Mercy-class hospital ship

The Mercy class of hospital ships are converted San Clemente-class supertankers now used by the United States Navy as naval ambulances. Originally built in the late 1970s by the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, they were acquired by the Navy and converted into hospital ships, coming into service in 1986 and 1987.

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 contain 12 fully equipped operating theaters, a 1,000-bed hospital facility, radiological services, medical laboratory, pharmacy, optometry lab, CAT scan and two oxygen-producing plants.

Ships
Two ships of the class were put into service:


 * USNS Mercy
 * USNS Comfort

Criticism
The Mercy-class ships are large, with 1,000 beds, and can receive up to 200 patients a day. They are stable platforms suitable for performing most surgical procedures in various sea conditions. However, the main points of criticism of these ships are:


 * They are too slow, with a maximum speed of just over 17 knots. They are too large, and are not easily or quickly deployed or docked. Their size gives them a substantial radar signature that, combined with lack of maneuverability, makes them vulnerable to attack (which should not occur under the auspices of International Law). The Mercy class ships are much larger (in terms of medical capacity) than is needed for most military operations. That said, to attack a hospital ship is a war crime under Hague Convention of 1907.


 * While the ships are underway or in rough seas patients must be transported in by helicopter. However, helicopter capacities are limited, as each ship has only one landing pad.


 * Patient movement within the ship is limited. Built as oil tankers, the original oil storage bulkheads were retained, but have no hatches, which means that patients must be brought up to the top deck in order to be moved from a lower compartment in one part of the ship to another.

In mid-2004 Vice Admiral Michael L. Cowan, the Surgeon General and chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, said that the Comfort and Mercy should be retired. "They’re wonderful ships, but they’re dinosaurs. They were designed in the ’70s, built in the ’80s, and frankly, they’re obsolete".

Few, if any, options are presently being explored to replace them with a platform better suited to the mission at this time.