It seems that the wizards at the Pentagon have come up with a concept called Heavy Air Lift Seabasing Ship (HALSS). It’s basically a ship, with a trimaran hull form and built to commercial ship standards, that would carry 6 C-130s, and then use these aircraft to ferry cargo to shore.

The idea is to use this to fill in the “last mile” gap of some of the newer basing schemes for American forces associated with the “systems of systems” concept and equipment by flying it all in on a C-130.

It won’t work.

A C-130 can take off and land from a carrier deck, this was shown in the 1960s, and the ship is technically possible, though the one concept has it using nuclear power (!).

The concept is flawed.

What is suggested here is that a unit of action (the new name that they have for a brigade) would be flown to an airfield in that last mile.

As strange as this might sound, will be many times slower than using a port or landing craft to deliver the men and materiel: the manned ground vehicles in the FCS family will have to be stripped down to fly on a C-130 (normal max payload is about 19 tons). You will basically have to make 3 C-130 flights to deliver two vehicles, and they will have to be basically reassembled on the other side, with the armor and other systems removed to make transport weight.

Additionally, this does not really allow for significant inland transport, as the C-130 is at maximum weight, and so it’s range is rather short, particularly to locations where it might be “hot”, and so it would have to carry fuel for a return trip.

Additionally, someone had to be smoking something special if they think that the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command would ever allow the Navy to get any sort of authority over their aircraft, which would be required for such a scheme.