It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, August 31, 2023
Crowley and Morgan Stanley Launch JV to Develop Wind Port Infrastructure
Crowley is involved with the Salem redevelopment project and looks to use the new JV with Morgan Stanley to redevelop existing facilities to support the offshore wind energy sector (Crowley)
Crowley is forming a new partnership with global financial services powerhouse Morgan Stanely as they look to further realize the emerging infrastructure opportunities to support the U.S. offshore wind energy business. The companies announced the formation of a new joint venture that will focus on accelerating long-term contracted growth infrastructure opportunities.
To be known as Crowley Wind Services Holdings, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners (MSIP), the private infrastructure investment platform within the advisory firm, will hold a majority stake in the joint venture. Crowley will operate the business which will focus on repurposing and operating existing U.S. port facilities and leasing them under long-term contracts to offshore wind developers.
The companies highlighted the critical role the onshore terminals are planning in the growth of the offshore wind energy sector and the strong demand that will be created as the U.S. proceeds toward its target of 30 GW by 2030 and 110 GW by 2050. They highlight that the terminal business will support the manufacturing, assembly, and storage of wind farm components as well as provide developers with maritime services such as Jones Act-compliant feedering vessels to transport components from ports to offshore wind installations.
“We believe port infrastructure is essential to the build-out and long-term maintenance of offshore wind projects,” said Daniel Sailors, Managing Director, MSIP. “We are excited to partner with Crowley to provide the foundational infrastructure that will enable the development of this important industry.”
The joint venture looks to build off Crowley’s existing business expertise in end-to-end maritime and logistics capabilities using Morgan Stanley’s financial strength and access to capital.
Crowley has already entered into the wind port business, including port operations and terminaling, feedering vessels and operations, and project management. Through a public-private partnership with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Clean Energy Center and the City of Salem, Massachusetts, Crowley plans to begin construction this fall on the Salem Wind Services Terminal, which will support the development and operation of offshore wind lease areas off the northeast U.S. coast. The project calls for repurposing an old power plant and parts of the space is already being used to support the first offshore wind farms being built near Martha’s Vineyard.
In addition, Crowley is pursuing the development of a U.S. West Coast terminal in Eureka, California, in a public-private partnership. Crowley also has a right-of-first-refusal agreement to lease and potentially develop a wind services terminal at Port Fourchon, Louisiana.
World's Largest Floating Offshore Wind Farm Officially Opened
Hywind Tampen located in the North Sea is the largest floating offshore wind farm (Ole Jørgen Bratland photo courtesy of Equinor)
Norway marked the official dedication of the Hywind Tampen wind farm with a ceremony attended by Crown Prince Haakon of Norway and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre on the Gullfaks C platform in the North Sea. Billed as the world’s largest floating wind farm the project is unique in that it is being used to power mature offshore oil production while it is also seen as a further proof of concept project to support the development of floating wind turbines.
The wind farm was developed by Equinor with the company noting it took five years for the project to go from the drawing board to completion. The wind farm, which generated its first power in November 2022, consists of 11 wind turbines. Hywind Tampen has a system capacity of 88 MW and is expected to cover about 35 percent of the annual need for electricity on the five platforms Snorre A and B and Gullfaks A, B, and C.
The wind farm is located nearly 90 miles from shore. At a water depth ranging between approximately 850 and 980 feet, Hywind Tampen will be exposed to some of the harshest offshore conditions. The field lines to the northwest of the city of Bergen, Norway.
Gullfaks in the North Sea with Hywind Tampen in the background (Ole Jørgen Bratland photo courtesy of Equinor)
The company highlighted that 40 years ago Gullfaks was Equinor's major qualifying test in field development on the Norwegian continental shelf. Gullfaks along with Snorre have now become the first oil and gas fields in the world to receive power from offshore wind, reducing CO2 emissions from their operations.
Development of the project was further complicated by the pandemic. Equinor reports they encountered COVID-related costs, delayed deliveries, and quality issues with some deliveries which also resulted in follow-up issues. They also had to manage increased market prices, currency exchange effects, and other challenges. Despite that, the project is fully operational as of August 2023.
They expect the larger size and challenging location of Hywind Tampen will contribute to the understanding and future development of floating wind. They note that already the project was able to reduce the cost of installed MW by approximately 35 percent compared to the first floating wind farm, Hywind Scotland.
Enova, a state enterprise owned by the Ministry of Climate and Environment launched in 2001 to promote environmentally friendly energy consumption and production provided approximately $217 million toward the development of Hywind Tampen. In addition, the Norwegian Business Sector's NoX fund supported the project with just over $50 million to stimulate technology development within offshore wind power and emission reductions.
Hywind Tampen is the first offshore wind farm in Norway, demonstrating the opportunities for renewable power production on the Norwegian continental shelf.
His Majesty Crown Prince Haakon and Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre making the ceremonial connect August 23, 2023 (Ole Jørgen Bratland photo courtesy of Equinor)
U.S. Approves Revolution Wind to Become Fourth Large, Offshore Wind Farm
Revolution Wind becomes the fourth large offshore widn farm to complete the U.S. review process (Orsted)
The Department of the Interior today announced its approval of the Revolution Wind offshore wind farm project which will provide energy to both Connecticut and Massachusetts. This is the Department’s fourth approval of a commercial-scale, offshore wind energy project as the U.S. offshore wind energy industry continues to gain momentum.
Located about 15 nautical miles southeast of Rhode Island and about 12 nautical miles from the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Revolution Wind will have an estimated capacity of 704 megawatts of energy, capable of powering nearly 250,000 homes. The project will split its power providing about 400 MW to Rhode Island and the remaining 304 MW to Connecticut. In the final form approved by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the project will consist of 65 wind turbines and two offshore substations.
The project is being developed in a partnership between Ørsted and Eversource. The companies acknowledged the milestone for the project saying they remain on track to begin onshore construction activities in the coming weeks. Offshore construction is scheduled to ramp up in 2024 with the project expected to be operational in 2025.
“Companies have quadrupled their U.S. offshore wind investments to over $20 billion, representing thousands of good-paying union jobs,” said Assistant to the President and National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi, highlighting the release of BOEM’s record of decision as the next major step in the industry. “Today’s approval of a fourth major offshore wind project is our latest permitting milestone that will help strengthen America’s energy security, make our power grid more reliable, lower energy costs, and cut dangerous climate pollution.”
Construction on the first two large offshore wind farms is already underway in Massachusetts and New York. Avangrid which is leading the development of Vineyard Wind 1 which will be near Revolution Wind highlights that the first nacelles and wind turbine blades have now arrived at the staging facility in Massachusetts. The first two projects, Vineyard and South Fork, are targeting completion before the end of the year and BOEM previously also approved the Ocean Wind 1 project offshore New Jersey.
BOEM highlights that the review process for Revolution Wind included considering the final Environmental Impact Statement alternatives, including public comments received. The Department approved Revolution Wind’s Construction and Operations Plan (COP) under its preferred Alternative G identified and analyzed in the EIS. This preferred alternative will meet energy needs by installing fewer wind turbines than originally proposed by the developer to reduce impacts to visual resources, benthic habitat, and ocean co-users. Alternative G includes up to 79 possible locations for the installation of 65 wind turbines and two offshore substations within the lease area. The Record of Decision is published on BOEM’s website.
The Record of Decision includes measures aimed at avoiding, minimizing, and mitigating the potential impacts that may result from the construction and operation of the project. Among them, Revolution Wind has committed to establishing fishery mitigation funds to compensate losses directly arising from the project incurred by recreational and commercial fisheries in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and to creating a direct compensation program to reimburse lost revenues for fisheries from other states. Additionally, Revolution Wind has committed to measures such as vessel speed restrictions and construction clearance zones to reduce the potential for impacts to protected species, such as marine mammals, sea turtles, and Atlantic sturgeon.
“Together with industry, labor, and partners from coast to coast, we are building an entirely new industry off the east and west and Gulf coasts,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
The Biden administration highlights that companies have announced 18 offshore wind shipbuilding projects as well as investments of nearly $3.5 billion across 12 manufacturing facilities and 13 ports to strengthen the American offshore wind supply chain. Ørsted and Eversource, for example, have committed to more than $100 million of direct investment to the State Pier redevelopment project in the Port of New London, Connecticut to create a marine terminal that is being used for staging and assembly. They have already also ordered five crew transfer vessels that will be built by Blount Boats and Senesco Marine both in Rhode Island.
BOEM reports it remains on track to complete reviews of at least 16 offshore wind project plans by 2025, representing more than 27 gigawatts of energy.
Union Members Authorize September Strike at Chevron Australia’s LNG Ops
Chevron's Australian LNG operation accounts for a fifth of global supply (Wheatstone file photo)
The Offshore Alliance which represents workers at Chevron’s Australian LNG production and distribution facilities scheduled an unspecified industrial action for September 7 after receiving nearly unanimous support for a strike from the 500 union members working at the company’s three plants. With Chevron Australia accounting for more than five percent of global LNG production, the news of the strike sent the European market for liquified natural gas up more than 10 percent according to Reuters.
Voting for a potential strike at Chevron’s facilities began last week with the union reporting in a filing to Australia’s Fair Work Commission that 99 percent of the 450 members at Chevron’s Gorgon LNG facility and Wheatstone downstream processing plant voted at the end of last week in favor of a job action. Today, polling was completed for the Wheatstone offshore platform where all 37 union members also voted to support a job action.
Under Australian labor law, the union needs to give notice and the action could be for a set number of hours, a ban on certain functions, or a full strike. Reuters is quoting unnamed sources saying that the union plans to stop work for three hours on September 7 and then escalate the number of hours if there is not sufficient progress on the negotiations.
Chevron confirmed that it had received the notice without announcing the details of the planned action. A company spokesperson said they don’t believe a job action is necessary for an agreement to be reached. In similar negotiations, Woodside and the union had set last Wednesday as a deadline in their talks and after a marathon negotiating session reported an in-principle agreement. Chevron combined with Woodside represents a tenth of global LNG production.
“Our members are locked and loaded and ready for Protected Industrial Action,” the Offshore Alliance wrote on its social media account. “A settlement is increasingly likely to come after we ‘jam up’ Chevron’s LNG exports.” The Offshore Alliance was formed as a combination of the Maritime Union of Australia and the Australian Workers’ Union to represent the employees at the major LNG producers.
Chevron’s Gorgon facility has an annual capacity of 15.6 million metric tons. In June the company reported it had production of first gas from the Gorgon Stage Two development off the northwest coast of Western Australia which included the addition of 11 wells and accompanying offshore production pipelines and subsea structures to maintain feed gas supply for the gas processing facilities on Barrow Island. The facility is a major LNG supplier to Asia Pacific as well as Australia’s domestic supply of LNG.
Just last week, a five percent increase in capacity was announced at the domestic gas facility at the Chevron-operated Wheatstone Project near Onslow. The company completed technical enhancements and plant modifications to increase production rates. The facility handles nearly nine million metric tons of LNG annually.
The Offshore Alliance highlighted that it had reached a new agreement with three of the operators and is now concentrating on Chevron saying that “no members will be left behind in our eventual settlement of our bargaining claims,” which center on wages and working conditions. INPEX reached terms on a new agreement early in 2022, but Shell only came to terms with the union after a 76-day job action that ended last September. Woodside has said it was confident that the in-principle agreement reached last week could be finalized and the union agreed not to proceed with a job action while the agreement was completed, submitted to the membership for a vote, and sent to the Fair Work Commission for approval.
Woodside and Australian Unions Reach In-Principle Agreement on LNG Contract
North Rankin Complex, North West Shelf Project, Western Australia (Woodside)
Woodside Energy and its labor unions announced that they have reached an in-principle agreement for an enterprise labor agreement for the company’s liquified natural gas operations in Australia. Energy market analysts welcomed the news noting that the threatened strike against Woodside and Chevron was putting as much as 10 percent of the world’s LNG supply at risk. Negotiations are still ongoing with Chevron.
Representatives for the Australian Workers’ Union called the agreement a “huge win” for members. The contract if completed would the be first enterprise-wide agreement in decades covering both on-shore employees and the over 150 workers at Woodside’s offshore LNG platform Goodwyn Alpha, North Rankin Complex, and Angel Platform. It also marks the union’s successful negotiations with three of the four large producers in Australia.
The Offshore Alliance, which is made up of the Australian Workers’ Union and the Maritime Union of Australia, called the agreement a “positive step” saying that Woodside had made a strong offer without the unions having to proceed with their threatened industrial action. The alliance reported that the in-principle agreement came as a 15-hour meeting and at the deadline set by the union to start a countdown toward a strike. The unions had authorization to begin a strike which was expected to start as early as September 2.
“Despite the lengthy road to this point, we are relieved that Woodside has now taken a more pragmatic approach and decided to offer our members an enterprise agreement with industry-standard terms and conditions,” said AWU WA Secretary Brad Grandy. Woodside in its statement said that the agreement covered all claims related to remuneration and other terms and conditions of employment.
Union members were scheduled to meet today to review the terms of the in-principle agreement and determine next steps. Woodside said it would be working with the union to finalize the agreement which would require a union vote and approval by Australia’s Fair Work Commission. They noted that the unions had agreed not to file for an industrial action while the process is underway while the union said members would also consider withdrawing their notices.
Just four days ago, the Electrical Trades Union which was negotiating alongside the alliance said it was “gearing up to take on the giants,” referring to Woodside and Chevron. “ETU members refuse to settle for anything less than they rightfully deserve,” the union warned.
Last year, the unions held out for 76 days in a strike against Shell before reaching a new agreement. Workers at INPEX secured a deal with the union earlier in 2022.
Chevron remains the last of the majors to reach terms with the union. The Offshore Alliance members began voting to authorize a possible strike. Union members at both Chevron’s downstream services and Gorgon platform were due to return their ballots today while workers at Chevron’s Wheatstone platform were due to submit their votes on Monday, August 28.
Industry analysts are hopeful that the initial agreement with Woodside would clear the way for a similar resolution with Chevron. Traders in LNG remained cautious but the announcement from Woodside and the unions took some pressure off the market which was bracing for a potential strike.
Wärtsilä Offers Onboard Carbon Capture and Storage Feasibility Studies
With CCS-Ready scrubbers now being sold at pace, Wärtsilä’s studies across a range of vessel types come as next step in rapidly accelerating trajectory for CCS in shipping
Technology group Wärtsilä is now offering carbon capture and storage (CCS) feasibility studies to shipowners and operators, in another milestone on its journey to research, develop and bring to market maritime CCS technologies. The studies have already been conducted on a range of vessel types including ro-ro and ro-pax vessels, a drill ship, a container vessel and a gas carrier.
The process takes four to six months of study and design work. Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment’s experts are involved in ship design at an early stage to conduct engineering work to understand how CCS can be smoothly integrated once the technology is launched to market.
Wärtsilä is conducting the feasibility studies across both newbuild and existing vessels. Retrofit CCS installations will be significantly smoothed by the presence of a scrubber onboard. Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment is already offering CCS-Ready scrubbers to the market, which are integrated onboard in a way that enables a CCS system to be added easily in the future once the technology is commercialised.
Once completed, the CCS feasibility study work enables Wärtsilä to provide customers with a fully rounded commercial offer that can be shared with shipyards to get an exact quote for installation. During the feasibility studies, Wärtsilä’s experts closely examine the existing naval architecture of the ship and work to understand how the power, space and exhaust demands of CCS can be accommodated onboard. Owners will receive a qualified analysis of the costs of CCS integration, and a clear list of considerations on how a potential retrofit would be conducted in the least intrusive way.
Conducting the studies today enables Wärtsilä to bring forward the early stages of CCS integration and, in doing so, lower the barrier to entry once the technology is commercialised in the near future. The studies also serve to educate customers on the upsides and particular considerations associated with installing CCS onboard their vessels. Finally, as the studies will run in parallel with the implementation of new environmental regulations for shipping, owners who conduct them today will be ‘ahead of the curve’ versus their peers.
Sigurd Jenssen, Director, Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment, said: “Launching these feasibility studies and being able to offer them to market is the exciting latest step in our process of bringing carbon capture and storage to market in shipping. It builds on the market-leading work we are conducting in our test hall in Moss, where our technology is already demonstrating our targeted 70% capture rate, and enables us to directly engage with customers to smooth the CCS adoption process in the near future.”
Jenssen continued: “By conducting these studies today, we are already building a considerable track record and understanding of how this technology will work across multiple vessel types. It builds on the considerable uptake we have already seen for our CCS-Ready scrubbers, which show that the industry is not only exploring CCS as a speculative technology, but is actively investing in its foundations as a decarbonisation solution. We look forward to conducting more of these studies in the coming months as we work to bring our CCS system to market.”
When a customer opts for a Wärtsilä CCS-Ready scrubber, the company takes measures during the scrubber installation process to ensure adequate space for the future installation of CCS system. CCS-Ready scrubbers are also designed to enable smooth integration with a Particulate Matter filter.
Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment is the market-leading marine exhaust gas cleaning system manufacturer, with a range of lifecycle solutions. Wärtsilä offers integrated compliant solutions for all types of ships, and in open loop, closed loop or hybrid configurations. Wärtsilä’s scrubbers are built with a modular approach to future technology development, creating a platform for the abatement of other emissions from shipping beyond sulphur.
Denmark Allocates $3.9B to Carbon Capture/Storage as it Accelerates Timing
With Avedore as a backdrop, Denmark outlined a comprehensive approach to carbon capture and storage advancing the deadline to 2029 (Orsted file photo)
Denmark announced a comprehensive plan for carbon capture and storage that includes significant government support as the country also accelerates its timeline while saying that CO2 capture and storage is one of several critical tools to achieve climate goals in Denmark, Europe, and the rest of the world. The announcement of the new plan comes just a week after Denmark postponed its second tender for offshore CO2 storage saying the government needed to finalize a comprehensive plan that resolved government participation in the industry.
“We are moving the requirement for full capture from 2030 to 2029 so that we get more CO2 from the air and into the underground faster,” said says Climate, Energy and Supply Minister Lars Aagaard during a briefing about the new plan at Avedøreværket, a power station just south of Copenhagen. “The plan must also ensure a clearer framework for the burgeoning industry and in this way bring the Danish CCS industry up in scale and down in price. It may well be that it's geeky, but it's in the geekery that things happen.”
The plan was presented as a comprehensive approach to with the government stressing that by pooling resources and creating clear framework conditions for CO2 capture and storage it was providing clarity to Danish industry. The energy minister was joined by Business Minister Morten Bødskov and Transport Minister Thomas Danielsen in presenting the new plan.
Instead of smaller tenders, the government plans to launch two large, comprehensive tenders, one in 2024 and a second in 2025. They plan to invest approximately $3.9 billion, with approximately $1.5 billion for the 2024 tender and a further nearly $2.4 billion in 2025 allocated over a 15-year period to support the programs. The goal for 2024 is to set up plans for 0.9 million tons of carbon capture and storage and a further 1.4 million tons in the 2025 tender. Going forward the government will continue to hold 20 percent state ownership, which is the model that was used for the first three licenses and the key point that the ministry said needed to be resolved before the next offshore tender.
While saying as a country Denmark must capture at least 3.2 million tons of CO2 annually by 2030, the new plan moves forward by one year the requirement for the programs to 2029. They said the possibility is also provided to start the large-scale capture and storage efforts by 2028.
The plan also ensures clear framework conditions for the industry regarding ownership and regulation for the transport of CO2 via pipes. Among other things, the government said it will expand the existing rules for the transport of CO2 to include all forms of CO2 transport, which is particularly important for the transport of CO2 for use in PtX facilities and for CO2 that must be shipped via ports for offshore storage.
The goal in addition to providing greater clarity was to increase the size and scope so that more companies can bid and participate in the efforts.
Denmark earlier this year awarded the first exploration licenses for offshore carbon storage after providing a provisional license for the testing and demonstration of the world’s first offshore storage operation. In addition, they awarded the first licenses for industrial plants to establish capture initiatives first centered on one of Ørsted’s plants but designed to also create the infrastructure for other industrial emitters to participate.
ADM Fagan: U.S. Coast Guard Must Learn From its Workplace Culture Problems
Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan (Congress.gov file image)
After revelations of an unreleased investigation into a pattern of sexual harassment and assault at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan has ordered a service-wide review of command climate and culture. In an open letter on Monday, Fagan addressed the early findings, and she compared the service's ability to learn from operational challenges with its ability to learn from internal, cultural problems.
"It is clear to me that we are not fully applying our core values, principles of operation, or ethos to our own workplaces. In some places in our Coast Guard, there is an unacceptable disconnect between the workplace experience we talk about, and the experience our people are actually having," Fagan said.
The commandant cited reports of "sexual assault, harassment, hazing, bullying, retaliation, discrimination, and other harmful workplace behaviors," at commands across the service. She warned that these incidents not only harm victims, they also tend to erode trust in unit leadership - reducing readiness and the ability to execute on the Coast Guard's core mission set.
In her appeal, Fagan sought to break down the distinction between externally-facing operational challenges and internal workplace problems. Both require an effective response to ensure readiness. "Our operational success depends on our people, and our people are sustained by a positive workplace environment," she said.
Though it went unsaid, the Coast Guard (like all of the armed services) is having a hard time recruiting and retaining enough personnel to meet end strength goals. Any public perception of a negative work environment could hinder efforts to close its workforce fit-and-fill gap.
To resolve workplace culture deficiencies, Fagan called for more transparency and more willingness to call out problems. The service has developed systems and practices that allow it to learn from operational mishaps like collisions or sinkings, but it has no equivalent for sexual harassment, bullying or toxic leadership, she said.
"We do not discuss incidents and do not encourage leaders throughout the Coast Guard to learn from them. Our people do not feel as confident speaking up about workplace behaviors as they do operational risks," Fagan said. "We must give our workplace climate the same transparency and attention as we do our operational missions."
RIP
America's First Licensed Female Tug Captain Passes Away at 82
Elsbeth Smith aboard the tug Elsbeth I, circa 1972 (Tradewinds Towing)
Elsbeth Smith, America’s first licensed female tug captain, has passed away at the age of 82. She passed peacefully, surrounded by her five children, on August 15, 2023. The cause of death was cancer.
Elsbeth Smith was born in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1941. She was co-owner of Smith Maritime from 1968 to 2000. For nearly three decades, she sailed on the tugs Elsbeth I and Elsbeth II, towing project cargos and conducting salvage missions. She achieved her captain's license in 1973, making her the first licensed female tugboat captain in American maritime history.
Her journeys included countless voyages through the Caribbean and South America aboard the Elsbeth I. In 1989, she made her initial trans-Atlantic crossing, followed by a year-long circumnavigation of the globe aboard the Elsbeth II in 1991. This feat earned her the distinction of being the first American woman to complete a world circumnavigation on a tugboat.
During her time at sea, Elsbeth established a routine of beginning her day with the sunrise navigation watch, followed by dedicated hours of homeschooling for her children. Underway, Elsbeth effectively co-managed the tug's day-to-day operations. When in port, she was responsible for sourcing parts and managing ship’s stores. On shore, Elsbeth also invested a significant amount of her time overseeing the management and operations of Smith Maritime.
Elsbeth Smith managing the home office at Smith Maritime, 1990 (Tradewinds Towing)
Elsbeth is remembered for her talent playing the piano, and was known to have upright pianos aboard each tug, which amazed customs officials and visitors alike. She was an avid reader and documentarian, maintaining detailed records of each voyage.
Upon retirement, she lived in Amelia Island, Florida, then on the island of Dominica, the birthplace of her fourth child, Dominique Smith. Amidst the jungles she adored, she embraced her appreciation of nature and cultivated the garden she never had. Her last decade led her to New Orleans and, ultimately, to her final home in St. Augustine, Florida.
Elsbeth is survived by her five children: Rachel Smith, Rhea Smith, Rebekah Jordan, Dominique Smith, and Hannah Baisley. She adored her 11 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, and was affectionately known as "Tugboat Grandma."
Her legacy continues through her co-founding of Tradewinds Towing in 2005. Elsbeth used her lifelong earnings to acquire the Miss Lis, the inaugural tug of the fleet. Tradewinds Towing now oversees a fleet of seven tugs.
Drought in Texas Reveals History of America's WWI Shipbuilding Surge
An Emergency Fleet Corporation wooden-hulled freighter (US National Archives)
Texas' prolonged drought has revealed a long-lost relic of the early 20th century on the Neches River. Local resident Bill Milner spotted the wreckage of a ship in the shoals while on a Jet-Ski outing near the town of Evadale, and he reported the find to a local museum. The vessel was large, and made of wood, suggesting a much earlier era. His first thought was that it was a wooden barge or riverboat - but it turned out to be something much more unusual.
According to the Texas Historical Commission, the wreck is one of many on the Neches that came from a World War I shipbuilding program run by the Emergency Fleet Corporation. When the United States joined the war in 1917, it was badly short of merchant tonnage to carry troops and equipment across the Atlantic. British shipping provided much of the transport capacity for U.S. forces until the end of the war, but loss rates were extreme. Germany's U-boats took a severe toll on shipping in the North Atlantic, and at one point British shipping could expect to lose one out of four vessels on any given round trip voyage.
The Emergency Fleet Corporation attempted to catch up with innovative strategies - including wooden shipbuilding. In that era, a wooden-hulled ship was not unusual, and it offered some advantages. With steel in short supply for the war effort, some of the EFC's leaders believed that wood would be an effective alternative for ships that only had to make a one-way voyage across the Atlantic to justify their cost. "The Germans were sinking vessels so fast that it became apparent we must adopt extraordinary methods," explained former Shipping Board chairman Edward N. Hurley after the war.
The program called for the construction of over 1,000 of these wooden ships with a total capacity of three million deadweight tonnes. The skills and materials to produce wooden ships at scale were available on the Gulf Coast, and many were built along the Neches.
These ships were never intended to be commercially useful in peacetime, and they were designed solely to offset wartime losses. About 320 were completed at the war's end, and though more than 260 had successfully carried cargo overseas, they were immediately obsolete. These hulks were widely criticized as a visible example of government waste. Hundreds were laid up and sold for scrap; in one prominent example, a recycler burned 30 of them at a time on the Potomac to salvage the metal components.
Over one dozen hulls were in various stages of construction at yards near Beaumont when the war ended, and they were left unfinished. In the 1920s, they were pushed off into the Neches and Sabine Rivers, where they slowly deteriorated over the span of a century.
The program's creators defended the wooden fleet as a legitimate wartime expense. "Although the wood ships never could compete with fast steel cargo carriers in the trans-Atlantic trade, they made more than enough voyages to convince us that our policy in building them was not mistaken," Hurley wrote in his history of the war effort.
Pentagon Wants "Thousands" of Fighting Drones Built in Just Two Years
A Ukrainian suicide drone boat evades Russian defensive fire as it attempts to approach a warship (Russian Navy)
The Pentagon is planning a major shift in order to counter China's massive investments in military hardware. As China goes big, the Pentagon wants to go small: Its newly-launched Replicator initiative envisions "multiple thousands" of smaller autonomous systems on land, in the air, on the surface and below the sea, all built cheaply enough to be lost in combat, all delivered by 2025.
On Monday, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks outlined the challenge at a defense contractors' conference in Washington, D.C. China's advantage, she noted, is "mass - more ships, more missiles, more people." China has the world's largest standing army and the largest navy by vessel count, and it is modernizing its fleet at a rapid clip. It can hit naval targets from thousands of miles away using anti-ship ballistic missiles, which the United States does not possess.
The U.S. may not be able to make similar claims, but it does have access to the world's most advanced portfolio of R&D projects in unmanned and autonomous warfighting. The challenge, Hicks said, is getting these projects to scale up, and scale fast. She wants to see "thousands" of autonomous drone platforms in the hands of warfighters in just 18-24 months.
"Replicator will galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of US military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap, and many,” said Hicks. “So now is the time to take all-domain, attritable autonomy to the next level: to produce and deliver capabilities to warfighters at the volume and velocity required to deter aggression, to win if we’re forced to fight.”
The focus of the initiative will be to grow "a new state of the art" in less-expensive autonomous systems, creating "mass of our own" to counter China's military might, she said.
Hicks' vision reflects lessons learned from the front lines in Ukraine, where low-cost drones often determine the outcome of combat engagements. Drones spot targets for artillery, drop grenades on enemy positions, and directly target armored vehicles in high-speed suicide runs - all without endangering the drone operator. Properly deployed, an $800 drone with an antitank munition can destroy a million-dollar armored vehicle, and both sides have used these devices to inflict real costs on the battlefield.
On the water, Ukraine has developed a series of unmanned suicide boats with long range and high hitting power. These devices have yet to claim a sinking, but they have damaged at least two warships of the Black Sea Fleet, and have forced the Russian Navy to operate with greater caution. They are also radically less expensive than coastal defense missiles or manned naval vessels, and Ukraine claims to be building them in serial production.
Hicks noted that Russia's mass has not translated into an automatic win on the technological battlefield in Ukraine, and suggested that China should take heed of that lesson.
"We must ensure the PRC leadership wakes up every day, considers the risks of aggression and concludes, 'today is not the day' — and not just today, but every day, between now and 2027, 2035, 2049 and beyond," Hicks said.
The stakes couldn't be higher, according to the top U.S. officer in the Indo-Pacific.
"We ought to look at the Chinese to understand truly where they are and what they're doing: the largest military buildup since World War II, both in conventional forces and in strategic nuclear [forces]," said Adm. John C. Aquilino, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, speaking on the sidelines of the same conference. "They have focused very clearly on delivering a force capable to take on the United States."
The Dreadnought After Next
HMS Dreadnought revolutionized surface warfare (U.S. Navy image circa 1906-7)
This article appears courtesy of CIMSEC and The Royal Navy. It was the first place, Gold Prize-winning essay of the First Sea Lord’s Essay Competition and may be found in its original form here.
[By Chris O’Connor]
In 1906, the battleship HMS Dreadnought was commissioned. An engineering marvel at the time, it completely changed the playing field of naval warfare and made previous classes of battleships and armoured cruisers obsolete overnight. Its advantage was not new technology but using technologies in a new combination that had never been done before. It created such an epochal shift in warship design that the battleships built preceding it were retroactively described as ‘preDreadnoughts.’1 In the next couple of years, a new HMS Dreadnought will go to sea. It will contain technologies that were the realm of science fiction when the battleship Dreadnought was commissioned – leveraging the atom for electrical power and weapons, operating with thinking machines, and using sound and radio waves to detect targets unseen by the eye.
The change of technologies between Sir Jackie Fisher’s Dreadnought of 1906 and its namesake two generations later (with the nuclear-powered attack submarine of the same name in between) did not make warships obsolete, rather, it completely changed the perception of what a warship was. Submarines were not considered ‘warships’ by many in the Royal Navy at the turn of the 20th century – when Sir Jackie experimented with them as the Commander-in-Chief of Portsmouth. Dismissed as ‘Fisher’s Toys,’ they were considered ‘unmanly, unethical, and ‘un-English.’2 If this sounds familiar, it is because this same kind of thinking, a fear of the new technology being so different that it is not ‘right,’ is used today to describe uncrewed platforms and other autonomous systems instead of ships operated by stalwart human sailors. The battleships of today are museums and not the capital ships of nations because they were overcome by new technologies and operational concepts. Warships still exist, but they are markedly different.
This historical perspective of maritime warfare innovation calls for a rephrasing of ‘will warships be obsolete?’ Instead, we should ask ourselves ‘What will make current warships obsolete?’ That way, we can examine the technologies that are just coming to the fore and begin thinking now about how warships will evolve, and yes, their form and function will not look like anything before.
Modern missiles and Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) alone will not bring about this change. New anti-ship missiles with longer ranges, smarter seeker heads, and hypersonic speeds will certainly force operational changes and necessitate new countermeasures for warships on the surface (and eventually below the surface). DEW will be part of every physical domain of warfare, as laser and microwave weapons will be employed from everything from satellites to Marines on the ground. These weapons will lead to an evolution in warship design to add magazines and launchers for the new missiles and increased power generation for the DEW. These ideas are all rolled into the ‘Dreadnought 2050’ concept that was publicised in 2015,3 but in the intervening years between then and now, a new forcing function has emerged that will cause a drastic rethink about the concept of a ‘warship.’
The new paradigm in naval warfare will be triggered by the simple fact that a warship of any size will no longer be able to hide on the surface of the oceans. Persistent multispectral sensing from space with military and commercial satellites already complicate efforts to create uncertainty for potential adversaries. Imagery taken daily of bases and harbours can discern with ever greater clarity the readiness and deployment schedules of navies. This pales in comparison to the ramifications of when these constellations of satellites are aided by deep learning algorithms that will be able to provide daily positions of warships at sea. In just the past year, Russian military equipment aiding the Kremlin in its invasion of Ukraine and a Chinese spy balloon were both tracked by these revolutionary means – satellites from the commercial company Planet feeding their image sets to generative artificial intelligence.4
When surface warships can be tracked this way, they will be constantly targeted and will most likely lose the element of surprise. Submarines are safe from this technology, for now. Even if a ship was able to develop some sort of countermeasure to hide itself and its various signatures (to include its wake), modern ships still rely on fuel for their engines, parts for their systems, and food for their crew. A carrier strike group (CSG) or surface action group (SAG) will give away its location simply through the replenishment ships they require to operate. To win the fight in this sensing environment, the warship will not be over a hundred metres long with scores of people onboard, it will have to be altogether different.
A warship is nothing more than a cluster of capabilities working in concert to fight. Sensors, weapons, propulsion, command and control, communications, and decision-making processes all linked together with a common set of missions and its embedded tasks. Modern warships have all of most of these functions physically located in one hull, but they do not have to be. Instead of a large ship that has offloaded weapons and sensors (like an aircraft carrier), a warship of many small optionally crewed systems would replace that big ship altogether. If hit with a hypersonic missile or fried with a microwave pulse, the ship would be able to reconstitute with varied components.
The crew and command structure would look very different, too:
“A small crew would embark a ship, or series of ships, serving in a variety of modalities as expert controllers, emergency maintainers, and expeditionary operators…moving from independent expeditionary command with a manned crew, to embarking on a mothership or series of motherships supporting unmanned operations.”5
These smaller distributed ships will build up to units that will have humans on the loop but will have to rely on autonomy to do a lot of the fighting. In doing so, a navy will be built of units that are closer to an aviation squadron with one commander, whose span of control is over many smaller assets. These together will be the ‘warship’ that will adapt every time they are employed, as the systems learn from past operations and enemy activity and will swap out with others of different payloads. The evolving capability would be akin to changing the battleship HMS Dreadnought’s turrets every underway – that is how integral these smaller vessels will be to the coherent whole of the unit. There are two benefits to this model; one, the ‘distributed force will pose a vast array of interlocking firepower, making it less clear to the adversary which elements… pose the most pressing threat,’ and two, ‘impos[ing] more kill chains for the adversary to manage.’6 This way of fighting at sea will be the only way to manage when larger warships will be rendered obsolete by their signatures.
When Sir Jackie Fisher recognised the disruptive potential of submarines he did not care if they were cowardly or underhanded, he only cared that they worked.7 He had the clarity of vision to examine warfare from the undersea while working on a super battleship that would be revolutionary in its own right. He was quoted as saying “I don’t think it is even faintly realised that the immense impending revolution with which submarines will effect as offensive weapons of war.” The crewmembers of the two submarines named Dreadnought realised this revolution. How soon will we realise the revolution of autonomous systems that will lead to a warship of the future – the Dreadnought after next?
Cdr. Chris O’Connor is a U.S. Naval Officer at NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe and Vice President of CIMSEC.
These views are presented in a personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the official views of any government or department.
References
1. Jesse Beckett, ‘The Enormous Early 20th Century Pre-Dreadnought & Dreadnought Battleships’, War History Online, 25/03/2021, https://bit.ly/3pRpS6K.
2. Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (New York: Random House Publishing Group, 1991).
3. Franz-Stefan Gady, ‘Dreadnought 2050: Is this the Battleship of the Future?’, The Diplomat, 07/09/2015, https://bit.ly/45iFgJL.
4. Patrick Tucker, ‘A “ChatGPT” For Satellite Photos Already Exists’, Defense One, 17/04/2023, https://bit.ly/3IqtGTa.
5. Kyle Cragge, ‘Every Ship a SAG and the LUSV Imperative,’ CIMSEC, 02/03/2023, https://bit.ly/3Mpb32X.
6. Dmitry Filipoff, ‘Fighting DMO, Pt. 1: Defining Distributed Maritime Operations and the Future of Naval Warfare’, CIMSEC, 20/02/2023, https://bit.ly/42Vj0Ea.
7. Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (New York: Random House Publishing Group, 1991).
Featured Image: ATLANTIC OCEAN (Sept. 23, 2019) Royal navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) transits the Atlantic Ocean, Sept. 23. (Photo courtesy of HNLMS De Ruyter)
