Ok, so which editor at the Naval Institute agreed to let @c.captain publish an article?
https://m.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017-11/where-are-you-going-kings-point
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The conclusion wasn’t calling for the school to be closed so it obviously wasn’t written by c.captain…
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At what other conclusion could a reasonable person arrive? The litany of failures highlights the complete lack of purpose and the fact that the only reason KP still exists is because MARAD desperately needs it to justify its own existence.
It is MARAD’s very own entitlement program.
How many more reasons are needed to close the place and sell it to developers? KP has been a dead horse for 50 years. Let it go into history while its image in the eyes of the very few who even know it exists remains relatively unspoiled.
obviously it wasn’t written by me as it was not filled with biting invective peppered with nasty obscenities! further, that rambling piece failed utterly to touch on the reality that there is NO valid reason to maintain such a school as KP. that the six state chartered maritime academies can easily supply more than enough entry level merchant marine officers to meet any future military contingency and that KP does nothing to ensure enough senior licensed mariners for such a massive breakout of the RRF. My good friend Steamer is correct, he place is truly an obsolete aged elephant which only exists to absorb huge amounts of funding and nothing other than to serve as a prop to keep a useless Maritime Administration alive. to quote Oliver Cromwell
You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately… Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!
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And a certain photo wasn’t used…
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Let’s not mention that ever again 
?
oh but how I wish it could…
a happy, happy day here
I feel so wonderful right now I am simply beside myself with joy…
STRIKE UP THE BAND…HUZZAH!
It looks like not everyone is drinking MARAD Kool-Aid.
Sadly, they did not include the best option possible for the American taxpayer and the US maritime industry - sell the property and use the money to fund continuing education for existing mariners.
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yes, it is refreshing to see someone believing the school as it is is not the best option for the nation’s taxpayer funds but you are correct that the option to outright close the place is not mentioned. that is a shame but there is so much money now invested into the property, I can see how there would be a great reluctance to sell it outright which would lead to a pretty severe loss of all that investment.
I am heartened by this in the article however
MARAD is also contemplating the recapitalization of its training ships, which are specially outfitted RRF vessels used by the maritime academies to provide experience at sea for cadets. In order to take advantage of the historically low prices for used tonnage on the international market, NAPA recommended that MARAD should present Congress with an option to “buy foreign vessels in the near-term for school ship recapitalization.” NAPA acknowledged that while the acquisition of used foreign ships in a down market would be cost-effective, it would also mean that the work of building replacement vessels would not go to an American shipyard.
I have said it before here that if the schoolships be replaced that the replacement vessels be ro/pax ferries from Europe which provide berthing, messing, public spaces, etc… but also have vehicle decks which make the vessels suitable for a surge sealift in wartime plus could be acquired for a small fraction of the cost of a newbuild in the US. Hell, since 75% of the RRF is already of foreign build there is no reason any new training ships should be any different. Let a conversion happen in a US yard but NO NEWBUILDING just to feather a major shipyard’s nest!
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The adage about “throwing good money after bad” comes to mind.
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I don’t dispute that but see it as a reason to not close the place. Then question is what else can it be used for which would make more fiscal sense? Frankly, the entire “service academy” concept is really not a very good one as the cost to produce a single graduate is many times more that to procure these officers from outside the system. Btw, Colin Powell and George Marshall were not West Point graduates.
Like any other of the hundreds of “emergency” WW2 built bases whose usefulness had passed but lingered on until very recently, the place might be turned over to the State of New York or some other agency for some other purpose.
KP’s usefulness expired years ago. It only exists today because of institutionalized corruption in MARAD. I challenge anyone to show what, where, or how KP has made a single contribution to the benefit of the American merchant marine or the American taxpayer since the end of WW2.
Don’t waste bandwidth telling me that some astronaut or military hero graduated from KP, the best and brightest might just as easily gone to some other school. For every outstanding student there are probably dozens of useless specimens, just like any other school.
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the only thing I can say in defense of the place is that up until the collapse of the Soviet Union, I can say there was a very small reason KP made sense because first we still did have a reasonably healthy foreign going merchant fleet (thanks to Ronnie Raygun for killing that one) and there remained the prospect of a war on the European continent with the USSR where a transAtlantic sealift just might have been challenged by the Soviet navy. With the prospects of ships being lost to enemy action, the US would have needed the legal ability to call up KP graduates to man the fleet using their USNR status.
now here is a brilliant idea…why not turn the entire RRF over to the Naval Reserve and then turn each vessel into its own reserve drilling unit? Turn KP into a cross services Academy to train reserve officers (and civilians) not just for the Navy, but USCG and other government branches as well. Just end the GODDAMNED MarAd management debacle once and for all and end the FUCKING REGIMENT! Also, make damned well sure that every graduate is a fully degreed engineer who comes out of the place to at least give that value back to the US taxpayer. For example, aeronautical engineers can work for the FAA, civil engineers work for the USACE, marine engineers work for USCG, NAVSEA, etc… and it does not need to be in uniform either. Make is so that everyone who graduates from the new KP has a 10 year contract to work for the Federal government in some capacity or they owe back the cost of their tuition.
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LOLOL…the fed government pays better than the private sector for most of these positions!
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well there you go then…get a heavily discounted education and guaranteed employment at good wages after one graduates just as long as one serves for more than a few token years.
Totally agree with where you’re going with this, but shouldn’t it be a 4 year commitment, or whatever the other service academies are. Also, while a federal engineering academy of sometype sounds good on paper, we already have top tier engineering schools in our country that both the Fed and the private sector recruit from. They might as well just close the facility and turn it over to the state of NY.
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