USAV Calaboza, a U.S. Army landing craft utility vessel, is moored at Yokohama North Dock, Japan, in December 2024. (Michael Graf/U.S. Army)
FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii — U.S. Army Pacific is tackling a watercraft shortage by maintaining and repairing vessels overseas and augmenting its fleet by leasing privately owned boats.
“There is a gap in our ability to conduct intra-theater lift and movement,” Maj. Gen. Jeffrey VanAntwerp, deputy chief of staff for the command, told reporters Thursday during a conference call from his headquarters at Fort Shafter, Hawaii.
“We have a lack of Army watercraft and the ability to move everything that we would like to be able to move and have the type of agility we’d like to have, particularly in the first island chain, but in the second island chain as well,” he said.
The first island chain, which includes the Japanese archipelago, Taiwan and the northern Philippines, lies closest to China, a potential adversary.
“The major step that we’re taking is to be able to repair forward in Japan,” he said. “In the future, we’d like to be able to repair forward in Japan, Korea, even out in Australia. So, we’re taking steps to be able to do that, rather than have to send them all the way back to the East Coast to make repairs.”
The Army trimmed its watercraft fleet by half over six years ending in May 2024, according to a report issued by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in October. By that point, the Army’s fleet had shrunk to 70 vessels from 134 in 2018, the office found.
The Army’s fleet moves supplies, equipment and personnel in deep ocean, shallow coastal waters, inland waterways and rivers.
The fleet’s vessels are also plagued by maintenance issues, with the “fully mission capable rate” for watercraft steadily declining from 75% in 2020 to less than 40% in 2024, the GAO reported.
Undertaking repair work within the Indo-Pacific, however, is not a cure-all for increasing mission-ready capability in an aging fleet, VanAntwerp said.
“What we’re not going to be able to do is instantly make them newer, so repair issues and wear and tear will continue to be an issue,” he said. “But I think being able to repair forward will drastically decrease the downtime and increase the overall [readiness] rate. And we’re seeing that already as we’ve begun to repair some of these forward.”
The Army is also experimenting with the use of leased vessels as a means of reaching anticipated need in the event of conflict.
“We’re just not going to be able to build enough Army watercraft to be able to meet the need,” VanAntwerp said.
“I think the key for us will be the ability to ramp up capacity during conflict through a combination of Army watercraft and leased vessels,” he said.
“We’re finding that leased vessels provide a pretty phenomenal capability and a pretty high level of readiness,” he said.
They have also proven to be “incredibly flexible,” VanAntwerp said.
“They’ve made modifications upon request and done it really rapidly to install, like, a front-loading ramp in order to roll-on, roll-off your equipment onto a beach per se or somewhere where there’s not a standing pier,” he said.
“You start to weigh out the cost of leasing a vessel versus owning it full time,” he added. “It really starts to look like a favorable mix going forward.”
