Auditors' Report: US Marine Corps lacks amphibious ships
MOSCOW, Dec 11 — RIA Novosti, Andrey Kotz. The elite of the US Army — the Marine Corps — has revealed an unexpected weakness. According to a government report, a significant portion of the Navy's amphibious ships are currently not operational. According to experts, this threatens that the Marines, in which case, simply will not have time to arrive on the battlefield in sufficient numbers. About the problems of the American troops — in the material of RIA Novosti.
Chronic delays
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) conducted a detailed audit of the fleet at naval bases in Norfolk and San Diego from April 2023 to December 2024. The conclusions are disappointing. Of the 32 amphibious assault ships responsible for the transfer of Marines with weapons and equipment to the theater of operations, only half are ready to perform a combat mission. According to the authors of the report, such a situation is unacceptable in the context of a potential conflict over Taiwan, where the corps fighters are assigned a leading role.
GAO experts explain this by a number of factors. First, there are chronic maintenance delays. Shipyards are already full of orders, there is frankly not enough capacity, so ships have to wait in line for repairs and upgrades for a long time. Secondly, there is a shortage of spare parts. The shortage is caused by disruptions to many supply chains during the COVID pandemic.
Thirdly, there is a lack of funding for amphibious ships. The GAO notes that other offshore platforms are currently taking priority in the Navy's budget planning. Finally, there are not enough technical staff. This has been talked about for years. The reasons are the relatively low salaries of such specialists and the general decline in the level of appropriate education.
The report provides examples of how all this affected the combat operation of the fleet. So, this year, the amphibious groups Boxer and America, along with the Marine expeditionary units they transported, missed major exercises. Due to breakdowns at sea, several pennants had to return to base. In 2020, the landing ship USS Bonhomme Richard burned down at the pier. This unforeseen loss has severely shaken the already imperfect combat readiness of the Marine Corps.
US Marines during the Baltops exercise
Image source: © AP Photo / Mindaugas Kulbis
A lot of problems
The U.S. Navy has two LHA universal amphibious assault ships, seven LHD universal amphibious assault ships, 13 LPD amphibious dock transports and ten large LSD amphibious assault ships. Of these, both LHA, two LHD, 11 LPD and only one LSD can go to sea. The rest have technical problems. Many have approached the service life limit.
The Wasp UDC, the oldest in the LHD class, is already 35 years old, and its traditional steam power plant regularly fails. In addition, there are not enough spare parts for it: they have not been produced for a long time. At the same time, the Pentagon expects to increase the service life of the LHD to at least 40 years, so as not to reduce the number of naval personnel. Replacement of steam installations is not provided, so the ships will have to be content with what they have.
Power plants are not the only weak point of these UDC. The report claims that technical regulations were violated when carrying out repair work on the 32-year-old Essex amphibious ship. Due to mistakes by contractors and poor control by the Navy, the welds in the structure had to be digested anew, which led to large-scale alterations and delays in repairs.
Not everything is smooth with the new ships either. The amphibious transport dock (LPD) Fort Lauderdale, transferred to the fleet in 2022, is criticized for not the most optimal installation of equipment on board. In addition, he often breaks a rotary crane with a manipulator for launching landing boats. Fuel and ballast tank level indicators were also incorrectly calibrated — contractors were called more than once to re-adjust.
The saddest situation is with the large LSD landing craft. Only Comstock is fully operational among them. The rest of the BDK cannot go to sea, mainly due to unsatisfactory maintenance of diesel engines.
US Navy Large Amphibious Assault Ship Fort McHenry
Image source: © U.S. Navy / MCS 2nd Class Megan Anuci
In 2021, the Fort McHenry BDK (LSD 43) was decommissioned — six years before the end of its service life. The Pentagon's verification commission described the ship as poorly maintained. At the time of the write-off, $146 million worth of technical work had not been completed on it.
Old cruisers
By the way, all this resembles the situation with Ticonderoga-type missile cruisers, the service life of which the Pentagon recently extended once again. By and large, these ships, which are very close to the 35-year age limit, have long become a burden for the military. For many years, admirals lobbied Congress for permission to early decommission of some cruisers, but these initiatives were blocked there, pointing out the inadmissibility of reducing the fleet.
Of the 27 ships of this type that entered service from 1983 to 1994, nine remain in service. This year, five were placed in reserve. Including Vicksburg, which served for 33 years. Perhaps his fate is the most striking example of the difficulties Americans face when upgrading old pennants. The statement of one representative of the Navy, published in 2020 in the Navy Times, is characteristic: "The ship looks like a damn dump, which is burning in addition."
According to many American experts, the age-old Ticonderoga with weapons from half a century ago is not capable of effectively performing combat missions. And it eats up so much money that it would be enough for several smaller pennants. In addition, it is necessary to invest in the modernization of on-board systems. Otherwise, the cruiser will only be able to play the role of a "floating arsenal" receiving target designation for missiles from other platforms.
The problems of amphibious assault ships and cruisers are typical for the US Navy as a whole. It is not enough to build a large and expensive fleet. It needs to be repaired in a timely manner, replenished with pennants, and modernized. Otherwise, it will very quickly start burning and sinking at the mooring wall.
Fire on the landing ship USS Bonhomme Richard at the San Diego Naval Base
Image source: © RIA Novosti / Pacific Fleet of the US Navy
