[Legbreaker]

I'm far from convinced adequate numbers of trained personnel would be available.

Firstly, there's been a war on for about 5 years. Many of the technicians could have been drafted, or simply run for the hills at the first sign of nuclear weapons. With the training they've had, they're more than aware of the effects of radiation exposure and just how much systems could have been effected by EMP and several years shut down without maintenance.

Those drafted are likely but by no means guarenteed of a position on a nuclear vessel. These vessels had been in constant heavy battle up until "the last major fleet in being" was destroyed. This canon statement says to me that there aren't a lt of ships still floating about, and therefore, chances are the crews were also destroyed. Those drafted after the ships had been sent to the bottom may well have been posted to combat units, or rear area units which we've established in other threads, were likely to have been hit very hard in the nuclear exchanges.

Yes, there was supposedly a large number of replacement crew, however, ships do take damage in battle and crew are much harder to repair than a bulkhead door. It is also likely that nuclear weapons were used against enemy warships, so even if the vessel survived, the crew is likely to have been exposed to high levels of radiation - a few days, weeks (or in some poor souls cases) months of agony later....

Those that avoided military service and probably death or injury, were exposed to everything the civilian population suffered through. Nuclear attack, radiation fallout, brutal winter, disease, famine, riots, etc. Just because they had prewar value as specialists, doesn't mean they'd be worth more than another mouth to feed post nuke.

Now, as to prepositioned supplies and equipment. Yes, FEMA may well have them in place today however we're talking about several years into a nuclear war. Those stocks, if they hadn't been looted already, would have been stripped bare by the emergency services in the immediate aftermath of the exchange. Any crumbs left over is likely to have been shipped overseas to support the war effort.

Yes, modern warships do have machineshops, etc, but warships, or shipping of virtually any kind is either non-existant in 2000 (on the bottom of the ocean) or simply doesn't have the fuel/lubricants/spare parts/crew/etc to get to where it's needed.

Operation Omega limited equipment to only 100kgs per person. This is not only due to limited troop space on the available shipping, but also due to the limits of the ships themselves. The ships involved are almost certainly only whatever could be found still capable of floating - this means they were not bulk carriers, vehicle transports, container ships, etc. Try getting a ten tonne earthmover into a ferry...

Yes, some heavy equipment would have been taken, but bear in mind that all heavy equipment was promised to the Germans in exchange for ships, use of port facilities (which again were damaged and unlikely to handle loading of heavy equipment) and most importantly, fuel oil! If the Germans got even the slightest hint that the US was trying to renege on the deal, there's a good chance there'd be some serious friction....