USNS Henry J. Kaiser (T-AO-187) is a United States Navy fleet replenishment oiler and the lead ship of her class.

In November 1983, Avondale Shipyard, Inc. was awarded a firm contract for the construction of two fleet replenishment oilers with options for two more.

[1] Henry J. Kaiser was laid down at Avondale's shipyard in Bridge City, Louisiana, on 22 August 1984 and launched on 5 October 1985.

[2] Speakers at her launch ceremony included Senator Jennings Randolph, U.S. Representative Lindy Boggs, and Admiral Small.

[6][7] Her construction complies with American Bureau of Shipping rules and is periodically inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard.

While the ship has five refueling stations, she has sufficient crew to operate only three of them at a time in order to save money.

Similar to refueling operations, span wires are kept under constant tension between these masts and receiving ships to form a trolley system, enabling the crew to deliver pallets of dry goods.

Its purpose is to allow helicopters to resupply ships, which the Navy refers to as vertical replenishment, or "vertrep".

A military detachment of active-duty Navy personnel, including communications and supply people, also serves on the ship.

Shortly after this deployment, during a NATO exercise in September 1989, she damaged a ballast tank off the west coast of England, perhaps by scraping a rock in a channel.

[19] Henry J. Kaiser was in the Red Sea in 1994 when the Egyptian ferry Al-Qamar Al-Saudi Al-Misri caught fire with approximately 580 people aboard.

[20] In January 1995, she was forward deployed to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean as part of Maritime Prepositioning Ships Squadron Two.

[4] During Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2011, the ship supported Fifth Fleet units in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman.

[26] In 2012, Henry J. Kaiser delivered 900,000 gallons of a 50–50 blend of advanced biofuels and traditional petroleum-based fuel to the USS Nimitz strike group.

[4] In this exercise, the ship was the "suspect vessel", supposedly carrying weapons of mass destruction, to train other units on boarding techniques.

In 2019, Henry J. Kaiser supported the USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group in exercise Northern Edge, the first time a U.S. aircraft carrier had been in Alaskan waters for a decade.