Failure Follies: The US Navy Continues the Race to the Bottom

The collapse of western martial civilization is sticking to its schedule.

The Wasp class LHD, USS Boxer, has suffered yet another engineering casualty. On this, the Navy delivers with a spectacularly consistent track record of failure with the Little Crappy Ships, the Zumwalt class and the 20 billion dollar USS Ford that cannot reliably launch and retrieve aircraft (you had one job!).

Keep in mind the USN already lost the USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) to a catastrophic fire in July 2020.

Will anyone in uniform ever be held accountable? Don’t hold your breath.

Expect the chaos avalanche of engineering and mechanical failures to continue apace. In good news for the world, it makes American foreign policy’s armed jeremiad against Earth a little more problematic with the inability to reliably project naval power.

The ship got underway again at the end of March without issue.

A defense official told Military.com in March that the Boxer had originally been slated to deploy late last year, but it was held up thanks to a series of delays and mechanical issues that were driven, at least partly, by poor leadership aboard the ship.

Two previous command investigations conducted on at least three different engineering breakdowns showed “a lack of procedural compliance, substandard supervisory oversight, and general complacency by the crew,” according to the ship’s strike group commander.

Those breakdowns, information on which was released to Military.com as part of a Freedom of Information Act request, revealed that the ship had experienced damage to two “forced draft blowers” on Nov. 8, 2022. A separate investigation into that incident, also provided to Military.com via FOIA request, faulted “poor quality craftsmanship, lack of industry repair skill set/capabilities” and a “lack of supervisory oversight” from the Navy offices overseeing the work.

Then on May 14, the ship had a “boiler safety” breakdown. That investigation “once again revealed a lack of procedural compliance and overall complacency of all personnel involved,” documents from the strike group commander revealed.