Second hand battleships

One of the reasons some U.S. aid may have been turned away by the Burmese government is that some of the assistance would come from warships. The U.S. Navy has a lot of capacity to do good, but even smaller detachment of ships still could pack a serious punch. We do have strictly hospital ships, such as the USNS Mercy shown below, but they’re only part of our response capability. One possible solution, suggested my friend and colleague Bryan Shea, might be to transfer some older ships to the State Department rather than selling or simply decommissioning them.’

The idea would face complications. To be effective the ship(s) would probably need to be forward deployed, perhaps combining aid with public diplomacy when there isn’t a disaster to respond to. Piracy can be a real issue in southeast Asia and aid teams often are targeted by spoilers or those simply seeking to rob them. An old nuclear carrier would have the advantage of fast movement but would raise a whole new class of concerns. But ultimately for our civilian agencies to be effective they must be in the field, and for large parts of the world, the field can be the oceans.

Image taken by Telstar Logistics and used under a Creative Commons license.

Comments

[Moti]

I don't really know how feasible it is, but is it really that bad? If they're under State Department control, couldn't they still be based out of Navy ports? Those are already all over the place, and would generally negate problems with pirates. They could also get naval escorts for a while to cut down that problem, as well. I realize it may look military, but those parts could stay well off-shore.

I think the real problem here would ultimately be one of recruitment; where are you going to get all the people who are supposed to be waiting around and getting ready to go provide aid? I know there's a lot of volunteering going on in the US, but I don't know that there's that many non-military people that want to go wait somewhere around the world in case of a natural disaster or such. Any ideas on that?