MARAD Awards $6B in Contracts for Ready Reserve Operations
The Maritime Administration has awarded seven private ship management companies with new 10-year contracts to operate the 51 vessels in the Ready Reserve Force (RRF), the strategic sealift fleet that is maintained in layup status.
“When our military is called to respond, the RRF delivers the tanks, the trucks, and the supplies,” said Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy in a statement. “These ships don’t just support the mission – they are the linchpin that makes the mission possible. National security depends on strategic sealift, and strategic sealift depends on the RRF.”
The maintenance contracts provide for $6.2 billion worth of operating expenses over a 10-year period, amounting to an average of roughly $120 million per ship. The funds cover crewing, maintenance, repairs, activation out of layup, operation, and post-usage deactivation. The RRF ships are kept minimally-crewed in reduced operating status most of the time, and priority hulls are intended to be capable of getting crewed up and ready with about five days of notice. Periodic activation exercises test whether these vessels can get under way; a large-scale activation test with a full public report occurred in 2019, and significant issues with readiness were reported at the time, primarily due to vessel age.
The overwhelming majority of the RRF is made up of militarily-useful ro/ros, including commercial PCTCs and custom-built or heavily-modified transports. The latter category includes the eight Algol-class SL-7 Fast Sealift Support (FSS) ships, powerful steamships capable of 33 knots, and the seven Bob Hope-class Large, Medium-Speed Roll-on/Roll-off ships (LMSRs). The average age of the fleet is about 45 years, including several hulls built in the 1960s; Congress has been purchasing replacement ro/ros at a steady pace to replenish the fleet.
The RRF is stationed at commercial and government ports around the country, keeping assets near to where they might be needed for a contingency operation. MARAD also maintains a central anchorage of its own in Beaumont, Texas.
The funding for opex is in addition to funds for vessel replacement, historically accomplished through the purchase of used foreign-built tonnage or the reassignment of ships from Military Sealift Command. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act allocated $600 million for lease or purchase of new ships through the National Defense Sealift Fund, which could be used to buy U.S.-built tonnage.