The US "Stars and Stripes" reluctantly admitted on 15 June that the amphibious assault ship "Boxer" had just completed a five-year repair and was on its way to the western Pacific Ocean. The bumpy encounters of the "Wasp"-class amphibious assault ship mentioned in the report in recent years have made Pentagon officials even more angry.
According to a statement issued by the U.S. Navy's Third Fleet, the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer left its home port of San Diego on April 1 for the Western Pacific, but was forced to return for "additional maintenance to support its deployment" due to mechanical problems.
Although the Third Fleet did not elaborate on the specific faults, the U.S. Naval Institute website said there was a problem with the ship's rudder. The report quoted a Pentagon official, who asked not to be named, as saying the repair could take up to three weeks.
The halfway turn of the "Boxer" seriously affected the deployment plan of the US military in the Indo-Pacific region. It also led an amphibious combat group of the San Antonio-class dock landing ships USS Somerset and USS Hubrsfery, carrying the 15th Marine Expeditionary Force and its supporting new amphibious fighting vehicles. They were originally scheduled to participate in a number of exercises in the Pacific, but after the Boxer malfunctioned, the Marine Corps units on board were withdrawn. Pentagon officials acknowledged that delays in the deployment of the Boxer disrupted a series of plans in the Pacific and caused "frustration for Indo-Pacific Command operatives."
Pentagon officials complain for good reason. Previously, the "Boxer" had already postponed its deployment several times due to major mechanical problems. Its last deployment dates back to 2019, when tensions between the United States and Iran were rising and it was sent to the Gulf region to show its might.
In June 2020, the Boxer began an 18-month period of maintenance and modernization work from BAE Systems, which is scheduled to end in December 2021. As a result, like other U.S. Navy ships awaiting repairs, it waited until June 2022 to end maintenance and go to sea for testing.
But its bad luck began. In August 2022, the Boxer was forced to return to port for repairs after it was discovered during sea trials that the forced ventilator of the power system had failed, and in the following months, the ship's boilers and engines had problems with the main reduction unit. The San Diego Public Broadcasting Service's investigative report reported that the U.S. Navy's review of three separate engineering failures found that "poor leaders, overly complacent crews and the disastrous consequences of the Navy's cuts in maintenance costs" added more than a year to the ship's undeployable time. Adm. Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations, said she had ordered an "in-depth investigation" into the issues.
To add insult to the dismay of the US Navy, a similar situation is intensifying. According to a 2023 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the U.S. Navy faces a backlog of surface warship repairs estimated at a total of up to $1.8 billion, and reports of failures that result in damage to ships that are unable to complete their primary tasks are also increasing, mainly involving littoral combat ships and Wasp-class amphibious assault ships. For example, in fiscal year 2011, the Wasp class reported 18 reports of the highest level III and IV damage accidents, while in fiscal year 2021, that number rose to 61, and the number of similar accidents reported on the Freedom-class and Littoral Combat Ships increased from 18 and 11 in 2011 to 44 and 37, respectively.
Faced with such a predicament, one US military official even complained: "How long will we have to accept such a catastrophic maintenance management from the US Navy before someone in the Pentagon is fired?"
Source | Privy Council No. 10