Our Navy's Stupid Mistakes

You can't, but there are others following his lead to this day that continue to mismanage our military procurement. It likely took more than Rumsfeld to push that unwanted program on the Navy. Ships are probably the most expensive piece of equipment the military purchases, so there will many contractors wanting to get in on the action.

“Miss the forest for the trees”….those neatly dressed sailors on the great /crappy ships will get hurt in any conflict….,.where does our insulin, antibiotics, PPE, and medications come from?? .. Used to be PR, an AMERICAN TERRITORY, now where are they made.., Forest for the trees, indeed.. (BTW you can add Sideeinderr missiles, the F15’s radar system and parts of the AEGIS air defense system to that list).

Truth is the Doha round did a LOT more than 99.9 percent of people think……this has all been YEARS in the coming…..

A lot of people in D.C. should be in jail from both political parties.

"great /crappy ships"

No relationship to my clan.

Rumsfeld didn't need any help; he was the Navy's boss. Here is the military chain of command:


The top 4 bosses of the Navy are 2 elected officials and 2 presidential appointees that must be confirmed by the Senate. These people might have agendas that are different from the direction the Navy was headed in. That can lead to some saying the Navy is making stupid mistakes.

Congress determines how much money the Navy can spend each year, and there are no guarantees that every project will be fully funded. That can lead to some saying the Navy is making stupid mistakes.

And then there is the enemy; they aren't sitting still. Their new threats might require the Navy to make adjustments (called mission creep) to an already established design. That can lead to some saying the Navy is making stupid mistakes.

I worked for almost 25 years in the Navy's program management offices (both aircraft and ships). We used to refer to our jobs as crisis management. I'm here to tell you that the Navy doesn't have as much say in its destiny as you all are suggesting.

That is part of the problem, politicians such as Rumsfeld have too much influence.

I agree with you 100%!

US Navy Stonewalls Congress In Working Ship Reports

John Konrad

May 9, 2022

The US Navy has used a trail of misinformation to stonewall Congress and divert funding from working ships to naval aviation and expensive/sexy warships like the failed USS Zumwalt.

By Captain John Konrad (********) Over the past few decades, the United States Navy has increasingly abandoned the unsexy working ships it once mastered and deployed around the world. Previously, the Navy had a large fleet of salvage tugs, but now they only have two, and only two Hospital Ships, two Submarine Tenders, and two Ocean Tugs. Some ship classes have been scrapped altogether including Fireboats or, as the Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro inaccurately called them in a letter to congress, “fire boats.”

In the letter, dated April 8th, the Navy responded to a congressional inquiry questioning why no fireboats are maintained in San DiegoHarbor, home to hundreds of billions of dollars in warships and taxpayer infrastructure, along with vital shipyards. This letter came after maritime experts, including ********, criticized the Navy for not having fireboats on hand to fight a fire aboard the large amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard (BHR) in 2020.

“Modern fireboats are impressive and so essential to protecting ships that Long Beach purchased them even though the next city north, Los Angeles, already had a state-of-the-art fireboat, and even though the construction cost for the two boats exceeded $50 million,” we wrote in July of last year. “Long Beach is not alone. Nearly every large commercial harbor worldwide now has state-of-the-art fireboats on duty, but the world’s largest US Naval Bases doesn’t own a single one.”

Why Does The US Navy Have No Fireboats?

In the official report attached to Del Toro’s letter to Congress, the Navy states. “We assess that the lack of dedicated fire boats did not have an appreciable effect on the BHR incident or loss of this ship. And, in fact, waterborne firefighting capability, readily available on Navy tug boats, was brought to bear in this incident and has been formally accepted into Navy installation emergency response plans. The Navy does not intend to request or pursue dedicated fire boats at this time.”

This report is shocking to commercial mariners who have worked with fireboats for several reasons. First, the letter is short. The sum total of the US Navy’s investigation into this severe inquiry is written on a page and a half of double-spaced text. The Navy, which is struggling to build enough ships, loses a critical ship worth billions of dollars, Congress demands an answer as to why no fireboats were available to help save the ship, and the Navy responds with an investigation so cursory it can be summed up in just 600 words. (I am not sure if ******** supports emoji, but I will try :angry face

But wait, there is more. The 600 words are not accurate. It contains blatant lies.

“And, in fact, waterborne firefighting capability,” says the report, “Readily available on Navy tug boats, was brought to bear in this incident.”

But Navy tugboats were neither readily available nor used in the BHR fire. Nothing was “brought to bear” in the critical early stage of the fire. Two hours into the incident, civilian captains aboard commercial tugboats owned by a private company, begged to help fight the fire but instead, the Navy brought in laughably small police boats with tiny water cannons built to fight small fires on recreational boats, not 844′ warships.

Much later, after the fire had burned out of control, these civilian tugboats were allowed to replace the laughably ineffective police boats.

Secretary Del Toro’s report claim that “Navy” tug boats were “brought to bear in this incident” is false and a blatant lie to Congress.

For clarity’s sake here are the differences between real fireboats and Del Toro’s “fire boats.”

50,000 Gallon Per Minute Fireboat



The 50,000 gallons per minute FDNY fireboat Three Forty Three.

10,000 Gallons Per Minute Fireboat


Fireboat 20 (Protector) arrives at the Port of Long Beach. Credit: Port of Long Beach

This is Long Beach’s modern $25 million 45,000 gallons per minute fireboat(left) next to an old 10,000 gallons per minute fireboat (right).

2,400 Gallon Per Minute San Diego Police Boat


Photos shared on social media on both Sunday, Jul 12, and early Monday morning, Jul. 13 showed the fire spreading to the superstructure. (Photo: US Naval Institute via Twitter from Matt Haskell)

Tiny 36 foot San Diego Harbor Police Boats trying to fight a fire aboard the 844-foot navy ship USS Bonhomme Richard

900 US Gallons Per Minute Civilian Tugboat


SAN DIEGO (July 13, 2020) An MH-60S Seahawk helicopter from the “Merlins” of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 3 provides aerial firefighting support alongside Sailors and civilian fire crews to fight the fire aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6). On July 12, a fire was called away aboard the ship while it was moored pier side at Naval Base San Diego. Base and shipboard firefighters responded to the fire. Bonhomme Richard is going through a maintenance availability, which began in 2018. (U.S. Navy photo by Patrick W. Menah Jr.)

Foss civilian tugboat Jamie Ann fighting the BHR fire with her 900 gallons per minute fire pump.

Why is pump capacity essential?

The most significant damage of the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake occurred when many of San Francisco’s water lines broke, and firefighters had no water to battle fires that broke out throughout the city. Most troubling was that flame swept wooden piers blocked residents’ escape and no water could be found to save them.

“A major deficiency in 1906 was the lack of a fireboat for pumping large volumes from San FranciscoBay,” said the post-earthquake report. “Chief Sullivan in 1905 had proposed that the city purchase a fireboat, but the request was denied.”

What saved the city and provided the San Francisco Fire Department (SSFD) with the water needed to put out the dock fires, which allowed half of the city’s residents to escape by boat across the bay to Oakland and Berkeley? It was US Navy fireboats!

SFFD, in 1906 was finally able to establish a water supply along Van Ness Avenue, a natural east-west fire break as it is 150 feet wide. Water supply was from U.S. Navy fireboats at the foot of Van Ness Avenue.

Immediately after the fire, the city determined the minimum pumping capacity needed to fight ship fires and augment city water supplies was 10,000 gallons per minute. That was one hundred years ago and long before the US Navy sold its last fireboat for scrap. Today the need is much greater, yet the most capable civilian tugboat in San Diego harbor is the approximately 3,500 gallon per minute Edison Chouest tractor tugs Del Toro refers to in the report.

More Than Just Pumping Power

The official report repeatedly says that managing water was a problem for the firefighters working aboard the BHR, a problem high pumping capacity fireboats could have solved, but there are many more factors to consider when using civilian tugboats rather than Navy fireboats:

• Civilian crews do not get veterans or firefighters disability benefits for fighting fires.
• Civilian tugboat crews do not train regularly with Navy firefighters,, and without regular training, you won’t have success.
• Civilian tugboats are needed for other jobs during a fire. In the case of the BHR effort, they were required to help move nearby ships.
• Civilian tugboats don’t have the HAZMAT capabilities or training needed for hazardous Navy firefighting duties.
• Civilian tugboats do not have medical facilities or advanced medical training to handle injuries.
• Civilian tugboats do not even have basic CBRD training required to fight fires on a nuclear ship or during an enemy or terrorist attack on the base.
• Civilian tugboats do not have the same radios and communications equipment as navy and local firefighters.
• Civilian firefighters are not subject to the UCMJ and can not be forced to put their life at risk to save critical navy equipment.
• Civilian Tugboats do not store heavy salvage pumps, and salvage equipment which the base needs to keep on standby and fireboat crews need to train with.

(Authors Note: The Civilian Tugboats crews went above and beyond the call of duty fighting the BHR fire. Why hasn’t the US Navy given each of those sailors a medal? Answer: Because the Navy never asked the Maritime Administration to. Why? Why are US Merchant Mariners facing harrowing conditions so infrequently awarded medals by MARAD or the US Navy?)

I could go on, but the Navy knows the importance of training for events. What the BHR report shows more than anything is a lack of training and working relationship between ship crews, base personnel, Navy federal fire personnel, tugboat crews, and local firefighters. Working together with regular drills will help, but civilian tugboats are working vessels and can not always participate in drills.

The civilian mariners who worked aboard the tugboats that did help fight the BHR fire prove the ingenuity and capability are there, the question is, will the Navy pay to equip and train crews in areas like firefighting mutual assistance communications and HAZMAT. Will it have contingency plans for medical injuries? Will it pay death benefits if a civilian tugboat crew is killed fighting a naval fire? These are just some of the questions Del Toro’s “fire boat” report to congress needs to answer but clearly does not.

The US Navy Is Stonewalling Congress

More troubling than the fireboat report itself is a pattern of disinformation the US Navy and Department Of Defense have provided Congress when it comes to working ships. In 2015 it told Congress that it had the capability to recover the VDR aboard the sunken American flagship El Faro, but it ended up taking them 10-months to locate and document the wreckage and retrieve the VDR, much longer than experts expected the audio tapes to survive at the bottom of the ocean. It has repeatedly underfunded both Military Sealift Command and MARAD sealift ships which has resulted in a rusting and broken supply ship fleet with massive capacity shortages. For years the Navy repeatedly pushed concerns about icebreaker unavailability off to the US Coast Guard until being forced to work on a joint icebreaker program. The Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin lied to Congress this year when he said after the Navy’s Red Hill Bunker facility leaked, poisoning civilians’ homes and even children, that lost fuel capacity could be “dispersed at sea.” He did this knowing full well that the United States Navy does not have enough tankers to meet current demand capacity, much less take over for major tank closures. They lied about the security concerns behind using a Chinese-built ship and foreign crews to recover the Navy’s most important fighter plane. They lied because they did not have the salvage ships (and possibly not the expertise) to recover it themselves and did not have the gumption to ask MARAD or our large fleet of American offshore support ships to help.

The US Navy has been playing games and dragging its feet with Congress for over a decade on Salvage ships to repalce the two remaining Safeguard class ships which are now 36 years old. Since 2010 the US Navy has told Congress it planned to buy eight special mission salvage ships in the new USNS Navy-class T-ATS. The latest budget published in March, however, only allocates money for one new T-ATS. One. One new working salvage ship to cover the entire 71 percent of the Earth’s surface that is water. One.

The Navy would rather contract a Chinese-built ship than ask MARAD and US Merchant Mariner for help doing a job every US Merchant Mariner knows the Navy should be able to accomplish on it’s own.

Why? Every US Merchant Mariner knows that MARAD is underfunded and broken… and the US Navy HATES asking US MERCHANT MARINERS for help. They HATE to even acknowledge our existence or thank us for our service.

Also troubling is that the Navy has lied repeatedly to Congress that they have fixed problems with watch standing and readiness in the wake of the USS Fitzgerald and USS McCain tragedies. Lies so blatant and bold that the journalist who uncovered the lies won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism for discovering how little the Navy has done to improve conditions and readiness aboard ships in the wake of those disasters.

Disasters that happened when the Navy collided with COMMERCIAL ships.

How Does The Navy Do It?

How do the US Navy and officials like Del Toro get away with telling bold lies to Congress? The answer comes from a lack of expertise within Congress and the lack of external oversight. In this case, as in others, Congress asked the Navy to provide solutions to its own failures. What does the US Navy know about fireboats? It hasn’t owned or operated one in decades.

The solution, in this case, is simple. Congress should not ask the US Navy for its opinion on the importance of fireboats. It should ask professional firefighters in port cities like New York these questions. Or they can ask Coast Guard Officers who work with them routinely:

But asking experts may not be possible either because the Navy has a history of fighting back against external reports. In 2017 Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer did ask five commercial companies in the maritime business to assist with an independent investigation into the underlying causes of the spate of collisions that have cost the lives of 17 sailors and hundreds and millions of dollars in damage. That effort, however, was largely rejected by the Navy and the Chief Of Naval Operations, who dismissed the effort as unnecessary and inferior to the Navy’s own investigation report. A report, the first copy of which, was not in-depth or impartial.

Read: Red Over Red, The Failure Of U.S. Navy Leadership

And it’s not just the BHR “fire boat” report that is troubling. According to maritime historian Sal Mercogliano, who is a fireman and former ship’s officer, both the firefighting response and the official US Navy BHR incident report itself deserves harsh criticism.

THE US NAVY DOES NOT VALUE WORKING SHIPS

Congress must realize that the US Navy does not have enough, does not have the desire to build enough, and does not properly maintain or want working ships. Not just fireboats but all unsexy working ships like submarine tenders, tankers, ammunition ships, and sealift ships. It prefers sleek and sexy $8 billion ships like the USS Zumwalt (which has turned into a rusty mess) and the cool-looking and expensive LCS which is a disaster.

CIVMAR Is A Derogatory Term

Congress, what more proof of this do you need than the fact it treats Merchant Mariners poorly, denies them thanks or basic veteran status and calls them by the ostracizing and derogative acronym CIVMAR, which outrightly denies the fact they… people who are correctly called US Merchant Mariners – not CIVMARS, are not members of the team… are equals. It is a derogatory term CIVMAR because, while the Navy claims it’s because these mariners are civil servants, most assume it means they are civilians. Civilians in military culture don’t take risks and are not part of the team.

Asking the foxes who raided the hen house to investigate the hen house burglary is not the way to fix this problem—asking the Navy to comment on sealift, ocean logistics, fireboats, tugboats, salvage, or any of the missions it once did well but has long since ignored is worse. The word Merchant Marine is not in any Navy strategy documents, and their relationship with the US Maritime Administration (MARAD) is tenuous at best.

Congress must understand that, with the help of the US Navy, White House and Congress, MARAD has suffered decades of decline, underfunding, and loss of influence.

(Military Sealift Command is only doing marginally better. )

It’s not just active Merchant Mariners, it’s our veterans too. Proud veterans who risked their lives delivering the goods in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm and Iraqi the last American Merchant Marine Veterans annual gala there were Admirals, and diplomats, and color guards and representatives from several European countries. Medals were given out by several nations including Russia but the US Navy did not send a single uniformed officer to the event. This painful rip between US Navy and US Merchant Marine officers, between the budgets for Top Combatants and working ships – needs to be repaired right now.

And what the fox in this hen house is hiding more than anything is the simple fact that if we don’t have enough sealift ships to support carrier groups today, tankers to compensate for Red Hill today, Navy salvage ships to help unstick the Ever Forward today, fireboats to save the Bonhomme Richard today.

Why Does Senate Keep Confirming US Navy Selections To MARAD?

When the Navy is forced to focus on working ships, it often tells Congress that working ships is the responsibility of US Maritime Administration (MARAD), a federal agency ostensibly equivalent to the FAA but with a fraction of the FAA’s influence and budget. The Navy does not support MARAD, but it likes to control it. The position of US Maritime Administrator is traditionally held by a commercial shipowner or captain, but President Obama left this critical position unfilled for years and then selected a former congressional staffer, David Matsuda. He was highly unpopular and was pushed out in 2013. Obama followed the appointment with a relatively low-ranking O6 navy submarine commander Chip Jaenichen.

The Trump administration appointed US Navy Rear Admiral Mark Buzby for the position. Buzby, while not a commercial mariner or shipowner, was a graduate of the US Merchant Marine Academy and did know how to operate working ships. Buzby was popular but the US Navy did not stand by him in Congress or help him publish the combined Navy, US Merchant Marine, national maritime strategy he asked for.

Related Book: Abandoned Ocean: A History of United States Maritime Policy by Andrew Gibson and Arthur Donovan

On Monday the US Senate is voting on another former US Navy officer – Rear Admiral Ann Phillips – who, like Jaenichen, has zero experience in the commercial maritime world and shows no signs of understanding the importance of working ships.

Why does the Senate keep confirming presidential MARAD appointments of US Navy officers to a position overseeing commercial ships and working military sealift ships when the US Navy has repeatedly and overwhelmingly failed on this topic for decades?

Read: Biden Appoints US Maritime Administrator With Zero Shipping Experience During Worst Shipping Crisis In Decades

What happens if China does attack?

Well ships will sink and supplies won’t reach the fight. In short we are in deep trouble because the US Navy has sold Congress a superhero comic book story. A story where a few super ships with names like USS Zumwalt, equipped with super hypersonics are invincible and omnipotent. A world were even it’s own sailors are disposable and everyday working sailors on working ships are obsolete.

History Of Fighting Fire Pearl Harbor To Today

In addition to a lack of expertise in the Navy, there is also a lack of historical reference. A Lack of available pumping capacity, firefighting, and salvage equipment was a major problem in the wake of Pearl Harbor. So was a lack of salvage ships.

Rear Admiral Edward Ellsberg wrote several books on this topic after World War II providing instructions for Commanding Officers aboard whips like the BHR and the US Navy Strategic Planners. Advice that is still usefull.

Today the US Navy has abrogated it’s responsibility and has transferred salvage duties to an overseas corporation. Privatizing emergency duties is dangerous but the Navy doesn’t have another choice considering it’s lack of salvage ships and equipment and the lack of fully American owned salvage companies in the United States. Outsourcing may be an ok temporary solution if, and only if, the Navy has equipment for salvage masters to use and trains extensively with these private contractors.

Not only does the US Navy not have the equipment or training but does not even attend most commercial salvage conferences and seminars. At the largest conference for ship owners this year, the CMA Shipping conference, the heads of major salvage companies discussed the problems they face but not a single uniformed Navy Officer was in attendance.

During the salvage seminar the world’s most famous salvage master, Captain Nick Sloane, discussed the most critical element of salvage. “It’s all about time. How much time do we have to mitigate the problem,” said Sloane. “How long does it take to get heavy equipment on location? How long does it take to get the right equipment on location”

Sloane did not comment on the BHR fire, but it doesn’t take an expert to see that the Navy took too long to get the wrong equipment (small police boats and, much later, commercial tugboats) on location and could not get the right equipment on location because it didn’t have it. Just like during Pearl Harbor, the US Navy did not have the salvage pumps, cascade systems, coupling, schematics, and more to fight this fire. And they certainly did not have the most valuable piece of equipment, a fully equipped modern 50,000 Gallons Per Hour fireboat with a dedicated and well-trained crew.


Captain John A Konrad V,
US Merchant Marine

Author’s Note To Congress: please don’t be so daft. Please stop believing the lies. The US Navy DOES need Fireboats. They need them NOW.

Author’s Note To Secretary Del Toro: they are “fireboats” not “fire boats”. That said, you promised me at The Navy League conference you would support working ships. We shook on it. I know this article is critical of your action, but we hold no resentment towards you. You are new to the job, have a lot on your plate, and there is a War in Europe. We all understand and are willing to give you slack. There is time to fix this, there is time to make good, but we need to start NOW. And the first step is to move past denial and acknowledge the US Merchant Mariners who are experts in their field may know more about certain topics than the Navy. It starts by hiring US Merchant Mariners in the Pentagon and giving them education at the Naval War College – both important because Admiral Gilday I am Not Ready For War – and sorting out the mess that is MARAD. It starts by killing the derogatory term CIVMAR and thanking them by their proper name “US Merchant Mariners”, especially those who sailed into war and were awarded medals by DOT but never got a single ribbon or even a handshake from the US Navy.

Sad, this is how empires fall into irrelevance.....look at the rest of the USA, and the band played on.......

US Navy Fails Hypersonic Missile Test
John Konrad
July 5, 2022

The United State Navy’s most expensive surface ships, the three destroyers of the USS Zumwalt class, has been plagued with failures. The ship’s Advanced Gun System did not work as hoped and its rocket-boosted LRLAP GPS-guided shells cost $800,000 dollars each so Navy CNO Admiral Gilday pivoted this year saying they would remove the guns and install just two hypersonic missiles instead. Now those missiles are failing tests.

By Jon Herskovitz (Bloomberg) A flight test of a hypersonic missile system in Hawaii ended in failure due to a problem that took place after ignition, the Department of Defense said, delivering a fresh blow to a program that has suffered stumbles.

It didn’t provide further details of what took place in the Wednesday test, but said in a statement sent by email “the Department remains confident that it is on track to field offensive and defensive hypersonic capabilities on target dates beginning in the early 2020s.”

“An anomaly occurred following ignition of the test asset,” Pentagon spokesman Navy Lieutenant Commander Tim Gorman said in the statement.

“Program officials have initiated a review to determine the cause to inform future tests.” he said. “While the Department was unable to collect data on the entirety of the planned flight profile, the information gathered from this event will provide vital insights.”

The trial marked the second unsuccessful test flight of the prototype weapon known as Conventional Prompt Strike. There was a booster failure in its first flight test in October, which prevented the missile from leaving the launch pad. The Conventional Prompt Strike weapon is envisioned to be installed on Zumwalt destroyers and Virginia-class submarines.

The Army is developing a land-based version. Lockheed Martin Corp and Northrop Grumman Corp are the top contractors.

The Pentagon is feeling pressure to deploy hypersonic systems as rivals including Russia, China and North Korea are pressing ahead with the systems designed to evade interception by flying at more than five times the speed of sound and gliding on a maneuverable path to deliver nuclear warheads.

China is investing heavily in hypersonic weapons, putting one in orbit in July of last year that flew 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers) in more than 100 minutes of flight, according to the top US nuclear commander. In January, North Korea conducted two separate launches of hypersonic missile systems that traveled several hundred kilometers.

Russia debuted a hypersonic air-to-ground missile in its attack on Ukraine. Adversaries don’t have to meet the rigorous standards set under the US defense acquisition system or face public scrutiny over delays and failure.

The slower pace of US hypersonic programs prompted a number of heated exchanges when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin testified in April before the House Armed Services Committee.

“You recently called in the defense industrial community that were involved in the hypersonics development as to how we can speed that up,” Republican Representative Mike Turner of Ohio said. “We’re behind our adversaries.”

Without denying that, Austin said “we have to be careful” because “hypersonic is a capability, sir, but it’s not the only capability.” He added “I have engaged industry” to “make sure that they’re leaning into” hypersonic development.

By Jon Herskovitz and Tony Capaccio, with assistance from Max Zimmerman. © 2022 Bloomberg L.P.

We always called this a SNAFU.

How does Del Toro still have a job after all of his lies to congress about this event?



U.S. Navy Hands Down Punishments Over Bonhomme Richard Fire

July 18, 2022

The U.S. Navy has announced a series of accountability actions in response to the 2020 fire on board the USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) in San Diego.

The punishments are primarily focused on Bonhomme Richard’s senior leadership and the fire response team.

In total there were 27 individual disposition decisions, including six Nonjudicial Punishments (NJP) with guilty findings, two NJPs with Matter of Interest Filings (MIF) and a Letter of Instruction (LOI), two NJP dismissals with a warning, one additional MIF, five other LOIs, three Non-Punitive Letters of Caution (NPLOC), two letters to former Sailors documenting substandard performance, and six no-action determinations.

Adm. Samuel Paparo, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and Consolidated Disposition Authority (CDA), awarded punitive letters of reprimand and forfeitures of pay to Capt. Gregory Scott Thoroman, former commanding officer, and Capt. Michael Ray, former executive officer. Former Command Master Chief Jose Hernandez was awarded a punitive letter of reprimand.

Additionaly, LOIs were awarded to Rear Adm. Scott Brown, U.S. Pacific Fleet director of fleet maintenance, and Rear Adm. Eric Ver Hage, commander, NavyRegionalMaintenanceCenter.

Additionally, Secretary Del Toro issued a Secretarial Letter of Censure (SLOC) to Vice Adm. (ret) Richard Brown. At the time of the fire, Vice Adm. (ret) Brown was Commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet.

The punishments are separate and distinct from the ongoing criminal proceedings against Seaman Apprentice Ryan Mays, who is accused of arson and hazarding a vessel, nor do they represent the entirety of corrective actions following the fire.

“When leaders’ actions or inactions result in the loss of life or capital resources, the senior leadership of the Department of the Navy has a responsibility to determine the root cause and hold those accountable,” Del Toro said in a message sent to the Department of the Navy on June 2. “This fire could have been prevented with adequate oversight into the ship’s material condition and the crew’s readiness to combat a fire.”

“Losing Bonhomme Richard to this fire was preventable. We are making significant changes in the way the Navy learns and leads so that this does not happen again,” said Adm. William Lescher, Vice Chief of Naval Operations.

Bonhomme Richard Fire: Series of Failures Led to Ship’s Destruction

This recent article supports my feelings our Navy could be at great risk because of modern hypersonic weapons.
U.S. Warship Sunk By Missile Fire in Pacific Training Exercise (newsweek.com)

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U.S. Navy Hands Down Punishments Over Bonhomme Richard Fire