Automated Vessel Selection and Combat Load Planning

By MAJ William Kirschenman, Dr. Brandon McConnell, and Dr. Russell King

Article published on: September 1, 2024 in the Fall 2024 edition of Army Sustainment

Read Time: < 8 mins

In preparation for the invasion of Normandy, Soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division load artillery equipment aboard Task Force 122 Landing Ship, Tanks, at Brixham, England, on June 1, 1944. (Photo by U.S. Army Technician 5th Grade Bill Nehez)

In large-scale combat operations (LSCO), the U.S. must move and maneuver forces through intra-theater and inter-theater modes of transportation. This complex challenge requires efficient integration of routing, scheduling, sequencing, and loading of personnel, equipment, and supplies. Threat forces exacerbate these demanding requirements through efforts to hinder the flow of friendly forces. Contested landing zones, whether they be ports or beaches, are the starting point for a landing force’s ground combat operations. It is imperative that the landing force expeditiously off-loads in the prescribed order of priority to support the planned scheme of maneuver. Embarkation planners must closely address certain factors when considering off-loading a landing force in a contested environment.

The U.S. military has not conducted LSCO against a near-peer threat since the Korean War and World War II. Since then, most military conflicts have used well-protected debarkation ports or landing zones, such as Saigon and Da Nang during the Vietnam War or various ports in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain during the Gulf War. What happens when the U.S. military must instead flow forces from intermediate staging bases (ISBs) or other protected ports for the final leg of movement through a contested port or landing zone for ground combat operations?

Joint Publication 3-02,Amphibious Operations, describes combat loading as “a loading method that gives primary consideration to the facility with which troops, equipment, and supplies can be unloaded ready for combat,”emphasizing the necessity of detailed planning that focuses on the off-loading phase. Efficient combat loading is paramount to allow the landing force the best opportunity to conduct its anticipated tactical operation upon debarkation. While administrative loading may be more appropriate when debarking at ISBs or well-protected ports and landing zones, contested ports or landing zones require combat loading. The U.S. will not consistently have the luxury of uncontested debarkations when it faces near-peer threats in the future.

The Integrated Computerized Deployment System (ICODES) is “the single DoD system to complete load plans for sealift, airlift and rail” per the Defense Transportation Regulation. Digital agents provide intelligent assistance by checking and notifying the planner of violations of various constraints based on information such as cargo placement, a vessel’s trim and stability impact, and accessibility. Each vessel’s embarkation planner can easily import cargo sets and manually adjust the stow plans to meet constraints.

The ICODES Single Load Planner is a remarkable capability that allows a vessel’s embarkation planner to create a viable loading plan with the corresponding reporting and networking capabilities for accountability throughout the embarkation process. Even with the levels of assistance and automation this system provides, automatically generated loading plans still require manual adjustments to meet constraints, or planners must stow equipment and generate loading plans from scratch.

Load plans are made per individual vessel, even though synchronization across a large landing force and multiple vessels may be required. These limitations create issues with configuring load plans that synchronize the priorities and restrictions required of a large landing force of diverse subordinate elements. This force may need to be carefully split across various vessels to balance concepts such as maintaining element unity or spreading equipment across vessels for risk mitigation.

Problem

What if we could automate the entire vessel-loading process without requiring manual cargo positioning adjustments to provide feasible loading plans that satisfy all constraints? Vessel, equipment, and loading constraints are known, and the landing-force staff can provide orders of priority for off-loading equipment.

What if we have a large landing force and must conduct combat spread loading across a set of candidate vessels? What subset of candidate vessels should we use? What is the corresponding assignment of landing-force elements and equipment for these vessels? And what are the specific loading configurations that maintain the landing-force commander’s order of priority?

Soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division and supporting units off-load vehicles and equipment onto Omaha Beach at Normandy, France, at low tide during the first days of Operation Overlord in June 1944. (Photo by USCG MoMMc3 Arthur DeLorenzo)

What if there are separate orders of priority for landing-force elements and the equipment within those elements, and we want to load all of an element’s equipment closely together or spread it across multiple vessels to balance the placement of a critical security asset at the landing zone?

The Army sustainment community, supported by academia, should lead an effort to design a methodology that will use landing-force commanders’ priorities for subordinate elements and equipment. We need a methodology that will automate combat loading for a large landing force into available vessels in a way that keeps element integrity while ensuring the force can off-load quickly into respective combat formations and continue to follow-on tactical objectives.

How can a set of available vessels be selected and combat-loaded to maximize a landing force’s flexibility to meet changes in its tactical plan? A group of subordinate elements constitute a large combat force, and these groups must fight cohesively, requiring them to be loaded close together to off-load efficiently into a combat formation. The group also has equipment-level loading priorities to ensure it can organize into a desired sequence or order of movement for the tactical situation upon off-loading. Groups may also have different priority levels, introducing the need to prioritize certain equipment groups ahead of others. These equipment groups may need to be loaded onto a single vessel or across multiple vessels while considering the various levels of prioritization. The ability to identify and combat load vessels while adhering to these various levels of prioritization allows a landing force commander to maximize the combat effectiveness of their forces upon off-loading in a contested environment.

Vision

We suggest creating a model that uses advanced algorithms and intelligent automation to assist landing-force and embarkation planners while rapidly providing vessel selection and combat-loading configurations that will maximize flexibility to meet changes in the tactical plan upon off-loading in a contested environment. The model will select an appropriate subset of available vessels, given the landing force’s anticipated tactical operation and equipment that must be loaded, while accounting for commander-driven prioritization requirements. The model will then provide plans that optimize vessel selection, sequencing, and combat-loading configurations by considering landing-force element-level priorities, equipment-level priorities within those elements, and group unity while enabling efficient off-loading into a desired order of movement.

Conclusion

During the war on terrorism, the U.S. military conducted operations as the primary airpower. We have since shifted to preparation for future conflict with a near-peer threat in a highly and constantly contested environment. In LSCO, the U.S. military cannot rely on continuous air superiority. It must rely on pulsed operations with windows of superiority and efficiency with off-loading combat forces at contested ports and landing zones. Staging forces near a contested port will not be an option. Army sustainers will have a clear role in working with landing-force commanders to create a deliberate combat-loading plan to quickly off-load, assemble into an order of movement that supports the scheme of maneuver, and continue to the next objective.

This prioritized loading model aims to enhance embarkation and logistics planner capabilities and provide the landing-force commander with a detailed loading plan that reduces risk to mission upon off-loading. Instead of spending hours planning complex loading configurations of large equipment sets across various vessels while maintaining prioritization requirements, planners will have a model that quickly generates multiple courses of action that provide excellent loading solutions that meet all constraints and requirements to promptly evaluate, refine, and utilize. These courses of action give landing-force commanders a viable combat loading plan that maximizes their ability to off-load quickly into combat formations while preserving combat power and rapidly orienting the force to follow-on objectives.