Bon Voyage to Army Sailors? Belay That

LCM-8 boats, U.S. Army

Here’s Perry with another essay, this time looking into the Army’s Brown Water Fleet (the Army has littoral and inland waterways boats- who knew?) and weighs the impact of realigning this capability. I’ll let Perry take it from here:

Perry Gaskill
A TAH post from last month predicting the end of Army soldier-sailors apparently had some accuracy issues. Among those reporting that the Army would “divest a majority of its watercraft and maritime capability” was the usually reliable shipping blog gCaptain which apparently missed some detail:

“U.S. Army Maritime capabilities will be radically reduced this year as the service deactivates and divests itself of numerous vessels, watercraft equipment, watercraft systems, Soldiers, and Units.”gCaptain writer Michael Carr said.

Carr is a retired CWO who served as an Army Reserve mariner.

“My fear is the Army doesn’t understand what we have or what we’re getting rid of,”Carr said recently in a phone interview with Stars and Stripes..

“I am concerned the Army will have to respond to something in Southeast Asia or South America, somewhere with hostile shores or underdeveloped ports, and we will need this capability and we won’t have it.”

According to sources quoting both an Army memo and separate Power Point deck from last year, the actual reduction plans are to phase out only the Army Reserve component which falls under the larger Army Maritime umbrella. Current estimates are this would affect 27 Reserve boats out of a 105-vessel Army fleet. Most of the Reserve craft are apparently stationed near New Orleans, including some using civilian docks and moorings. Around 746 people would also be affected by the change.

Those boats getting scrubbed from inventory include the slow 73-foot LCM-8 “Mike” boats which date back to the late 1950s, and lack the capacity to carry larger tanks such as the M1A2 Abrams. Also tagged for reduction are the Army’s larger 174-foot Landing Craft Utility (LCU)boats which will be reduced by 18 from a current count of 35.

This may not be an entirely bad idea. As any owner of a wooden sailboat could probably tell you, restoration and routine maintenance of aging vessels can be a lot like building a bonfire out of $100 bills. Some estimates are that the Mike boats are currently costing the Army $600,000 per year in maintenance.

Nor is the decision to retire the LCMs a bolt from the blue. In late 2017, the Army awarded a $1 Billion contract to the Portland, Oregon based company Vigor for a prototype and construction of a faster next-generation 100-foot Maneuver Support Vessel (Light) or MSV(L) to replace the Mike boats. Vigor announced last week that it would be shifting production of the MSV(L) to a shipyard on the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington where it plans to build as many as 36 of the new vessels by the year 2027.

Thanks, Perry. “A boat is a hole in the water into which one throws money” is just as true for the Army as anyone else.

Category: Big Army, Guest Post