Securing the Commercial Maritime Industry
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- Опубликовано: 20 сен 2024
- Admiral Foggo sits down with renowned shipping expert, Dr. Salvatore Mercogliano, to discuss what the national security community should know about commercial shipping and the most immediate issues facing the commercial shipping sector.
Awesome Sal 👍🙏🏻🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Great assessments from Sal!
Simply outstanding. BTW, nice bit of important history at the end, how NOUS encouraged formation on USNL. I was the 12th enlisted member to be elected into NOUS membership, and am equally proud to say I was the first enlisted USN sailor to be a national officer of the Naval Order of the United States. Make the United States Merchant Marine Great Again.
When I worked at Avondale Shipyards in the 1990's, we were building commercial product tankers right along side USNS fleet oilers and US Navy LSD's. It's not like we can't do it. Sadly, Avondale was shut down in 2014, along with a lot of other shipyards around that time. We as a nation are perfectly capable of building ships for the navy as well as for commercial interests, we just have to have the will to do it. My fear is that we find ourselves in a peer to peer conflict and get caught flat footed, without the infrastructure in place to ramp up production when we need it most. Our sealift capacity is woefully inadequate, and if we don't fix it, someday we will pay the price. I don't think it's a matter of if, but when the bill comes due for our reluctance to invest in our maritime infrastructure.
It’s Sal!
Sal, what do you anticipate would happen if we immediately needed a fleet of merchant marine shipping to support a protracted war but had no supply source for steel. The Chinese could easily deprive us of the materials to build out any significant number of vessels. We also need to support at least a minimum manufacturing capability in order to have a sustained military response to any crisis. The initial 6 to 8 weeks would be one thing but 6 to 8 months would be something entirely different.
I knew our Merchant Marine was shrinking as young seamen like myself had a hard time getting sea time back in the late 60s and early 70s. So I stayed ashore to pursue a career in construction. But the problem was clearly set out by John McPhee in his 1990 book "Looking For A Ship." We went from thousands of US flagged ships after WW2 to a couple of hundred in 1988. We've known about this situation for half a century, so let's do something about it while we can.
This was a great and much needed discussion… followed Sal over here. I don’t think the Navy has done good job advocating for sea power. I lot of the lack of progress is self inflicted I.e. Billions spent on LCS’s with little return on investment. Any business 101 student can tell you that for logistical reasons you settle on 1 not 2 different hulls. Problems with the Reagan systems. I’m still not convinced in a conflict the weapons elevators will function with the technology used. There have need a lot of bad choices made with the resultant bad publicity that has hurt the Navy’s image and I won’t even bring up the ‘Fat Leonard’ disaster !
Well, all of it makes sense when you think about it thusly: the navy really never intended any of it to end up in combat. It's just a lot of money pouring into the military industrial complex for baubles and beads that look pretty on a shelf in peacetime.
That's what happens when you start turning weapons programs into section 8 housing for big corporations.
You get the lcs boondoggle, the f35 money hole, the manta drone drain, that stupid railgun, etc etc etc.
You *don't* get support vessels and infrastructure, because those would be beneficial to someone other than Lockheed.
Different country with different people in the 1940s.