DINGALAN, Philippines— On the rocky shores of a remote beach in the Philippines, a team from the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) rolled out an innovation designed to solve a tough expeditionary logistics challenge—getting heavy military vehicles from ship to shore without getting stuck. Armed with expertise and a groundbreaking technology called Submersible Matting (SUBMAT), ERDC researchers played a critical role in supporting beach landing operations during Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore operation (JLOTS 25), part of this year’s Balikatan, an annual exercise with the U.S. and Philippine military.
During JLOTS25, the mission was expeditionary discharge of U.S Marine Corps cargo, over-the-shore, in the town of Dingalan, Philippines, and to conduct onward movement to Balikatan 25 exercise training sites. Throughout the exercise, the ERDC team assisted with the installation of SUBMAT to enable efficient ship-to-shore vehicle trafficking.
“We attended to provide technical assistance to the installation team and observe our technology during landing operations,” said Dr. Tim Rushing senior research engineer with ERDC’s Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory.
SUBMAT is essentially a large sandbag that, when filled with sandy material, can build a road system or hard surface for military vehicles to drive across. Typically, sand is collected on site from nearby beaches at the deployed location. However, for this exercise, the material consistency of the beach was large-diameter gravel and cobblestones with very little sand.
To overcome this challenge, a team of Navy Seabees and ERDC researchers developed a method to create a small pit that could be loaded with sand using an excavator and then pumped into the SUBMAT system. The system was successful, and the team completed the installation.
ERDC team members also successfully instructed Navy teams from the Navy Beach Group (NBG 1), Amphibious Construction Battalion (ACB1) and Philippine Navy Seabees on the SUBMAT system. They installed two SUBMATs in a side-by-side configuration to create a 42-foot-wide by 100-foot-long offloading ramp to prevent vehicles from being stuck and recovered on the beach. This marked the first SUBMAT installation on a rocky beach and in a two-mat-wide configuration, successfully enabling launches of a Coast Guard vessel and offloads from an Army logistics support vessel.
“Knowing something you created is important and successful is very rewarding,” said Rushing. “SUBMAT was used to successfully launch and retrieve a U.S. Coast Guard security boat, proving it has value as an expeditionary boat ramp. It also stabilized the beach and eliminated vehicle recovery while in operation. No vehicles required assistance to exit the beach.”
ERDC currently has a Defense Innovation Accelerator project called Containerized Agile Expeditionary and Rapid Beach Preparation (CONAER) to continue improving SUBMAT to make it faster, easier and less expensive to deploy and improve its effectiveness. The lessons learned in Dingalan will be used to create more capability for the next generation of the SUBMAT system.