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Two Navy cargo ships to load in Jacksonville for war on terrorism

MSC PAO 03-10
February 11, 2003

Two of the U.S. Navy's largest noncombatant ships will load Army combat equipment in Jacksonville, Fla., today. USNS Dahl and USNS Bob Hope - large, medium-speed, roll-on/roll-off ships - are loading military cargo for the 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky., as part of the repositioning of U.S. forces in support of the president's global war on terrorism. Cargo includes Army Blackhawk, Apache, Kiowa and Chinnook helicopters and a variety of wheeled vehicles. Together, the two have a capacity of more than 600,000 square feet of military cargo.

USNS Bob Hope was in reduced operating status at the pier in Charleston, S.C., with a small cadre crew embarked. She was activated last week and fully crewed with U.S. merchant mariners. Dahl, normally used to preposition Army cargo at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, had off-loaded her cargo in Southwest Asia and returned to the U.S. to load more gear at Jacksonville.

The 950-foot ships are operated by private companies under contract to the Navy's Military Sealift Command. Each ship is crewed by approximately 30 civilian mariners.

The two LMSRs are part of a 19-ship program begun in the mid-1990s to improve the U.S. military's rapid response capabilities in wartime or during other contingencies. The aircraft-carrier-sized cargo ships are ideally designed for military equipment and were built for the U.S. Navy because the U.S. merchant fleet has no comparable militarily useful cargo ships.

The ships' reinforced decks, huge onboard cranes and interior ramps make them ideal for loading, transporting and off-loading heavy combat equipment, especially wheeled and tracked vehicles. Each ship has a huge slewing stern ramp and a removable ramp that services two side ports to make it easy to drive vehicles on and off the ship. Loading and off-loading operations take only 96 hours per shipload.

Military Sealift Command, the ocean transportation provider for the Department of Defense, normally operates about 120 civilian-crewed, noncombatant ships around the world. MSC ship missions vary from the transport and afloat prepositioning of defense cargo to underway replenishment and other direct support to Navy ships at sea and at-sea data collection for the U.S. military and other U.S. government agencies.