The Hormuz Crisis and the Case for Reconnecting the Navy and Merchant Marine
The MOC
By
CDR Ander Heiles, USN
April 1, 2026
Two weeks into Operation Epic Fury, twenty commercial vessels have been struck in the Persian Gulf. At least six seafarers are dead. Roughly 400 tankers sit idle. Insurance withdrew before the first mine was laid, and the cascading commercial decisions that followed shut the Strait of Hormuz faster than any weapon could. The mines and missiles came later – but by then, the spreadsheets had already done the work.
President Trump has promised Navy escorts; but the Navy is declining near-daily requests from the shipping industry because the threat remains too dangerous. During Operation Earnest Will in 1987-88, roughly 30 warships escorted convoys through the Gulf, covering a fraction of today’s stranded traffic. With a third of deployed naval forces engaged in strike operations, the arithmetic does not work.
But the escort shortage is a symptom. The disease is older. The United States has spent seven decades severing every operational link between the Navy and the Merchant Marine, and the Hormuz crisis is the bill coming due.
Seven Decades of Separation
At the end of World War II, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Merchant Marine were operationally fused. Over 6,200 merchant ships carried Navy Armed Guard gun crews. The Military Sea Transportation Service and its predecessors operated as the logistics bridge between the two services. Merchant mariners served under fire in every theater.
What followed was a slow institutional dismemberment. Maritime functions were stripped from the defense establishment, passed between agencies, and eventually buried inside the Department of Transportation as the Maritime Administration – a promotional body with fewer than 800 employees. The Navy stopped training with commercial ships; commercial shipbuilders stopped building for the Navy. The merchant fleet shrank from over 1,200 internationally trading vessels in the 1950s to fewer than 80 today. The institutional connective tissue between the two services atrophied until there was nothing left.
The Hormuz crisis has exposed what that absence looks like in practice. When war-risk insurance collapsed and merchant ships started to get hit, there was no doctrine defending commercial shipping short of full naval escort. No liaison structure between operational commanders and the commercial shipping companies whose vessels were under fire. No embarked capability of any kind aboard merchant hulls.
The Navy had plans for fighting Iran. It had no plan for protecting the commercial fleet whose continued operation underpins the global economy.
China took a different path. Over the past two decades, Beijing has deliberately integrated its commercial fleet into military logistics. National defense mobilization laws allow the requisitioning of civilian vessels. Merchant ships are built to dual-use standards. A cargo vessel recently observed at a Shanghai shipyard had been fitted with containerized vertical launch cells, radar, and a close-in weapon system. The United States does not need to replicate China’s offensive model. But continuing to treat the Navy and the Merchant marine as separate institutions is a strategic liability the country can no longer afford.
The Armed Guard as a First Step
The fastest way to force the Navy and the Merchant Marine back into the same operating space is to put Navy personnel aboard merchant ships. The World War II Naval Armed Guard did exactly this – 112,000 sailors served aboard merchant vessels, operating defensive weapons, living alongside civilian crews, and building the kind of institutional familiarity that no memorandum of understanding can replicate. As the Armed Guard expanded and more ships received defensive armament, merchant shipping losses declined sharply. The Armed Guard was not a permanent force structure. It was a wartime mechanism that created enduring institutional relationships.
A modern Armed Guard would center on fly-away Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) kits, specifically the Mk 15 Phalanx Block 1B: a self-contained weapon system that perform search, detection, tracking, and engagement without integration into a ship’s combat system. The Army’s Centurion C-RAM has already proven the fly-away concept, deploying modified Phalanx mounts on trailers to forward operating bases. The Block 1B engages small surface craft and slow-moving air targets – precisely the fast-attack boat and drone threats striking merchant ships in the Gulf today. Each installation would require a crew of four to six Navy Fire Controlmen and Gunners Mates. At roughly $5.6 million per mount, the cost is a fraction of a single destroyer escort mission.
CIWS will not sweep a mine. The mine threat now emerging in the Strait – where Iran has begun mine laying operations even as the Navy is actively destroying minelaying vessels – demands a dedicated mine countermeasure capability, which the Navy weakened by decommissioning its last four minesweepers in the region in September 2025. But the 20 vessels struck since February 28th were hit by drones, missiles, and fast-attack craft – not mines. Point defense fills the gap against the threats that are actually killing seafarers today.
A Hedge Force The CNO Already Asked For
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle’s hedge strategy, codified in his December 2025 guidance and the January 2026 Fighting Instructions, calls for “tailored forces” and “tailored offsets” – scalable, cost-effective capabilities that address specific threat without consuming the readiness of general purpose forces. Caudle himself cited the Strait of Hormuz as a use case for the concept. A fly-away CIWS aboard a merchant tanker is a hedge force in its purest form: low-cost, rapidly deployable, tailored to a specific chokepoint, and designed to fill a gap that the main battle force cannot cover while simultaneously fighting a war.
The hedge strategy’s current vision focuses on unmanned platforms and robotic autonomous systems. It has not yet recognized the merchant fleet as a hedge force platform. It should: not only because the tactical need is immediate, but because the institutional return extends far beyond the current crisis.
The Window is Open
The objection writes itself: Earnest Will ended when the Iran-Iraq War ended, and everything was put back in the box. What prevents a modern Armed Guard from suffering the same fate? Two things are different now. First, the SHIPS for America Act and the White House Maritime Action Plan have created a policy framework for Navy-Merchant marine integration that did not exist in 1988. An Armed Guard program initiated during this crisis would land inside an active legislative and executive effort to rebuild the relationship, not in a vacuum.
Second, the threat environment is not going away. The Red Sea has been effectively closed to Western-affiliated shipping for over two years. The insurance-driven blockade demonstrated at Hormuz is replicable at any chokepoint – the next crisis may be at Malacca, not Hormuz. An Armed Guard capability that proves itself in the Gulf becomes a standing tool in the Navy’s hedge force inventory, deployable where the insurance architecture fails and commercial shipping needs point defense that escorts cannot provide.
The Hormuz crisis did not create the gap between the Navy and the Merchant Marine. It revealed it. Closing the gap will take years of work in doctrine, manning, shipbuilding, and institutional habit. But every institutional change begins with a first operational step. Placing Navy weapons and Navy crews aboard merchant ships is that step. The precedent exists. The technology exists. The CNO’s own strategy provides the framework. It is time to bring back the Naval Armed Guard.
Commander Ander Heiles is a Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy, licensed merchant mariner, and a 2025 graduate of the Joint Advanced Warfighting School at National Defense University. He has commanded USS Monsoon (PC 4) in Bahrain and is currently the Executive Officer for the Naval Talent Acquisition Group Empire State in New York.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
The opinions and views expressed here belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of War or the Department of the Navy or their components. Any mention of commercial products or services does not imply Department of War endorsement. Additionally, the presence of external hyperlinks does not signify Department of War approval of the linked websites of their content, products, or services.
Center for Maritime Strategy
By CDR Ander Heiles, USN
Two weeks into Operation Epic Fury, twenty commercial vessels have been struck in the Persian Gulf. At least six seafarers are dead. Roughly 400 tankers sit idle. Insurance withdrew before the first mine was laid, and the cascading commercial decisions that followed shut the Strait of Hormuz faster than any weapon could. The mines and missiles came later – but by then, the spreadsheets had already done the work.
President Trump has promised Navy escorts; but the Navy is declining near-daily requests from the shipping industry because the threat remains too dangerous. During Operation Earnest Will in 1987-88, roughly 30 warships escorted convoys through the Gulf, covering a fraction of today’s stranded traffic. With a third of deployed naval forces engaged in strike operations, the arithmetic does not work.
But the escort shortage is a symptom. The disease is older. The United States has spent seven decades severing every operational link between the Navy and the Merchant Marine, and the Hormuz crisis is the bill coming due.
Seven Decades of Separation
At the end of World War II, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Merchant Marine were operationally fused. Over 6,200 merchant ships carried Navy Armed Guard gun crews. The Military Sea Transportation Service and its predecessors operated as the logistics bridge between the two services. Merchant mariners served under fire in every theater.
What followed was a slow institutional dismemberment. Maritime functions were stripped from the defense establishment, passed between agencies, and eventually buried inside the Department of Transportation as the Maritime Administration – a promotional body with fewer than 800 employees. The Navy stopped training with commercial ships; commercial shipbuilders stopped building for the Navy. The merchant fleet shrank from over 1,200 internationally trading vessels in the 1950s to fewer than 80 today. The institutional connective tissue between the two services atrophied until there was nothing left.
The Hormuz crisis has exposed what that absence looks like in practice. When war-risk insurance collapsed and merchant ships started to get hit, there was no doctrine defending commercial shipping short of full naval escort. No liaison structure between operational commanders and the commercial shipping companies whose vessels were under fire. No embarked capability of any kind aboard merchant hulls.
The Navy had plans for fighting Iran. It had no plan for protecting the commercial fleet whose continued operation underpins the global economy.
China took a different path. Over the past two decades, Beijing has deliberately integrated its commercial fleet into military logistics. National defense mobilization laws allow the requisitioning of civilian vessels. Merchant ships are built to dual-use standards. A cargo vessel recently observed at a Shanghai shipyard had been fitted with containerized vertical launch cells, radar, and a close-in weapon system. The United States does not need to replicate China’s offensive model. But continuing to treat the Navy and the Merchant marine as separate institutions is a strategic liability the country can no longer afford.
The Armed Guard as a First Step
The fastest way to force the Navy and the Merchant Marine back into the same operating space is to put Navy personnel aboard merchant ships. The World War II Naval Armed Guard did exactly this – 112,000 sailors served aboard merchant vessels, operating defensive weapons, living alongside civilian crews, and building the kind of institutional familiarity that no memorandum of understanding can replicate. As the Armed Guard expanded and more ships received defensive armament, merchant shipping losses declined sharply. The Armed Guard was not a permanent force structure. It was a wartime mechanism that created enduring institutional relationships.
A modern Armed Guard would center on fly-away Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) kits, specifically the Mk 15 Phalanx Block 1B: a self-contained weapon system that perform search, detection, tracking, and engagement without integration into a ship’s combat system. The Army’s Centurion C-RAM has already proven the fly-away concept, deploying modified Phalanx mounts on trailers to forward operating bases. The Block 1B engages small surface craft and slow-moving air targets – precisely the fast-attack boat and drone threats striking merchant ships in the Gulf today. Each installation would require a crew of four to six Navy Fire Controlmen and Gunners Mates. At roughly $5.6 million per mount, the cost is a fraction of a single destroyer escort mission.
CIWS will not sweep a mine. The mine threat now emerging in the Strait – where Iran has begun mine laying operations even as the Navy is actively destroying minelaying vessels – demands a dedicated mine countermeasure capability, which the Navy weakened by decommissioning its last four minesweepers in the region in September 2025. But the 20 vessels struck since February 28th were hit by drones, missiles, and fast-attack craft – not mines. Point defense fills the gap against the threats that are actually killing seafarers today.
A Hedge Force The CNO Already Asked For
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle’s hedge strategy, codified in his December 2025 guidance and the January 2026 Fighting Instructions, calls for “tailored forces” and “tailored offsets” – scalable, cost-effective capabilities that address specific threat without consuming the readiness of general purpose forces. Caudle himself cited the Strait of Hormuz as a use case for the concept. A fly-away CIWS aboard a merchant tanker is a hedge force in its purest form: low-cost, rapidly deployable, tailored to a specific chokepoint, and designed to fill a gap that the main battle force cannot cover while simultaneously fighting a war.
The hedge strategy’s current vision focuses on unmanned platforms and robotic autonomous systems. It has not yet recognized the merchant fleet as a hedge force platform. It should: not only because the tactical need is immediate, but because the institutional return extends far beyond the current crisis.
The Window is Open
The objection writes itself: Earnest Will ended when the Iran-Iraq War ended, and everything was put back in the box. What prevents a modern Armed Guard from suffering the same fate? Two things are different now. First, the SHIPS for America Act and the White House Maritime Action Plan have created a policy framework for Navy-Merchant marine integration that did not exist in 1988. An Armed Guard program initiated during this crisis would land inside an active legislative and executive effort to rebuild the relationship, not in a vacuum.
Second, the threat environment is not going away. The Red Sea has been effectively closed to Western-affiliated shipping for over two years. The insurance-driven blockade demonstrated at Hormuz is replicable at any chokepoint – the next crisis may be at Malacca, not Hormuz. An Armed Guard capability that proves itself in the Gulf becomes a standing tool in the Navy’s hedge force inventory, deployable where the insurance architecture fails and commercial shipping needs point defense that escorts cannot provide.
The Hormuz crisis did not create the gap between the Navy and the Merchant Marine. It revealed it. Closing the gap will take years of work in doctrine, manning, shipbuilding, and institutional habit. But every institutional change begins with a first operational step. Placing Navy weapons and Navy crews aboard merchant ships is that step. The precedent exists. The technology exists. The CNO’s own strategy provides the framework. It is time to bring back the Naval Armed Guard.
Commander Ander Heiles is a Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy, licensed merchant mariner, and a 2025 graduate of the Joint Advanced Warfighting School at National Defense University. He has commanded USS Monsoon (PC 4) in Bahrain and is currently the Executive Officer for the Naval Talent Acquisition Group Empire State in New York.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
The opinions and views expressed here belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of War or the Department of the Navy or their components. Any mention of commercial products or services does not imply Department of War endorsement. Additionally, the presence of external hyperlinks does not signify Department of War approval of the linked websites of their content, products, or services.