This is a relief:
The U.S. Army, at least for the immediate future, has put plans on hold to gut its obscure and underappreciated fleets of amphibious ships, landing craft, tugs, and other maritime assets. The General Services Administration, or GSA, which had previously announced it would be auctioning off dozens of these vessels over the next year and a half, has pulled down all of the existing listings offline.
The Army navy will never be the People's Liberation Army Navy, but keeping that skill set does keep the option open to create The AFRICOM Queen modularized auxiliary cruiser as a power projection platform in a theater that doesn't get the assets that EUCOM, CENTCOM, and INDOPACOM get.
See my Military Review article on that concept here.
Army mariners would be needed to crew such a power projection platform. Without ships, there would be no reason to keep the mariners.
