WASHINGTON – Weeks of disagreement over the future of the Navy's biggest supply ships has ended with a decision to inactivate one of the four vessels.
"We've been told to continue with the program of record for the USNS Bridge and continue her on course for inactivation," Tom van Leunen, a spokesman for the Military Sealift Command (MSC), which operates the ships, said Wednesday.
The Bridge is one of four fast combat support ships operated by MSC. With a full load displacement of over 50,000 tons, length of 754 feet and powered by gas turbines, the ships — designated T-AOEs — commonly operate with deployed carrier strike groups, carrying fuel, ammunition and other stores to supply warships at sea.
But the turbines mean the ships are costly to run, and their crews of 170 civilian mariners are among the largest in MSC's fleet.
That's made the ships targets of budget-cutters in Washington, who have been butting heads for weeks with planners at Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk and the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, where operators have been arguing to keep them.
The Bridge — ironically the youngest of the four, having been in service for 16 years — is the first to go. The Navy had scheduled her to be inactivated by the end of September — the end of the fiscal year — and MSC has put the ship into a 45-day Reserve Operating Status (ROS) at Bremerton, Washington, meaning the ship could be reactivated in 45 days and is looked after by a very small crew, usually less than 10 sailors.
But Navy and MSC sources said a message was sent out Tuesday to begin putting the ship into Mobilization Category B, more commonly known as "mothballs." In this category, dehumidification and cathodic protection systems are installed, along with flooding alarms and shore-based power systems, and no sailors are assigned. It often takes months to reactivate ships in MobCat B.
Another ship, the Supply, is scheduled to leave active service a year from now.
It is not yet clear how the Navy intends to employ the remaining two ships, Rainier and Arctic.
