U.S. Sealift Fleet Average Age Exceeds 45 Years with No Replacement Plan Funded

The United States Military Sealift Command operates a fleet of surge sealift ships — the vessels that would carry heavy equipment like tanks, helicopters, and ammunition across oceans in a major conflict. These ships, primarily Large Medium-Speed Roll-on/Roll-off (LMSR) vessels and older Ready Reserve Force (RRF) ships, have an average age exceeding 45 years. During a 2019 turbo activation exercise, only 61% of the RRF ships activated on time, and some broke down mid-transit. The fleet that is supposed to deliver the Army and Marine Corps to a Pacific fight is literally rusting in port. This matters because 90% of military cargo moves by sea. There is no alternative. Airlift can move high-priority items quickly, but a single large sealift vessel carries more cargo than dozens of C-17 flights. In a Taiwan contingency scenario, TRANSCOM would need to move millions of tons of equipment and supplies across the Pacific. If the sealift fleet cannot activate, load, sail, and deliver reliably, ground forces simply do not arrive in theater. The ships are not a nice-to-have logistics asset; they are the foundation upon which U.S. power projection rests. The readiness crisis compounds in a contested environment. Older ships are slower, more prone to mechanical breakdown, and less survivable. A ship that breaks down in the middle of the Pacific during a China contingency is not just a logistics failure — it is a floating target carrying irreplaceable equipment. Unlike commercial shipping, military sealift vessels must be able to discharge cargo at austere ports without crane infrastructure, which requires specialized ship designs that the commercial market does not produce. This problem persists because shipbuilding competes with every other defense priority in the budget, and ships are not glamorous. Congress and the Pentagon have consistently underfunded sealift recapitalization. The Navy's Shipbuilding Plan has repeatedly deferred sealift replacement in favor of combatant ships. The commercial U.S.-flagged merchant fleet has also shrunk dramatically, reducing the pool of ships available for emergency requisition under the Maritime Security Program. The Jones Act fleet is aging too. Structurally, the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base has contracted to a handful of yards focused on warships and submarines. There is limited domestic capacity to build the large cargo vessels needed for sealift, and foreign-built ships face political and legal barriers to military use. The result is a vicious cycle: no orders mean no capacity, and no capacity means no realistic plan to replace the fleet. TRANSCOM commanders have testified to Congress repeatedly that sealift is the most significant risk to the joint force's ability to project power, but funding has not followed.