Turbo Activation – A Sealift Surge, or just a Trickle?
December 31, 2019
By Salvatore R. Mercogliano, Ph.D. – In September, gCaptain reported on Turbo Activation 19-Plus, US Transportation Command’s largest peacetime exercise of the 61-ship surge sealift fleet. Initial assessments, gathered from unclassified sources reported that 23 out of the 28 ships activated on Monday, September 16, 2019, were able to get underway to meet their readiness benchmark. Further orders were issued on September 18 for three ships and another two on September 21, for a total of 33 vessels. This represented an 82 percent success rate. All told, 32 ships plus 4 others on scheduled exercises, or more than half of the surge sealift fleet, were underway; the most since the deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. The exercise raises the question, is the U.S. ready to meet the next contingency?
The surge sealift fleet, with 15 ships maintained by the Military Sealift Command (MSC) and 46 by the Maritime Administration’s (MarAd) Ready Reserve Force (RRF), provides a key ingredient in the nation’s military strategy. The United States relies on merchant shipping to provide four essential missions in the execution of national defense.
The first are those ships that provide direct fleet support to the U.S. Navy, such as oilers and supply ships. Out of the 293 ships in the U.S. Navy battle force, 20 percent utilize civilian merchant mariners as their crews. The second element are ships loaded and forward based in the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific with materiel and equipment, known as the Afloat Prepositioning Force. To transport forces from the Continental United States, that is the role of the surge sealift fleet. Finally, to provide the necessary sustainment is the commercial U.S. merchant marine.
A disruption of any of these four elements could have a detrimental impact on the ability of the armed forces to execute its mission. Admiral Mark Buzby, the head of the Maritime Administration (MarAd), and General Steven Lyons, the commander of U.S. Transportation Command, testified before Congress in March 2019 that the surge sealift fleet was in a precarious condition due to its age (the ships are on average 44 years old), the difficulty in obtaining qualified crews, and the fleet’s overall reliability.
On December 16, 2019, Vice Admiral Dee Mewbourne, former commander of Military Sealift Command (MSC), and currently Deputy Commander of US Transportation Command, released an after-action report on the exercise. The purpose of the report was: “to objectively evaluate the ability of as many Organic Surge Fleet vessels as possible to transition from Reduced Operating Status (ROS) to Full Operating Status (FOS) within 120 hours; and to assess the vessel’s performance.” The executive summary ominously notes, “The findings indicate that the surge sealift fleet has many issues that can negatively impact the nation’s ability to surge forces from the continental United States overseas.”
The report’s first issue is perhaps the most troubling. During their testimony earlier this year, Admiral Buzby and General Lyons provided a graphic that showed 13 out of the 61 ships were “Not Mission Capable,” meaning they were unable to be used due to mechanical issues. Ships are assigned a C-rating from fully mission capable C-1, to not prepared for mission, C-5. When the orders were issued for Turbo Activation 19-Plus six months later, 22 ships were identified with casualties that placed them non-mission capable; either in a C-4 (12 ships) or C-5 (10 ships) category. These 22 vessels reduced the overall total of 10.5 million square feet of cargo space by 3.7 million. This equates to a ready for tasking rate of 63.9 % (39 out of 61 ships).
Second, the report confirmed what gCaptain earlier reported with 27 out of 33 (81.8%) being Ready for Sea. The six ships that did not meet this objective experienced a myriad of issues. In Beaumont, Texas, two ships (Cape Texas and Cape Trinity) were delayed due to rain and high water as a result of Tropical Storm Imelda. Another vessel (Regulus) was unable to sail due to air clearance under the Martin Luther King Bridge in Port Arthur. Fisher was delayed by two days due to a malfunctioning Simplified Voyage Data Recorder (the ship’s black box). Gilliland was delayed only a few hours due to a sounding tube’s self-closing valve. The last ship, Capella, experienced a stateroom fire that required an additional US Coast Guard inspection.
More here:
https://gcaptain.com/turbo-activation-19-plus-a-sealift-surge-or-just-a-trickle/