Newsmax

One official told Newsmax the Boxer was in good shape when it deployed in March, and the Navy crew is doing all it can to keep its amphibious ship going while paying the price for years of reduced fleet inventory and availability.

The Boxer incident has not been previously reported, and it highlights how military leaders continue to face limited mission options for the Marine Corps' most sought-after rapid response units due to problems with amphibious ships.

Newsmax broke the news last month that a shortage of sea-ready amphibious ships likely will keep the Marine Corps from deploying another full-sized rapid response force aboard vessels for almost a year.

The development severely curtails the service's ability to respond to crises around the globe at a period that coincides with China's stated timeline for potential action against Taiwan.

This post was edited on 7/10/26 at 2:21 pm

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Posted by LemmyLives

Texas

Member since Mar 2019

17218 posts

Posted on 7/10/26 at 4:51 pm to Swazla

From a CDR Salamander SubStack post from 2023:

quote:
The Navy is proposing to drop its amphibious fleet below 31 ships, despite an agreement with the Marine Corps and a potential violation of last year’s defense policy law.

Sent to Congress on Monday, the Navy’s proposed $255.8 billion 2024 budget aims to retire eight warships before the end of their intended service life, including three Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships, or LSDs, that it proposed to scrap last year but which were saved by the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act

quote:
As we have covered here for the better part of two decades, as have others, the Navy decided to take savings from maintenance, hide once UNCLAS INSURV behind a classified wall, and - like someone avoiding the dentist or a regular physical - more than willing make things easy by doing nothing now, knowing full well that it will only be worse later on.

quote:
Buying amphibious ships tends to be the last priority for the Navy after spending shipbuilding funds on aircraft carriers, submarines, and destroyers, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Bryan Clark said March 9 during Defense One’s State of the Navy event.

“Whatever gets left over is what can go towards the amphibious ships and the support ships. And when you do all the numbers for that, you always end up with you know maybe not quite enough for the amphibious ships, because if you're building one LHA every four or five years that you can incrementally fund, that's a chunk of money that's on the scale of you know, $500 million a year. And then you've got maybe $500 million or a billion dollars leftover for one more amphibious ship, which isn't quite an LPD,” Clark said.

From promotion rates to "prestige" - the Gator Navy has always been like that really good offensive lineman. They do their job and no one ever hears about them. Though they are paid less and don't get endorsements, without them no quarterback would be able to shine - no team achieve victory - and yet, the bias remains.

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