For several years we have been chronicling the drastic problems the U.S. Navy has been suffering under, in everything from manpower and recruiting to warship and submarine warfighting readiness:
You get the idea; and keep in mind that the six above posts are just a sample of those posted from 2023 and 2024.
Anyway, we have yet to post any bad news about the Navy’s merchant marine fleet, which deploys with the regular U.S. Navy and supplies at-sea ship refueling, spare parts, ammunition, repairs, etc., so we were surprised to see the latest evidence of the decline of this portion of the U.S. Navy.
From the Naval Institute: Navy Could Sideline 17 Support Ships Due to Manpower Issues:
Military Sealift Command has drafted a plan to remove the crews from 17 Navy support ships due to a lack of qualified mariners to operate the vessels across the Navy, USNI News learned.The MSC “force generation reset” identified 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 that would enter an “extended maintenance” period and have their crews retasked to other ships in the fleet, three people familiar with the plan told USNI News Thursday….A defense official confirmed the basic outline of the plan to USNI News on Thursday. Two sources 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, and operated in U.S. European and Africa Command….The new effort, known informally as “the great reset” has yet to be adopted by the Navy and is awaiting approval from Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, USNI News understands.
The problem is that there are insufficient numbers of civilian merchant sailors, who man the Navy’s support ships. Ideally there are two crewmembers for every at-sea position, which means a rotation of one month on (or longer), with an equal amount of time off. But as the Naval Institute reports, that number is now 1.27 to one, which means that for every month off, a civilian merchant sailor has to spend four months at sea, which is “unsustainable”:
“That math just doesn’t work,” the former mariner told USNI News.“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, [and] take care of medical requirements.”
Fox News reports that this plan, currently under consideration by Navy brass, is only part of the Navy’s overall “great reset” involving decommissioning 48 ships in four years, from 2022 – 2026:
The Navy has a 30-year shipbuilding plan that will include the decommissioning of 48 ships to occur over a four-year period that started in 2022…In the first year, the Navy retired 10 ships, and in 2023 the force retired 11 more ships ranging from missile cruisers, dock landing ships and ocean tugs.
And msn.com reports on some of the impacts to the Navy: ‘Great Reset’ Plan for US Navy: Active Surface Fleet Battle Force Ships to Be Stripped of Crews
While the move may alleviate some manpower concerns, it leaves naval support capabilities severely diminished.
The dozen fast transports targeted as part of the drawdown are used to provide “rapid transport of military equipment and personnel in theater,” according the Military Sealift Command.
If the plan is enacted, the command would only have access to two operational fast transports for its entire operation.
Here is a Tweet of one of the Fast Transports entering port in Sri Lanka:
Msn.com reports further on the manpower issues involved and asks a key question:
According to USNI, some of the fast transport ships have already begun to return to the United States for unknown reasons.
The Navy’s manpower problems ring similar to issues faced by other branches of the military. The U.S. Army admitted a complete failure on the recruiting front, necessitating a massive reduction of 24,000 soldiers from the force, 5 percent of its total strength.
In the background of the military shakeup is the rise of China in the Pacific.
As Beijing becomes increasingly aggressive in claiming international waters and foreign territory as its own, America’s ability to counter the Asian superpower will largely be based on our naval capabilities.
If the time comes when we must put firepower behind our words, will we be ready to meet a powerful threat on the water?
Finally, from the Eurasian Times: US Navy’s Achilles Heel In Indo-Pacific Gives Edge To China; Pentagon Banks On Asian Allies To Boost Its Navy:
In the coming decade, the US Navy will be stretched thin to counter the burgeoning numerical strength of the Chinese PLA Navy in the Indo-Pacific. The US Navy that will deliver the wrath of the US beyond its border has an Achilles Heel—not the lack of warships but trained crew to man those warships.The shortage of qualified mariners is forcing the US to sideline 17 support ships, impacting the logistics backbone of the force….The US military has been struggling to recruit people in its rank and file. After the US Army failed to meet its recruiting targets for two consecutive fiscal years, its strength fell from an original level of 485,000 in late 2021 to around 452,000 active-duty soldiers in 2023.It is the lowest full-time force size since 1940, before the US entered World War II….According to reports, in fiscal 2023, only the Marine Corps and the Space Force among the five service branches met their recruiting goals. The Army fell short by about 10,000 of its goal to bring on 65,000 active-duty enlisted soldiers; the Air Force recruited only 24,100 of the 26,877 it wanted; and the Navy recruited 30,236 active-duty enlisted sailors, well short of its goal of 37,000.The shortfall understates the challenges facing the US military, as the service also had to lower its end-strength goals in recent years to ease the recruitment shortage. The recruitment crisis has been deemed one of the biggest challenges faced by the all-volunteer force since its inception….This will make it difficult for the US to keep pace with the growing flotilla of the Chinese Navy. According to the 2022 Pentagon report, China is building more modern surface vessels, aircraft carriers, and support ships to help its naval influence grow. By 2025, the People’s Liberation Army Navy is expected to grow to 400 hulls, up from its fleet of 340.In contrast, the US Navy has admitted that all of its key shipbuilding programs—from the new Columbia-class submarine to the new Constellation-class frigate—are facing years-long delays.“I’m concerned that the Navy is falling behind — it is behind,” Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, said Wednesday. “The Navy continues to retire ships faster than it builds them, and I’m troubled by the Navy’s request to decommission 10 ships before the end of their service life and build only six.”The labor shortage is further resulting in a backlog of ship production and maintenance at a time when the Navy faces global threats. The US has put the US behind China in the number of ships at its disposal, and the gap is widening.Navy shipbuilding is currently in “a terrible state” — the worst in a quarter century, says Eric Labs, a long-time naval analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. “I feel alarmed,” he said. “I don’t see a fast, easy way to get out of this problem.”
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