The size of the Japanese disaster makes relief efforts look
woefully puny; humanity needs more powerful tools to deliver aid.
More quakes will come, some larger, and most nations will need far
more help than well-prepared Japan.
Since most of the world’s population lives near the
shoreline, bringing the required level of aid to bear is properly a
naval mission. Already two U.S. Navy landing ships and a command
ship are on scene in Japan, and about a dozen more Navy ships are
arrive day by day. The 40,000-ton assault ships are suited to
disaster relief with their flight decks and amphibious capabilities
— not to mention their Marine Corps complements.
But the role to be played by our two, 100,000-ton
nuclear-powered super-carriers, the USS George Washington
and USS Ronald Reagan will be immense, even out of
proportion to their displacement. These are superb vessels for
disaster intervention.
As a former naval officer, I am awed by the capabilities
of these ships. As a student of naval history, I also remember
Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet, with its demonstration of
power and peaceful purpose, and I believe we should combine the
super-carrier and fleet concepts for a new, humanitarian
mission.
The First Fleet
Every sailor knows that the original Great White Fleet of
sixteen battleships sailed on an around-the-world goodwill mission
in 1907 at the direction of President Roosevelt. It demonstrated
that while the United States had attained global reach, and that
while its sea power might worry others, America’s intentions were
peaceful. The Fleet’s white color scheme symbolized not surrender,
but purity of purpose in an idealistic time.
The United States can reaffirm its ideals in this century
with a new Great White Fleet. The U.S. Navy has inactive
super-carriers which could easily, even relatively inexpensively,
be converted to disaster-relief ships. We should do this because we
are America: Americans would rather save nations than destroy them,
because The Fleet would demonstrate American compassion in the wake
of disaster, and because America is the only nation that
can.
Natural disasters like those in Haiti, Chile, Pakistan,
New Zealand, China, and Japan strain national and local resources
to the breaking point. Immediate needs range from fresh water, food
and shelter to medical supplies and care, to electricity,
transport, heavy construction equipment, and almost every other
civilized necessity. A converted super-carrier — with its size,
flight deck, and carrying capacity — is the perfect vessel to
deliver massive amounts of aid to a disaster-stricken city or
country. And because these carriers are among the fastest ships
afloat, the aid would get their when needed.
We have three idle super-carriers, tied to piers, awaiting
decommissioning but still serviceable, plus one, the USS
Enterprise, due to go inactive in 2013.
We should turn these ships into a Great White Fleet for
the twenty-first century and give it a humanitarian mission. TR’s
ghost would flash his toothy grin, and our country’s pride and
prestige would get a terrific boost.
What Could a Super-Carrier Do?
Many quake-stricken Haitians remember the arrival of the
super-carrier USS Carl Vinson as a sign of hope restored.
Many Japanese will probably see the USS George Washington,
now in Tokyo Bay, and the USS Ronald Reagan
the same way.
These ships can supply, for example, 400,000 gallons of
fresh water daily; they can deliver large amounts of electrical
power to an area where more than a million people lack it. They can
carry food and medical supplies, feed thousands from their mess
facilities, and supply landing space for helicopters on logistical
and rescue runs. They can act as hospital ships, and also supply
trained crew members for rescue work. But that’s just the
beginning; they could do far more than that. In reality, they are
limited only by the imaginations of their expert, inventive crews
and the requirements of the population in need.
Now imagine what a demilitarized version of one of these
super-ships could do; freed of it’s usual military load-out, a
super-carrier could become a floating city, carrying mountains of
supplies ranging from antibiotics to picks, shovels, and everything
in between. We still remember the many days it took to airlift
meaningful amounts of supplies to Haiti; a single super-carrier
might satisfy all needs in a single trip. Thus, a converted
super-carrier, especially with a few shallow-draft support vessels,
would be the best relief ship possible.
First, they could carry vast amounts of food and medicine.
Holds formerly dedicated to military stores and aviation fuel could
be restructured as warehouses, living quarters, and hospital
facilities for the homeless and injured. On their hangar decks,
they could carry quantities of heavy construction equipment —
cranes, bulldozers, backhoes, cement mixers, portable generators —
to aid in rescue, rubble removal, and initial reconstruction. They
could carry larger diesel power plants for onshore use and the fuel
to power them.
Just as importantly, because communications is one of the
first things to fail in a natural disaster, and one of the most
necessary to recovery, the super-ships could carry telephones and
cell-phone towers, laptop computers, wireless Internet gear,
satellite ground stations, thousands of civil and police
walkie-talkies — everything needed to restore life-saving,
efficient communications. Even the most devastated city would be
relinked to the world even as the super-carrier neared
port.
The non-nuclear USS Kitty Hawk and USS
Constellation are presently floating at pier-side in
Bremerton, WA, and the USS John F. Kennedy is on donation
hold in Philadelphia awaiting conversion into a museum ship. Those
carriers could be made available quickly for demilitarization and
modification. Since they are oil-burning ships, their
power-generation capabilities eventually would be limited by their
bunker capacity, but the Navy has tankers for that. Surpassed only
by the nearly endless electrical generating capacity of a nuclear
carrier, they could handle the mission perfectly. And since they
are already on the inactive list, their conversion would not
diminish the Navy’s readiness.
Deploying The Great White Fleet
Where would we station them? We should follow the military
practice of pre-positioning; fill them with the necessities and
station them around the world so that they would be available where
needed as soon as possible. I’d port one in Pearl Harbor to cover
the Pacific Rim (including our own West Coast), another at Diego
Garcia in the Indian Ocean to cover East Africa, South Asia, and
Australia, and a third in Mayport, FL, to cover the North Atlantic.
A fourth, when available, could be located in Argentina or Brazil,
allowing for a quick dash along the coast, around Cape Horn, or
across the South Atlantic to West Africa.
Except for caretaker crews, just enough to get underway
and man the flight deck, most personnel (largely civilian) could
remain stateside until needed, and be flown to the ships en route
aboard US Navy COD transports. Because the ships would usually be
idle, staffing and maintenance cost would be low, just as with
today’s forward-deployed supply ships.
Of course, one question is “Where will the money come
from?” Among them America’s billionaires, most with some claim to
philanthropy, could afford to convert and supply four
disaster-relief super-carriers. After all, they would not be paying
to build these ships from the keel up. Also remember that when the
Persians were coming, Athenian merchants put up the money to build
the triremes that defeated them. That’s a tradition worth
reviving.
Barring that, make this an international program with
every coastal nation contributing a fair share.
Meanwhile, imagine the USS Kitty Hawk, the
JFK, the Constellation — or the iconic USS
Enterprise with its eight nuclear reactors — gleaming,
demilitarized, converted for disaster intervention, and painted a
blinding white sailing into some shattered port to save lives, heal
the injured, feed the hungry, house the homeless, clear the
wreckage, and help restore both power and civilization.
I can’t imagine a better second career for any retired
warrior; it would be in the highest tradition of American morality
and the U.S. Navy. And not only would Roosevelt’s ghost approve,
but the hundreds of thousands The Fleet could rescue would
appreciate one of America’s greatest strengths, its
idealism.
