War coming? USA Transportation Command, in cooperation with the U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command and the Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration, kicked off a massive snap sealift exercise yesterday across the United States. It involves an unprecedented 28 ships from the Ready Reserve Force, a fleet of support ships with merchant marine crews that would be vital during any large scale conflict, but which has experienced serious readiness problems in recent years leading to concerns that they would be unable to support a sustained conflict abroad.
The exercise, aptly nicknamed Turbo Activation, began on Sept. 16, 2019, and involves crews from the Ready Reserve Force getting no-notice orders to "activate" their ships and get them ready for operations. The general goal of these exercises, four of which generally occur every fiscal year, is to validate the readiness of the vessels involved and test the ability of merchant mariners to get them operational within an assigned timeframe. How long a crew has to prepare varies from ship to ship and can be anywhere from four to 20 days.
"The activated ships are directed to transition from a reduced operating status to a fully crewed status, with the quarters made habitable and cargo gear ready, within five days," according to a press release from U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM). "Activations are commonly followed immediately by a sea trial."
During any major contingency, these vessels would provide absolutely vital logistics capabilities, especially it there was a need to move large contingents of ground forces into a theater during the early phases of a particular operation. During sustained operations, these ships would become a critical link in the logistics chain.
"These exercises typically involve only a few ships, but this event targets 28 vessels for activation to provide a better assessment of the readiness of U.S. sealift forces than can be accomplished with fewer activations," U.S. Transportation Command's statement said. "This scale will also stress the underlying support network involved in maintaining, manning and operating the nation’s ready sealift forces."