Hi CobaltBlue; Those who've been wondering why the US has been chartering foreign carriers when we've got 100 ships in the US RRF can find the answers "write-cheer" [Southern slang for "right here"]:
A Real Wake-Up Call: The Continuing Decline of the U.S.-Flag Merchant Fleet
Robert Little, Seapower Magazine, May 2002
John Babineau can do things with a ship that very few people in the world can do. He can manage the loading and unloading of its cargo without blowing the schedule, for instance. Then he can maneuver it through a crowded channel without an accident--at night. Babineau is a trained and experienced deck officer in the U.S.-flag Merchant Marine, and precisely the type of qualified civilian professional that the United States is counting on to operate its military cargo ships in wartime.
But if war comes, Babineau is not going to sea--and much of the U.S. military's ammunition, supplies, and equipment might not be going either. Babineau and thousands of trained U.S. merchant seamen like him have fled the U.S. Merchant Marine in favor of more stable and lucrative work ashore--leaving the United States desperately short of the qualified manpower that it needs to activate its military cargo ships and deploy large numbers of its ground forces overseas.
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The commercial fleet, which is expected to provide manpower to the military in wartime, can barely find enough qualified mariners to sail its own ships. The Navy's Military Sealift Command (MSC) is so desperate for civilian seafarers that it is offering signing bonuses as high as $5,000 to mariners who will work on the logistics ships that it operates full-time in support of Navy and Department of Defense (DOD) operations.
In peacetime the Maritime Administration (MARAD) simply works around the manpower shortage by shuffling crews from ship to ship in the 76-ship Ready Reserve Force (RRF) just long enough to pass a drill or activation exercise. But if war broke out and all of the ships were activated simultaneously under the control of MSC, there would not be enough sailors to go around. Another problem is that the fallback supply of U.S. maritime labor--retired and inactive merchant seamen--has been all but eliminated by the new Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping (STCW) regulations that took effect earlier this year.
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Jerry A. Aspland, a former president of the California Maritime Academy, asks rhetorically: "Are there enough people to sail all of those ships today?" The answer to that question, he quickly adds, "is truly no. We could never send all of those ships to sea, and everyone in the country should be worried about that."
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MARAD and MSC are both reviewing how to tap the manpower graduating from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and the nation's six state maritime academies more effectively--possibly by requiring midshipmen to make some commitment to the sealift fleet in exchange for their subsidized education.
But quick answers are elusive, because the maritime manpower shortage stems mostly from the enduring and systemic economic decline of the U.S. commercial shipping industry--a merchant fleet that once ruled the globe but today pales before the likes of Panama, Liberia, Malta, and Cyprus. U.S.-flag ships, which must hire expensive American crews and make repairs in expensive U.S. shipyards, typically cost as much as $4 million more to operate for a year than an identical ship flying a foreign flag. That is an expense few shipowners are willing to pay, which is why the U.S.-flag merchant fleet has all but vanished from the world's oceans.
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First to go, typically, would be eight "fast sealift ships" operated by MSC. Those ships, formerly owned and operated by Sea-Land Service Inc. and called SL-7s, are equipped with twin steam plants that can generate 30 knots or more, making them some of the fastest cargo ships afloat.
Next to go would be the fleet of large, medium-speed, roll-on/roll-off (RO/RO) ships, or LMSRs, acquired since Desert Storm. The nation will have 19 of these modern vessels by 2003.
The last ships activated in a crisis, probably, would be the 76 dormant ships of the Ready Reserve Force (RRF), maintained by MARAD in peacetime but transferred to MSC control in time of war. The RRF is an eclectic collection of vessels ranging from Vietnam-era break-bulk ships to modern RO-ROs, from barge carriers to old T-1 tankers. Some are fairly new; others are 50 or more years old. All of them are well-maintained to meet DOD activation requirements. The RRF ships most likely to be activated early in a major mobilization have cadre crews onboard that maintain the ships in a reduced operating status (ROS) so that they can be fully crewed and ready to sail in five days or less. Other RRF ships are kept in a 10- or 20-day ROS readiness status.
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Whistling Past the Graveyard
On any given day, a handful of fast sealift ships, LMSRs, and RRF ships might be operating for the Pentagon or laid up in a shipyard. But most of them are waiting empty in various ports. If all of the vessels were needed at once, DOD would have to find nearly 3,500 sailors to operate them. About 900 mariners already work on the vessels full-time, but the rest would have to be provided by the union halls and dispatch centers of the U.S. Merchant Marine.
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seapowermagazine.org
From the same magazine, a glowing tribute to Sealift, from the guys who run it, of course, but that also makes it clear that very little use has been made of it since the WTC attack:
seapowermagazine.org
Re: "Hi Carl - I've been researching MSC some more. ... There's no reason to send them out unless action is imminent."
Good. Now you realize that your logic on the foreign charters implying the full use of the RRF was completely wrong. I'll take your post as an admission of error and let it go at that.
It's understandable that a mom or pop wouldn't know what the RRF was for, or what kind of logistics are required to fight a war. But the implication re the accuracy of Debka, StratFor and other "black helicopter" sources of military intelligence (and the newspapers that reprint their rubbish) is clear. They are either deliberately lying to the public, or they are clueless about military operations. You have an excuse. Debka does not. And look how much effort it took me to show you that Debka was misleading (lying to) you. Think about it. Who provided an accurate picture of the real defense situation, me (and the web) or Debka?
-- Carl |
