USS vessel to become a USNS vessel...which one?

[Xmsccapt_ret]

@"Jeffrox"

This is from a friend at MSC:
"We’ve been “requested” to man up the USS Ponce, which is an old piece of shit LPD. There was a study done to see if our civmar engineers could run the plant better than the Navy. Never heard about the outcome, then I saw where the program got canx. The whole thing is about the fact that the Navy can’t safely run the steam engine rooms. They’ve been getting blasted during OPPEs and INSURVs.

So anyway, magically the program is back on again with an extremely high priority and a very ambitious timeline for MSC taking over the ship. My read is that somebody high up noticed we fixed then operated the fucked up plants on the 2 sub tenders with less than half the engineers the Navy required. Plus, there is really not much of a training pipeline for Navy kids to go through to prepare them for boiler plant operation. The pipeline for civmar engineers is,…you got a steam license, then you’re experienced.

So, yes, MSC is gonna rob it’s fleet of every experienced steam license engineer it can find and throw them on the Ponce."

There was talk some years ago of putting lic engineers and deck officers on USS ships, in essence Msc would be a taxi service. Then the USN could ride along, not worry about operating the ship, drink monster drinks, eat cheese balls, watch movies, award themselves with citations and metals, and when done talk about how they are war fighters. The idea died thank god.