We could clear the bridge in weeks if we hadn’t done this to the agencies involved

Leave a CommentWe could clear the bridge in weeks if we hadn’t done this to the agencies involvedCommentary, National Security, White House

Captain John Konrad is the founder and CEO of gCaptain and author of the book Fire On The Horizon. He is licensed to captain the world’s largest ships and has sailed from ports around the world. John has built some of the world’s most advanced ships and managed billion-dollar offshore construction projects in some of the world’s harshest marine environments. John is a distinguished alumnus of New York Maritime College. He has this to say about the Baltimore bridge disaster.

We could clear the bridge in weeks IF:

1) our federal maritime agencies @DOTMARAD & @USCG were fully funded and functional

2) we had heavylift, salvage and offshore construction ships on hand.

We don’t.

The Navy sold off almost its entire fleet of salvage ships. We don’t even have a single fireboat in the Navy’s most important port.

3) the Navy hadn’t outsourced the majority of its salvage operations to a European company. Sailing assets from Europe would take weeks and would anger certain powerful lobbyists.

4) the Army didn’t sell off the majority of it’s watercraft fleet and deprioritize the Corps of Engineers maritime missions.

5) our DOT Ready Reserve fleet was fully functional and not a half a century old.

6) the balance sheets of our US shipping companies, tugboat operators, construction companies encouraged growth.

7) silicon valley investors didn’t have a revulsion to investing in maritime startups with revolutionary new ideas.

8) the media understood ships and focused on the right stories and pushed DC in the right directions.

9) environmental regulations were not onerous

10) local port politics. https://x.com/jessekellydc/s/jessekellydc/status/1773100881203921205

Urgency – also from John Konrad

Fact: The US Navy is in charged of the Baltimore Bridge salvage effort

Fact: The US Navy has more Admirals than warships

Fact: there is not one Admiral in uniform today who is a salvage master

Fact: salvage masters were once among the Navy’s most respected officers

Fact: during the Navy’s biggest crisis in history it made a salvage master it’s top Admiral and gave him 5 stars.

Fact: for winning the entire F’n war Admiral King was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal

Fact: King already hade TWO Distinguished Service Medals for salvage operations

Opinion: this operation in Baltimore is going to be a painstaking long process costing billions of dollars.

Opinion: If the US Navy had not divested all its salvage equipment, subcontracted most of its salvage work to an overseas company, and still promoted experience hardened salvage masters to the rank of Admiral… this bridge could have been cleared in a few weeks

But today’s Admirals won’t be found on the decks of shipwrecks wearing wrinkled khakis. The hundreds of Admirals in today’s Navy prefer wearing starched Army camouflage to office jobs.