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msc

The Tug and Salvage Fleet T-ATS(X) has a Builder!

by Craig Hooper on March 26, 2018

As a staunch advocate for the Navy’s tug and salvage fleet, I am thrilled to see the drama-filled T-ATS(X) program head towards production (some history here). It has been a long road for this important but low-profile and oft-ignored vessel–the T-ATS(X) wallowed under multiple RFIs for years. It nearly foundered after several efforts to privatize […]

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As the oil industry races to put modern platform support vessels and anchor handling ships into layup, the eight-ship “tug and salvage” T-ATS(X) program is getting kinda tough to justify. Why build new ships if the Navy can buy suitable hulls for far less? Right now there’s plenty of ships on the market that would make […]

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As the U.S. Navy strives to become a lean-and-mean “warfighting-first” fleet, Pentagon cost-cutters will, by FY 16, reduce the American Navy’s modest rescue, salvage and tug fleet by half–and the mad warrior-accountants may even go farther, entirely eliminating the tug and salvage/rescue fleet and privatizing the whole tug and rescue/salvage mission. Eliminating half the Military […]

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If the U.S. Navy is really putting “Warfighting First“, then, well, why not just turn the non-fighting seamanship, navigation and ship-handling work over to civilian mariners? The connection between the conn and battle at sea is less intimate than ever–and civilian mariners are generally better qualified in ship operations, have more experience conning ships, and […]

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David Larter over at Navy Times has an interesting story up, detailing the average time Navy combatants have spent at sea over the past three years. Go take a look. The data, apparently acquired from the Center for Naval Analyses, is good stuff–you can break it down to the individual ship level for almost every […]

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The future U.S. Navy is full of ferries. And the Nation should not only tolerate them, but embrace them, and accept them for what they are–good, capable, handy-sized ships of civilian origin. In the right CIVMAR hands, ferries are do-anything, economical “environmentally-friendly” platforms, capable of putting right-sized forces in the right place at the right […]

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In a rare–and long overdue–victory for strategic realists, the normally business-first Military Sealift Command (MSC) has abruptly cancelled plans for the JHSV fleet to be operated by civilian contractors. The Green-Eyeshade crowd–the annoying folks who think that war should be run like a modern, “lean” and “just-in-time” business–lost big today. I couldn’t be happier. What’s […]

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Stealth! Low observables! Reduced signatures! Wake reduction! It’s all the rage in naval warfare…Modern navies just won’t leave home without a full suite of pricey features deemed necessary to make a 16,000 ton DDG-1000 dwindle away to a rowboat-sized radar blip. But…outside of that uncomfortable moment when, say, an anti-ship missile starts seeking your vessel, […]

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In the game of “annual” Navy conferences, it seems every naval “Community”, no matter how small, has a conference of their own. Sail on surface ships as a Line Officer? Go to the Surface Navy Association meeting. Special Operators have their convo. Submariners have theirs. Marines have a few. Aviators have whatever they are calling Tailhook […]

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After Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Greenert has spent a year giving stump speeches that, in large part, highlighted the future contributions of civilian-manned ships operated by the Military Sealift Command (MSC) (the AFSB, MLP and JHSV), one might think that the Surface Navy Association (SNA) would get the message and give the humble ‘ole […]

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