After the earthquakes in Haiti and now Chile, I cannot help but be reminded of an old idea once posited by my good friend Craig Hooper back in 2005:
“An underlying problem is strategic. America simply lacks a presence in shallow intertidal zones. Had fast-moving assets been nearby, the Bush administration, by getting firsthand information from the disaster zone, would have better understood the scope of the tragedy and avoided making an embarrassingly low initial aid offer of $15 million.
…
Auxiliaries may not capture the imagination. But imagine if 24 American-flagged ships had, within hours of the tsunami, swarmed into the shattered regions of the Indian coast, disgorging helicopters, mobile hospitals and recovery specialists. That’s an exciting enough vision for even Rumsfeld to embrace.”
It is an idea that might be worth reconsidering.
Christopher R. Albon is a political science Ph.D. specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
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We had fast moving assets somewhat nearby – grey hulled combatants. They are everywhere, at a huge cost. Unless you are going to have these aux ships underway in rotation like the battle fleet, they will never be nearby. Each ship can only be in one place at a time, and half of that time will be pierside or drydocked. Great White Fleet is a great example – had the tsunami been in Medan, Indonesia rather than Messina, Italy the fleet would have arrived a month or more after the fact. There’s only one navy with a global presence, and look how many combatants, sailors, and dollars that takes.
As far as that $15 million, remember those first few days after Cristmas, with all the press and politicians occupied elsewhere, nobody knew how bad Aceh was. Not even Jakarta.
What about better incorporating disaster relief into aux ships’ mission?
Actually, if you want sea-based disaster relief as fast as air-based, the way to do it is something like AMVER. From USCG website: “Amver, sponsored by the United States Coast Guard, is a unique, computer-based, and voluntary global ship reporting system used worldwide by search and rescue authorities to arrange for assistance to persons in distress at sea. With Amver, rescue coordinators can identify participating ships in the area of distress and divert the best-suited ship or ships to respond.” It’s sort of a wiki-rescue since the USCG and other CGs can’t be everywhere at once, but there are freighters and fishermen and crabbers and salvors and processors and all sorts of merchant vessels underway all the time. Wouldn’t have medical professionals, but could carry nonperishable gear/food, possibly water. SOLAS (International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea) specifies lifeboats and other gear/procedures/standards, so they might have a thought here, but really they’re focussed on protecting ships and sailors.
Man, I’d still love to see a few public health/disaster response/diplomacy-oriented JHSV or LCS-2 seaframes! Those supplemented with a couple of good-ole civ-spec flat-decks–for use in low-threat environments–would be a great addition to the fleet.
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