But with the interest about ballistic missile threats today, is there any talk about acquiring a few more of those?
No. Given the geography of where the threats are, and the capabilities of the sensors, you can get away with some Aegis ships that have that capability, to a certain extent, to this vessel, and a couple of strategically placed land-based “tippy two” [A/N TPY-2]-kind of radars that can cover threat from that direction and the threat from the other direction. Again, there’s enough land-based plus Aegis cruisers and destroyers sitting in the eastern Med that could cover the threat pretty well.
We’re continuing to forward-base capability and logistic support.
We still have the two remaining maritime prepositioning [MPS] squadrons. MPS 3 is in Saipan and Guam, and MPS 2 is in Diego Garcia. They consist of Marine Corps, Army, and Air Force Pre-Po. Each one of those services has elements loaded up, ready to go, ready to surge, wherever they need to go, aboard those ships that we operate for them. The Air Force maintains several ships loaded with ammo, ready to go. The Army has some rolling stock and equipment, with their own lighterage and warping tugs on board so they can put them over the side and make them into amphibious causeways and load alongside or to marry up astern to a stern ramp. The Marine Corps Pre-Po ships use the Improved Navy Lighterage System.
USNS Spearhead (JHSV 1) is the first Joint High Speed vessel, built by Austal USA of Mobile, Ala. Photo courtesy of Capt. Edward H. Lundquist, USN (Ret.)
What about the Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV)?
You can carry 312 troops or passengers in seats, and bunk 104 of them. If you were creative in terms of berthing modules or something like that, you could carry even more, and do it all at 35 knots for 1,200 miles carrying 600 tons of cargo. And when you look at that vehicle space and see that you can park four rows of vehicles or put LCS [littoral combat ship] mission modules in there, this opens up a lot of possibilities. When you walk up the ramp, and into the mission bay, and behold 20,000 square feet of generally open space, and then go up and look at a very large flight deck that can handle a CH-53 helicopter with no problem, and look at the crane that’s on the stern that can handle things from the water to the deck, up to the flight deck, your mind can’t help but think of all the possibilities that this ship could be used for.
With the Army backing out of the JHSV program, are you basically going to have to provide that support for them?
If they have a mission requirement, and material stuff that needs to be moved around, the JHSV is an option available in the Joint Deployment Distribution System. The ships are available there, operated by the naval component commander in each area, to move whatever cargo needs to be moved.
What are we doing about the fast combat support ships [T-AOEs]? Are we going to be decommissioning them?
The Military Sealift Command fleet replenishment oiler USNS Laramie (T-AO-203) and an MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter from Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 28, embarked aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), conducts a vertical replenishment at sea, May 22, 2013. Kearsarge is the flagship for the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group and, with the embarked 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, is deployed in support of maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Tamara Vaughn
Right now the program of record maintains two of them of the four T-AOEs. Two will remain active, and two of them are going to be going out in the next five years or so, to be put into deactivation as mobilization assets. They’re very capable ships. They’re our most capable UNREP [underway replenishment] ship. They have a lot of good life left in them. They’re only about halfway through their lives. We would very much like to try to keep them, if we could, but they are very expensive to operate and we have to face the realities of budgets. We’re looking at what’s the right mix of UNREP ships.
Was this decision to take two of them out of service because of sequestration?
No. This was all kind of before that.
You must have some strong relationships, partnerships, and collaborations with industry and the unions, and our allies.
For MSC specifically, all of those things are key to our business model. We are a very unique part of the Navy in that we sit astride both maritime industry, the interagency in terms of the [U.S. Department of Transportation] Maritime Administration, the joint world with U.S. Transportation Command, and the Navy. So I wear a bunch of different hats and all of those contribute to our ability to execute our mission and the means by which we execute our mission. So keeping a very close relationship with all of those entities and working closely with them is the main job of the commander of Military Sealift Command. We, along with the unions that represent our mariners, have our mariners at heart. They are the forefront of what we think about every day because they are MSC [Military Sealift Command]. Our mariners are MSC. The unions represent them from one point of view, and we represent them from another point of view, but at the end of the day, we all shake hands and agree that we sail under the same flag. That’s been kind of key to the good relationships that we’ve had with our unions. Being transparent is critical.
USNS Grapple is a towing, diving, and salvage ship operated by Military Sealift Command. Photo courtesy of Capt. Edward H. Lundquist, USN (Ret.)
When we had the radiological contamination of our ship, USNS Bridge [T-AOE 10], off Japan during Operation Tomodachi, the first phone calls that I made were to the presidents of all of those unions to reassure them and tell them exactly what I was going to do, and exactly what was going on. And we had many, many phone calls and meetings to reassure them and their leadership, what was going on. So, the transparency was very, very important. We work with the industry every day. We charter a lot of their vessels, and a lot of shipping companies operate our ships for us under contract. It’s very important that we have good relations and understand their challenges and what’s happening in the commercial industry, because it impacts us just in terms of the number of people available.
And then, of course, on the military side, a large part of our mission is to directly support the warfighter with government owned and operated ships. People depend on us. People trust us. It’s a very hard-earned trust that we seek to maintain every single day. Our motto is, “MSC delivers.” And we look to earn that trust every single day, and I think it’s born out in the fact that we’re getting more business, getting more ships given to us and more trust every single day, because they know that if you ask MSC to do something, by God, MSC is gonna do it, efficiently, and at the best price.