The argument of a depleted Navy continues as 4 incidents this year call for more ships to be commissioned.
The USS Antietam (1987), USS Fitzgerald (1998) and the USS John S. McCain (1994) have all suffered major damages this year while deployed with some saying the ship controls lost power.
But as technology continues to grow it also takes longer for a ship to go from drawing board to training to service and eight to ten years can pass
Add in that there are only two major shipbuilders and lack of skilled workers and it’s a mess- PB/TK
Fewer vessels and insufficient training may be a common theme in four incidents this year- By Justin Bachman / Aug 22, 2017
The déjà vu collision of the guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain with an oil tanker near Singapore was the Navy’s fourth serious incident in the western Pacific this year, and mirrored a similar disaster in June that claimed the lives of seven sailors off the coast of Japan.
In January, the USS Antietam ran aground near Yokosuka, Japan, where the U.S. Seventh Fleet is based. In May, the USS Lake Champlain ran into a South Korean fishing vessel. And just last week, the Navy relieved the commander of the USS Fitzgerald, a guided missile destroyer that on June 17 was hit by a container ship, with deadly consequences.
Now, with 10 sailors dead or missing following the McCain incident Aug. 21, the question of what, if anything, these accidents have in common has become front-of-mind.
Damage to the portside is visible yeserday as the guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain steers toward Changi Naval Base, Singapore.
One distinct possibility is a fleet that’s stretched too thin, forced to combine training with deployments over a vast area teeming with U.S. strategic interests, according to two retired Navy officers. In a Facebook video, the chief of naval operations, Admiral John Richardson, said he has directed “a more comprehensive review to ensure that we get at the contributing factors, the root causes of these incidents.”
Continue to Bloomberg.com article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-22/why-do-u-s-navy-ships-keep-crashing
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