The amphibious assault ship USS Boxer is underway for a long-delayed deployment after a maintenance and overhaul period of almost four years.
The ship has been conducting work-ups for the last several months with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The Boxer last deployed in 2019.
The Navy struggled to get the ship back to sea after a $200 million planned overhaul and maintenance availability in 2020.
The ship went to sea briefly in June 2022 but then remained pier-side in San Diego until last summer, KPBS previously reported.
A series of Navy investigations found some of the ship's issues came from poor craftsmanship and lack of skill from the shipyard and others from crew complacency, poor training and a toxic command environment.
The years of delay were especially trying on the Navy because they coincided with the loss of another amphibious assault ship, the USS Bonhomme Richard. That ship had just come out of a long maintenance and overhaul period when the USS Boxer began its time in the San Diego dry dock in the summer of 2020.
In July of that year, the ship was destroyed in a fire that raged more than four days. The Navy was down two big-deck amphibious ships while the USS Boxer was unable to get to sea.
The loss impacted other ships, said Brad Martin, a retired Navy captain and former amphibious squadron commander.
"The Navy's had to adjust its presence ... what happens is that other ships end up taking taking up the load," Martin, now a senior researcher at the Rand Corporation, said in an interview.
Martin said other ships have to stay out at sea longer, meaning any maintenance they might need gets delayed, which then could delay maintenance on other ships.
"There is a cumulative effect," Martin said. "It just makes it harder and harder to to catch up with."
Martin said it's not unusual that a ship as old as the USS Boxer, which was built in the early 1990s, to have problems. What's needed, he said, are more ships.
"It's just not possible to take ships that are as old as the Boxer is ... have it in service for decades and then expect that you aren't going to encounter some long-term problems as it's reused," Martin said. "If a presence in the western Pacific ... the Mediterranean ... the Middle East and everywhere else ... is going to be maintained the force needs to be bigger. (We) need more ships."
The Navy said its goal is to reduce maintenance delays. A Navy official in San Diego told KPBS on Monday the service is prioritizing the readiness of its amphibious ships and catch up with required maintenance — a process that's going to take some time.
The USS Boxer's deployment with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit marks the first with the Marine Corps' new Amphibious Combat Vehicles and the return of MV-22 Ospreys to shipboard operations.
The first ACV deployment was also delayed more than a year after two of the vehicles floundered in heavy surf off Camp Pendleton in 2022. The ACV is the replacement for the Vietnam War-era Assault Amphibious Vehicle, or AAV. Those vehicles were pulled for waterborne operations in 2020 after one sank off San Clemente Island, killing eight Marines and a sailor.
