ARLINGTON, VA - The United States Navy is preparing to stand down 17 of its support vessels citing a severe manpower shortage hindering the Navy's ability to crew and operate fully the fleet which has already declined in size steadily since 2000.
Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation for the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, told Fox News Saturday that the Navy simply cannot find enough Merchant Marines to man all the support vessels at once. The Merchant Marines operate the Navy's support vessel fleet that handles the global logistics of projecting military force around the world.
"The sailors tend to man our warships … the merchant mariners man something that’s equally important, which is the logistics backbone of the Navy – oilers, ammo ships, transports ships that move the Army and Marine Corps across the water," he explained.
Referring to the reorganization as the MSC "force generation reset," the effort would direct "two Lewis and Clark replenishment ships, one fleet oiler, a dozen Spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transports (EPF) and two forward-deployed Navy expeditionary sea bases," to enter a period of "extended maintenance," enabling their crews to be retasked to join other ships in the fleet, consolidating their limited manpower.
Two sources for USNI identified the forward-deployed sea bases as USS Lewis Puller (ESB-3), based in Bahrain in U.S. Central Command, and USS Hershel “Woody” Williams (ESB-4), based in Naval Support Activity Souda Bay, Greece as two of the vessels to be sidelined.
“That math just doesn’t work,” the former mariner told the Institute. “No one is able to have a healthy work-life balance and be able to get off the ship and get adequate time to go home, have time at home with their family, take leave, take care of medical requirements [in that timeframe]. There is so much training required of every billet at MSC to stay proficient with Navy requirements and training and merchant marine credentialing.”
An associate professor of history at Campbell University and former merchant mariner Sal Mercogliano pegged the decline in manpower as "basically the result of many years of neglect and mismanagement of their force." He added, “They are just burning through people.”
For many, the COVID lockdown was reportedly the breaking point with now-retired MSC commander Rear Adm. Michael Wettlaufer ordering a "gangway up" policy, requiring mariners remain on board ship. “[During] COVID nobody was getting off the ship, mariners were being treated poorly and so they started to quit,” one retired MSC mariner told USNI. Following that experience, “mariners have been quitting at a greater rate than MSC can hire new ones… People say ‘I had to quit because it’s a terrible work-life balance. I can’t go to sea and also have a family, so I got to leave.’”
Montgomery told Fox News that the age of the vessels is also a factor. "The average age of the ships in the reserve force is about 45 years old," Montgomery said. "Between 20 and 30 years is fine, because you don’t have the same issues of modernization of weapon systems and big changes in electrical power distribution … but 17 of the ships are over 50 years old."
Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation for the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, told Fox News Saturday that the Navy simply cannot find enough Merchant Marines to man all the support vessels at once. The Merchant Marines operate the Navy's support vessel fleet that handles the global logistics of projecting military force around the world.
"The sailors tend to man our warships … the merchant mariners man something that’s equally important, which is the logistics backbone of the Navy – oilers, ammo ships, transports ships that move the Army and Marine Corps across the water," he explained.
"The problem, of course, is the ships are at sea, away from home port 12 months of the year," Montgomery explained. "So you need two crews … we're desperately short of the number of people." He continued, "There’s a lack of experienced merchant mariners to crew the ships, and this is really a clear danger to national security."
According to the US Naval Institute, the Military Sealift Command (MSC) is planning to remove crews from the seventeen vessels "due to a lack of qualified mariners to operate the vessels across the Navy."Referring to the reorganization as the MSC "force generation reset," the effort would direct "two Lewis and Clark replenishment ships, one fleet oiler, a dozen Spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transports (EPF) and two forward-deployed Navy expeditionary sea bases," to enter a period of "extended maintenance," enabling their crews to be retasked to join other ships in the fleet, consolidating their limited manpower.
Two sources for USNI identified the forward-deployed sea bases as USS Lewis Puller (ESB-3), based in Bahrain in U.S. Central Command, and USS Hershel “Woody” Williams (ESB-4), based in Naval Support Activity Souda Bay, Greece as two of the vessels to be sidelined.
A former MSC mariner told USNI News, “If you’re required to have 100 people on a vessel. There are only 27 more people on shore at any given time to rotate those crew members." This arrangement requires that a mariner would be at sea for four months on and one month off throughout their service.Guiding through the night! @USNavy Petty Officer 3rd Class Patrick Adkins expertly directs an SH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter from the flight deck of the USS Hershel "Woody" Williams in the Atlantic Ocean. pic.twitter.com/NyKhGx9HFc
— Department of Defense 🇺🇸 (@DeptofDefense) August 13, 2024
“That math just doesn’t work,” the former mariner told the Institute. “No one is able to have a healthy work-life balance and be able to get off the ship and get adequate time to go home, have time at home with their family, take leave, take care of medical requirements [in that timeframe]. There is so much training required of every billet at MSC to stay proficient with Navy requirements and training and merchant marine credentialing.”
An associate professor of history at Campbell University and former merchant mariner Sal Mercogliano pegged the decline in manpower as "basically the result of many years of neglect and mismanagement of their force." He added, “They are just burning through people.”
For many, the COVID lockdown was reportedly the breaking point with now-retired MSC commander Rear Adm. Michael Wettlaufer ordering a "gangway up" policy, requiring mariners remain on board ship. “[During] COVID nobody was getting off the ship, mariners were being treated poorly and so they started to quit,” one retired MSC mariner told USNI. Following that experience, “mariners have been quitting at a greater rate than MSC can hire new ones… People say ‘I had to quit because it’s a terrible work-life balance. I can’t go to sea and also have a family, so I got to leave.’”
Montgomery told Fox News that the age of the vessels is also a factor. "The average age of the ships in the reserve force is about 45 years old," Montgomery said. "Between 20 and 30 years is fine, because you don’t have the same issues of modernization of weapon systems and big changes in electrical power distribution … but 17 of the ships are over 50 years old."
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Comments
2024-08-28T11:32-0700 | Comment by: thomas
That's because the new generation is still thinking about what gender they are. A bunch of wuss's