America's Military Can Move the First Wave. Can It Keep the War Supplied?
Wendover Productions' The US Military’s Massive Global Transportation System presents an impressive picture of American military logistics: passenger airlines, civilian aircraft reserves, expeditionary airbases, billions of dollars in prepositioned equipment and a worldwide network of commercial shipping.
Its conclusion is that logistics power is military power.
I agree with the underlying principle. What the video fails to establish is whether the United States can sustain that power through a prolonged, high-intensity conflict against an adversary capable of attacking its transportation network.
That is not a theoretical concern. A March 2026 study commissioned by the Maritime Administration (MARAD) from the research organization CNA concludes that the United States does not maintain enough assured shipping capacity to sustain military operations or seaborne commerce in a major global conflict. It also identifies an inadequate domestic shipbuilding industry to replace lost shipping capacity on a significant scale.
The video describes the machinery of American military mobility. It does not adequately investigate whether that machinery can survive the war it is supposed to support.
The 41% readiness figure is not what the video says it is
Wendover identifies a 2019 readiness test in which only 41% of available sealift capacity was reportedly ready for ocean service, against an expected 85%.
The underlying figures are real. Their presentation is imprecise.
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the September 2019 exercise assessed the combined Organic Surge Fleet: 46 ships belonging to MARAD's Ready Reserve Force (RRF) and another 15 managed by the Military Sealift Command.
The reported 40.7% was the cumulative fleet success rate, not a finding that only 41% of the Ready Reserve Force's available shipping capacity was ocean-ready.
The distinction matters:
- Fourteen of the 46 RRF ships could not participate because they were undergoing repairs. Six were undergoing unplanned repairs and eight scheduled repairs.
- Of the 26 RRF ships participating in the at-sea phase, half achieved a 100% success rating.
- The other half experienced significant deficiencies, particularly failures to achieve required speeds.
- Seven ships experienced serious equipment casualties.
- TRANSCOM gave a failing grade to 21% of the RRF fleet, excluding ships undergoing scheduled repairs.
- No cargo was loaded during the exercise, meaning cargo cranes and stevedoring operations were not tested.
The 85% figure was the established readiness target for the combined Organic Surge Fleet on any given day. It was not simply a prediction that 85% of individual RRF vessels would pass a particular exercise.
This remains a serious historical warning. But the video turns a complicated operational assessment into a much simpler statistic.
More importantly, a 2019 result cannot establish the fleet's operational readiness in 2026. The video needed a current assessment, not a six-year-old snapshot.
The first wave is not the war
The video devotes considerable attention to getting American military personnel and equipment into a conflict.
It explains Patriot Express, the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF), the BEAR expeditionary airbase system, Army Prepositioned Stocks and maritime prepositioning ships.
But deployment and sustainment are different problems.
A military can assemble an enormous initial force, transport it into a theater and establish temporary infrastructure. Keeping that force supplied with fuel, ammunition, food, replacement vehicles and equipment is an entirely different undertaking.
In a March 2026 Senate hearing, USTRANSCOM Commander General Randall Reed explained the distinction:
The Ready Reserve Force provides the initial surge. The commercial fleet subsequently performs more than 90% of military sealift sustainment.
That dependence deserves considerably more attention than the video gives it.
The commercial shipping system is not simply an optional supplement. It is fundamental to keeping American forces supplied after the initial deployment.
The 2026 CNA study identifies a particularly consequential weakness: fuel transportation.
Its analysis estimates that the United States would need assured access to an additional 68 large fuel tankers and 50 smaller tankers, 118 vessels in total, to adequately support military operations in a major conflict.
These requirements are particularly important in the Western Pacific, where American forces would operate across enormous ocean distances.
The study also estimates a requirement for approximately 6,400 additional merchant mariners to meet its major-conflict sealift scenario.
That 6,400 figure is a scenario-based estimate, not an independently verified count of current vacant jobs. It incorporates an earlier MARAD estimate of a 1,839-mariner shortage and the additional personnel required to operate the proposed tanker capacity.
Nevertheless, the scale of the problem is difficult to dismiss.
Source: CNA, Independent Study in Support of a National Maritime Strategy, March 2026.
A fleet on paper is not necessarily a fleet available for war
The video compares an American merchant fleet of approximately 181 ships with a historical fleet of 565.
That comparison communicates a decline, but the number of ships alone tells us surprisingly little about actual military transportation capacity.
MARAD's August 2026 dashboard lists 190 US-flag oceangoing merchant vessels, of which 168 are classified as militarily useful.
But military usefulness does not mean immediate operational availability.
The CNA study uses a broader definition of assured-access shipping, identifying approximately 298 vessels across government and commercial fleets.
Its inventory includes:
- 48 Ready Reserve Force ships.
- 15 government-owned or long-term-chartered prepositioning vessels.
- 110 actively sailing US-flag ships operating under emergency access agreements.
- 125 additional US-flag ships without those agreements.
Even this broader inventory needs qualification. It includes 63 domestic Jones Act vessels that military planning assumes will remain necessary for domestic commerce, as well as 50 small tanker and offshore-support vessels that are largely laid up rather than participating in ordinary port-to-port trade.
Only about 93 of the ships in the study's overall inventory operate internationally, with a similar number engaged in domestic trade.
A raw ship count is not a measure of immediately available military sealift.
There is another problem: ownership and control.
Commercial shipping companies are private businesses. Their vessels and crews are not automatically military assets simply because they participate in emergency transportation agreements.
CNA notes that commercial ships may be anywhere in the world, potentially carrying existing cargo, when an emergency begins. Their availability therefore increases gradually; some can be redirected within days, while others may take weeks.
The study also makes an important distinction about merchant mariners. They are civilian employees, not active-duty military personnel subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
American crews operating under service agreements are considered relatively dependable, but the military cannot simply treat every commercial vessel and every foreign crew as personnel under its direct command. Foreign operators and crews may be unwilling to undertake dangerous voyages into contested waters.
This is a substantial strategic dependency.
The military can negotiate access to transportation capacity. It cannot automatically guarantee that every ship, crew and commercial operator will behave like a military transport unit during a dangerous conflict.
Sources: CNA, 2026; MARAD, U.S.-Flag Fleet Dashboard, August 2026.
America's mariner shortage is a problem the government cannot properly count
Ships are useless without crews.
MARAD's 2017 workforce assessment identified a shortage of 1,839 qualified mariners needed to sustain simultaneous commercial and military sealift operations.
The agency's March 2025 workforce strategy continued to identify this problem.
More troublingly, MARAD acknowledged that limitations in its information systems prevented it from identifying the number of actively serving mariners and their specific credentials.
A 2026 Government Accountability Office report found that approximately 200,000 individuals held valid merchant mariner credentials as of 2023. But credentials cover different occupations, vessel types and levels of qualification. They do not establish how many people are actively sailing and available to crew strategic sealift vessels.
The same GAO investigation found that fewer than 20% of 197 non-academy institutions offering Coast Guard-approved courses were authorized to accept federal financial aid.
That creates another workforce-development problem: training opportunities exist, but access to financial support remains limited.
This is not simply a matter of finding more people interested in working aboard ships. The country needs appropriately qualified personnel, sufficient sea time, career progression and enough actively sailing commercial vessels to maintain professional experience.
MARAD's inability to reliably identify its active qualified workforce makes the planning problem even harder.
Sources: MARAD, Mariner Workforce Strategic Plan, revised March 2025; GAO-26-108184, May 2026.
The reserve fleet is being replaced, but the clock is running
The age and readiness of American reserve ships have been recognized problems for years.
A June 2025 Department of Defense Inspector General report examined the Navy's efforts to recapitalize its surge sealift fleet.
As of February 2025, the report found that the government had:
- Completed six of the original 31 planned vessel service-life extensions.
- Acquired seven of an estimated 26 used vessels.
- Started construction on none of the planned new vessels.
The Navy disputed aspects of the assessment, and its response deserves attention.
In 2020, the Navy had revised its service-life extension strategy, reducing the target from 31 ships to eight because several older vessels were expensive to maintain and had poor readiness. Six of those eight extensions had been completed by March 2025, with two still in progress.
The Navy also argued that its acquisition strategy had evolved, including a longer-term plan to acquire used vessels and construct replacements.
So the original 31-ship target should not be presented as though it remained the active plan in 2025.
But the underlying replacement problem did not disappear.
In March 2026, General Reed reported that the government had purchased seven of 12 authorized used ships. Three had completed modernization and reflagging and were operational, while four more were expected to become operational during the year.
He also disclosed that 14 ships had retired from the Ready Reserve Force during fiscal years 2025 and 2026, including the entire eight-ship Fast Sealift Ship class.
The government offset some of this lost capacity by taking possession of former Army Prepositioned Stocks vessels, providing nearly two million square feet of shipping capacity.
However, Reed described that advantage as short-lived: another 11 ships are scheduled to retire between 2027 and 2031.
The Navy has also completed requirements for new sealift vessels, delivered to MARAD in December 2025. A new construction program is expected to follow.
That is progress, but a planned ship is not an operational ship. The distinction is particularly important when the existing fleet continues to age and retire.
Sources: DoD Inspector General, DODIG-2025-116; USTRANSCOM, General Reed's March 18, 2026 testimony.
The airlift system is stronger, but it cannot solve the maritime problem
There is an important distinction between the weaknesses of American sealift and the country's emergency airlift capacity.
USTRANSCOM's March 2026 testimony described the Civil Reserve Air Fleet as having 29 participating carriers and 253 commercial aircraft available during activation. The command called the program healthy and capable of meeting its wartime requirements.
It also reported that the Voluntary Intermodal Sealift Agreement provides more than 95% of ocean-based dry-cargo sustainment capacity when activated.
These are meaningful capabilities, and they support some of the video's strongest descriptions.
But dry cargo and fuel are different requirements. An aircraft cannot economically replace the enormous capacity required to transport heavy vehicles, bulk supplies and fuel across oceans.
The same USTRANSCOM testimony acknowledged the need to expand tanker capacity and improve intra-theater sealift, particularly in the Indo-Pacific.
The video treats the transportation network as a connected system, but does not adequately examine the limitations of moving different kinds of cargo through that system.
The ability to fly personnel into a theater does not establish the ability to sustain their equipment, fuel their operations and keep their supply lines functioning.
The next war will attack the transportation network itself
Perhaps the most important omission is the changing nature of military logistics.
The video largely describes a system built around moving supplies through an established network of bases, airports, ports, warehouses and commercial transportation companies.
Modern adversaries are developing weapons and capabilities specifically intended to disrupt those networks.
In its March 2026 statement, USTRANSCOM identified long-range precision strikes, drones, hypersonic weapons, degraded communications and attacks against logistics infrastructure as major challenges.
The CNA study similarly identifies the likelihood of precision naval and missile attacks against bases, logistical nodes and sea and air lines of communication in a major Western Pacific conflict.
This changes the question entirely.
A stockpile of equipment in Kuwait is valuable only if the military can access it, move it and protect the transportation routes required to sustain operations.
A ship in a reserve fleet is valuable only if it can be activated, crewed, loaded and sent through a functioning maritime network.
A commercial vessel under contract is valuable only if its owner, crew and operating environment allow it to complete the mission.
The military must also replace damaged infrastructure and lost vessels while continuing to supply its forces.
CNA estimates that American shipyards currently produce approximately three to five oceangoing commercial vessels annually. Even substantially expanding that capacity would take years, and the study estimates that quadrupling output would take at least 15 years to double the size of the US-built fleet under its illustrative assumptions.
This is not a replacement system capable of rapidly rebuilding a heavily damaged merchant fleet.
Wendover explains how America prepares to move a war. It does not explain how America would rebuild the transportation system if the enemy succeeded in breaking it.
The verdict: Deployment is not sustained military power
The US Defense Transportation System is not imaginary, and its capabilities should not be confused with those of an ordinary military.
But the existence of an enormous transportation network does not establish that it can sustain a major war.
The most important findings are uncomfortable:
- The 2019 readiness statistic is more complicated than the video's presentation.
- The government relies on commercial shipping for the overwhelming majority of maritime sustainment.
- The available ship inventory is not equivalent to immediately deployable capacity.
- Merchant mariner availability remains a serious problem, and the government has incomplete workforce data.
- The reserve fleet faces continuing retirements and a lengthy replacement process.
- The United States needs substantially more tanker capacity for a major conflict.
- Its shipbuilding industry cannot quickly replace major wartime losses.
There are real improvements underway. The CRAF program remains substantial, commercial dry-cargo agreements provide significant capacity, and the government has acquired replacement sealift vessels.
But those developments do not erase the underlying weaknesses.
Wendover's final argument is that logistics power is military power. The more uncomfortable conclusion is that logistics weakness can become military weakness, regardless of how impressive the rest of the armed forces may be.
America has built a system capable of projecting enormous power across the world. It has not yet demonstrated that this system can reliably sustain that power through a prolonged, contested war.
The first shipment is not the victory. The ability to deliver the next thousand shipments may determine whether there is one.
References
- The US Military’s Massive Global Transportation System — Wendover Productions, original video. The source work examined in this critique.
- Maritime Administration’s Ready Reserve Sealift Fleet — Congressional Research Service, June 4, 2020. Establishes what the 2019 readiness exercise actually measured and documents the ships that failed or could not participate.
- Independent Study in Support of a National Maritime Strategy: Summary Report — CNA, March 2026, commissioned for MARAD. Provides the additional tanker, mariner and shipbuilding estimates, along with the analysis of commercial shipping access and wartime vulnerabilities. Its estimates are scenario-dependent, not official military requirements.
- Evaluation of U.S. Navy Efforts to Recapitalize Surge Sealift Vessels — Department of Defense Inspector General, June 24, 2025. Documents delays in reserve-fleet replacement and includes the Navy's formal objections and explanations.
- Statement of General Randall Reed Before the House Armed Services Committee — USTRANSCOM, March 18, 2026. Provides current figures on ship acquisitions, retirements, CRAF, commercial sealift, fuel transportation and operational shortcomings.
- Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing Transcript — March 12, 2026. Records General Reed's testimony that commercial shipping provides more than 90% of military sealift sustainment and documents congressional concerns about commercial transportation cybersecurity.
- Mariner Workforce Strategic Plan, FY 2023–FY 2027 — MARAD, revised March 2025. Documents the historical qualified-mariner shortage and the government's inability to identify its active mariner workforce precisely.
- Mariner Training: Maritime Administration Should Share More Information About Financial Aid and Careers — Government Accountability Office, May 7, 2026. Examines mariner credentialing, workforce training and barriers to financial assistance.
- U.S.-Flag Fleet Dashboard — MARAD, August 2026. Provides the current commercial fleet inventory and distinguishes militarily useful vessels from the total merchant fleet.
Research citations
Every CRS Report+13