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Global Reach presents a unique view of the fiscal constraints facing the Department of Defense and the U.S. Government. It calls for U.S. policymakers and the general public to understand the message within the book. With this understanding, the United States will ensure its future ability to acquire and maintain the sealift capability to respond to these challenges in the years to come. The 20 years following the Persian Gulf Conflict (1990-91) saw a revolution in the means by which the United States military deploys and sustains U.S. armed forces worldwide during contingencies. Historically, 95 percent of the equipment and supplies our military needs to fight and win in combat are delivered by ship. That remains true today. What has changed is how those cargoes are delivered in theatre. For almost as long as nations sought to deploy military forces by sea, they relied on commercial "Ships Taken Up From Trade" to meet those needs. This changed for the United States with the global conflicts of the 20th Century. With millions of troops deployed oversea and the need to simultaneously supply allied nations with tools of war and food and supplies for their civil economies, the need for sealift exceeded what the commercial fleet could supply. For both the First and Second World Wars, America's mobilization including the construction of thousands of government-owned merchant type ships for sealift. This Government-owned fleet model remained the general practice after 1945 as U.S. forces during both the Korean and Vietnam conflicts were in large part deployed and supplied by the same ships as had supported the Allied victories in Europe and the Pacific. The Persian Gulf Conflict signalled a need for change. Not only had the nature of the conflicts changed, but so too had the commercial maritime industry in the United States and worldwide. Working in close cooperation with its commercial industry partners, including carriers and maritime labour, the U.S. military over the next decade revolutionized the use of commercial vessels and intermodal systems for military sealift. By 2002, the then Commander of the U.S. Transportation Command, General John W. Handy, USAF, in testimony before the U.S. Congress stated that "[w]e simply cannot, as a nation, fight the fight without the partnership of the commercial maritime industry." By 2009-10, not only was 95 percent of all equipment and supplies required by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan still being delivered by ship, but over 90 percent of those cargoes were being transported by United States-flag commercial vessels and U.S. citizen crews in regular commercial liner services. This is the story of that revolution in military sealift.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

"This study provides a program overview of acquisition options available for the Commonwealth of Australia's next generation naval surface combatant and identifies internal and external factors that can influence a major ship acquisition program. The authors address questions relating to available ship design and build options; various phases, options, and decisions; and aspects that can contribute to the success of an acquisition program. Three broad options for designing and building the new ship include a new design, tailor-made to Royal Australian Navy specifications and requirements; a military off-the-shelf design, which would involve making only minor modifications to an existing ship design; and an evolved military off-the-shelf design, which would involve making more significant modifications to an existing ship design. The authors discuss lessons learned as they apply to different phases of a shipbuilding program and highlight the lessons most applicable to the acquisition strategy selected."--Back cover.

"The management and oversight of a major defense acquisition program are exceedingly complex processes. The U.S. Department of Defense has a well-established set of policies, procedures, and organizations for program management and oversight, described in the '5000 series' of directives and instructions. Not all weapon systems fit comfortably within this framework, however. In particular, ship acquisition programs have characteristics that deviate from the normal framework, including concurrency of production and subsystem development, low production quantity and rate, varied test and evaluation procedures, and a unique relationship between milestone decision points and actual construction status. The authors explore these differences in detail, suggesting policies that can better account for the differences in ship acquisition programs without compromising oversight or establishing an entirely separate process."--Publisher's description.

Some recent shipbuilding programs in the United States and Europe have involved multiple shipyards constructing major modules of each ship for final integration and testing at one shipyard. Most modern shipyards have the capability to build and integrate modules, whether those modules originate at that shipyard or at another. Some yards might need to modify their facilities, however, to handle large blocks, rather than completed vessels, at the waterfront. Shared build might not maintain skills at all shipyards equally, but it might help maintain skills at multiple shipyards. It requires the cooperating shipyards to set aside any competitive tendencies and help each other to the overall benefit of the program. Potential benefits include maximizing the learning curve, cross-yard learning, and outsourcing benefits. The Navy needs to decide what it wants from a shared-build strategy, then monitor and manage the program to ensure that it delivers the required outcome, as well as the vessels called for in the program.

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy increased its manpower from fewer than 20,000 to more than 147,000 men, with a concomitant increase in the quantities of food and drink required to sustain them. The organisation responsible for this, the Victualling Board, performed its tasks using techniques and systems which it had developed over the previous 110 years. In terms of actually delivering supplies to warships, troopships and army garrisons abroad, the Victualling Board performed well given the constraints of long-distance communications and intermittent difficulties in obtaining supplies. However, its other areas of responsibility showed poor performance, as evidenced by the reports of several Parliamentary enquiries. This book examines in detail the processes by which the Victualling Board performed its core and non-core tasks, identifying the areas of competence and incompetence, and establishing the underlying causes of the incompetencies. JANET MACDONALD, author of the highly acclaimed Feeding Nelson's Navy (Chatham, 2004), has recently completed a thesis at King's College London. After a business career, and running an equestrian organisation, she spent ten years as a freelance writer, publishing more than thirty books.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Provisioning the fleet, and the army overseas, during the French Wars of 1793-1815 was a major undertaking. This book explains how the Victualling Board in London handled this enormous task, focusing in particular on contractors - that is the merchants and brokers, who provided a vast range of commodities including flour and biscuit, salt beef and pork, as well as huge quantities of fresh water and coal, and every other item needed. It shows how these merchants could be large or small concerns, and provides detailed case studies of different kinds of contractors, including examples of contractors based both in Britain and in the navy's overseas bases. The book demonstrates how, overall, the contracting system represented the mobilisation of a substantial part of the British economy for war; how the performance of contracting was effective, with little or no corruption; and how the contractors took considerable financial risks and made only reasonable margins. It assesses the performance of the Victualling Board, arguing that this was good, and that the problem in the major area of weakness - accounting - was quickly addressed following a major crisis in 1808-09. It concludes that this was "an impressive performance" by the state, but that the overwhelming advantage was the resilience of the market, and that it was "upon the success of the contractors that the war at sea was won." For most of his career, ROGER KNIGHT was on the staff of the National Maritime Museum, leaving as Deputy Director in 2000. Since then he has taught at the Greenwich Maritime Institute at the University of Greenwich, where he is currently Visiting Professor of Naval History. MARTIN WILCOX completed a doctorate in maritime history at the University of Hull, and has been employed as postdoctoral research fellow at Greenwich Maritime Institute since 2006.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Though completely unsung and commonly left out of battle histories, nothing is more important than the details of logistics and support operations during a military campaign. Without fuel, food, transport, communications, and medical facilities, modern military engagement would be impossible. Peter Nash compares the methods the British and American navies developed to supply their ships across the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean during the first part of the twentieth century. He argues that the logistics challenges faced by the navies during World War II were so profound and required such innovative solutions that the outcome was the most radical turning point in the history of mobile logistics support. He shows how the lessons learned during the final campaign against Japan were successfully implemented during the Korean War and transformed the way naval expeditionary force is projected to this day. The foreword was written by the Royal Navy's current Second Sea Lord, Vice Admiral Sir Alan Massey.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)