North Point's modernized Alaska class cruisers

According to the very basic ORBAT I've developed for the North Point Sea Command, this ship would sail with an F-100, two MEKO 200s, and a Qahir al-Amwaj corvette - the actual group would probably be larger in retrospect.

A minor issue, but I doubt the Challenger is going to have the performance to keep up with the rest of the Action Group.

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Yeah, I agree... not really sure why I added the corvettes into the various non-patrol groups... I'll add one of the F-100 derivatives into Surface Action Group 1 and move the corvette to one of the patrol squadrons.

You'd probably want at least two F-100s to protect a significant surface asset like that.

http://statesmanship.co.uk/wiki/North_P ... 28SAG_1.29

Yep... I imagine it would probably operate along with DESRON 11 in addition to its core group of ships. But I am not really knowledgeable on how navies are organized.

Your navy organisation is not bad. Generally a Navy is organised in Commands aacording to type (cruisers,Destrroyers,Frigates etc) which include also auxiliary ships, such as AOR, tugs, repair ships etc. A Submarine Command for instance can be include submarine tenders and submarine rescue ships.

Each Command itshelf consists of groups and squadrons, similar with Air Force.

@Odysseus1980
Not necessarily exactly like that (regarding naval administrative organization) - it depends on both geographical conditions, type of navy (brown/green/blue water) and therefore perceived needs etc.
Most often there are one of two ways used:
-"regional forces" (naval districts or whatever you call them) plus "main fleet" (that's indeed divided into "commands" - submarines, escorts, strike craft, minesweepers etc. as needed)
-geographical commands (like the US fleets), that could be then divided into smaller groupings.
Btw. using names like "command", "group", "squadron" and the like depend on the fleet. Soviet fleet (and some other navies) used such names like "division" (but in sense of "army division"), "brigade" etc.

So if you want to know how the US does it...

The Navy does group ships by type but not in the way you might think. It makes sense to combine a group of DDGs together for certain purposes as they are generally going to have the same equipment, maintenance and training requirements. In the US this is called a DESRON and is commanded by an O6 commodore. The DESRONs primary task is to maintain and train the ships under its charge. However, these DESRON do not work together operationally, at least no more than they do with any other ships colocated in its base. At any one time a DESRON of five destroyers might have one or two units deployed with the rest at various stages of their training and maintenance cycles which makes sense as a single staff can't be evaluating/qualifying all their ships at the pique of the training cycle at once. The only time a DESRON might sort of be in an operational role as the commodore is if he happens to be the senior officer afloat while onboard for whetever reason, but this is really a technicality because while the DESRON is charged with ensuring their ships are trained the Strike Group is the one actually scheduling underway training and is deeply interested in all other aspects of the ship as they are the ones that are going to take it into harms way.

When a Strike Group (or Amphibious Assault Group, or whatever) is formed it is filled out with the various ships among the DESRONs that are at the top of their training cycle. It is the job of the various Type Commanders (SURFLANT/SURFPAC for surface ships, AIRLANT/AIRPAC or SUBLANT/SUBPAC for those units) to coordinate the training and maintenance of all the ships amongst the DESRONs to make sure enough are available for this purpose. The Type commands basically divide the world betweek Atlantic and Pacific to ensure all units to include those based overseas are covered and managed. Working out when units are to be available is a big deal, and since ships are generally designated to a Strike Group over a year before they deploy and the SG commander is usually a one star this can cause some interesting tension between them and DESRON as they have similar responsibilities in that respect but one is senior.

Though the DESRON itself is not an operational unit it does deploy, just not with its ships. Each DESRON trains up an underway staff headed by the commodore that will act as the surface warfare componet commander for a Strike Group. It may have some of its squadrons ships under its control in this role, but not as a the DESRON. Interestingly a deployed staff is still responsible for its squadron at home which leads to a hell of a lot of email and phone call micromanangemet.

CGs and Carriers are O6 commands so they basically operate as a squadron of one, each attached to a Strike Group. There are also independent deploying DDGs and FFGs for various random requirements that will report directly to whatever numbered fleet they are in.

Numbered fleets are the operational commands for the Strike Groups as they deploy depending on which one's geographic area they are in. The numebred fleets report to the COCOMs (EURCOM/CENTCOM/etc.) they are contained within which will have component commands (NAVEUR in the case of EURCOM, the neatness of the system breaks down at this level).

Just a brief peek

An excellent and extremely useful post... thanks for taking the time to write it. It answered some questions I had...

I basically just split NP's ships between three "commands" - three commands that made sense when NP had its original geography. Now the "Western", "Gulf", and "Southern" commands are a bit tortured when you look at the map but it still somewhat works. I am not really sure how it would be organized beyond that as NP does not operate large carrier task groups.

Well the CSG is just how we put our normal deployable units together. You could just sub in SAG or other custom division for your AU depending on what you need.

The reason the US divides their their of command into administrative/maintenance and operational is that the skill sets for both are not the same and we want those responsible for each to focus their time, energy and training on the task at hand. Our fleet is so big that both of those sides are full time jobs for hundreds of people, if your navy is small enough you could combine the tasks into a single staff or have the funtions remain divided but have the admin/maintenance staff provide an equivalent deployable SAG staff from its ranks instead of having a permanent deployable staff.

The thing to remember, and I am sure you have accounted for this, is that if you combine the functions you are still going to have half the ships assigned to a squadron unavailable to it due to maitenance action or lack of training in peacetime. You can always surge the materially capable ships not finished with their training cycle in an emergency but with the caveat that those units are not at the height of operational readiness.

This is sort of why I roll my eyes when people say we don't need 11 aircraft carriers. I agree with them in theory, but they come to this conclusion without thinking about how many carriers are actually available. Of the 11 carriers in the fleet 2-3 will be down hard in the yards and another 3-4 will be at the bottom or middle of their training cyle. So in reality to have 4-5 carriers ready for normal operations you need 10-11. Thats before you factor in a global presense requirment that takes months to transit at times.

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