October 21, 2026:
Recently, more than a dozen guided-missile destroyers supported the GW Bush and the George Washington aircraft carriers, along with an Amphibious Ready Group, in the Indian Ocean and adjacent waters. Two destroyers, Spruance and McFaul, had been in the area for nearly a year.
The American Navy had fifteen warships in the combat zone, and supplying them was difficult. As the old saying goes, amateurs study tactics while professionals concentrate on logistics. The closest supply source was Diego Garcia, an Indian Ocean island. Worse, Diego Garcia was 4,000 kilometers from Iran. To keep the ships off Iran-supplied, the navy relied on the hundred-or-so Military Sealift Command ships.
Precedents exist for what is now taking place off the Iranian coast. Servron, or Service Squadron, supply techniques developed out of necessity during World War II because the vast Pacific lacked sufficient forward bases. These service squadrons became a permanent fixture in the U.S. Navy. Ships now normally stay at sea for up to six months at a time, being resupplied at sea by a Servron. New technologies were developed to support the effective use of the seagoing supply service. Few other navies have matched this capability, mainly because Servron ships are expensive and at-sea replenishment requires extensive training. Western naval experts took note of the Chinese Navy's expansion when Servron-type ships appeared in the late 1990s. That trend has accelerated because China wants to eventually challenge the U.S. Navy throughout the Pacific and needs efficient Servrons to do it.
Meanwhile, the Military Sealift Command/MSC is still having problems recruiting sufficient personnel to man the growing number of ships used by MSC to support American military and diplomatic missions overseas. MSC currently has 140 civilian-crewed ships that replenish U.S. Navy ships, carry out special dedicated operations, preposition combat cargo at sea worldwide, and move military cargo and supplies for deployed U.S. forces and allied nations.
That won’t mean much if MSC can't solve the personnel shortage. So far, at least a dozen ships have been sidelined because no crews were available. MSC needs to fill at least 95 percent of its 4,500 jobs to function fully. To operate at that level, MSC needs 5,500 personnel to provide enough crew so merchant sailors can have one month off duty every four months at sea. This plan became less attractive to MSC sailors. The solution is to change the work routine to four months at sea and two months of downtime.
MSC has faced manning problems since 2020, and the two-month downtime policy is another attempt to address them. Meanwhile, MSC continues to expand and evolve.
Back in 2018, the U.S. Navy completed the conversion of a cargo ship into a Maritime Support Vessel/MSV for Special Operations Command/SOCOM. The ship was built in 2011 for commercial service with Maersk Lines. The U.S. Navy quietly purchased it, and in early 2014 an American shipyard began converting the 20,000-ton roll-on/Roll-off (RO/RO) cargo ship MV Craigside into a seagoing base for SOCOM commandos and support troops. This included renaming the ship to Ocean Trader.
The conversion cost about $ 80 million and included turning the deck into a landing pad for at least two helicopters, plus a forward hangar to house three helicopters for maintenance or to keep them out of bad weather. The ramp for RO/RO of vehicles is in the rear and remains. The Ocean Trader had special windowless communications and planning areas built, as well as spaces for launching and recovering Scan Eagle UAVs. There was a dive locker/chamber for U.S. Navy SEALs to quietly slip into the sea, as well as storage and launch facilities for Rigid Inflatable Boats/RIB like the 11-meter RHIB used by SOCOM and the 12.8-meter Combat Craft Assault/CCA for more difficult insertions of SEALs to a hostile shore.
The CCA is built from composites and shaped for stealth in coastal and riverine operations. Carrying up to eleven personnel, the CCA can be airdropped from a C-17 but is usually launched from larger ships like the Ocean Trader. The Ocean Trader still has a large vehicle deck and can carry a wide variety of vehicles used by SOCOM personnel. It also has climate-controlled storage for a wide range of supplies and a small hospital area, including an operating room and recovery areas.
In 2015, Craigside was renamed Ocean Trader and by 2016 was spotted in the Mediterranean. Commercial ships can be easily tracked using the Automatic Identification System (AIS), and Ocean Trader appeared in Crete for a while in May 2016, in Gibraltar on May 14, 2017, and in Amsterdam on August 16, 2017. Since then, the AIS has been turned off most of the time, as it is with warships. Without AIS, you must rely on visual spotting, which has put Ocean Trader in the Baltic, Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and Black Sea in 2017 and 2018.
The Ocean Trader has a top speed of 36 kilometers per hour, even in heavy seas. Its internal fuel allows it to travel about 14,000 kilometers, and it is equipped for at-sea resupply, including fuel. The ship's crew consists of 50 civilian personnel. These ship handlers require security clearances and lots of experience running cargo ships. At least two crews rotate periodically to give crews time at home and allow the Ocean Trader to remain at sea for long periods. The ship has berths for about 200 special operations personnel or contractors who operate specialized electronic or transport equipment, and when it docks, personnel and some equipment rotate out, and supplies come on.
What’s interesting about the Ocean Trader is that it’s an old idea. In 2004, SOCOM asked the U.S. Navy to investigate modifying a container ship for use as a seagoing base for Special Operations troops. This idea was apparently inspired by incidents in the past decade when SOCOM forces were temporarily based on Navy ships. Off Haiti in 1996 and Afghanistan in 2001, the Navy provided an aircraft carrier, with most of its air wing withdrawn, and replaced it with Army or Special Operations helicopters and personnel. While this tactic demonstrated tremendous flexibility, the Navy could not do it regularly because it tied up carriers and their crews, the Navy's most valuable assets. Then in 2001, the Navy began converting four Ballistic Missile Firing Nuclear subs/SSBNs to carry 154 cruise missiles as well as SOCOM commandos. This included commando equipment and special boats to get them ashore. But these SSGNs lacked the capabilities of an MSV like the Ocean Trader. The SSGNs have proved useful for some largely classified SOCOM missions but not for all the missions SOCOM needed an MSV for.
The 2004 SOCOM proposal was to buy or lease a container ship, paint it gray, and fit it out with crew quarters like those used by oil platform crews, for up to 800 SOCOM operators and 200 support troops, and it got some serious consideration. The facilities on board would include command, medical, recreation, and storage for weapons, ammunition, and explosives. All would all be built into standard modular containers, as the U.S. later did extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan. Container ships have power-generating capability to support refrigerated cargo, so they have plenty of power for military needs, especially communications.
Modified onshore containers could also provide bolted-together structures to serve as a helicopter hangar and flight deck. With this setup, the ship could operate over a dozen SOCOM helicopters, especially the larger MC-47s and V-22. Other containers could hold at least half a dozen RHIBs, launch-and-recovery equipment, and drones.
The concept had several major advantages over the traditional approach of building a new type of military ship. Commercial vessels, even ones the size of aircraft carriers, like large tankers and container carriers, typically require crews of fewer than fifty, rather than the thousands needed for military ships of the same size. A large container ship used for military purposes could be operated by fewer than 100 sailors, compared with 1,100 on an LHD or 3,200 on a Nimitz-class carrier. It would also be easier to upgrade, as the modules could be removed and replaced independently.
MSC would own and operate these ships using civilian crews. The Navy would keep one or two of these ships always ready, plus a reserve of special containers ashore for use on additional MSC-owned ships or those leased from commercial users. The container ship conversion never happened, but some MSC ships quietly moved SOCOM personnel and equipment around, though nothing as customized as the Ocean Trader. While the Ocean Trader was created quietly, it wasn't kept secret. The Ocean Trader made frequent port calls and was often photographed by anyone with a smartphone. People took photos often, and they made their way onto the Internet, and suddenly a lot was known about the Ocean Trader. While SOCOM remains quiet on the subject, the Ocean Trader has been at sea almost constantly for over two years, with only brief stops in foreign ports, suggesting the ship is being used regularly.
James F. Dunnigan