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Policymakers in Washington are beginning to understand the pressing need to address the maritime crisis that the nation’s military sealift is facing. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle are raising concerns that our sealift is ill-prepared for a major conflict with a peer adversary.

Thought leaders are also drawing attention to this situation. Recently, the respected Yorktown Institute issued a white paper that outlines the numerous weaknesses in our military sealift and provides a roadmap for Congress and the executive branch to consider in order to rebuild our fleet and address the shortage of mariners.

You can find the Yorktown paper and its press release here.

While many of Yorktown’s recommendations focus on ships, the paper rightly emphasizes the importance of merchant mariners, who are crucial to ensure a viable sealift. The author, Seth Cropsey, is the President of Yorktown and a highly respected authority on national security issues, with experience as a naval officer and former undersecretary of defense.

Mr. Cropsey highlights the significant role of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) in sealift capacity––It graduates the vast majority of Merchant Marine officers who are obligated to command and crew the sealift during times of war.

USMMA was established in 1943 to serve as the primary source of these service obligated Merchant Marine officers. Today, its graduates make up over 80 percent of the U.S. Navy’s Strategic Sealift Officer Force. Without USMMA, one of our nation’s five federal service academies, we would lack a reliable means of manning vessels that are crucial for transporting weapons, troops, fuel, and supplies during wartime.

Mr. Cropsey calls for an investment of one billion dollars over a decade, as “USMMA graduates form almost the entirety of the U.S.’s strategic sealift officer capacity.” He believes that “[t]he plan must be initiated in the next 24 months to create an institution that, if the need arises, can train a significantly greater number of obligated merchant mariners in a much shorter time frame during a crash mobilization effort.”

We are grateful that an increasing number of experts are reminding policymakers of why Congress felt compelled to establish the USMMA over 80 years ago, its valuable contributions since then to our nation’s security, and the need to ensure it remains fit for its vital purpose.