Delayed and skipped amphibious warship maintenance has prevented Marine Corps units from training and deploying on schedule, reads a new Government Accountability Office report released on Tuesday.
Sixteen out of the 32 ships in the amphibious fleet are considered to be in “poor material condition” by the Navy’s own standards. Those ships include almost all of the Whidbey Island and Harpers Ferry landing ship docks and the majority of the Wasp-class big-deck amphibious assault ships, according to the GAO study ordered as part of the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.
“These ships are generally the oldest ships in the amphibious fleet. Being rated as unsatisfactory means that these ships are not currently on track to meet their expected service lives because of the number of deferred mandatory maintenance tasks, the condition of essential systems, or the number of structural repair tasks required,” reads the report.
The amphibious fleet has always lagged behind the rest of the surface Navy in terms of availability. Those factors are due in part to maintaining systems that are obsolete in the rest of the fleet and in commercial industry. For example, seven of the eight Wasp-class big-decks run off non-nuclear steam propulsion systems.
“According to ship and maintenance officials, as one of the last non-nuclear steam propulsion ships in the Navy, the LHD class faces diminishing sources for the manufacture of parts for its steam systems,” reads the report.
“Non-nuclear steam propulsion repair is facing a significant loss of repair expertise as an increasingly obsolete trade.”
Overall, the GAO found that the Navy has had a track record of not meeting maintenance schedules for more than a decade.
“Marine Corps documentation indicates that amphibious warfare ships have generally not met the Navy’s planned maintenance schedules dating back to 2010. Specifically, Marine Corps documentation states that, from 2010-2021, the Navy extended 71 percent of amphibious warfare ship depot maintenance beyond its original planned end date. This cumulatively resulted in 28.5 years of lost training and deployment time for those ships and their associated Marines,” reads the report.
Earlier this year, maintenance delays for all three ships in the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group led to a split deployment, with each ship leaving on a different schedule.This forced the Marine Corps and the Navy to rethink the deployment of the ARG and the embarked 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit.
“All three ships experienced maintenance delays and each ship individually deployed later than planned. In particular, the USS Boxer was not available and ready to deploy until April 2024. Days into its transit to the amphibious ready group, the USS Boxer experienced an equipment issue with its rudder and was forced to return to port. The ship was unable to resume its deployment until July 2024—or 10 months later than planned,” reads the report.
But beyond a lack of spare parts and obsolescence issues, the GAO found that the Navy’s decisions to cancel maintenance periods for ships it planned to divest but was later forced by Congress to retain has complicated its repair schedules.
“Decisions in recent years to divest ships before reaching the end of their expected service lives and prior to completing a waiver process involving submitting a certification to congressional defense committees triggered decisions to forego critical maintenance and worsened the condition of those ships,” reads the report.
In 2022, the Navy made plans, at the direction of the Office of Secretary of Defense, to retire all ten of the Harpers Ferry-class landing ships. After a public plea from the Marine Corps to keep the ships in the service, Congress mandated the Navy maintain a minimum of 31 ships to meet the minimum needs of the service.
“As a result, these LSD class ships fell into further disrepair, which compounded the amount of work the Navy needs to complete in future maintenance periods. In 2023, the Navy found that seven of 13 incidents that affected amphibious fleet readiness were linked to LSD diesel engine problems resulting from deferred maintenance,” reads the GAO report.
Delaying or deferring maintenance can lead to earlier decommissioning of ships, the report reads.
“For example, we found the Navy divested the USS Fort McHenry (LSD-43) six years before it reached its expected end of service life. Navy maintenance officials described [Fort McHenry] as a poorly maintained ship that had accumulated a significant backlog of deferred maintenance at the time of divestment,” reads the report.
The accumulation of maintenance issues and the delay in ships coming out of maintenance on time caused the GAO to question if the service could meet its statutory amphibious ship goal.
“The Navy is likely to face difficulties meeting a statutory requirement to have a fleet size of at least 31 amphibious warfare ships into the 2030s, based on its existing investments and planned ship decommissions and divestments,” reads the report.
On Tuesday, in response to questions on amphibious readiness, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti pointed to the recent multi-year procurement deals for San Antonio and American-class amphibious warships as an example of the two sea services moving in the right direction.
“We just put funding in to buy more amphibious ships, new ones,” she said at the Stimson Center on Tuesday.
“The Marine Corps is very excited about that. I’m very excited about that too, again, because this is a capability that we need all around the world every single day.”
In a statement to USNI News, a spokesman for Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said “the Department of the Navy remains committed to building and maintaining 31 amphibious warships, as mandated by Congress. We look forward to working with Congress and our partners in industry to find innovative ways to meet that requirement, such as the block-buy of three LPDs and one LHA we announced in September. We, alongside the Navy and Marine Corps team, are focused on ensuring we have the Fleet and the Force our Nation needs.”
A Marine Corps spokesman told USNI News that the GAO report’s description of the state of the amphibious fleet is similar to the service’s understanding.
“The Marine Corps is aware of the GAO report released today on the Amphibious Warfare Fleet, which fundamentally aligns with our perspective on the issue,” Lt. Col. Josh Benson said in a statement. “The current state of readiness impacts the Marine Corps’ capacity to support Combatant Commander’s needs, to maintain a 3.0 presence with Marine Expeditionary Units performing heel-to-toe deployments, and ultimately limits our ability to respond to crisis around the globe.”
Earlier this year, the Navy and Marine Corps were working on an agreement that would define a common understanding of amphibious ship readiness requirements. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith told reporters in May that he and Franchetti agreed the that the fleet must work toward a goal of 80 percent readiness for its amphibious transport docks and big-deck amphibious warships.
“We have to get back to a three to make one readiness rate, where we have three ARG/[Marine Expeditionary Units] with the full up round ships. We’ve got the Marines. We just need the ships,” Smith said in May.
“We’re looking at three, four-month gaps, maybe six-month gaps in ARG/MEU presence,” the commandant said.
