Navy will sideline 17 MSC ships to ease mariner stress

Under a plan approved Oct. 30 by Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, and disclosed by the Navy yesterday, the U.S. Military Sealift Command (MSC) is to sideline 17 ships to ease the stress on its civilian mariners.  “That number’s based on again the number of mariners that we need to get us to 95% [manning],” MSC’s commander Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck told reporters in a call Thursday morning. “It is aligning the force so that we are most ready and that we are getting after the fleet requirements.”

A Navy press release says that Secretary Del Toro approved the plan “to restore the health of the Military Sealift Command (MSC) workforce and generate more logistics support for fleet operations worldwide.”

MSC’s 5,500 civil service mariners and 1,500 contracted mariners operate 140 logistics supply ships that support the replenishment and transport of military cargo and supplies for U.S. forces and partners. The command’s new workforce initiative addresses civil service mariner recruitment and retention challenges by restoring the health of the MSC workforce for, according to the Navy “the next several decades.” The initiative will also include crew reassignments to higher priority vessels and the placement of some MSC logistics support ships into extended maintenance periods. Rotating crews to higher priority vessels will minimize overdue reliefs and provide a more predictable work environment for civil service mariners, says the Navy, “Our civil service mariners play invaluable roles providing continuous logistics support to our deployed naval forces, and they are working overtime to sustain that mission globally,” said Secretary Del Toro. “This initiative will not only address operational logistics challenges we face now, it will ensure that Military Sealift Command has policies, programs and incentives it needs to recruit and retain future generations of civil service mariners.”

Nationally, the U.S. merchant marine workforce is facing a shortage of personnel to fill positions at sea, as it has become more challenging to attract interested Americans, impacting mariners employed by MSC. MSC has also assumed broader logistics responsibilities and experienced higher mission demand for Navy operations in recent years, increasing the strain on the workforce and contributing to recruiting and retention challenges.

The types of ships to be sidelined by the workforce initiative include Fleet Replenishment Oilers (T-AO), Dry Cargo/Ammunition Ships (T-AKE), Expeditionary Fast Transports (T-EPF), and Expeditionary Sea Bases (ESB).

According to USNI News, in his press call Sobeck declined to specify which hulls would go into extended maintenance, but confirmed the Navy would reduce manning on two Expeditionary Sea Bases, Spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transports (EPF), T-AGOS ocean surveillance ships, T-AKE dry cargo and ammunition ships and replenishment oilers. For the EPFs, USNI News quotes Sobeck as saying that the service is figuring out what to do with the new ones coming off the production line in Mobile, Ala.