Hospital ship Comfort heading to Puerto Rico

Versus what being docked somewhere collecting dust? The territory people are as Americans as Texans and Floridians so this should be executed with the highest priority. Yeah the AAR will be interesting and hopefully PR and federal governments can better prepare for the next catastrophe and up their contingency response plan. Bringing the Comfort vessel to operational status? Are you serious? It can and has deployed within a day or two notice before. It's been all over the world to assist in all kinds of contingencies but you're questioning its use in Puerto Rico, a US island? Yeah seems like the Comfort is a T in healthcare and their mission; however, there's still a lot to learn in all other areas for the US territories/islands.

I'm torn over this happening because I don't think it fits the mission but then again we've done it before so there is precedent. I could be wrong but here is why:
The T-AH class does remarkable things and brings it's own unique brand of naval power to bear on a situation. It does convey that the U.S. is all in when the deployment announcement is made and when it enters the waters or port where it will perform its mission. Combatant Commanders have gotten creative in its employment in recent years by adding capabilities to ride along and perform missions on the shore while the Medical Treatment Facility conducts their business aboard or on shore. As for the full range of Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response, the ships in an Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) probably have more all around capability than a Hospital Ship. As for medical care afloat, the Amphibious Assault Ship is next best to the Comfort or Mercy. One of those is in an ARG and on station off the coast of PR.

For the Comfort to sail, it has to be brought to operational status, again that takes time, but could that have been happening already behind the scenes? The Navy has figured out how to do this quickly even adding an interim stop to provision and have the medical staff embark. Then enroute there is setting up and training before the ship accepts patients.

As for timing to make the decision to deploy, yes it may have been slow, but I personally think it is top down decision and not coming from the people on the ground. Federal planners working with the Territory's Health Department have worked hard to prepare for an event on the island. They conducted pre landfall evacuations and are moving patients to CONUS. There are prepositioned stocks and sets on the island and they flew teams in ahead of the storm.

It will be interesting to look at the AAR of this event.