gCaptain has a post that looks at a Navy proposal to build ten smaller underway replenishment ships, but it goes on to provide an overview of US sealift capacity (see the video above, included in the gCaptain post), and it finds that it is pretty poor.

“…amateurs talk strategy, but professionals talk logistics.”

Why should the Coast Guard care?

Any merchant marine construction in the US is going to be subject to Coast Guard oversight.

The health of America’s shipbuilding industry is in the Coast Guard’s interest.

It would be nice to have enough underway replenishment ships to be able to keep one on station in the Eastern Pacific to support drug interdiction efforts. Might make operating groups of Webber Class WPCs in the drug interdiction role in the drug transit zone more practical. It might even be possible to fly supporting Coast Guard rotary wing or UAS assets from a T-AOL.  It would probably be good to have one in Oceania as well.

Because there are so few US owned merchant ships, and because the MSC and MARAD sealift ships are old, unreliable, and use outdated technology, it is difficult to find crews for them. Then there might also be a problem of getting the mariners we do have, to take what is likely to be a hazardous job.

The Navy has already told MARAD that in wartime they would be on their own. That they should not expect the Navy to protect them.

Take a look at what happened in WWII. The Coast Guard ended up crewing 351 US Navy and 288 Army ships and craft. Many of the Navy vessels and most of the Army vessels were logistics ships. If the Navy has trouble crewing logistics ships, they might well commission them and put Coast Guard crews on them.

The Coast Guard should support MSC and MARAD recapitalization.