US Navy Now Wants To Retire One Of Its Two Hospital Ships: USNS Mercy USNS Comfort

The US Navy Now Wants To Retire One Of Its Two Hospital Ships, The Navy's two hospital ships are expensive to operate and maintain, but offer capabilities found in no other Navy in the world.

Faced with growing difficulties sustaining and modernizing its existing fleet, the need to address the underlying issues behind a spate of deadly accidents and other controversies, and a desire to increase the total number of ships in its inventory, the U.S. Navy has many different priorities to balance when it put together its latest budget request. But at least one part of its new, broad plans, includes a decision to retire one of its two unique hospital ships, possibly as early as the end of 2019, a move that has already rankled some members of Congress.

At present, the Navy has two large hospital ships, the USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort, which it received in 1986 and 1987 respectively. Converted from oil tankers, each of the nearly 900-foot long ships displaces more than 69,500 tons and has a crew of more than 1,200 individuals when operating at full capacity. Both are part of Military Sealift Command, the service’s hybrid military-civilian logistics and support arm, which is itself under the operational control of U.S. Transportation Command, or TRANSCOM. “I’m a big fan of hospital ships, because I love the fact that we can help injured and ill [service] members,” U.S. Air Force General Darren McDew, head of TRANSCOM, told legislators during a hearing on March 8, 2018. This position immediately seemed to clash with the Navy’s plan to put Mecry or Comfort in mothballs sometime over the next 18 months. Each of the two ships can accommodate 1,000 patients in total, including 80 in intensive care. There is a landing pad amidships so helicopters can rapidly deliver casualties and there is a hangar area to embark Seahawk helicopters as well. The ships are designed to be stable enough for surgeons to perform their delicate work in any of 12 operating rooms. There are a host of other specialized facilities, including burn wards and dental suites. Medical staff on board have laboratory, MRI and x-ray equipment to diagnose patients and there is a blood bank and oxygen generating plant. The two vessels even have their own morgue to securely store the dead in a dignified manner if necessary. Without these hospital ships nearby, U.S. forces on land or afloat could have to rely on far less capable mobile field hospitals or the ability to rush seriously wounded individuals, likely via aircraft, to more established facilities far away. Having to airlift personnel to larger hospitals, such as the United States’ Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, a major American medical hub overseas, requires significant resources, and considering a whole region may be a combat zone, it may not be possible at all. Beyond their combat mission, Mercy and Comfort a serve important secondary roles as an on-call tool to respond to natural disasters and other crises involving mass casualties, at home and abroad. One of the two ships have been on hand to aid in disaster relief efforts in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and the continental United States, among others locations. Most recently, Comfort deployed to Puerto Rico following the devastating Hurricane Maria in September 2017. “I was recently in Djibouti and noticed that the Chinese actually had a hospital ship in port over there, and they’re delivering services,” Austin Scott, a Republic Representative from Georgia said in defense of keeping both ships in service at the hearing on March 8, 2018. “For the U.S. to pull back on that soft power side, I think it’s just a – I think it’s a strategic mistake for us.” But while they have proven their worth in many instances and offer unique military and diplomatic benefits, that capability doesn't come cheap. In its 2019 fiscal year budget proposal, the Navy asked for just over $120 million to sustain both ships and their on board facilities, a figure equal to three percent of what the service expects to spend in total operating on maintaining its nearly 300 other ships, including 11 aircraft carriers. In its budget request for the 2019 fiscal year, the Navy says it will be able to save more than $23 million just by having Mercy operate at a so-called “reduced operating status,” or ROS, for 150 of the year’s 365 days. However, putting the ship into ROS leaves it with a skeleton crew of just 70 individuals, less than a tenth of its full compliment. This means it would take significant time and effort to get the ship to full operating status if necessarily in an emergency, which in turn calls into question whether it’s beneficial to keep it in this condition at all. The cost to keep both Mercy and Comfort on active duty is the price one pays for having that kind of unique capability. With the possible exception of China, no other navy in the world operates hospital ships with anywhere near the same capacity. The sole Chinese Type 920 hospital ship, a converted cruise ship with a similar dual military and civic-action role – taking on the names Daishan Dao and Peace Ark during war and peace respectively – can still only accommodate 600 patients in total, far less than its American counterparts. And having just one ship in service could dramatically reduce the ability the Navy’s ability to deploy this capability where and when it might be most necessary. Having one ship on each coast adds important flexibility and having a pair of them at all simply improves the chances that at least one will be operational in a crisis. “We have an obligation to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, and also the civilians across this world… Because there will come a time when we need that [hospital ship capability] and we need to always be ready.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JNNYaINshQ

With all this in mind, it seems that the decision to largely retire one of these vessels is extremely nearsighted, counter-intuitive to the Navy's future battle doctrine and could have horrible consequences should an war erupt.