Medical Diplomats: Kearsarge's Latin American humanitarian cruise tests new U.S. military 'soft power' concepts

摘要

To Chief Warrant Officer Chris Pienkowski, combat cargo officer aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge, one pallet is the same as another. "A piece of gear is a piece of gear," he said, barely looking up from the paperwork on his desk Aug. 9 in his office deep in Kearsarge's bowels. It's Pienkowski's job to decide where to put things in the ship's roughly 100,000 cubic feet of cargo space. When the 15-year-old vessel is carrying its usual contingent of 2,200 Marines, plus all their weapons and equipment - not to mention gear for an aviation attachment of up to 30 helicopters - storing everything can be like doing a puzzle, where the pieces each weigh hundreds or thousands of pounds. But, like he said, gear is gear. So when Kearsarge was ordered to leave its Marines and usual flotilla of escorting warships behind and instead sail unescorted to Latin America to pursue a radical new "soft power" strategy, it didn't make any difference to Pienkowski. Instead of storing combat vehicles and ammunition, the combat cargo team crammed in pallets of medical equipment, generators, construction vehicles, lumber, tools and $600,000 worth of donated medicine. Below decks, the 840-foot assault ship looked like a cross between a hospital store room and a Home Depot.