Manning the Ready Reserve Force
Abstract
Sealift is needed for National Defense. The best source of sealift is a healthy Merchant Marine. The U.S. Merchant Marine is in a serious downward spiral, to make up for the lack of available commercial ships in the RRF (a subset of the NDRF) was created. These ships are laid up in increased states of readiness and are dependent on the existing pool of available merchant mariners for manning. Unfortunately as the Merchant Fleet declines mariners available to man the RRF also dwindles, until now there is serious doubt that there are sufficient mariners available to provide crews for the RRF. Numerous studies of this problem have been based on statistics, exercises and speculation. The activation of the RRF for Desert Shield/Desert Storm involved 80% of the ships and was the only real exercise of the RRF to date. Lessons learned from Desert Shield/Desert Storm bear on the validity of the previous studies and the conclusions drawn. This paper will consider only the issue of manning for the RRF in it's present and planned size. The research involve published and unpublished documents relating to the RRF and information gleaned from government databases available to the author. The chief findings of the study are that a quantitative and qualitative manning problem exists and is becoming worse. The problem is greatly exacerbated by present procedures for distributing the manpower. Solutions have been proposed to increase available manpower. These include a civilian reserve program, Navy Reserve manning and programs to enhance the present system.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADA267539
Entities
People
- Frank J. Flyntz
Organizations
- Naval War College