Speaking at the Surface Navy Association (SNA) annual symposium in Arlington, Virginia, SecNav Carlos Del Toro said that, since announcing (at the SNA event in 2023) the plan to develop and test the capability to re-arm surface ships at sea, the Transportable Re-Arming Mechanism (TRAM) system has continued development, with funding secured to conduct testing in 2024. The Naval Sea Systems Command’s (NAVSEA’s) Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) team at Port Hueneme, California is finalising preparations for both shore-based and at-sea testing and demonstrations, said SecNav. “We remain on track for the all-important at-sea demonstration I have directed to take place no later than this coming summer,” he added.
The USN has already tested the ship-to-ship missile transfer concept in port, onboard the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Spruance in San Diego in October 2022.
However, the operational requirement for the capability is accelerating. For example, since Yemen-based Ansar Allah (Houthi) rebels began, in November 2023, launching ballistic and cruise missiles, and uncrewed air and surface systems against commercial and naval ships sailing in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, five USN Arleigh Burke-class destroyers have fired missiles and other ordnance to shoot down these inbound threats. These destroyers were US Ships Carney, Gravely, Thomas Hudner, Laboon, and Mason, SecNav noted.
With the Houthi attacks continuing, and given the broader operational context of returning contest and conflict at sea, SecNav said “The near-term deterrent effect of fielding TRAM in the Fleet cannot be overstated.”
“This capability will herald nothing short of a revolution in naval surface warfare logistics,” SecNav continued. The at-sea re-arming option provided by TRAM is “a game changing [capability] that will be operational within two to three years, and will make our surface navy more formidable, serving as a powerful maritime deterrent”, he said.
The importance of the capability was demonstrated by the fact that new USN Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Lisa Franchetti visited the TRAM team at Port Hueneme in December 2023, during her first few weeks in post. “[CNO] came back impressed by both the system and the progress the team has made,” said SecNav.
TRAM is being designed to enable the at-sea loading of missile canisters into surface ship vertical launching system (VLS) cells in up to Sea State 5. It is designed to do so using existing USN underway replenishment ships.
As well as enabling USN ships to add firepower capacity at sea without having to transit over distance to reach port, TRAM provides an option to deliver firepower should access to ports be denied in crisis or conflict, for example.
A second-order effect of the development of the TRAM capability is missile capacity. “As TRAM delivers an at-sea missile re-load capability for the Fleet, we look forward to working with industry to improve our missile supply through efforts like the Naval Modular Missile [NMM] programme,” said SecNav. This programme is focused on component commonality across the USN’s missile family, to increase efficiency and resilience in manufacturing, he added.
The development of programmes like TRAM and NMM are the kinds of innovations industry needs to be thinking about, SecNav challenged. “As we stand at the crossroads of strategic competition, innovation is no longer a luxury: it’s a necessity. Innovation is key to unlocking our potential and maintaining our competitive edge,” he said, adding that industry needs to provide solutions “that can fix problems we face not 10 years from now, [but] that we face today.”
“This issue about re-arming our destroyers in the Red Sea today is far more relevant, I assure you, than it was a year ago when we first started thinking about this,” SecNav concluded.
