By JACK DORSEY, The Virginian-Pilot
© October 5, 2006
NORFOLK — As the Navy struggles to increase the size of its dwindling fleet, what’s known as the “other navy” is having little trouble.
Rear Adm. Carol Pottenger has about 40 ships under her wing now, including oilers, ammunition ships, salvage vessels, hospital ships, ocean tugs and combat stores ships.
And she expects more.
Pottenger runs the Military Sealift Fleet Support Command in Norfolk, which mans, equips and maintains the fleet of ships owned and operated by the government. Unlike Navy warships, these are manned by civilian crews, which can be as small as one-third the size of Navy crews that once sailed them.
“We’ve made a business case that convinced the Navy this is the right thing to do, and it’s based primarily on the minimum manning concept,” she said.
The oiler Bridge, for example, which Pottenger previously commanded, had a crew of 600 uniformed Navy sailors. When it was turned over to the sealift command, it needed only 120 civilian mariners and a cadre of five to 10 sailors to handle communications.
Automation in the engine room and on the bridge and the elimination of weapons systems allowed the crew to shrink.
The Military Sealift Command’s overall armada of about 185 non combatant ships largely goes uncounted when the Navy talks about its fighting fleet shrinking to 282 ships today.
The Navy has dropped from nearly 600 ships at the height of the military buildup during the Reagan administration; projected budgets indicate the figure will fall to 200 or 220, Adm. Mike Mullen, chief of naval operations, has said. He wants Congress to boost the number to 313 ships by 2012.
The civilian-crew program began in the 1970s and has expanded as the Navy sought to save money and become more efficient, Pottenger said.
The biggest savings comes from smaller crews, swapping crews while the cargo ships remain deployed overseas, and keeping the ships at sea longer than the traditional six months that Navy ships are away.
Crews can take vacations, get mandated training ashore or fill in on other ships while the ships spend more time at sea, supporting the fleet.
While Pottenger’s fleet of 40 ships, known as the Naval Fleet Auxiliary Force , is counted in the 282-ship Navy total, another 136 the sealift command operates or charters are not, she said.
Those include about 24 special-purpose ships, such as research, cable repair and missile range instrumentation ships; 36 ships pre positioned overseas carrying military equipment ; 28 s ealift s hips, carrying petroleum products; and a reserve force of 48 ships that can be quickly activated.
All have civilian crews.
Ships that belong to the Military S ealift C ommand are known as United States Naval Ships, or USNS ships, but are not commissioned as Navy warships. A gold and blue stripe is painted on their smokestacks to distinguish them from USS Navy ships. T hey also carry the prefix T before their hull numbers.
This summer, a new class of sealift command cargo ships arrived in Hampton Roads, built with minimum crew manning in mind. Called the Lewis and Clark class, or T-AKE class, for dry cargo/ammunition ships, the namesake ship uses just 124 crew members and is the first of 11 ships expected in the next five years. Four are coming to Norfolk.
Cmdr. Bill Power is in charge of an 11-person Navy detachment aboard the Lewis and Clark. His sailors – storekeepers and operations specialists – keep track of inventory and handle communications.
The detachment usually is aboard a year before getting new Navy assignments, compared with sailors on warships who sign up for about three years.
On most Navy ships, sailors sleep in open-bay berthing, with 30 or more in a cramped space. It stays that way until a sailor is promoted to petty officer first class, Power said.
Aboard Lewis and Clark, there are no open bays. So everyone, from seaman on up, military or civilian, has a two-person stateroom, which is “better accommodations then I had when I was a lieutenant,” Power said.
Each room also has a bathroom, something Power didn’t get until he was in charge of a department. “And I had to share that with someone too,” he said.
Pottenger heads a staff of about 470 in Hampton Roads, just 44 of them military. The command also employes 4,400 civilian mariners – expected to grow to 5,600 by 2009.
The mariners belong to the federal civil service, are union members and receive pay about equal to military positions.
While the sealift command doesn’t track annual savings, 2003 reports from the Center of Naval Analysis suggest the savings from using civilian crews.
One report calculated $21.5 million in annual savings because the sealift command operated the Navy’s four salvage ships.
Civilians working the Navy’s four command ships would help save $90 million a year, said another report from the Center for Naval Analyse s .
Pottenger’s command can sail ships with smaller civilian crews because “our merchant mariners are professionals and that is all they do,” she said. “In the Navy, sailors rotate through and you get a different chief engineer every year and a half and a different commanding officer.”
Although Power said it’s fair to call the sealift command ships “the other navy,” he said the civilian crews are highly skilled.
“These folks aboard this ship are as competent as I have ever seen,” he said. “They make difficult tasks easy all the time and are very proud of the fact that they call themselves mariners and they really do sail for a living. I love to work with them.”
Pottenger leaves her job Wednesday after a year to take command of Expeditionary Strike Group Seven in November. It is based in Okinawa, Japan, and is known as Amphibious Group One.
She will become the first woman to lead a combat strike group.
Reach Jack Dorsey at (757) 446-2284 or
[email protected].
