I think the RADM will do better than some of the other known and unknown/rumored candidates that have been circulating these past month’s.
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A very good candidate was highlighted on this site a while back. Too late now, but perhaps they have a chat or two during her tenure.
I don’t care that they know the plight of the merchant marine. I care that they know Wall Street bankers and shipping executives and understand where they tripwires are throughout the industry, which operators a good versus bad, who are the mid and high level managers who can get stuff done in this industry. Its about understand the relationships between FOC’s, the US Flag, EU, and the IMO.
It’s about networking and granular knowledge. Who to call in a crisis.
I have read a few of Mahan’s books and I understand the basic tenets of seapower. I know the importance of freedom
Of navigation and choke points. That does not make me a good candidate for CNO.
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Part 2.
It’s not knowledge of ships themselves that worry me, it’s knowledge of Wall Street. When I was chief mate of a transocean ship we had a constant stream of bankers, hedge funds and analysts. MARAD needs to go where the money is and understand derivatives and fintech to open up new financial options. She does have an MBA so maybe she gets it but does she have a relationship with bankers? Is she willing to build them?
Congress is broken and won’t give us funds so the only other option is Wall Street. When she left the Navy the United States was 12th in International ship finance, now we are number one…. So there is plenty of money for someone with the right banking connections.
And I’m sorry but you guys on the Navy side of things just don’t understand that world. I tried many times to get Buzby to meet with these guys but he said he felt like a duck out of water. Buzby couldn’t seem to get past the title XI program which bankers HATE.
As they say in the movie the right stuff, “no buck, no buck Rogers“
I have met many former Navy guys who make excellent CEOs but I can’t think of any former Navy officers that are CFOs… and most executives at large companies and met the CFO job is more important.
Nobody who What is a senior Pentagon official turn the budgeting of the zumwalt and LCS ships should be allowed anywhere near a bank IMHO.
Hopefully a good CFO is the first person she hires.
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Maybe if they had (appointed a merchant marine captain) he would have asked, “Wait a minute, tell me again why we are building these (LCS) ships?”.
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In New York harbor they have anchor control Part of VTS, and they will actually call you and tell you that your dragging.
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Mark Buzby had no commercial shipping experience and his deputy is/was acting administrator. All I ever heard were accolades for him. But I guess that’s how we got in this mess.
MARAD could easily bring in some of the top Flag people to talk too, considering the location to DC of the some of the major flags. People on here may not like the International Flags, but at least they understand shipping and have the connections to connect any dots. Oh, and they are Americans. I’m sure Liberia, Marshall Islands and Bahamas could give some value in consult to the MARAD admin.
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… exist because they offer a detour around American taxes, labor, and standards.
They are probably the last people we want involved in defining the future of American shipping.
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Shipping is a business, I tend to agree with ITOIL on this. Some of those registries are doing amazing JIPs on alternative designs and new vessels with class and shipyards. Don’t forget about the plethora of US businesses that skirt the tax scheme and send jobs overseas. You have to think strategic and put your ignorance aside.
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It is class and the shipyards pushing forward the work with AIPs on alternative designs. The registries of which you speak, not so much if anything.
Incorrect, I know of quite a few that are related with the registries. Also Approval In Principle is different than Joint Industry Projects.
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Please enlighten me. My experience was with ABS, DNV, and GL classing Liberian Flag vessels in Korea. To a much lessor extent Lloyds classing Marshall Island Flag bulkers. And of course ABS classing US Flag ships. Liberia and Marshall Island registries empowers class to act on their behalf.
Here is a gcaptain article about the bulker design that was built. There was no mention of a Flag registry. https://gcaptain.com/interesting-ship-green-dolphin/.
I can see some of these corporate registries attaching their names to various JIPs but that is not the same as significantly funding such work.
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You pull out one article. You can always PM me and I would have the conversation with you. Multiple registries have put money into JIPs, and some or most that are not public knowledge. You only see the big picture ship building ones, when a JIP could be connected to infrastructure building, environmental impact, etc.
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I used that article because it was one I had some personal involvement, thus knowledge of. But I agree this is going to far off topic to continue here.
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I agree.
Comments on GCaptain on the plight of the USMM are hopelessly one-sided. You’d think the USMM is the personnel who staff the ships, which exist only to be staffed, and which are owned by sub-human scum who live on another planet.
In fact, the ships are the core of the USMM. We, the personnel, are increasingly peripheral, and if you think I’m wrong, ask yourself how many ships will be autonomous or remotely operated in 25 years.
Which means ship owners play a bigger part in resurrecting the USMM than mariners. Bankers and financiers mean more to the USMM than captains and chiefs. Always have been. Always will be. Get over it.
Resurrecting the USMM means one thing: subsidies. Subsidies are enacted by senators, who listen to ship owners and bankers. They don’t listen to sailors. So, what’s our campaign to cooperate with ship owners and financiers, and have them lobby senators to resurrect subsidies? The campaign would mean:
- Mariners would actually organize themselves. Not to bitch and whine, but to forge a value proposition they can offer ship owners, so both sides profit from a resurrected USMM. A business plan, in other words.
- The mariner-group then speaks with key ship owners. Business meetings, in which the profit of the plan to both sides, and the nation, is discussed, and details hammered out.
- The shipowner/mariner consortium lobbies senators to resurrect subsidy payments.
…which is why all this talk on gcaptain about resurrecting the USMM is a bunch of whining. According to the average commentator here, all ship owners fall somewhere between Genghis Khan and Bernie Madoff. You wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire. You certainly wouldn’t dirty yourself by speaking to them. But they, not us, not the Congress, are the key to resurrecting the USMM, and yet we simply ignore them.
I return you now to the discussion of the how the MARAD college dean/junkyard operator guy is going to make a difference. Said discussion now in its fortieth year…
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Actually US shipowners are not doing so badly on the world stage.
They control the 5th largest fleet of ships over 1000 GT by value, which is what Investors, Bankers and Finance people care about:
(That position has held steady for several years)
In terms of DWT US owners are #10 on the list:
https://www.usfunds.com/investor-library/frank-talk-a-ceo-blog-by-frank-holmes/top-10-countries-with-the-largest-shipping-fleets/:
Both in terms of DWT and number of ships US ownership has dropped between 2016-2021, however:
(Scroll down)
USMM Academies we’re created for the children of influential people who couldn’t get in to West Point, Annapolis, or Colorado Springs.
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IMO:
USMM academies were part of a plan that germinated after WW1 and came to fruition in WW2, to raise hundreds of ships and train thousand of mariners to staff them, as part of a coordinated, subsidized 6th military service known as the USMM. A marvelous plan.
In the 1980s the government decided this 6th military force wasn’t worth the cost of maintaining They thought that, unlike all the other military services, the USMM could be self-sustaining. The system decayed. The cheapest part to maintain were the academies, so they were left intact, albeit with the state academies becoming more state university than federally-oriented academy. A hybrid thing.
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Nearly all are irrelevant this days for creating military officers. Well, except for the ring knocker fraternity aspect.
I don’t know where to find the data, but I suspect just as many officers are commissioned into the military vis ROTC, OCS, direct commission, and enlisted to officer pathways as are commissioned via federal academies.
OCS usually meaning the taxpayer doesn’t pay for college degree. And ROTC is likely cheaper to taxpayer than a federal academy.
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