The U.S. Navy's Chief Supplier Is in Peril

"The U.S. Navy has struggled to maintain personnel and readiness across the fleet, which makes its new plan for the Military Sealift Command to lose 17 ships under a "force generation reset" deeply troubling.

The Military Sealift Command keeps the Navy supplied and operational. 

By losing ships, the Navy is severing critical sinews of combat power that will jeopardize deterrence across Eurasia, making it harder to threaten China. The Navy must persuade Congress to modify pay, leave and benefits for MSC to increase personnel. Congress also should appropriate funds to repair the antiquated Merchant Marine Academy in King's Point, N.Y., thereby increasing the pool of qualified mariners.

To evaluate U.S. Navy combat power, the public and analysts often look at the number of fighting ships. That tally is shrinking. Since 2022 the Navy has decommissioned 10 Ticonderoga-class cruisers and plans to decommission the remaining 12 by 2027. Those cruisers are the Navy's top air-defense assets, with more missile-launch cells than their Arleigh Burke-class destroyer counterparts. Typically, the Navy's Carrier Strike Groups deploy with a Ticonderoga as the key air-defense platform. These ships are old, having entered service late in the Cold War. Retiring them nevertheless cuts into the Navy's deployed missile-cell numbers, while forcing the Arleigh Burkes to cover another full mission, that of fleet air defense, which will further strain the destroyer fleet.

Less discussed but crucial for combat power are the Navy's support ships. MSC operates these ships with some 5,500 civilian mariners and naval reserve officers, the latter group mostly U.S. Merchant Marine Academy graduates. MSC ships include several special-mission units, namely missile instrumentation ships and undersea surveillance and cable repair ships, alongside all the Navy's oiler, ordnance, cargo and heavy-lift ships.

These 125 vessels sustain U.S. military operations, providing supplies to American warships from the Mediterranean to the Pacific and to ground forces at coastal bases. Without MSC ships, absent a robust logistical system, the U.S. Navy can't fight for more than a few weeks. The Air Force's heavy-lift aircraft are more flexible, but physical capacity constraints make it impossible to replace ship-based logistics with aerial logistics.

Personnel shortages are common across the fleet. The Navy missed every recruitment goal in 2023, even after raising the maximum enlistment age to 41 from 39 and lowering mental aptitude and physical fitness standards. Retention fared better: new promotion programs and higher re-enlistment bonuses encouraged experienced sailors to stay.

MSC is in a far worse situation than the broader Navy. MSC ships are civilian-crewed, meaning MSC must compete with traditional civilian contracts. Unionized private-sector mariners enjoy limits on sea time -- for certain billets, this means a paid month on shore for every month at sea. By contrast, MSC's current billet-to-personnel ratio is around 1.27, meaning there are only 27 replacement mariners on shore to relieve every 100 mariners deployed. This creates a brutal work schedule, requiring mariners to deploy for four months at sea for each month ashore.

MSC mariners operate complex ships fulfilling highly specific tasks, necessitating more training that reduces actual leave time. MSC uses the Pentagon's pay system, reducing the financial incentive for senior mariners to stay in the fleet, while junior mariners don't receive paid shore time without having accrued enough hours. This system may be tolerable for typical soldiers and sailors, but when combined with MSC demands, it makes it difficult for an MSC mariner to maintain a family.

The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated all these problems. MSC's "Gangway Up" policy, maintained through summer 2021, prevented civilian mariners from leaving their ships for months to reduce viral exposure. This might have made sense as a precaution to keep the fleet in fighting shape, particularly during the pandemic's first months. But after more than a year, experienced mariners nearing the end of their contracts began to quit. MSC hasn't addressed this attrition due to the disparity between MSC pay and benefits and private-economy opportunities. Since late 2021, MSC deployments have also become more demanding, with MSC ships supporting U.S. naval forces in the Middle East and Indo-Pacific and sustaining a combat power buildup in Europe.

By retiring 17 MSC support ships, the Navy hopes to save around 700 billets, increasing MSC's billet-to-personnel ratio to 1.5, while reducing the strain on its mariners. 

The problem is that those 17 ships are crucial to sustain American forces in a Eurasian war.

The ships on the chopping block include two Expeditionary Sea Bases, or ESBs, likely the Centcom-deployed USS Lewis Puller and the Eucom/Africom-deployed USS Hershel "Woody" Williams, along with the remaining 12 Spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transports, or EPFs. The four ESBs, with two under construction, are flexible. Designed off 100,000-ton oil tankers, each ESB provides logistical support to U.S. forces. They can also launch multiple helicopters and small patrol craft, allowing them to act as bases for special-operations forces and antimine units, as the Puller has done since Houthi attacks on shipping began in 2023.

The Spearhead-class EPFs are relatively small, at only 2,500 tons. Their 1,400-mile range and 49-mile-an-hour speed, however, allows them to shift supplies and specific units within a theater as large as the Indo-Pacific. These will be crucial to sustaining U.S. naval combat strategy, which relies on warships and Marine units to blunt a Chinese attack.

The Navy should address the root of the issue and make an MSC career more competitive and balanced. This requires the political advocacy from which the Navy has retreated since the Cold War's end. Only congressional action can change MSC personnel regulations. The Navy must make this a priority and reverse a decline in U.S. sealift and logistics that is certain to embolden foes.

---

Mr. Cropsey is president of the Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as a deputy undersecretary of the Navy and is author of "Mayday" and "Seablindness."" [1]

1. The U.S. Navy's Chief Supplier Is in Peril. Cropsey, Seth.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 04 Sep 2024: A.15.