The Netherlands Queen Heads to Sea
Battling the Tyranny of Numbers
The Dutch are building modularized auxiliary cruisers to be part of a larger networked strike fleet. This is something I proposed back in 2007.
Auxiliary cruisers will be part of the Dutch navy:
The Netherlands is reviving and rebuilding its naval forces. This includes some novel innovations, like arming several commercial ships with weapons stored and operated from shipping containers. These containers would not look out of place on the deck of a freighter, and the few naval personnel needed to operate the weapons could wear civilian clothes when on deck.
The weapons in the containers include drones for surveillance as well as some drones for attacking hostile warships. In addition there might be one or two anti-ship missiles. These missiles are relatively small and can be launched vertically. ...
The Dutch are concentrating on some upgraded and improved warship designs that plan to use missile armed cargo ships as storage vessels for missiles and a launching site for missile attacks planned by the crew of a nearby warship, or some naval officer back in Holland.
I cited the Dutch support ship Absalon that used shipping container systems in this 2007 article proposal for networked modularized auxiliary cruisers—as the Dutch plan now—for the U.S. Navy:
Our Navy defends our nation within the incompatible and unforgiving boundaries formed by the tyrannies of distance and numbers. We struggle to build enough ships both capable of deploying globally and powerful enough for fighting first-rate opponents. Operating within a network-centric Navy, auxiliary cruisers could once again play a valuable role in projecting naval power. Using modular systems installed on civilian hulls, auxiliary cruisers could handle many peacetime roles; free scarce warships for more demanding environments; add combat power within a networked force; and promote the global maritime partnership.
Our Navy is surely superior to any conceivable combination of potential foes, alarmism notwithstanding. Yet as a global power, our sea power cannot be narrowly defined by our superb warships able to win conventional sea-control campaigns. We have many objectives at sea. Modularized Auxiliary Cruisers could provide the numbers we need to achieve our maritime objectives. The tyranny of numbers matters to the United States Navy.
You might consider it the logical next step after dethroning the queen of platform-centric warfare, the aircraft carrier.
I later adapted that essay into this published article for an Army power projection platform designed to operate around Africa. That article won third prize in the Military Review annual writing contest. But the suggestion for using naval systems in shipping containers initially made more sense to me as an evolution of the traditional practice of making auxiliary cruisers from merchant ships in emergencies.
I must say that 17 years later, I am hearing the alarm going off about our Navy. Although I remain unsure of the true state of the Chinese navy despite its new car smell and impressive numbers.
Maybe somebody paid attention.
NOTE: I made the image with Bing.