This assessment last year by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, paints a grim picture for sustained oprerations in the Pacific. Eastern Med and Arabian Sea would be worse.
Heritage assesses with high confidence that as of May 2025, twelve Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo/ammunition ships (T-AKE) are assigned to the Combat Logistics Force (CLF), each capable of delivering approximately 6,000–7,000 tons of ordnance and provisions, and up to 25,000 barrels of F-76 per loadout, depending on mission configuration. While not primary fuel delivery platforms, these ships provide critical distributed sustainment for forward naval forces. However, Heritage judges that survivability remains low in contested environments without escort due to minimal defensive systems, volatile cargo loadouts, and high target value to PLA strike planners.
To me, it looks like sliced processed meat. Not all of the foodstuff is sourced from the US while a ship is deployed. This may very well have been sourced from one of the Arab countries in the region and usually prepared locally in a different manner than the CS is used to doing for Americans. CS by the way is the Culinary Specialist, which used to be called Mess Management Specialist.
I have seen that many times and eaten it only once. On the USS Forrestal in the 90s, it was called “meat loaf”.
It’s fairly close to what we called “horsecock” on submarines, although horsecock tasted better. It’s what they serve when fresh supplies are low, but usually it’s hidden between a couple slices of bread.
FWIW, on surface ships you choose what goes on your tray, so the sailor who shared this photo was probably doing it for a reason. On submarines you eat family style, which is one of the reasons the food is so much better. Skimmer food sucks - I survived a 6 month deployment on the USS Yorktown (CG-48) eating nothing but peanut butter sandwiches and cottage cheese.
Would you say you ate better, or worse, than these 18th-century rations? Though one must note they were rationed a gallon of beer per day to wash all that crap down, so maybe we must admit a slight improvement.
Their bolding is to basically say that logistics vessels need escorts in wartime? That’s not exactly groundbreaking (depends on how deep ships are operating inside the contested environment and whether the Navy has escorts available—for a conflict of this scale, I’d be shocked if they don’t, since it’s hardly global at this point). Maybe that’s a problem today, maybe it isn’t. I’d simply note that sailors complaining about the quality of food on ships is about as reliable an indicator of supply problems as a report from, say, the Heritage Foundation.
Which is to say, take it all with several grains of salt (not unlike Navy food, which is terrible even in the best of times).
Exactly this. At the end of the day, I don’t know if these ships are experiencing genuine problems getting replenished or not. But it’s not as if the food got onto this sailor’s tray by someone going “Here’s your meal for the day, now shut up and eat.” They went to a cafeteria-style buffet line and self-selected what went on their tray. Whether they intentionally left better options in the serving line just to generate controversy, or this really was the best of a series of bad options, I can’t say. None if us can just based of that picture.
ETA: The only thing I am reasonably confident of at this point is that this sailor has been or will soon be identified by their chain of command, and is absolutely screwed. My heart goes out to them, although I can’t say why because then I’d be getting political.
Often, though not always. My main complaint was that the cooks (or cranks) who were serving followed the guidelines for portion size; submarine cooks didn’t, and also allowed seconds if they weren’t running low.
Interesting. Even on the John Marshall (converted Lafayette class boomer) the mess deck was pretty small, with just a small pass through and 5 or 6 tables that seated 6. All 3 of my boats were family-style, and I assumed it was because there wasn’t room for a chow line (although we did line up in the passageway waiting for a table to open up).
Honestly, I would have preferred that to the shit they dished up on the Yorktown. Submarine food on the other hand was usually as good or better than restaurant food (at least for the first few months).
Ah “meatloaf”!
I remember that this was served often at the GTMO Bay dinner hall. I tried it once.
I survived on PBJ sandwiches and potato chips for the most part.
A 688 has five tables, two six-man (one of which was the chiefs’ table) and three four-man. Dessert and a big bowl of salad were on the counter at the forward end of the space; everything else was served through the window. Drinks and desserts (if you didn’t pick one up on the way to a table) were delivered by the cranks mess cooks.
And if you’d read the the assessment, each CAG gets one T-AO for fuel and one T-AKE for dry goods and munitions accompanying it. Once they’re empty they have to cycle back for a reload, Greece or Sicily in the eastern Mediterranean, Diego Garcia for the Arabian Sea. This stretches the supply chain quite a bit.
Keeping a ship forward deployed is a finite resource. Ford just set a post-WWII record, ten months at sea. Our god-emperor and his alcoholic minion are fighting a fantasy war having forgotten – assuming they ever knew – logistics comes first, tactics second in warfighting.
When I was on the MSP the unqualified E-4s and below were required to do crank duty. As a rider, I volunteered for it even though I was an E-5. The senior chief MS who ran the galley was adored by everyone, and their galley was affectionately known as “The Viking Inn”. That was a great trip.
Shipmate, I was a naval officer. I served on a forward deployed destroyer, a minesweeper homeported in Bahrain (and alas, the last of those—including the one I served on—was decommissioned not too long ago), and an aircraft carrier (twice). I have conned a ship alongside a tanker to take on fuel and supplies. Many times.
I am very aware of what it takes to maintain a ship at sea, and I am telling you it’s really not that much of a stretch for the US Navy to pull off. It’s a capability we pretty much mastered in WWII and have continued to make use of as a matter of routine.
As far as Ford’s record… first of all, it hasn’t spent the whole time at sea. It quite infamously had to pull into Crete a month ago. But more importantly, it hasn’t exactly shattered the record, as you will see here:
I was in sonar and we were always undermanned so sonar never cranked at sea on my boat. My turn to crank didn’t come up until I was already a qualified E5 and I loved it.
A break from the duty section and all the inport departmental and divisional bull@#$? Sign me up dude.
