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.
A Navy official, when contacted by USNI News, acknowledged the service was working on a plan to retask civilian mariners but did not provide details.
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 Military Sealift Command operates a fleet of logistics ships that refuel and resupply the Navy’s ships around the world and are crewed by 5,500 civilians who are employed by the Navy.
Across the MSC there are about 4,500 billets for mariners on a wide variety of U.S. support ships ranging from resupply vessels, fleet oilers that refuel ships and aircraft, salvage ships, the Navy’s two command ships, submarine tenders and hospital ships.
For every billet on an MSC ship there are about 1.27 mariners to fill the positions, a ratio that two former MSC master mariners told USNI News on Thursday was unstainable.
“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,” a former MSC mariner told USNI News.
At that ratio, a mariner would be at sea for four months and off for about a month and then return.
“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, 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.”
That’s much more time at sea than commercial mariners. For example, the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association union contracts requires their members to work with two mariners for every billet, which translates to a paid month off for every month at sea.
In addition to the more demanding schedule, the extra wrinkle for the MSC mariners is that they earn leave at the same rate as other DoD employees and junior mariners aren’t paid for their time off on shore if they haven’t accrued leave.
If the Navy and MSC elect to reassign the crews of all 17 ships, the so-called great reset could free up 600 to 700 sailors to the larger MSC pool, USNI News understands. That would bring the ratio closer to 1.5 mariners per billet and allow MSC mariners more time on shore and allow the Navy to crew newer support vessels like the John Lewis-class fleet oiler. Three have delivered to the Navy, but none have deployed in part due to crew availability, USNI News understands.
The punishing schedule for the mariners led to a retention issue for MSC that was accelerated by the severe “gangway up” COVID-19 prevention measures ordered by retired MSC commander Rear Adm. Michael Wettlaufer.
“[During] COVID nobody was getting off the ship, mariners were being treated poorly and so they started to quit,” a retired MSC mariner told USNI News.
Since then, “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.’”
Another former MSC mariner told USNI News he enjoyed sailing with MSC, but he saw his older peers deal with divorce and estrangement from their children and didn’t want that for himself.
“I can’t say much bad about MSC, he said. “But when I left, I left because of my family.”
That pressure to retain experienced mariners led to the decision to craft the plan to sideline ships, three sources familiar with the plan told USNI News.
“This is basically the result of many years of neglect and mismanagement of their force,” Sal Mercogliano, former MSC mariner and associate professor of history at Campbell University told USNI News on Thursday.
“They are just burning through people.”
Spearheads and Seabases
Perhaps the highest visibility ships purposed to be sidelined are the two forward-deployed expeditionary sea bases. While Navy officials did not identify the hulls, two people familiar with the draft plan said the ESBs were CENTCOM’s USS Lewis Puller (ESB-3) and U.S. Europe and Africa Command’s USS Herschel “Woody” Williams (ESB-4).
Puller has been forward deployed to Bahrain since 2017 serving as host for both mine countermeasures and special operations forces in the region. For example, CENTCOM has used the ship as a platform to launch anti-smuggling operations to seize Iranian weapons bound for Yemen as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian. In 2023, it was positioned off the coast of Sudan as a platform in case U.S. citizens needed to evacuate from the country.
Puller is based on the Alaska-class tanker design and is a follow-on to a converted amphibious warship USS Ponce (AFSB(I)-15). The ESB was commissioned in port in Bahrain to allow it to operate as a warship. The idea proved so popular, the Navy has bought several more of the platform. Williamshas held annual patrols around Africa and been central to the Navy’s effort in the region.
The largest shares of ships proposed to be sidelined in the great reset are the 12 active Spearhead-class EPF in the service, USNI News understands. The first two EPF, USNS Spearhead (EPF-1) and USNS Choctaw County (EPF-2), have already been sidelined at the former Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. While technically still part of MSC, the ships have a sparse crew and are listed in reduced operating status.
The EPFs, high-speed aluminum catamarans that are built at Austal USA in Mobile, Ala., are crewed by about 26 MSC mariners and have been deployed to the Pacific, Europe and Africa as part of U.S. outreach missions.
The hull form is set to be the basis for a new class of hospital ships which will enter the fleet by the end of the decade.
While the order has yet to be signed, Mercogliano has tracked EPFs beginning to return to the U.S. from aboard far from the end of their expected service lives.
“These ships have a lot of life in them,” he said.
