\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWith Russia\u2019s reemergence as a menace in Europe, the U.S. Army has been laying the foundations\n to fight once again on the continent it defended through most of the \n20th century. But if war were to break out tomorrow, the U.S. military \ncould be hard-pressed to move the number of tanks, heavy guns and \nequipment needed to face off with Russian forces.
\nAnd even if the Army could get there in numbers, then the real problems would start: how would the U.S. sustain them?
\n\n The U.S. sealift capacity \u2014 the ships that would ultimately be used to \ntransport Army equipment from the states to Europe or Asia \u2014 is orders \nof magnitude smaller than it was during World War II. Combine that with \nthe fact that the commercial shipbuilding industry in the U.S. is all \nbut gone, and the U.S. can\u2019t launch the kind of massive buildup of \nlogistics ships it undertook during wartime decades ago.
\nAmong the ships the country has for sealift and logistics forces, the Government Accountability Office has found a steady increase in\n mission-limiting equipment failures, which raises questions about how \nmany might actually be available if the balloon goes up.
\n\n The ships the U.S. counts among its ready stock available for a \nlarge-scale contingency are 46 ships in the Ready Reserve Force, 15 \nships in the Military Sealift Command surge force, and roughly 60 \nU.S.-flagged commercial ships in the Maritime Security Program available\n to the military in a crisis,
\n\n The 46 Ready Reserve Force ships, overseen by the Maritime \nAdministration, are old and rapidly approaching the end of their hull \nlife, as are many of the senior engineers who are still qualified and \nable to work on the aging steam propulsion plants.
\nWe\u2019ve solved the problem of war
\nfoolish Pentagon not designing tanks that fit neatly in standard containers.
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Don’t we have yards full of spare tanks in Europe for exactly this situation?
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