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A mission of Mercy sets sail for the Indian Ocean

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The Navy’s hospital ship Mercy sailed out of San Diego Bay on Friday, its white bow pointed toward Hawaii but dragging in its wake concerns about the future of its unique fleet of vessels.

The Mercy will act as the flagship for the annual “Pacific Partnership” mission, a five-month goodwill tour that’s slated to unite the hospital ship with its sidekick, the Singapore-based fast transport Falls River — plus more than 800 military and civilian personnel from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, France, Peru and Japan and nongovernmental organizations like Project Hope, Hope Worldwide and Project Handclasp.

The mission came as a response to the tsunami that ravaged large parts of south and southeast Asia, triggering calls across the region to build stronger partnerships with the United States and other powers.

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For this tour, the Mercy plans to dock in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Vietnam while the Fall River will break away to visit Thailand and the Pacific islands of Yap and Palau.

The ships’ medical, engineering and veterinary teams plan to help the countries they visit but the key mission is to conduct disaster relief exercises and hold medical symposiums designed to mitigate future humanitarian crises.

On the American side, the mission is drawing civilian mariners to sail the ship along with Navy medical teams, Coast Guard rescue swimmers and Army veterinarians.

“Unfortunately, it’s not if, it’s when there’s the next natural disaster, so we want our allies and partners and everyone in the region to be prepared,” said Capt. David Bretz, a career surface warfare officer who skippers Destroyer Squadron 31 and will act as the overall mission leader during Mercy’s tour.

Bretz’s deputy commander is British Capt. Peter Olive, the former commander of the minesweeper Ledbury and the frigate Argyll. He’s slated to join the Fall River later in the tour while Bretz stays aboard the Mercy.

It’s the first time in the initiative’s 13-year history that a British commander has been asked to lead a task group, which comes as no surprise to maritime strategists watching the increased role the United Kingdom is playing in the region.

During a Feb. 12 address in Australia, British defense secretary Gavin Williamson announced that the frigate Sutherland would return from its tour through the South China Sea, “making it clear our navy has a right to do that,” a direct challenge to Chinese military leaders who continue to arm and expand islands in the ocean in an effort to assert territorial claims challenged by Vietnam, Malaysia and other nations.

“The Pacific region is really important to the U.S., obviously, but it’s also important to all the partners participating in this,” Olive said.

U.S. Navy Capt. Peter Roberts, a primary mission is humanitarian, its stops in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam continue an American “legacy of strong cooperation and defense ties with these nations,” according to the Mercy’s press materials.

Mercy’s visit to Vietnam will follow the planned March port call of the San Diego-based Carl Vinson carrier strike group there. The Point Loma-headquartered Third Fleet’s carrier will be the first one back in Vietnam since the end of the war in 1975.

“America’s interests are worldwide and many people view the Pacific Ocean as something that divides us from the world,” Bretz said. “From my perspective, it’s something that unites us. We’re united with the countries of the Western Pacific.”

China hasn’t been sleeping when it comes to medical diplomacy.

Beijing launched the 866 Daishan Da — also known as the “Peace Ark” — in 2007. It can expand to 600 beds during wartime or disaster relief and it provided medical care to the people of Gabon in October and the Philippines after of 2013’s Typhoon Haiyan.

Friday’s departure of the Mercy comes at an important time in an ongoing debate over its future and that of its only counterpart in the Navy, the Virginia-based Comfort. They’re getting old. They began their lives in 1976 as San Clemente-class supertankers launched by the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company — NASSCO — and were converted eight years later into mammoth floating hospitals.

In the Navy, only the aircraft carriers are larger but it’s the guts inside the hull — the surgical theaters and medical wards — that make it unique.

If the skipper parked the Mercy on land, its 1,000 beds would make it as the 5th largest hospital in California, bigger than Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and twice the size of Scripps Mercy Hospital here.

A 2013 report prepared by the Navy’s Center for Innovation in Ship Design proposed a new class of hospital vessels that offered modular medical facilities and increased amphibious support to hike ship-to-shore patient transfers and make better use of the military’s clinics ashore.

It built on a study drafted two years earlier that identified faults in the Mercy-class ships, including excessive draft that limited where it could sail, limited oxygen and potable water production and the inability to switch around medical spaces.

The second study projected half as many bed spaces but also a medical crew nearly two-thirds smaller than that staffing the Mercy. It would be built on a hull already used for the Navy’s San Antonio-class amphibious warships, but wouldn’t need to meet combat specifications.

The report predicted that the new design would make the flow of patients through the ship more efficient, cutting the need for so many beds. Helicopters, tilt-rotor Ospreys and hovercraft boats would act like ambulances, speeding patients from damaged warships to the floating hospitals.

In 2017, a Navy service life extension program for the Mercy postponed its demise until 2035, commanders say, but the Comfort is slated for mothballing in 2021.

Bretz said that the Navy has placed no restrictions on the Mercy’s current mission due to its age and declined to speculate on its long-term future in the fleet.

“I’m not aware of any limitations because of age,” said the mission’s leader, Bretz. “We have a very complex mission this year going to Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Japan and there’s been no indication of any restrictions on where we anchor or anything.”

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cprine@sduniontribune.com

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