(WASHINGTON) — The Military Sealift Command (MSC) 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 service, USNI News reported.
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.
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. Two sources identified the forward-deployed sea bases as USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB 3), based in Bahrain in U.S. Central Command, and USS Hershel “Woody” Williams (ESB 4), based in Naval Support Activity Souda Bay, Greece, and operated in U.S. European and Africa Command.
A Navy official 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.
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, 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 said was unsustainable.
“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 crewmembers,” 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 said. “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 time frame). There is so much training required of every billet at MSC to stay proficient with Navy requirements and training and merchant marine credentialing.”
The Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association union contracts require their members to work with two mariners for every billet, which translates to a paid month off for every month at sea.
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. 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 said.
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 said. 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.’”
That pressure to retain experienced mariners led to the decision to craft the plan to sideline ships, three sources familiar with the plan said.
“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.”
