The $35 million sale of the defunct Hawaii Superferries Alakai and Huakai by the U.S. Maritime Administration to the U.S. Navy, finalized last week, raised the possibility that one of the blue-and-white high-speed vessels could return to Hawaii in battleship gray.
All that’s certain is that one of the former passenger catamarans will not be operating out of Hawaii in the near future.
The Navy’s Military Sealift Command in Washington, D.C,. said one of the superferries will replace the leased 331-foot Westpac Express based out of Okinawa, Japan, a vessel used to transport Marines and equipment around the Western Pacific, sometime before the end of the calendar year.
Sealift Command officials said no decision has been made whether that will be the 338-foot Huakai or 321-foot Alakai. The mission of the second vessel is still being determined, officials said.
Separate from the two former superferries, the Pentagon had plans to build and operate 10 additional Joint High-Speed Vessels, and said in 2010 that it was looking at basing up to three of the speedy cargo and troop carriers at Pearl Harbor.
But new defense budget priorities released Thursday call for reducing that number by eight. Officials with the Sealift Command, which will operate the high-speed vessels, could not be reached for comment about the reduction.
The Army talked for years about the advantages of having one of the big Joint High-Speed Vessels in Hawaii to transport Stryker armored vehicles and troops to Pohakuloa Training Area on Hawaii island.
The Navy wanted them to move Marines and equipment and possibly use them as a platform from which it could conduct humanitarian assistance efforts.
"The versatility and utility of the Joint High-Speed Vessel, when fielded by the U.S. Navy, will provide the Army and Marines in Hawaii with a durable, flexible and responsive seagoing platform that can transport and assist to sustain forces during training, inter-theater movement or distributed operations," U.S. Army Pacific at Fort Shafter said in a statement Tuesday.
The two superferries were transferred from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration to the Navy on Jan. 20, officials said.
The Maritime Administration took custody of the superferries in 2009 as part of bankruptcy proceedings after the state Supreme Court ruled that Hawaii Superferry couldn’t operate without completing an environmental impact statement. The company subsequently folded.
The Alakai made its last round trip between Oahu and Maui in March 2009. A second superferry destined for Hawaii, the Huakai, was retrofitted with a vehicle loading ramp that would have allowed access to large piers without having to use an onshore ramp.
Military Sealift Command said Tuesday that one of the former superferries, which it refers to now simply as "high-speed vessels," will replace Westpac Express, leased from Australia-based shipyard Austal Ltd., once modifications to passenger accommodations and the ship’s mission areas have been made.
The two ships are at Lambert’s Point in Norfolk, Va., and will remain there until a contract for shipyard availability is secured, the Navy said. The two former superferries will be renamed, and both will eventually bear the prefix "USNS" for noncommissioned ships that belong to the Navy, officials said.
Austal USA was to build 10 Joint High-Speed Vessels for the Navy at a potential cost of more than $1.6 billion. The Westpac Express in Japan, an early test of the design, was first chartered to the III Marine Expeditionary Force in July 2001. A new contract for the Westpac Express starts in February and will last between six and 24 months.
Two other high-speed vessels, the HSV-2 Swift, a 320-foot all-aluminum catamaran, and the HSV-X1 Joint Venture, have been tested in Hawaii waters.
The new 338-foot Joint High-Speed Vessels being built will be capable of transporting up to 312 military personnel and crew of up to 41 along with 600 tons of cargo at speeds in excess of 40 miles per hour for 1,380 miles. They can accommodate Abrams tanks, and heavy-lift helicopters can land on their decks.
The vessels were expected to operate with the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships in shallow waterways as a sea base for U.S. power projection.
The Army published a notice in the Federal Register in early 2010 saying it would conduct a programmatic environmental impact statement analysis of the potential basing of up to 12 Joint High-Speed Vessels at five locations, including up to three of the ships at Pearl Harbor.
Other locations to be considered in the study were Guam, the Virginia Tidewater area, San Diego and Seattle-Tacoma, Wash.
The Joint High-Speed Vessel program initially had five of the first 10 ships assigned to the Army and five to the Navy, but the Army agreed in May to transfer its ships to the Navy.
The Army subsequently said it would not conduct the basing study. How much the basing examination has changed is unclear.
Lt. Cmdr. Alana Garas, a Navy spokeswoman at the Pentagon, said Tuesday, before the latest budget announcements were made, "At this time we are still assessing a basing plan for the JHSVs, based on combatant commander requirements, to best meet war-fighter demands."
Jan van Tol, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a retired Navy captain, said he could envision Joint High-Speed Vessels in Hawaii being used to move large amounts of critical materiel quickly — materiel that’s not so critical that it needs airlift — between Hawaii, Guam and points beyond.
"Hawaii is a receiving point for lots of stuff coming out of (the mainland), and this is a good way to shuttle things intra-theater," van Tol said. "(The high-speed vessels) can carry a lot more than an airplane."
