The entire company is transported by Landing Craft and mechanised by legs Mk.1. Overall, the company is not too dissimilar to an army light infantry company.

The two Stand Off Companies provide additional weapons support to the Commando, although they are capable of limited manoeuvre, and are made up of 5 officers and 78 other ranks. They consist of one close combat troop (identical to the three in the Close Combat Company, an Anti-Tank Troop (six Javelin ATGMs) and a Heavy Machine Gun Troop (six .50 calibre HMGs). One of the companies are wheeled using Jackal 2 MWMIK and one is tracked on Viking All-Terrain Vehicle (Protected).

 

           30 Commando information exploitation group (thirty commando IX) provide ISTAR support to the entire brigade. It is made up of 465 personnel (all ranks) and is named for 30 Assault Unit, a tri-service unit which gathered intelligence from behind enemy lines, whose organisation was planned heavily by Commander Ian Fleming (of Bond fame). The unit current organisation, however, is primarily Royal Marines and consists of four squadrons and HQ troop, who are responsible for unit administration. 

Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron (SR Sqn) provide the Brigade with its own organic recce capability. It has four troops; the Brigade Patrol Troop has six teams of four Marines who insert before the main force, scouting ahead in a similar style to UKSF units. Air Defence Troop operates Starstreak High velocity missiles to provide top cover to Brigade assets and the Royal Marine Police troop operate as force protection for Brigade HQ and provide  mentoring for partner nations. The squadron also has responsibility for Tactical Air Control Parties for the Brigade. Logistics Squadron provides Motor Transport, Catering, Stores, and Equipment support troops for Brigade on operations and at home while the Communications Squadron provides two satellite communications troops. This is rounded off by Y Squadron who provide electronic warfare assets to various levels of command.

            42 Commando are the 'specialist maritime operations unit' which means that they don't operate as a formed unit, instead deploying small, highly skilled teams around the world on Royal Navy warships and Royal Fleet Auxiliaries. Juliet Company are board and search specialists who board non-compliant vessels, mainly East of Suez and provide the Fleet Contingency Troop. Kilo Company are the Support, Augment, Liaison, Training (SALT) company, which means they provide teams to SALT other units (both UK and partner nations). Lima Company provide Joint Personnel Recovery on the Queen Elizabeth class carriers while Mike Company are force protection specialists for warships in high-risk areas.

            43 Commando Fleet Protection Group provides protection to the nuclear deterrent in and around HMNB Faslane and related establishments. The group is highly trained in maritime security, boarding operations and CBRN procedures. The unit numbers around 550 personnel and is divided between HQ Squadron, 3 rifle squadrons and the boat troop who operate three Island class patrol vessels, purchased of the Ministry of Defence Police and then up-armoured. The group also have a secondary role of assisting the Special Boat Service with Maritime Counter-Terrorism, especially in the North Sea Oil fields (although this is obviously a lower priority than protecting the deterrent).

 

           47 Commando provides landing craft support to the Royal Marines in the form of two squadrons of Landing Craft (4 Assault Squadron Royal Marines and 6 ASRM) both of which operate 4 Landing Craft Utility and 4 Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel. The Group also provides training to crews of the vessels and oversees training to partner nations in amphibious landings.They also command 539 Raiding Squadron RM who operate Landing Craft Air Cushions, LCVPs, Rigid Raiders and Offshore Raiding Craft directly under the command of the Brigade.

            The Commando Logistics Regiment provide Combat Service Support to the Brigade and draws its 780 personnel from the Royal Navy, Royal Marines and British Army (all need to have passed the All-Arms Commando Course). They are split into HQ Squadron, Equipment Support Squadron (provide repair and recovery to the Brigades equipment), Logistics Support Squadron (provide transport, fuel and stores to the Brigade), Medical Squadron, Landing Force Support Squadron (land directly behind front line troops to control beach movements) and the Logistics Task Group which is essentially a high readiness smaller scale formation made up from all elements of the Regiment, to support the high-readiness Battlegroup.

Under the command of the CLR is the Viking Squadron, which operates the Royal Marines BvS10 All Terrain Vehicle (Protected). The Squadron is manned by 162 Marines and is split into four independent troops of 16 vehicles each. Two of the troops are held at 5 days notice to move with the lead Commando group with the remainder of the squadron held at 28 days notice to move.

 

           24 Commando provides engineering support to the Brigade and is manned by 492 British Army personnel who have completed the All-Arms Commando Course. The Regiment is made up of four squadrons: 56 HQ and support squadron who provide HQ functions and recce, support and signals troops. 54 Squadron provide engineering support to the Brigade during amphibious assaults and 59 squadron is the Naval Support Squadron. These are all supported by 131 (Reserve) Squadron based in London.

 

           29 Commando provide indirect fires to the Brigade, both through their own guns and as fire controllers. It consists of HQ battery, two gun batteries of 6 L118 light guns and three observation posts,a Naval Gunfire Support Forward Observation (NGSFO) Battery with eight 6 man fire support teams and a training battery.

 

           The Commando Helicopter Force consists of 3 squadrons of helicopters of the Fleet Air Arm, operating in support of 3 Commando Brigade. 845 NAS operates 3 flights of four Merlin Mk4 transport helicopters while 846 NAS operates one deployable flight, the Merlin OCU and the Maritime Counter Terrorism Flight. They are supported by 847 NAS with 6 Wildcat AH1 Helicopters. These can be augmented by any other rotary and fixed wing assets in the British Forces and our allies; namely Apache, Puma, Chinook and USMC V22 Ospreys.

Current Shipping

            Along with the Marines themselves, the Navy's amphibious ships are vitally important to a littoral theatre entry. Without them it would be literally impossible to invade anywhere bar the Isle of Wight. In this section of the article I'm going to detail the Navy and RFA's current amphibious shipping.

            The Royal Navy currently operates two Albion class Landing Platform Docks or LPDs- Albion and Bulwark. They displace 19,500 tons and are 176 metres long. Each is crewed by 325 officers and ratings and can reach speeds of 18 knots with a range of 8,000 miles. The ships have a two spot flight deck capable of landing helicopters up to the size of a Chinook but lack a hanger. Each operates a landing craft squadron of 4 LCU and 4 LCVP from davits and the large well deck. An Embarked Military Force of 405 (710 overload) can be carried along with 67 vehicles.

            Operated by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, the Bay class are meant to bring in 'second wave' troops in any major landings. They can carry 356 troops (700 overload) with 1,150 lane metres for vehicles. The ships complement is 70 RFA all ranks. Although their primary role is amphibious assault, the Bays are often seen operating as mine countermeasures command and support ships in the Gulf or disaster relief in the Caribbean. They have a Chinook sized flight deck and no hanger, although the effects of this are mitigated by the installation of a temporary fabric hanger.

            The four Point class strategic sealift ships are owned and operated by Foreland Shipping Ltd and permanently chartered to the MOD. They are crewed by around 20 British Merchant Navy Men, who are also Royal Naval Reservists. They can transport up to 130 armoured vehicles or four helicopters at a speed of 21 knots but have no passenger capability to speak of. They aren't usually used in the assault phase of an operation, instead providing follow on equipment. Most of the time however, the Point class are used to transport equipment between standing garrisons (the Falklands, Cyprus, Germany etc.).

Future Amphibious Forces

            The Future Commando Force is a programme designed to essentially take the Royal Marines 'back to their roots' of amphibious raiding from the sea, like the original army commandos of World War 2, rather than acting in a role practically identical to any number of light role infantry battalions the army is not lacking, to say the least. This includes trials with different unit sizes, including troops of sixteen and sections of twelve and new technology, drones and unmanned ground vehicles. They also tested out new vehicles, such as the Polaris MRZR which is both air-portable by Merlin and incredibly ally and gave every marine a tablet as part of the ATAK (Android Team Awareness Kit) system; essentially kit which can be used for displaying data from UAVs and providing a location of friendly forces, greatly improving situational awareness both for the man on the ground and in HQs at every level from section to Northwood. The trials also included more symbolic changes including adopting the White Ensign instead of Union Flag on the Marines' left arm, adopting a separate uniform from the Army and the adoption of the Colt Canada C8 rifle instead of the SA80 as the primary individual rifle.

LRG organisation (Image credit: Navy Lookout)

The aim of the FCF is to deploy the Marines permanently aboard ships in 'Littoral Response Groups'. Two will be formed; LRG(North), based in the UK and responsible for the Atlantic, Baltic, Mediterranean and the Arctic and LRG(South), responsible for the Persian Gulf and Indo-Pacific which will be permanently based at the UK Joint Logistics Support base in Oman. LRG(N) will be made up of an Albion class LPD, Bay class LSD (plus escorts) and a Littoral Strike Unit consisting of a company group from 45 CDO and various supports from the brigade level. LRG(S), however, won't have the luxury of the LPD and LSD so will have to make do with a refurbished RFA Albion, but will, ironically have better aviation support from a fifty year old former container ship then LRG(N) will from two modern(ish) purpose built warships.

Fantasy Fleet Time!

            Now we have the context behind the current structure and theory of the Future Commando Force, I'm going to have a crack at my own fantasy amphibious force. I'm going to try and stay just about within the realms of reality budget-wise(ish!), and try and follow the doctrine of the Future Commando Force. This means that I'm going to expand on the ideas the theory is built around namely forward-deployed, light, expeditionary troops able to operate in independent company groups, away from any support not organic to the group.

 

           In keeping with the FCF plans, I would still forward deploy Groups both to the Gulf/Indo-Pacific region and the High North. Each group would be made up of a 'Littoral Strike Unit' of around 250 Marines from 45 Commando in the North and 40 Commando in the South and supporting units, half an infantry Battlegroup, a Landing Craft and vehicle squadron from 47 Commando, an aviation group from the Commando Helicopter Force, a Type 83 Destroyer, Type 26 frigate, Landing Helicopter Dock and a Littoral Strike Ship. This would all come together to form a well-rounded group optimised for raiding and small scale insertions which is entirely self contained. The exact composition of small units will obviously need perfecting with trials and experimentation (which has already began with the LRG[X] deployment) but should be reasonably easy to work with.

            I'm going to start with the simplest part and talk about the naval component of the group, which will be made up of a Type 26 frigate and Type 83 destroyer. The combination of the two gives the task force a potent and organic ASW, AAW and ASuW capability. Currently, the Type 32 frigate is expected to provide support to the LRGs but I would use them to provide depth to the forward deployed Type 31s.

The Littoral Strike Ship probably deserves it's own article but, in essence should be a part of the Multi Role Support Ship as it currently is pencilled in to be. Currently, the MRSS is going to be six ships to replace the Bays, Albion and Argus. I would however, change the programme fundamentally to be not a group of identical ships to instead being a group of ships will the same hull, engines and systems. They will be based on whichever design wins the Fleet Solid Support Ship competition and will have up to twelve hulls; four FSSS, four LSS and four Hospital ships (funded by the DFiD) plus whatever export orders we can secure. As I said earlier, I'm going to write an article about this proposal sometime in the near future but for now, I'll outline the LSS variant. 

The LSS should be based on the FSS (probably Team UK's proposal) meaning it will be 220 metres long, 30 metres wide and have a draught of 7 metres. There would be space for a two spot flight deck at around the same height as the top of the hanger in the image which would stretch roughly to the funnels (which would be heightened to the same level as the main superstructure). The large hanger would sit between the funnels and the location where RASCO is (although that would be deleted), just forward of this would be a large opening on both port and starboard so the LSS can operate in a similar fashion as the US Navy's Expeditionary Dock, moving cargo and vehicles between strategic RO-RO ships (in our case the Point class but could well be allied shipping or STUFT) and landing craft. This would be connected to a stern ramp for RO-RO and several decks for vehicle movement and stowage. To top this all off, would be the three decks seen, extended all the way aft for accommodation for embarked forces.

Team UK's FSS proposal

To round off the group is the flagship of the force, a Commando Carrier. This will be a similar size to the Juan Carlos class (or Canberra class if we feel AUKUSy today) Landing Helicopter Dock but I have brought back the term for the Centaur class because they will both literally carry Commandos and operate fixed wing aviation plus it sounds way more impressive. The class would have a flat top capable of operating F35B Lightnings as well as rotary aviation. A well deck for amphibious shipping would back onto the vehicle deck and an aircraft hanger would be necessary.

            The LRG is provided with a capable air group of one squadron of 12 F35Bs (primarily for CAP over the naval element- if anything else is needed then a Carrier Strike Group should be added), four Chinooks if they can be marinised, eight Merlin HC4s and eight Apache attack helicopters as well as the escorts own organic aviation assets. This would be augmented by UAVs when this technology has matured

properly.

 

           This may sound good but to land troops on the ground you need, well, troops on the ground. This will be provided by 40/45 Commando Royal Marines, but these will only deploy smaller formations of around a company group size. Each would be made of three large troops with engineer, artillery (in the form of fires controllers) and medical support.

To provide mass to the Marines, I would reflag 1st Division as a more expeditionary focused organisation to provide a rapid reaction capability worldwide, making it a fully deployable division. It would take command of a variety of the Army (and Navy's) lighter brigades, including 3 Commando. The lighter RM raiding force would be augmented by a half-battalion (I would reorganise the Division's Infantry into a structure similar to Commando 21) of one Close Combat and one Stand Off Company and a small HQ/logistics element. This would be augmented by a Cavalry Squadron, artillery battery with 120mm Mortars, engineer troop, medical teams and an ISTAR squadron. The entire Battlegroup (or as much as feasibly possible within equipment constraints) would be mounted in MRV(P) which should really only be a single vehicle instead of the several different packages currently planned for (my favourite is Bushmaster but any will do) in LRG(S) and F-ATV(P) in LRG(N).

 

           A landing force is obviously useless stuck aboard a ship, they need a way to get from ship to shore-back in the old times, this would be done solely with landing craft. The US Marines tried to use aviation solely and then found that while this might work well in the assault phase of any landing, by the time the main forward elements have a solid foothold on the ground, aviation cannot keep up with demand (remember this is the USMC, who have much better rotary wing support than virtually our entire forces, never mind the CHF) so even they had to bring back small vessels. These are currently the LCVP Mk5 and LCU Mk10 for the Royal Marines and are both in essence evolved designs which wouldn't look out of place on Sword beach. This is not in itself a bad thing, but has it's drawbacks on the craft's speed- the LCU has a fully laden speed of 10 knots. I think both of these need replacing with completely new designs.

I would replace the Landing Craft Mark 5 with the CB90 or similar. It increases the speed over the LCVP from 25 knots up to 40. The craft is a flexible and well proven design and can be armed with a variety of weapons systems including but not limited to M2HB HMGs and Grenade Machine Guns. This could, of course, all be adapted to suit the raiding teams needs and whatever equipment becomes available in the future. One of the potential downsides of the CB90 (aside from the price tag) is the smaller load (only 21 fully loaded troops to the LCVP's 35) and the CB90 cannot carry vehicles, although as 'light vehicles' get bigger and much heavier the LCVP can't carry much more than a Land Rover anyway.

The LCU should be replaced by a large hovercraft. This would be similar to the type used by the USMC rather than the in service (or recently retired?) type used by 47 Commando. Hovercraft have the advantage of being able to access up to 70% of coastlines around the world (compared to 15% for conventional landing craft) as well as not needing complicated wet docks to be launched from ships, instead essentially just needing an opening to drive straight out of. 

 

           That, with some investment, leaves us with a credible, modern and agile amphibious force, fit for any expeditionary warfare around the globe at many scales. Imagine, for a moment, a terrorist group seizing power in a small West African country. LRG(South) steams towards the nation immediately, with her embarked forces preparing. The group gets within ten miles of the coastline, launching her landing craft and helicopters laden with Marines and soldiers. A company, 1 LOAMSHIRES form a secure perimeter around the beach zone where the Hovercraft came ashore, allowing British citizens to be safely and efficiently evacuated to the ships, where medical and humanitarian attention is waiting. Meanwhile, the commandos head towards the British embassy, where sensitive material is destroyed and the entire staff evacuated by helicopter before the entire force pulls out, mere hours after the evacuation began.

Now think to the Falkland Islands, where by some strange course of events the Argentinians have managed to land a force and secure Mount Pleasant before reinforcements can arrive. Both LRGs head for the South Atlantic, having been reinforced by the rest of the battalions on amphibious duties at the time, as well as the two battalions with the most recent amphibious experience, forming an ad-hoc brigade under 3 CDO BDE HQ. The deployed Carrier Strike Group head towards the islands too, with the 'building up' group making preparations to sail immediately. The group lands first wave forces near Bluff cove, being followed up by troops brought down on ship taken up from trade and then transferred (with all their equipment) through the LSS' onto landing craft in preparation for the final push on Stanley. 

However unlikely, these examples show the main benefits of my proposal- it is scalable from company to brigade level and can deploy an entire amphibious brigade without having a committed amphibious brigade at high readiness at all times.