Tag: usn

US Navy Destroyer Suffered 4-Day Power Outage In Sweltering South China Sea

Large US naval battleships continue to suffer problems at sea. While there have been many headlines of late detailing the problems of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier connected to its extended deployment amid the Iran war, a separate warship is having serious problems in Pacific waters, quite apart from the crisis in the Persian Gulf.

“A US Navy guided-missile destroyer spent four days last month without working toilets, galley services and air conditioning in the blistering heat of the South China Sea after the warship lost power,” CNN reports.

The military has since confirmed an engineering failure which caused the significant outage, which basically shut down all the ship’s systems, including the ability to maneuver on its own.

A US 7th Fleet statement identified that the USS Benfold, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, was on routine operations in the Indo-Pacific on when an “engineering casualty involving its generators” occurred. 

It happened on July 24, and has now set back additional operations. It was supposed to be part of the USS George Washington strike group which is at the moment headed to the Middle East in order to relieve the Lincoln carrier. 

However, the Benfold is still stuck in Asian waters. “There were no injuries to the crew, who demonstrated resilience, grit, professionalism, and unwavering steadiness in their response,” the US Navy statement said.

The four-day crisis impacted the ship’s galley services, toilets, air conditioning and potable water, the 7th Fleet also confirmed. The heat would have been sweltering.

No explanations have been given as to how the crew managed the waste problem. USNI, which first reported the crisis, describes of the repair process:

The George Washington Carrier Strike Group supported the destroyer, according to 7th Fleet. USS Robert Smalls (CG-62), the cruiser attached to the George Washington Carrier Strike Group, helped provide meals for the crew, Comer said.

Contractor tugboats towed Benfold to Subic Bay where it was met by personnel from the Ship Repair Facility – Japan Regional Maintenance Center on July 28, with crew receiving contracted lodging off the ship the next day. Power was restored on July 30, Comer said.

All repairs were completed by Aug. 7 when the ship completed a berth shift for fuel. The destroyer left Subic Bay on Aug. 8.

Benfold, which had been sailing with the George Washington Carrier Strike Group, pulled into Yokosuka, Japan, on Thursday, according to ship spotters. It did not transit the Malacca Strait with the other ships of the GW CSG, which are likely heading toward the Middle East.

The timing of this engineering failure incident is very bad for the navy, given already there’s much scrutiny being placed on long deployments at sea connected to the Iran conflict.

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USS Abraham Lincoln sailors tried to jump overboard amid extended deployment – reports

Military families and Congress members are sounding the alarm about an intensifying mental health crisis onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as its 5,000 sailors and marines endure a record-breaking deployment at sea tied to the war with Iran.

Two leading specialist military papers, the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes, are reporting that there have been multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard as poor conditions and mental stresses on the Lincoln reach the breaking point. The crew is in its ninth month at sea, and has spent 250 days consecutively without making land – a record for an aircraft carrier in modern times.

Worried families vented their anxieties about loved ones onboard the Lincoln at an emotional town hall meeting with navy leaders in San Diego last Thursday, Stars and Stripes reported. One spouse among the 200 or so family members said that her husband had texted her that day saying “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow”.

The families’ worries were expressed directly to navy leadership, represented at the town hall by the acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, and other top officials.

A woman at the meeting told Cao that the navy had “broken trust between us and the leadership”, the paper reported.

The Navy Times gave details of thwarted suicide attempts onboard the aircraft carrier during the current deployment. Annabelle Loma told the outlet that her husband had tried to jump overboard after his spell at sea kept being extended.

“He’s scared. He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out his 13-year career is ruined, just like that,” she said.

The paper quoted another sailor’s wife whose husband was involved in a separate incident onboard the Lincoln in which he prevented a fellow crew member from jumping, grabbing them and bringing them back on deck.

Mike Levin, a Democratic member of Congress from California, has sounded the alarm over conditions onboard the warship, which is in its fifth month of combat operations against Iran. He described the lot of the crew on X as “moldy showers, broken toilets, laundry down for weeks, long stretches with no hot water, a meal that came down to half a cup of rice and two tortillas. No soap, deodorant, or toothpaste.”

Jason Crow, a Democratic Congress member from Colorado who is a former army ranger having served in Afghanistan and Iraq, has warned that the strain on service members and their families on the Lincoln is “building week by week”.

The current crunch has been months in the making. The warship left San Diego on 21 November and was originally intended for the Pacific but was redirected to the Middle East once the US-Israel war with Iran began.

Since then, MS Now revealed, the 5,000-plus crew has had only two days on land, in Guam in December and Oman in July. The deployment was scheduled to end in May but has been extended a couple of times amid the ongoing war.

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Selling dead bodies to the US Navy for Israeli military training?

Medical case manager Miriam Volpin was at work in Nevada when she received a disturbing message from a student journalist at the University of Southern California (USC).

That student, Jennifer Nehrer, was part of a team investigating allegations that bodies donated to the school for education and scientific research were being sold to the United States Armed Forces. Some may even have ended up in the hands of Israeli military surgeons.

“I just got sick to my stomach,” Volpin told Al Jazeera.

Her 101-year-old mother, Jeanette, had died in 2021. A former flight nurse who served in World War II, Jeanette had arranged to donate her body to USC.

Volpin now fears her mother’s body was among those used to train surgical teams for conflicts like Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

The AJ+ documentary series Direct From caught up with Volpin and other family members who wonder whether the remains of their loved ones were used to provide training for military personnel.

Direct From also met with the student journalists who broke the story in 2025, to take their investigation further.

Their reporting revealed that USC was one of two schools in southern California that provided cadavers to the US Navy for Israeli surgical teams.

Records show that, since 2018, USC has supplied at least 89 fresh cadavers as part of agreements involving training for both the US Navy and Israeli military personnel.

Public information about the Israeli training is limited. But a 2020 medical paper written by USC and US Navy instructors offers a rare glimpse inside the process.

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USS Gerald R. Ford breaks record for longest post-Vietnam deployment

The world’s largest aircraft carrier officially earned the distinction of having the longest modern deployment Wednesday, when it marked 296 days at sea.

The USS Abraham Lincoln previously held that record, having deployed for 295 days in January 2020.

The USS Nimitz was at sea for a record 341 days in 2020 and 2021, but parts of that deployment were plagued by quarantine periods intended to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, which saw the carrier stationed ashore. The Nimitz was forward-deployed in support of American security interests for only 263 days, factoring in those isolation periods, according to USNI News.

The Ford’s record didn’t come as a surprise.

During a March 31 appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said the carrier would likely see a “record-breaking deployment.”

And Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James Kilby told lawmakers at a Senate Armed Services Committee in March that he expected the Ford to reach an 11-month extended deployment.

The current record for longest deployment, modern or historic, is held by the USS Midway, which was at sea for 332 days during the Vietnam War.

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Gerald R. Ford out of commission for one year: What’s wrong with America’s most advanced carrier?

The nuclear-powered USS Gerald R. Ford, the most advanced aircraft carrier in the United States Navy and the only vessel in its class, is presently anchored in Croatia’s port of Split for repairs ‌and maintenance. Media reports have indicated the ship is there to stay, since repairs after a major “laundry fire” and prolonged deployment could take between 12 and 14 months.

Delivered years behind schedule in May 2017, the Ford was by far the most expensive American warship ever constructed, costing $13.2 billion. The latest prolonged deployment of the ship began on June 24 and included combat operations during the US raid on Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro, as well as in the ongoing US-Israeli attack on Iran.

The supercarrier ended up hastily withdrawn from the Middle East theater in mid-March, having suffered a supposedly non-combat-related fire. The ship briefly moored at Crete for damage assessment before heading to Croatia for maintenance. 

Laundry fire?

The deployment exceeded 260 days and ranks as one of the longest carrier patrols since the Vietnam War, ending on March 12 shortly after the ship transited the Suez Canal and entered the Red Sea. According to official statements from US Central Command, it was then that the vessel “experienced a fire that originated in the ship’s main laundry spaces.”  

“The cause of the fire was not combat-related and is contained. There is no damage to the ship’s propulsion plant, and the aircraft carrier remains fully operational. Two sailors are currently receiving medical treatment for non-life-threatening injuries and are in stable condition,” CENTCOM stated at the time.

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Feds charge 11 in Florida for marriage fraud scheme targeting US service members

Federal authorities have unsealed a sweeping indictment charging 11 people in connection with a marriage fraud conspiracy that allegedly recruited U.S. military service members, particularly Navy personnel, to enter sham marriages with Chinese nationals to evade immigration laws and provide illicit benefits, including unauthorized access to military installations. 

The three-count indictment, announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, alleges the conspiracy operated from March 2024 through February 2025 and spanned multiple states, with fraudulent weddings staged in Florida, New York, Connecticut and Nevada.  

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Mysterious ‘vehicle of unknown origin’ hidden at US Navy Base raises questions about secret UFO program

A mysterious UFO has been allegedly stored at a little-known US Navy base on the East Coast for decades as the military continues to reverse-engineer its secrets. 

A new report has claimed that Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland, better known as Pax River, has kept an ‘exotic vehicle of unknown origin’ secretly housed there, possibly since the 1950s.

According to anonymous sources tied to Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), which is headquartered at Pax River, certain military programs at the base have been involved in analyzing and exploiting technology recovered from non-human craft for years.

NAVAIR is a major part of the US Navy, which handles everything related to naval aircraft, weapons, and aviation systems. It designs, builds, tests, buys, repairs, and keeps Navy and Marine Corps aircraft ready for use.

Speaking to the Liberation Times, the unnamed sources claimed that two types of aircraft have been trying to spy on what the US has at Pax River. One is allegedly drones from China, and the other are non-human UFOs.

Recently, this spying activity has allegedly increased and moved closer to land, including right around the Navy base on the Chesapeake Bay.

Although the claims could not be confirmed by the Daily Mail, UFO whistleblower Luis Elizondo stated in written testimony to Congress that a specially built hangar was constructed at Pax River specifically for the transfer of extraterrestrial technology.

Under oath, Elizondo described a plan where this hangar would help major defense contractor Lockheed Martin move non-human technology to another company called Bigelow Aerospace for further study and analysis.

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Trump Class Battleships Could Get Megawatt Lasers: Navy’s Top Officer

The U.S. Navy’s top officer wants directed energy weapons to become the go-to choice for the crews of American warships when faced with close-in threats. He also said that more powerful megawatt-class lasers should not be seen as “beyond” the capabilities that could be found on the future Trump class warships. The Navy has been a leader within the U.S. military in fielding laser weapons and is actively pursuing systems that employ high-power microwaves, but there continue to be significant hurdles to these efforts.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle talked with TWZ and other outlets about his service’s directed energy weapon plans at a roundtable at the Surface Navy Association’s (SNA) annual symposium earlier today. Caudle has long been an outspoken proponent of directed energy capabilities.

“My thesis research at [the] Naval Post Graduate School was on directed energy and nuclear weapons,” Caudle said. “This is my goal, if it’s in line of sight of a ship, that the first solution that we’re using is directed energy.”

In particular, “point defense needs to shift to directed energy,” the admiral added. “It has an infinite magazine.”

When it comes to point defense for its ships, the Navy currently relies heavily on Mk 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon Systems armed with six-barrel 20mm M61 Vulcan rotary cannons and launchers for RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles (RAM). Each Phalanx has enough ammunition to fire for a total of around 30 seconds, at most at the lower of two rate-of-fire settings, before needing to be reloaded. RAM launchers available today can hold either 11 or 21 missiles at a time, and the latest versions of those missiles cost around $1 million each. Many ships across the Navy also have 5-inch or 57mm main guns, and/or 30mm automatic cannons, which can also be used against close-in threats.

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Former U.S. Navy sailor gets more than 16 years for selling secrets to China

A former U.S. Navy sailor convicted of selling technical and operating manuals for ships and operating systems to an intelligence officer working for China was sentenced Monday to more than 16 years in prison, prosecutors said.

A federal judge in San Diego sentenced Jinchao Wei, also known as Patrick Wei, 25, to 200 months. A federal jury convicted Wei in August of six crimes, including espionage. He was paid more than $12,000 for the information he sold, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.

Wei, an engineer for the amphibious assault ship USS Essex, was one of two California-based sailors charged on Aug. 3, 2023, with providing sensitive military information to China. The other, Wenheng Zhao, was sentenced to more than two years in 2024 after he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of receiving a bribe in violation of his official duties.

U.S. officials have for years expressed concern about the espionage threat they say the Chinese government poses, bringing criminal cases in recent years against Beijing intelligence operatives who have stolen sensitive government and commercial information, including through illegal hacking.

Wei held a security clearance that gave him access to sensitive national security defense information about the ship’s operations and capabilities.   

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Land Along Southern Border Is Transferred to Navy To Become Part Of ‘National Defense Area’

The Trump administration said on Dec. 10 that it would transfer roughly 760 acres of public land along the U.S.-Mexico border in California to the Navy for three years to support border security operations.

While announcing the decision Wednesday, the Interior Department said the land would become part of a “National Defense Area,” or militarized zone, to bolster immigration enforcement.

The land stretches from roughly a mile west of the California-Arizona state line to the western edge of the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area in San Diego and Imperial counties, according to the Interior Department.

“This corridor is one of the highest-traffic regions for unlawful crossings along the southern border, creating significant national security challenges and contributing to environmental degradation,” the department said.

The Interior Department said the land was originally set aside in 1907 by President Theodore Roosevelt for “border protection purposes,” and the Navy will use it to “strengthen operational capabilities while reducing ecological harm associated with sustained illegal activity.”

Since April, the federal government has transferred large portions of land along the southern border to the military, allowing troops to detain migrants attempting to cross the border or arrest people accused of trespassing on military bases.

The process began with a 170-mile swath of land along the border in New Mexico before the government expanded into Texas and Arizona.

While the Interior Department referred to the Southern California lands as a high-traffic area for illegal border crossings, arrests along the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped to the lowest level since the 1960s as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on illegal immigration.

“President Trump has made it clear that securing our border and restoring American sovereignty are top national priorities,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement.

“This action delivers on that commitment. By working with the Navy to close longstanding security gaps, we are strengthening national defense, protecting our public lands from unlawful use, and advancing the president’s agenda to put the safety and security of the American people first.”

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