By: Jake Smith, Daily Caller News Foundation
The Pentagon is heavily reliant on commercial vessels to transport military resources abroad, but that fleet is too small and would be potentially unreliable in a major global conflict, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Transporting assets such as fighter jets, ammunition, armaments and even basic resources such as food and fuel to U.S. military forces abroad requires a robust logistics chain, leading the Pentagon’s Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) to tap commercial seafaring vessels to help, according to the WSJ. The fleet of vessels would be essential in providing support during a global conflict, but there aren’t enough of them, and there are questions about whether those ships would be mission-capable in the event of a crisis.
That problem is exacerbated by China — which U.S. intelligence considers the greatest threat to American national security — having a massive fleet of ships that could be mobilized at a near moment’s notice, according to the WSJ.
“We’re light years from where we need to be,” Stephen Carmel, head of the U.S. Marine Management, told the WSJ, referencing TRANSCOM’s fleet of fuel-transport ships. TRANSCOM would need more than 100 such vessels in a global conflict, according to some analysts’ estimates — but the command has only received promised access to 10.
The Pentagon is so heavily reliant on private-sector vessel companies in part because its own fleet of transport vessels is so small. The government only owns less than 50 such vessels, and 28 of those will be retired within the next decade, according to the WSJ.
“The age of the fleet is dragging readiness rates to alarming levels,” a TRANSCOM spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “USTRANSCOM supports a new construction program as complementary to the current buy-used acquisition strategy.”
For routine deployment or training exercises, TRANSCOM can tap its private-sector partners for approximately 60 transport ships, according to the WSJ. An additional 95 ships can be activated for bigger mobilization efforts.
In the event of a conflict with China, TRANSCOM can mobilize 200 commercial transport vessels for deployment, according to the WSJ. But it isn’t clear whether commercial companies would be willing to send their ships into an active combat zone; even if they did, the sailors onboard might not be trained for battle. In that kind of conflict, the U.S. would need to rely on more than 13,000 sailors, but a 2017 U.S. Marine Administration simulation found that such a force was at least 13% short of being qualified.
Adding to the challenge is that if China invaded Taiwan — a major concern in the U.S. in the West, given that it could spark a global war — the country would only need to travel about 100 miles by sea to arrive at the island. It would require thousands of miles and weeks of travel for U.S.-based vessels to arrive in the region.
None of those problems even account for China’s fleet of 7,000 commercial ships, according to the WSJ. Given that the Chinese government wields significant influence over private companies on the mainland, it could easily mobilize these ships if needed, and China’s Navy has expanded at a rapid pace and is now equipped with technology rivaling the U.S.’ capabilities.
To counter this, Congress has authorized the Maritime Administration to buy secondhand ships for transport use. So far, the budget allotted by Congress only allows for the purchase of nine vessels.
“It’s a bandage for a cancer patient,” Seth Cropsey, a former Navy officer, told the WSJ.
