Maybe the bugge will enlighten is as to what benefits Norway’s second registry offers to entice shipowners. Maybe the government can expand MSP to cover the expense of American officers in the name of national security.
No one, the RRF ships should be scrapped.
Foreign ships can fill in for the American ships that get called to serve the war effort. RRF as are just about the stupidest idea of a boondoggle even contrived. Try to come up with a plan that doesn’t involve them and people night actually take you seriously.
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Wasn’t the ODS scrubbed in the early nineties and the MSP program rolled out to take its place. One old captain I sailed with told me he’d taken a 40% pay cut overnight, kept his job, and was just then (mid 2000’s) back near what he was making then without adjusting for inflation. The money was apparently very good under ODS both for the companies it kept on life support all those years and the sailors who rode the wave of great American shipping companies like Sealand, U.S. Lines, Lykes Bros., Farrell, American Export, Waterman, APL, etc.
Greed and the march of time took its course and there is very little left to what was once a great Maritime nation.
Here is the word from the horses mouth: (Unread, it is getting late)
https://www.sdir.no/en/shipping/registration-of-commercial-vessels-in-nisnor/new-registration-nis/why-choose-the-nis/
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Thanks for contributing useful information. I find this line very interesting:
“The NMA offers a competitive reimbursement schemes for the employment of Norwegian seafarers in order to preserve Norwegian maritime expertise and a competitive framework for shipowners.”
https://www.sdir.no/sjofart/for-rederi/tilskudd-til-sysselsetting-av-sjofolk/om-tilskuddsordningen/
net pay scheme
You have to use Google translate but I find it very useful. Just ask if you are stuck on words.
A lot of the words is tax related so some of you will shut down automatically, but I would think some here will power true.
I’m not sure, that’s why I pay into the PCF, they can figure it out.
Every MEBA ship I’ve sailed on has been all metric. Is there any deep sea US flag ship built since the C9s (1982-ish) that’s not all metric? Gray hulls I guess…
Point is, metric is not some uncrackable code that will prevent Americans from getting a ship underway.
I think he left off the /sarc tag…
not sure? how in the HELL can you not be sure?
I am advocating for more ships in the MSP which are vessels working globally manned 100% top to bottom with US citizen mariners plus I want the government to build ships which fill both DoD and commercial needs like the Mariner class C4s in the 1950s and get US operators to charter them at low rates and operate those globally manned 100% top to bottom with US citizen mariners and lastly to cease using foreign ships to carry even one tube of toothpaste for the DoD anywhere meaning more work for US flagged ships manned 100% top to bottom with US citizen mariners. Thousands of jobs for US citizen mariners will be created as a result leaving plenty of reserve mariners to call upon if the balloon goes up again someday and every ROS ship needs to be manned post haste.
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such a veritable genius you are! scrap every ship in the US reserve inventory and replace them with ??? please enlighten us oh great all knowing one?
and I am the one who cannot be taken seriously you say?
You answered your own fucking question. Maybe if you stopped angrily typing long enough to think you’d realize that.
If all that happens you don’t need the RRF ships.
not at all…are all these commercial ships just supposed to stop their trades and run to the fight? certainly some will but not all and the DoD still must have its own sealift ships just like they had in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (x2) and Afghanistan. Having a reserve fleet is hardly a new concept but the problem is having enough US citizen mariners to operate them (or should we just accept that shipping is now an international business and plan to hire nothing but Filippinos to man the reserve fleet next time round?)
what is your beef here exactly other than you think having reserve ships is stoopid? do you think the government already does enough to support the fleet and that our industry is healthy and happy or do you think it does too much like Ronald Raygun and his minions did?
Yes.
They already do, it’s called Military Sealift Command.
And it’s never been a particularly good one.
You fight the good (and achievable) ideas that get proposed and counter with impossible desires and the ridiculous RRF.
well I for one am not denying that the ships in the RRF are going to waste just sitting when they can be out there carrying cargo for their owner. Frankly in a perfect world they would be an active fleet carrying DoD cargoes across the globe every day with contract commercial operators and mariners running them but the goobermint says they can’t do that because that would be place the goobermint in competition with commercial industry so there we are (however there have been instances of RRF ships being broken out to carry unique DoD cargoes so it is not unheard of)
that still does leave a good number of ships to be held in ROS status because the whole fleet is hardly needed in peacetime and you can cry all you want about what a bad idea a reserve fleet might be but the US is going to have a big one whether you like it or not so why not discuss how to man them if they are all needed at once like in 1990? that and that alone should be what is talked about here?
I don’t see why. This thread is about the US Merchant Marine, not specifically the RRF or how to man it.
this is the basis of the topic of this thread
“As small as our Merchant Marine may be today, it is absolutely essential. It’s in every war plan that I review, I guarantee you,” the secretary said. “Because you’re going to be the fourth arm of the defense. You’re going to sustain our allies and fuel our ships and ferry our warriors.” SecDef Mattis
now I can pretty much guarantee you that every war plan of the DoD involves the use of all the ROS ships sitting around the US and that the people and not the ships are what Mattis means are the “fourth arm of the defense” however there is no systematic structured program to build and retain reserve mariners for these ships and thus this fourth arm is a very weak one at best. The topic of this thread by my understanding is the manning of the Federally owned reserve fleet. It was the critical matter in 1990 when we had a bigger merchant marine and while the nation barely pulled it off in 1990 I doubt very seriously we can do it again and that is what I am pointing out in this thread.
Now what is it you are trying to bleat out?
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Then we are back to the beginning, if all you want and need is mariners for the ready reserve fleet why can’t you just take them from non critical coastal and inland trade? Unless the wiki page for the US merchant marine is lying you have plenty of people.
You want an active trading fleet in peace time big enough to serve the war effort and on the same time a reserve fleet? Why?
That is state aid and would get countered hard by other nations. Where are the vessels going to trade? You believe European and Asian nations are just going to watch US subsidized vessels trade globally?
Because the “coastal and inland trade” folks would probably have a hard time finding the engine room on a deep sea ship and be totally lost even trying to turn the lights on.
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