Autonomous Underway Replenishment at Sea for Riverine Operations

Abstract

Currently, the United States Navy is making a small footprint in the world's littoral regions with the help of the United States Marine Corps. In Iraq, the Marine Corps is actively conducting Riverine operations, however, they are overly tasked and in need of permanent replacement by the United States Navy. To relieve the Marine Corps, the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command with its Riverine Squadrons will soon take over these Riverine operational commitments to reestablish supremacy throughout the Riverine environment. Based on the Chief of Naval Operations, Center for Naval Analyses requirements, the System Engineering Analysis (SEA-11) class of 2007 developed a concept of operations (CONOPS) that the Total Ships System Engineering (TSSE) class of 2007 used to develop a prototype platform. The first step in the development of the new platform was to conduct a Capability Gap Analysis of existing Naval assets, both U.S. and foreign. It was determined from this analysis that no current ships were capable of fulfilling all of the initial requirements and a new platform would be needed. A functional Element Decomposition of the system requirements was developed and a preliminary design was identified. The ultimate design evolved into a multi-hulled Specialized Command and Control Craft (SCCC) that would utilize three multimission craft (MMC) to accomplish all mission requirements. To take full advantage of this prototype platform, every effort was taken to minimize the number of crew members on station at any given time. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate the use of the direct method, which will allow the SCCC to conduct a fully autonomous Underway Replenishment at Sea (UNREP) with a standard supply vessel. The direct method approach allows for the creation of a smooth path and real-time updates at 1Hz.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2008
Accession Number
ADA479664

Entities

People

  • William F. Addison Ii

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundary Value Problems
  • Command And Control
  • Computational Science
  • Engineering
  • Equations
  • Equations Of Motion
  • Marine Corps
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Military Science
  • Naval Operations
  • Navigation
  • Navy
  • Replenishment
  • Standards
  • United States
  • United States Naval Academy
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Irregular Warfare and Special Operations Cyberspace Operations against Adversarial Threats.
  • Maritime Combat Support and Expeditionary Logistics.
  • Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering.

Technology Areas

  • Fully Networked C3
  • Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control