607 
37, or 64 percent, can be used in direct support of military forces; 
if one includes the six LNG carriers which can be converted into 
oilers for the Navy, this figure rises to 55, or 95 percent.1*! 
The Department of Defense is not as optimistic as MARAD. As- 
sessing defense ocean shipping needs for peace and war, Dr. John 
Bennett concluded that the major concern of the Defense Department 
is the shortage of general cargo vessels which could quickly be made 
available in a minor contingency situation where allied support is 
absent and ship requisitioning is not possible. The total general cargo 
assets available to the Defense Department for a major deployment 
effort, including specific NATO shipping allocations in the case of 
a NATO effort, are only marginally adequate to meet defense needs. !%? 
These ships are no longer being built (not even under the 1970 
act) because they are no longer efficient in view of the emergence 
of specialized Lash and Seabee carriers, container and roll-on/roll- 
off vessels. While those ships are very valuable for defense needs, 
some of them are only useful where there are highly developed port 
facilities. The military must plan for the use of unsophisticated ports, 
ports destroyed or sabotaged, or even possibly over-the-beach unload- 
ing. These factors, according to Dr. Bennett, require the availability 
of some vessels with self-contained cargo handling capacity.! A sig- 
nificant portion of military cargo cannot, in a practical sense, be 
containerized. 
The United States had sufficient self-sustained general cargo ships 
available during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Today, there are only 
35 post-World War II conventional general cargo vessels available, 
in addition to the 130 obsolete Victory ships in the national defense 
reserve fleet.124 The trend appears to be toward further construction 
of big tankers, or carriers and LNG carriers.'** 
MARAD’s delemma has been to subsidize, with the limited funds 
available, a merchant marine capable of meeting direct defense needs 
and other national security interests, with commercial requirements. 
There is little doubt that defense interests have been taken into ac- 
count in the construction subsidy program, but the less efficient 
general self-sustained dry cargo ships have lost out to the more effi- 
cient specialized cargo vessels. MARAD’s efforts to compromise show 
up in the list of constructed and projected (by 1975) deliveries. Out 
of a total of 55 subsidized ships, 13 are Lash and Seabee or roll- 
on/roll-off ships, which are not as flexible as the conventional general 
cargo vessel, but which are much more efficient than containerships 
and general cargo vessels, while maintaining much of their flexibility.*® 
The addition or modification of certain features to these ships to 
131 [bid. 
132 Ibid., p. 4. 
133 Ibid. 
134 Tbid., p. 5. 
135 Ibid. 
136 Tbid., pp. 9 and 10. 
A recent study by the Transportation Institute concludes that the use of merchant vessels for un- 
derway refueling could provide direct dollar savings and even increased fleet flexibility. In addition to 
providing comparable services to the Navy at less costs, the Navy was said to benefit from such a 
program because it would result in making available a considerable number of merchant seamen 
trained to operate with the Navy. 
See: Transportation Institute, op. cit., p. ii. 
