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Prof Triggernometry
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Navy Could Sideline 17 Support Ships Due to Manpower Issues
Sam LaGroneAugust 22, 2024 7:52 PM - Updated: August 23, 2024 8:07 AM
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.
Based on the crew requirements on the platforms, sideling all the ships could reduce the civilian mariner demand for MSC by as many as 700 billets.
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 Herschel “Woody” Williams (ESB-4), based in Naval Support Activity Souda Bay, Greece, and operated in U.S. European and Africa Command.
More here on the catastrophe: https://news.usni.org/2024/08/22/navy-could-sideline-17-support-ships-due-to-manpower-issues
In WWII we had over 6700 surface combatants in the US Navy. Today we have fleets with a combined total of 293 deployable ships and Joe Biden thinks he can take on the Middle East, The Russians, and the Chinese in the Indo Pacific and projecting power to each. It's insane. In WWII if you joined the Navy you were likely gone for the duration. Today's "sailors" start whining if they're out for more than six months.