The head of U.S. Transportation Command asked a key Senate panel for the authority to buy 10 more used cargo vessels to support American forces overseas in combat.
Air Force Gen. Randall Reed said in a Thursday hearing, unless moves are made quickly by 2032, “54 percent of the government-owned sealift ships will reach the end of their service life.” He added, 85 percent of the nation’s combat power is in the United States and would need to be delivered by sea or air for operations overseas.
Acknowledging President Donald Trump’s call to overhaul American shipbuilding to compete with China, the Maritime Administration and command need to “get ships in any way we can,” Reed said.
For speed, that means buy used but newer vessels to support U.S. sealift.
Reed would like to buy four per year, but “two at a minimum” to maintain necessary sealift capacity. The estimated cost for two would be about $210 million.
In his prepared testimony, Reed said, “working with MARAD, we purchased seven used vessels and expect to purchase two more in FY25 with over 1.5 million useful square feet of capacity. We are grateful that Congress increased the statutory limit to ten used ships in the FY25 National Defense Authorization Act. The Navy and MARAD are expected to reach that ten-ship limit in FY26 yet our ability to maintain credible capacity will remain constrained because 30 ships are scheduled to retire between 2026 and 2034.”
Reed told the Senate Armed Services Readiness and Management subcommittee he needs more flexibility to buy, “refurb them here in the States and put them to sea.” He put the time in the shipyard to bring the vessels up to U.S. standards at nine to 14 months.
When questioned, Reed said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s announced 5 to 8 percent cuts in Pentagon programs for this year would “limit our flexibility to shop the market” for newer ships “and get them at the right price.” He also called on Congress to fully fund the maritime security and tanker security programs, preserve the Jones Act and cargo-preference laws to maintain sealift capacity.
Newer ships are critical to retaining younger sailors and merchant mariners, “so we can call on that force to sail” in a crisis, he added. Acknowledging that 20 vessels in MARAD’s Ready Reserve Fleet are 50 years old, Reed said “they would not perform” to the level desired in the contested environments of 21st century warfare. He added the last time he was aboard a steam-powered ship was as a teenager.
“The sailors and crews we put on them need something younger” than steam-powered ships to build careers on.
Reed told the panel that Military Sealift Command’s decision to sideline 17 ships was taken to “manage the crews in a sustainable manner.” USNI News quoted Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck in explaining “that number’s based on again the number of mariners that we need to get us to 95 percent [manning]. It is aligning the force so that we are most ready and that we are getting after the fleet requirements.”
MSC crews the Navy’s logistics and support vessels, with 4,500 billets across the command. There are about 5,500, or 1.27 mariners per billet, to fill positions on an MSC ship. That ratio means a mariner is at sea for four months, off for one month and then must return to work. The new move will allow mariners more time on shore.
