Watchdog finds significant issues with US Army’s boat fleet

By Haley Britzky, CNN

(CNN) — US Army boats, which carried out the temporary Gaza pier mission earlier this year, are poorly maintained and largely unprepared to meet the military’s growing mission in the Pacific, a new government oversight report said this week.

The Government Accountability Office released a report on Wednesday that concluded there are “wide-ranging” issues facing Army watercraft, which limit the Army’s ability “to meet mission requirements in the Indo-Pacific theater where the need for Army watercraft is most pronounced.”

Despite Army policy requiring the vessels to be at least at a 90% mission capable rate — meaning the vessels are ready to perform their mission — the boats currently have a less than 40% capable rate this year. Overall, the fleet of watercraft has dropped by nearly half since 2018, going from 134 vessels to 70 as of May this year, in part due to divestment of vessels in 2018 and 2019.

“Army officials stated that these low mission capable rates, along with the smaller size of the watercraft fleet after divestment, hinder operational readiness and the ability to meet mission requirement,” the report said. “Army officials also stated that with such low rates, usually fewer than half the vessels in the fleet are available at any given time.”

The Army’s watercraft came under significant scrutiny this year during the troubled temporary pier mission meant to increase humanitarian aid flow to Palestinians in Gaza. CNN reported in June that the vessels responsible for the temporary pier — called the Joint Logistics Over the Shore, or JLOTS —  were not well resourced or maintained by the Army.

“Army boats have not been ready, capable, or in a mindset they’ll have to do something dangerous or in the real world … for decades now,” a retired warrant officer and former chief engineer on Army watercraft told CNN at the time.

After the temporary pier mission ended — the pier was only operational for roughly 20 days in total with a cost of $230 million — the military requested civilian contractor support in bringing the Army’s vessels back to the US. A defense official said at the time that it’s more cost effective and safer to have them transported back that way.

One vessel is currently being transported back to the US while two others are expected to be loaded for transport this weekend, Army spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said on Friday. Another vessel is undergoing “routine maintenance” which is expected to be completed next week; that vessel is anticipated to be underway by the end of October, Smith said.

Smith said that the Army is “actively” working to address gaps in the watercraft’s capability as a whole, and prioritizing improving the current fleet while also “investing in a modernized fleet to meet the needs of the 2040 force.”

Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, told CNN that the Army is also looking at possibly replacing the existing fleet of Army watercraft with autonomous vessels in the future.

“What we see is the oil industry and other shipping industries are doing this already, we see that happening all around the world,” Butler said. “There’s no reason the Army shouldn’t be thinking that way … leaders from down at ship level all the way to the Pentagon are looking at this and determining the best way to deploy our forces.”

The GAO report released this week says that “significant maintenance challenges” have contributed to the vessels’ low state of readiness, exacerbated by “aging vessels, supply shortages, and obsolete parts.”

The report includes one example of a Landing Craft Utility vessel which has been under maintenance since 2018. While the vessel was originally scheduled to be repaired and operational by January 2021, it was delayed by at least three years. The Army “had to revise the contract seven times due to the expanded scope of work” after discovering more than 40% of the boat’s hull required “significant unplanned repairs.”

“The expanded scope of work added further delays and costs, exceeding the initial maintenance estimate by over $1.2 million,” the GAO report said.

In another example included in the report, the GAO says the Army identified in 2010 “safety concerns” with the ramp on an LCU, used for loading and unloading people or equipment.

“Despite the risk of catastrophic failure and loss of life, the Army did not replace bow ramp components essential for safety,” the report says, adding that one ramp fell off a LCU vessel in 2022 “in open seas” near Japan. The Army did not appear to act until a briefing from the GAO in 2023, more than 10 years after concerns were first identified. An inspection of all LCUs that followed the GAO briefing that year found roughly one-third of the vessels “failed the inspection and were pending repairs.”

The report includes a response from Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, who says the Army is “actively pursuing a holistic approach to mitigate the gaps in Army watercraft capability and capacity.” In regards to the mission needs in the Pacific specifically, Wormuth said Army Futures Command is working with US Army Pacific and Indo-Pacific Command to address concerns about the watercraft’s mission readiness.

The GAO report also said the Army is considering leasing civilian watercraft to bolster its existing fleet and moving all of its watercraft to the Pacific. Butler also said the Army was actively talking to Congress about leasing civilian vessels, and even hosted representatives recently in Hawaii on the Army watercraft to discuss the benefits of leasing.

The Army established a governing board in February this year to help provide oversight of the watercraft, though the GAO found that as of May, the board hadn’t yet started talking steps on key responsibilities of its oversight role, like establishing how information would be distributed to stakeholders or how frequently the board would meet.

Ultimately, the Army watercraft is “how the ground force, the Army, gets to war,” Butler said.

“Maybe the future fleet is all autonomous, we just don’t know,” he said. “This is all stuff we’re looking at in terms of trying to modernize the way we move people, weapons, and equipment.”

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