Ever since the end of the Cold War, Big Navy saw dollar signs in trying to push just about anything haze gray but without fixed weapons to the Military Sealift Command whose ships are still Navy-tasked but manned by civil service mariners (CIVMARs) rather than bluejackets. Up until then, MSC had previously just manned sealift ships and provided crews for pre-positioned ships.
The theory was that the civvies could be employed at less than the cost of active duty military (when you add Tricare, BAH, retirement, etc), and you could get away with furloughing a lot of them if not needed (try doing that with an E-6). Plus the billets per ship could be quietly reduced, further saving dollars.
This saw most of the Navy’s logistics, fleet support, and special mission auxiliaries transfer over in the 1990s (as USNS vs USS), and most remain there. This included oilers (AOs becoming T-AOs), hospital ships (T-AHs), dry cargo/ammo ships (T-AKE), fleet tugs, rescue ships, salvage ships, etc.
As new ships are added in what used to be Navy missions– things like Expeditionary Fast Transport Vessels (T-EPF) and Expeditionary Mobile Bases (T-ESB)– they have gone to the MSC instead.
Then came mixed crews, with the MSC driving and operating things like the big LCCs, tenders (AS/AD), et. al. while the rest of the watch bills are filled with Navy rates.
In short, by now something like 1 in 5 Navy ships aren’t manned by the Navy.
The money to be made sounds decent, such as $65,768 entry-level Ordinary Seaman for deck rates, $92,785 for a Pumpman in the Engine department, $89,947 for an Assistant Cook, $73,549 for an Assistant Storekeeper, etc. but there are lots of caveats to that and they need to address glaring reasons for the dangerous the shortfall (MSC is always recruiting for just about everything). Such as the fact that mariners not assigned to a ship are not getting paid.
Keep in mind there are just 6,000 CIVMARs on hand but ideally you need more like 10,000 to pull off the taskings they have (especially if there is a crisis activation), and the MSC looks at these guys the same way as a government employee working a desk job in Washington. This means entry-level guys get just 13 days off a year plus some allotments for extra shore leave if underway (1 day for 15 steaming).
Retention is an even bigger problem, as senior guys who carry the certs and ratings for this kind of work can get a lot better job driving a cruise ship, commercial RO-RO, or tanker, without the burn-out and hassle you get at the MSC– especially when getting shot at.
It has gotten so bad that the MSC plans to lay up 17 ships, some of them in dire need forward deployed:
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 Thursday.
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 to USNI News on Thursday. Two sources identified the forward-deployed sea bases as USS Lewis Puller (ESB-3), based in Bahrain in U.S. Central Command, and USS Herschel “Woody” Williams (ESB-4), based in Naval Support Activity Souda Bay, Greece, and operated in U.S. European and Africa Command.
Sal Mercogliano, a maritime historian at Campbell University and former merchant mariner, had a great video a couple months ago discussing crewing issues with the MSC and the Royal Navy’s Royal Fleet Auxiliary, which suffers from the same talent drain.