SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Drift: How This Ship Became a Floating Gitmo

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This is the U.S.S. Boxer. A big-deck amphibious assault ship, the “Golden Gator” displaces about 40,500 tons and provides a working home for more than 2,000 troops. Recently, its brig held a less likely passenger, Danger Room has confirmed: Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali whom the United States just charged with supporting al-Shabaab and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
But if Warsame’s case is the future of terrorism detentions, that’s going to be a problem. The Navy simply doesn’t have enough ships with the brig space to serve as a floating Guantanamo Bay.
Out of the Navy’s 286 ships, only its 11 aircraft carriers and 10 big-deck amphibious assault ships really have brigs to lock up potential dangerous detainees. Its destroyers, cruisers, subs, frigates and littoral combat ships lack the space necessary to operate more than a makeshift brig. They also lack the guards and medical support personnel to detain someone for months, as in Warsame’s case.
“When someone is confined on surface ships,” explains retired Rear Adm. Ronald Christenson, a former commander of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, “they’ll transfer him almost immediately to a big ship that does have a brig, or shore facilities that have those qualifications.” And an aircraft carrier’s brig is only big enough for about “six to ten” detainees, Christenson adds.

Of course, in a pinch, the Navy has workarounds. In February 2009, the Navy placed 16 captured pirates aboard the supply ship Lewis and Clark, where about 20 Marines were tasked with guarding the mostly docile buccaneers. The Navy called the arrangement a “temporary holding facility” en route to depositing the detainees at a Kenyan pirate court. Ironically, after the Lewis and Clark ceased holding its detainees, pirates chased it in May 2009.
“Even though [smaller] ships have this ability, if you want to have a real prison, you need a larger ship,” says Eric Wertheim, who edits the authoritative Combat Fleets of The World for the U.S. Naval Institute. “Also, you have to look at what ships are need for other duties, and how it affects the main mission of the ship. If it’s a small ship, and you’ve got a lot of [detainees], it’s gonna have a big impact.”
Even on the large ships that have brig space for detainees, Christenson says, “extended” detentions — “a month or something” — are very rare. “They’ll transfer them to shore, get them in a big facility,” he says. “They don’t want to keep someone in a ship’s brig for a long time.” Unless Obama can reverse the drift of his detentions policy, they might have to.

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