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Flooded streets made traditional rescue efforts impossible post-Katrina.

A Coalition of the Capable

How private naval companies can expand humanitatrian efforts

By Claude Berube

The first sign of the disaster was a little girl’s sandal in the water. Then the debris of houses, the bodies, and then the smoke on the shoreline from burning refuse of what hadn’t been swept away by the waves. Survivors were met almost immediately by gray hulls and Americans. Two years later on the other side of the world, a city fell to a hurricane as levees broke and anarchy followed until the citizens’ fellow Americans arrived on the scene.

Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) operations are nothing new to American military and government agencies. HADR includes securing areas, then providing food, water, shelter, medical assistance, and reconstruction efforts. No other country is as capable of mounting such herculean efforts, particularly on distant shores. Nor are many countries as capable of voluntarily sharing their time or money. The Giving USA Foundation reported that Americans donated more than $295 billion in 2006. In response to the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the United States provided more than 24.3 million pounds of relief supplies and equipment in the two months following the disaster, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. One Navy cruiser operating off Sumatra found that within 24 hours, its crew had donated more than 500 pounds of their own clothing and purchased items from the ship.

In the case of Hurricane Katrina, both the Navy and the Coast Guard played major roles in evacuating citizens of New Orleans. Private security firms also contributed to the effort. Seamus Flatley, who served as on-site manager for Blackwater Worldwide during Hurricane Katrina, noted that the company started sending assets within two days, conducted 128 rooftop rescues, and provided security at government offices—all at its own expense.

The U.S. Navy, in its recently released maritime strategy, mentioned humanitarian assistance seven times in less than 20 pages of text, signifying the importance the Navy places on exerting soft power throughout the world. The Navy hopes to “mitigate human suffering.” The document states that the “expeditionary character of maritime forces uniquely positions them to provide assistance.” With the majority of the world’s population located within 100 miles of the world’s coastlines, the Navy and Coast Guard are integral to such efforts.

In addition to ad hoc missions like those after the tsunami, the earthquake in Pakistan, or Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the U.S. Navy has conducted goodwill tours such as the USNS Mercy’s 2006 humanitarian assistance deployment to Pacific islands and Southeast Asia or the more recent deployment of the USNS Comfort throughout the Caribbean and Central and South America. In the latter deployment, more than 98,000 patients received treatment, according to a recent article by the mission’s commander. The deployments also included civilian personnel from various nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

While the United States and its Navy and Coast Guard remain the pre-eminent global first responders to disasters, could the global stability industry contribute to these missions?

Communication was key as PSCs helped restore order to New Orleans. Fema/IllinoisPhoto.com

The first issue is access. At nearly 900 feet long, the deep-draft USNS Comfort is limited to larger ports. Although the majority of the world’s population lives within 100 miles of major bodies of water, few live near accessible deepwater ports. The global security industry, in the form of private naval companies (PNCs), can provide smaller but capable boats to administer to the needs of areas with smaller populations who might not otherwise receive much-needed medical treatment or supplies from the United States. These boats might also be small enough to enter navigable rivers, thereby reaching even more remote populations. Richard McLellan, president and founder of Pistris, Inc., a firm that has specialized in maritime operations for 10 years, notes that “the U.S. can send the Comfort or Mercy to show the flag around, say, Manila Bay [Philippines], but there are problems in outlying islands as well.”

The second issue is the perennial problem of numbers. As of mid-November, the U.S. Navy had 279 deployable ships, fewer than half the number it had during Secretary of the Navy John Lehman’s tenure in the 1980s. While a carrier or expeditionary strike group en route to its duty station might be able to respond to major crises, the problem of more missions with fewer ships remains. Supplementary capabilities provided by PNCs would be a force multiplier.

The third issue is timely response. Rather than getting underway from the continental United States and making a time-consuming passage across oceans, the U.S. Marine Corps has a Maritime Prepositioning Force with squadrons strategically stationed throughout the world to meet global conflicts when they erupt. The Military Sealift Command, for example, contracts some of its supply work out to firms like Edison Chouest and Hornbeck Offshore. A similar structure could be created specifically for contingency humanitarian relief operations composed of PNC-owned boats, particularly in Southeast Asia and around the increasingly important coastlines of Africa, which recently received its own combatant command.

A young Indonesian boy watches humanitarian efforts in Banda Aceh, Sumatra.

While PSCs have proliferated in recent years, particularly with operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, applying global security operations to the maritime environment hasn’t fully matured, much less been explored. McLellan, a former Navy surface warfare officer, suggests that they’re “ahead of our time; people are just catching on to the value” of using private companies to support the U.S. Navy or Coast Guard. Pistris’ approach to its maritime component in support of humanitarian assistance efforts is its innovative use of commercial craft. Pistris is partnered with a shipyard that converts fast support boats for use with multimillion-dollar yachts. Yacht owners don’t want their own decks encumbered with helicopters, small boats, or supplies, so they purchase these boats that trail behind. Since everything is now modular, according to McLellan, you could easily install containers of surgical supplies or anything else the mission requires.

Another firm pursuing at-sea opportunities is Blackwater Worldwide. Tom Ridenour, the director of maritime operations at Blackwater, is a retired Coast Guard captain. Last year, Blackwater purchased the former National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration ship M/V McArthur, which was launched in 1966. Since then, Ridenour and his crew have refurbished the ship, which now includes capacity for several rigid hull inflatable boats and a flight deck and hangar that can house two helicopters. Like the Pistris vessels, the McArthur has room for 20-foot modular containers. With a crew of 13, the McArthur can deploy with up to 42 government, military, or nongovernmental personnel.

But there are concerns, namely the negative connotations of employing private firms to do what may be considered inherently government or military functions. If a PNC is based in the United States, then it might be U.S.-flagged. “Lots of countries don’t want American presence,” McLellan argues, “so it may be more palatable to fly a non-American flag” while accomplishing the same goal. But he suggests that it’s in the PNCs’ interest to be “strategically helping, not hindering, to acquire more business opportunities,” part of the performance-based marketing approach that has proven successful for many defense firms.

These concerns might be mitigated by the fact that HADR missions conducted by PNCs would be cooperating with embedded U.S. government and military personnel as well as NGOs, such as those who were embedded on recent deployments of the Comfort and Mercy.

Ridenour and Flatley both noted their firm’s “Field of Dreams” mantra: “If you build it, they will come,” a phrase familiar to most in commercial enterprises. With regard to PNCs and their potential role in humanitarian assistance roles, if it happens, they could be there.

Claude Berube teaches in the political science and history departments at the U.S. Naval Academy. The co-author of two books, he wrote “Blackwaters for the Blue Waters: The Promise of Private Naval Companies,” which appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Orbis. The views expressed are his own and not those of the Department of the Navy.

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From the January/February 2008 issue of Serviam.