BY NATHAN HODGE

The military campaign in Iraq would not have succeeded without a major contribution from private shipping contractors, according to the three-star admiral in charge of Military Sealift Command (MSC).

In an interview last week with Defense Week, Vice Adm. David Brewer said MSC moved over 20 million square feet of equipment to the Persian Gulf in less than four months.

"To use a football analogy, there are 119 NCAA 1A football teams in the country, [and] we delivered enough equipment to fill all NCAA 1A football fields three times," Brewer said. "In the course of about four months."

The massive sealift operation in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom began in earnest at the beginning of this year. At the peak of the operation—March 24—MSC had 167 ships at sea. That equals one ship every 72 miles from the continental United States to Kuwait.

According to Brewer, the surge in sealift would not have been possible without the private sector.

"The lion's share of everything delivered was delivered by contractor-operated ships," he said. "Period. Now some of these [ships] are government owned, but they're all contractor-operated."

Brewer's command operates a fleet of 120 noncombatant ships to deliver military hardware and supplies to U.S. forces around the globe. In event of a major war, ships controlled by MSC would move more than nine-tenths of the military's needs for ammunition, fuel, supplies and spare parts.

But with terrorists targeting shipping lanes—last year, for instance, a small craft laden with explosives crippled the French supertanker Limburg—those supply lines are more vulnerable. And protecting the sealift force has become a much bigger concern for the military.

"Force protection to protect shipping was not necessarily a mission during Desert Storm," said Brewer. "It is a major mission now."

The Navy currently has plans in the works to create a mobility security force to provide better security for cargo ships. But according to Brewer, that force was not yet in place in time for the Iraq campaign.

"There were several things we had to do to make this work," he said. "During the initial surge, we had to man the ships with force-protection teams from the deploying units" such as the Third and Fourth Infantry Divisions.

In addition, the Defense Department activated the 92nd Infantry Brigade, a National Guard unit based out of Puerto Rico.

"We called this team the Guardian Mariners: 1,300 shooters plus 300 command elements," Brewer said. "The Guardian Mariners took on the lion's share of FP [force protection] in the latter part of the war, and will be the FP teams that we will embark during redeployment."

`Dedicated' force

The lesson learned, Brewer said, is "in the future, we will need a dedicated FP surge organization ... element to man our ships."

The Guardian Mariners unit, he added, was more of an improvised solution: "It was really an emergent requirement rather than a built-in requirement."

However, the activation of the Puerto Rican guard unit and the posting of troops as armed cargo supervisors helped remedy one issue of concern for MSC: control of sensitive military cargo.

In the past, MSC's occasional reliance on foreign contractors and foreign-flagged ships for military sealift has prompted concern from oversight.

Last year, the General Accounting Office suggested in a report that the Defense Department "relinquishes control" of sensitive military cargo when it contracts out to foreign ships. The auditor noted that, on a number of the shipments it reviewed—including those carrying helicopters, armored vehicles and artillery pieces—no armed cargo supervisors were on board.

According to Brewer, his command was less dependent on foreign-owned vessels during the build-up to Iraqi Freedom than it was during Desert Storm.

"84 percent of the dry cargo moved went on U.S. government-owned or chartered U.S.-flag [ships]" during recent operations, Brewer said. "Only 16 percent of it went on foreign. Our reliance on foreign flag was significantly less than it was during Desert Storm in terms of total cargo moved."

Still, force protection remains a manpower-intensive job. In budget-planning documents, MSC anticipates investing in security upgrades such as hull-perimeter lighting and intrusion detection systems for its ships. However, many of those upgrades could not be performed before the war started, Brewer said.

"Unfortunately, the war happened before we got all of the technology inserted," he said.

Rotating home

While major combat operations in Iraq may be over, the workload for MSC promises to be intense in the coming months as the military repositions forces post-conflict.

As widely reported, plans to rotate units such as the Third Infantry Division back to the United States has been put on hold while security on the ground in Iraq is reinforced. Currently, around 30 MSC ships are waiting in the Persian Gulf to start moving military hardware out of theater. Of those ships, 19 are large, medium-speed, roll-on/roll-off ships, or LMSRs.

According to Brewer, the LMSR "proved to be the star" of sealift operations.

"Here's an analogy," he said. "During Desert Storm, the average speed [of MSC ships] was approximately 13 knots. When we borrowed the LMSRs that had a top speed of 24 knots, our speed of delivery increased overall to approximately 17 knots. Now four knots equals about three to four days earlier delivery from CONUS [the continental United States] to Kuwait."

Noting that an LMSR carries the equivalent of 3,000 SUVs, Brewer said: "The LMSR provided us with more speed and more capacity, and less round trip."