The ships are operated by Military Sealift Command and are designed to provide emergency, on-site care for American combatant forces, and also for use in support of disaster relief and humanitarian operations. Each ship contains twelve fully equipped operating rooms, a 1,000-bed hospital facility, radiological services, a medical laboratory, pharmacy, optometry lab, CT scan equipment, and two oxygen-producing plants.[2]
Stationed in San Diego, California, Mercy primarily operates in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Her inaugural mission in 1987, was a humanitarian cruise to the Philippines and South Pacific. Her first military mission was serving coalition troops in the First Gulf War. The first disaster relief came in the wake of the 2004 tsunami as Operation Unified Assistance. Her latest was in 2013, when she came to the aid of the Philippines, and other nations in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan.
Stationed out of Norfolk, Virginia, Comfort operates primarily in the Caribbean and Latin America. Her first mission was a combat one: serving coalition troops off the coast of Kuwait, during Operation Desert Storm. Her first humanitarian missions both happened in 1994, helping Haitian and Cuban immigrants looking to come to America. In the aftermath of September 11 attacks, Comfort was activated and sent to Manhattan, to provide medical and mental health services. Comfort headed into combat again for Operation Iraqi Freedom. In 2005, she was back saving American citizens following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. In 2010, she undertook another disaster relief mission, in response to an earthquake in Haiti.[4] In May 2015, Comfort was in Kingston, Jamaica.[5] Once again in 2017, Comfort was deployed to aid American citizens in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.[6]
In March 2020, the ships were deployed to aid in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Both ships were to function as trauma centers at erstwhile-disused cruise ship terminals in San Pedro and Manhattan. This, at that time, would have been expected to have enabled nearby hospitals to have freed up beds for coronavirus patients.[7][8] On 21 April, Governor Cuomo told President Trump that Comfort was no longer needed in New York. While docked in the city, she treated 182 patients.[9]
Criticism
The Mercy-class ships' size gives them a substantial radar signature that, combined with lack of maneuverability, makes them vulnerable to attack. In theory, this should never occur, as attacking a hospital ship is a war crime under the Hague Convention of 1907, but the ships are left vulnerable to terrorist organizations and other entities that do not follow such established warfare conventions, due to the fact that both ships are outfitted only with defensive weapons. If within a battle fleet they could be vulnerable to missile strikes aimed at the fleet as a whole, and their radar signature could be confused with troop ships, landing ships, helicopter carriers or become a target for weapons that miss or are decoyed away from combatant ships.
In mid-2004 Vice Admiral Michael L. Cowan, the Surgeon General and chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, said that Comfort and Mercy should be retired and that "They're wonderful ships, but they're dinosaurs. They were designed in the '70s, built in the '80s, and frankly, they're obsolete."[2]
^"MSC 2005 in Review Home › Publications › Annual Report › 2005 › Appendix". www.msc.navy.mil. Retrieved 12 January 2018. MSC ships need force protection, which is provided by embarked security teams. The ESTs defend against terrorists and pirates by using automatic weapons, such as this M-240 light machine gun mounted on the rail of MSC hospital ship USNS Mercy while she was underway in support of Operation Unified Assistance.
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