The Joint Venture Project

Essay by finskaUniversity, Bachelor's June 2008

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The QDR process was born amid congressional frustrations about the slow pace of Pentagon reform and policy changes following the end of the Cold War. In September 1996 President Bill Clinton signed the FY1997 Defense Authorization Act which requires every new Administration to conduct "a comprehensive examination of the defense strategy, force structure, force modernization plans, infrastructure, budget plan, and other elements of the defense program and policies...."Thinking "outside the box" was strongly encouraged, and one of the results has been the development of the Joint Venture High Speed Vessel (HSV) project. The Joint Venture is an aluminum-hulled catamaran. The project is in its infant stages having only started in October. The goal is to see how Commercial Off-the-Shelf Technology can satisfy the military's transportation requirements.

The technological abilities being assessed are speed, payload fraction, range, and adaptability for multiple uses. The goal of this project is to gauge the Joint Venture can move 450 tons of cargo, such as light armored vehicles and trucks, and up to 325 Marines, over a distance of 1,100 nautical miles at speeds averaging 35 knots in a sea state of 3 (waves up from 3.5

to 5 feet, and wind speeds from 13.7 to 16.4 knots).

IntroductionWhen Donald Rumsfeld began his second tour as Defense Secretary in January of 2001, he let it be known that he was there to transform the military into a more cost effective, faster, lighter force. No longer was the threat of the Soviet Union on the horizon, in the post cold war world, the new threats would be terrorists, and small rouge nations. On September 11th of that year, the need to transform our military became even more apparent. The Joint Venture project is a revolution in the future of amphibious transportation.

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