Road to 350: What Does the US Navy Do Anyway?

[hscs]

And everyone is missing a major piece - we can’t even fill the billets on our current MSC ships, so why are we talking about a once a quarter at best niche capability?

 

[sevenhelmet]

And everyone is missing a major piece - we can’t even fill the billets on our current MSC ships, so why are we talking about a once a quarter at best?

Solid point. Our sealift capacity is seriously hurting, thanks to decades of institutional neglect when it comes to the Merchant Marine.

 

[GroundPounder]

I cannot take credit for that, but it is a nice image.

Potentially worthy of veneration, those majic rocks.

 

[ChuckMK23]

And everyone is missing a major piece - we can’t even fill the billets on our current MSC ships, so why are we talking about a once a quarter at best niche capability?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/business/merchant-marines-shipbuilding.html?unlocked_article_code=1.0k8.eAVO.XTSIKKM5fzUT&smid=nytcore-android-share

 

[Brett327]

Unclear just what the correlation is between American shipbuilding capacity and the demand for civilian mariners. That's a weird headline that belies a poor understanding of the subject matter.

 

[taxi1]

They’d have better success selling the rum and sodomy aspect.

 

[sevenhelmet]

They’d have better success selling the rum and sodomy aspect.

US flag ships are generally dry, so there's no rum, at least not officially. As to the other, I can't claim any personal expertise there- best of luck.

 

[Randy Daytona]

Again, he’s not recommending an active naval vessel, but a mothballed vessel repurposed for disaster relief…no hot rocks involved.

Meant to get back to this sooner, but as you said, the idea was for dedicated humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, ie, the ship would be used year round with an emphasis on hurricanes during that time of the year. Figured either State or DOT might have a better chance of funding, anything going through the Pentagon would have a low priority. Perhaps using something like the National Security Multi- Mission Vessels like Empire State VII that DOT is currently building might be better than an older LSD - although the ships only have a single helo pad, they do have roll on / roll off capability.

Empire State VII - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Also found this feature from USNI when in 1929 the carrier USS Lexington went pierside and supplied power to the city of Tacoma for a month (no hot rocks required)

https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/1990/september/carrier-lit-tacoma

USS Lexington (CV-2) supplying power to Tacoma, January 1930

 

[sevenhelmet]

Meant to get back to this sooner, but as you said, the idea was for dedicated humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, ie, the ship would be used year round with an emphasis on hurricanes during that time of the year. Figured either State or DOT might have a better chance of funding, anything going through the Pentagon would have a low priority. Perhaps using something like the National Security Multi- Mission Vessels like Empire State VII that DOT is currently building might be better than an older LSD - although the ships only have a single helo pad, they do have roll on / roll off capability.

Empire State VII - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Also found this feature from USNI when in 1929 the carrier USS Lexington went pierside and supplied power to the city of Tacoma for a month (no hot rocks required)

https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/1990/september/carrier-lit-tacoma

View attachment 43917
USS Lexington (CV-2) supplying power to Tacoma, January 1930

Thanks for sharing. Looks like a unique situation that the ship lent itself well to solving.