Part one
CMS Launches ‘Returning from Ebb Tide’
The MOC
By Admiral James G. Foggo, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
April 1, 2025
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Last month, CMS published its first book project: Returning from Ebb Tide: Renewing the United States Commercial Maritime Industry, an edited volume featuring essays from experts and practitioners on the challenges and opportunities facing the U.S. commercial maritime sector.
Digital copies of the book are available free for download from Marine Corps University Press.
Please join CMS for an exclusive book launch event next week at Sea-Air-Space 2025!
This article is adapted from the book’s foreword and previews the volume’s contents.
As a “plank owner” and dean of the Center for Maritime Strategy (CMS) of the Navy League of the United States, when we opened for business in January 2022, I needed a mission statement. With the help of my small team, we settled on the following:
Our mission is to strengthen American national security through its Sea Services by conducting policy-driven research, advocacy, and education on the relationship between maritime power and international security.
In the coming months, I received a lot of unsolicited advice as to our priorities for research, advocacy, and content generation. Some pundits speculated that CMS would be yet another pro-Navy organization that reflexively advocated for more carriers and submarines. Others assumed that we would simply be a voice for the maritime industrial base’s prime contractors. However, my thinking was to do something different in our advocacy that would surprise people. Hence, the publication of this edited volume of essays by noted authors that examine the challenges and opportunities facing the once-robust U.S. commercial maritime industry.
This book tells a sad story of decline in our nation’s commercial maritime capability for a variety of reasons—the peace dividend in the post–Cold War era; elimination of subsidies for the commercial maritime sector during the Ronald W. Reagan administration; and globalization whereby we outsourced our maritime lift requirements to foreign carriers, some of whom may not be friendly to us in times of war.
It is one thing to lament the inability of our current maritime industrial base to produce aircraft carriers, warships, icebreakers, and submarines on time and on budget; yet, policy makers and commentators often ignore the atrophy of our commercial maritime fleet. This is the fleet that supported the Allies to defeat authoritarian regimes in the First and Second World Wars. This is also the fleet that ferried hundreds of thousands of troops and millions of pounds of equipment in support of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm and then brought them home. This fleet is a shadow of its former self, and this book represents a clarion call to action. Failure to revitalize America’s once-great merchant fleet will spell sure defeat the next time the United States finds itself fighting a major conflict. We cannot afford to idly observe the status quo in the commercial maritime sector. We have too many enemies and there is too much at stake. We must take drastic measures to meet the shortfalls in U.S.-flagged merchant shipping before it is too late.
This book is divided into three sections: The Current State of America’s Commercial Shipping Industry, The Elements of Strategic Sealift, and The Merchant Marine. I can think of no better author than CMS’s own nonresident fellow, John D. McCown Jr., to kick off chapter one, entitled “Why a Standalone U.S. Commercial Fleet?” McCown is the author of Giants of the Sea: Ships & Men Who Changed the World, which is the story of the magnificent cargo ships and the visionaries who invented them to enable world trade on the high seas. In fact, McCown knew and worked with the legendary Malcolm McLean, who conceived of and operationalized the modern shipping container that revolutionized world trade. It is no wonder, based on McCown’s experience in the industry, why he is so passionate about the U.S. commercial maritime fleet. He begins the journey with the Continental Congress’s letters of marque authorizing merchant Mariners to harass the vastly superior British Royal Navy. Their success helped cement the independence of our country, and in subsequent wars thereafter the U.S. merchant fleet has always played a critical role in sustaining our combat power overseas. Without Henry Kaiser’s Liberty– and Victory-class ships, World War II would have been prolonged and victory would have come at a much greater cost in terms of American and Allied lives.
McCown cites some sobering statistics: the U.S.-flag fleet carried 60 percent of foreign commerce in 1947, declining to 40 percent by 1951, to 5 percent in 1980, and to a miserly 1 percent today. Part of the reason for the decline is the fact that U.S.-flagged vessels are on average three times more expensive to operate than a similar foreign-flagged vessel, making it extremely difficult for U.S. shipping companies to compete in the international market.
Conversely, the U.S. domestic market is reserved for U.S. owned and flagged ships under the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (a.k.a. the Jones Act). McCown has been a fervent supporter of the Jones Act and is often asked by CMS to offer an opinion in support of Jones Act legislation. Pundits claim unfair protectionism in U.S. domestic waterways, when in fact they are missing the point. The Jones Act protects the sanctity of American waterways from foreign competitors and potential nefarious actors as well as preserving U.S. commercial shipping and shipbuilding industries. I am with McCown on this.
McCown explains the reasons for our commercial maritime decline in chapter two: “The Late Cold War and Post–Cold War World of Shipping and the Impact on U.S. Commercial Fleet.” With the advent of flags of convenience during the Cold War, shippers were given options to put cargo on carriers that could compete at lower cost because they circumvented regulatory limitations in the nation where the carrier is registered. Currently, three of the smallest nations in the world have the largest registries of commercial shipping: Panama, Liberia, and the Marshall Islands. While it is tough for U.S.-flagged vessels to compete against their foreign counterparts on cost, it is absolutely essential to have a fleet of U.S.-flagged carriers in time of war. China recognizes this and McCown portrays the stunning contrast between China and the rest of the commercial maritime world as follows:
China now builds 50 percent of the world’s container ships, 97 percent of container equipment, 70 percent of container cranes, controls 14 percent of container ships by flag, represents 40 percent of worldwide volume, and controls or has investments in 357 international container terminals in 63 different countries.
Statistics like these should be a wake-up call for the American people and our policymakers. The rest of the book provides a variety of solutions that could contribute to the rebuilding of the U.S.-flagged commercial fleet and should be taken under serious consideration.
For example, in chapter three, “A Strategy for the Commercial Maritime Industry,” Brent Sadler, prolific writer, friend, former submariner, and Olmsted Scholar, reviews the revolution in shipping that stemmed from Malcolm McLean’s containerization of the industry and the rise of intermodalism. Sadler proposes that we invest in a second shipping revolution enabled by a new “multimodalism.” Sadler portrays multimodalism in the land, sea, air, space, and cyber domains. The five elements of multimodalism include “distributed production, new cargo containers, cargo-carrying drones and dirigibles, diversified port operations, and massive cargo ships that hardly ever make port calls.” By applying blockchain technology to digitize and track the movement of cargo, combined with artificial intelligence to ensure that cargo ends up in the right delivery location, the speed and efficiency realized could once again revolutionize the industry. By also expanding or contracting the size of traditional containers in a scalable way, we could allow greater flexibility and efficiency in the transportation of cargo according to the type of multimodal transport system available. As a trained nuclear engineer, Sadler also explores the potential of next-generation energy solutions and alternate sources of energy in commercial shipping power plants.
This is a perfect segue to chapter 4 entitled, “Savannah’s Legacy: Advancing U.S. Commercial Shipping with Small Nuclear Reactors.” Thomas Davies and Sanjan Shashkumar of CORE POWER take us back to an earlier era when nuclear propulsion was employed on both military and commercial vessels. As an offshoot of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program in the 1960s, this nation produced NS Savannah in 1962, the world’s first nuclear-powered merchant vessel. Perhaps it is time to revisit this option for the latter. Davies and Shashkumar make the case that protectionist measures will not bring the U.S.-flagged fleet out of its slump compared to others on the international market. What is required is an “innovative and domestic technological game changer to regain global competitiveness.” That game changer is available now in the form of marinized advanced nuclear technology.
NS Savannah was a pioneer in the commercial shipping industry with a pressurized water reactor (PWR) unlike its military counterparts. The problem with PWR is the radius around the ship that constitutes an emergency planning zone (EPZ) in the event of a breach of the pressure vessel and subsequent release of fission products because the system is under high pressure.
New technology harnesses the concept of passive safety, whereby without human intervention, the plant renders itself safe such that further analysis can be conducted to resolve any issues. Furthermore, advanced reactor designs, including molten salt reactors, operate at low pressure, thereby reducing the EPZ to a minimal radius, and in most cases contained within the hull of the ship.
Small module reactors (SMR) combined with electric drive onboard commercial ships significantly change the calculations and trade-offs surrounding size, weight, power, and cost that determine a shipboard powerplant’s viability. SMRs powering electric drive would also reduce the carbon footprint of this newly designed ship to near zero, a major benefit for an industry that produces three percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. As an ancillary benefit to the husbanding agent and the port, unused energy from a ship of this class could in the future be used to reverse power the local community and return additional profits to the owner—a win-win for all concerned. The U.S. commercial shipping industry would be wise to invest in this revolution in commercial ship propulsion before our competitors do. In fact, China is already planning its first-ever nuclear-powered container ship.
Vice Admiral Dee Mewbourne, PhD, USN (Ret), leads off part 2 of this book—“The Elements of Strategic Sealift”—with chapter 5, “The Role of U.S. Transportation Command.” Mewbourne is a fellow admiral, a friend, and former commander of Military Sealift Command (MSC) and deputy commander of U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois. The fact that Vice Admiral Mewbourne moved from command of MSC, a component command of USTRANSCOM, and then went on to be the deputy commander of USTRANSCOM, makes incredible sense. USTRANSCOM is one of 11 unified combatant commands in the U.S. Joint Force and is responsible for air and maritime lift across the globe.
Air Mobility Command (AMC) is the air component of USTRANSCOM, responsible for airlift of people and materiel in any and all theaters of operation. In fact, USTRANSCOM conducted the largest noncombatant evacuation operation in history from Kabul, Afghanistan, when the Taliban stormed the capital and the government toppled. To their great credit, AMC moved more than 124,000 people and another 6,000 military personnel to safety.
Likewise, USTRANSCOM moved more than 313 million pounds of equipment to Ukraine in support of the war effort in 2022. Going further back to Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm, USTRANSCOM moved more than 286,000 passengers and 1.2 million short tons of cargo to the theater, 91 percent of which traveled by sea. The ships bearing these personnel or cargo were from the Maritime Administration Ready Reserve Force, Military Sealift Command, U.S-flagged commercial vessels, or foreign-flagged vessels. It is unlikely that we will get that kind of support from foreign-flagged vessels in future conflicts, particularly one taking place in the Western Pacific.
Vice Admiral Mewbourne does a good job of explaining the command relationships that manifest between USTRANSCOM and its component commanders as well as outside contract lift and foreign-flagged vessels. In the final analysis, he concludes that the next war will be won or lost by a belligerent’s ability to conduct logistics and sustain supply lines to forward-deployed forces. It is therefore essential that the nation keep and maintain a robust logistics force capable of operating anywhere on the high seas.
In chapter 6, Dr. Bradley Martin dives deeper into this subject in his chapter entitled, “Sealift: Requirements, Capabilities, and Capacity.” He is a senior policy researcher at Rand. Dr. Martin retired from the Navy as a surface warfare captain after 30 years of service, including four command tours as well as service on the staff of U.S. Forces Japan, the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations staff as an operations analyst, and most recently as the Navy coordinator for participation in Joint Staff and Office of the Secretary of Defense requirements.
Dr. Martin drills down into the details of strategic and intratheater lift requirements for the Joint Force. While MSC provides for some of the nation’s strategic sealift, it also maintains the combat logistics force (CLF) of ships that sustain the requirements for food, fuel, and weapons resupply for afloat major combatants in the fleet. On the other hand, the Maritime Administration (MARAD) maintains a Ready Reserve Force (RRF) of 41 ships to provide fast sealift when necessary. These ships are on a 5- to 10-day activation window, and it is assumed that when called on, they will be ready to go. However, the majority of the RRF is old, with 23 of the vessels aged between 45–49 years. As Dr. Martin points out, periodic “turbo activations” to evaluate the RRF have produced disappointing results: “Fewer than 70 percent of the ships met the time standard and some could not get underway at all.”
The current inventory of MSC and MARAD platforms and their different mission sets presents both strategic and tactical dilemmas for the unified combatant commanders. First, with the loss of Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility as a defense fuel support point in Hawaii, there is now more emphasis on the requirement to refuel from bulk fuel carriers and tankers at sea. Second, with new doctrinal concepts of operation like distributed maritime operations for the Navy and expeditionary advanced base operations for the Marine Corps, sustaining a distributed force in remote areas will require more sealift and sustainment from MARAD and the CLF, which we do not have. As Dr. Martin points out, the Services have not yet articulated a refined set of priorities and requirements against which we should apply our limited resources—is it fuel, replenishment, lift, or prepositioning of assets? The Western Pacific will be the worst-case scenario in the event of a conflict with China. It will certainly not be the unopposed lift of troops, tanks, fuel, equipment, food, and other resources of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Based on the “Davidson Window” of 2027, the time to address Dr. Martin’s concerns is right now.