What this attack submarine sidelined for a decade says about the US Navy's maintenance failures

Business Insider

15 hours ago

Sidelined for over ten years now, the attack submarine USS Boise has become one of the clearest and most damning examples of the US Navy's maintenance problems.
The Los Angeles-class sub came up during the confirmation hearing of Adm. Daryl Caudle, President Donald Trump's pick for top admiral. The Senate recently confirmed him as the new chief of naval operations.
Last month, Caudle responded to fresh concerns about the Boise and questions of whether it might be time to scrap the boat. He told the US Senate Armed Services Committee that if he were confirmed, he'd look hard at the Boise's situation.
"The decision whether or not to actually walk away from Boise is a big one, and I want to make sure I clearly understand the trajectory and trends," Caudle said, responding to a question from Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican who had asked him if it was time to "just simply pull the plug on that one."
"I hear you loud and clear, senator, on how unacceptable it is, how long she's been in the yards," the admiral said.
He added that the Boise's delays were "a dagger in my heart as a submarine officer." Caudle previously served as commander on three nuclear-powered submarines and was the commander of Submarine Forces Atlantic and Submarine Forces, US Pacific Fleet.
The Boise and the larger US Navy shipbuilding and maintenance issues were major topics of conversation in Caudle's hearing. The Boise was originally launched in 1991 and conducted operations until early 2015, when it wrapped up its last patrol and docked at Naval Station Norfolk for scheduled repairs.
Limited dry dock availability and workforce capacity left the Boise and its crew waiting. In 2016, the vessel lost its ability to perform unrestricted operations, and then it lost its dive certification in the following year. Those developments were then followed by more waiting, leaving the valuable combat asset out of action.
In 2019, then- US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper visited the Boise and praised the crew for maintaining "readiness and lethality" as the vessel was still standing by for repairs.
In February 2024, the Navy awarded prominent shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) a $1.2 billion contract to begin an engineering overhaul on the Boise. The work is expected to be completed by 2029, meaning the ship will not have set sail on a patrol for roughly 15 years by the time it's finished. That's a staggering waste of an expensive, front-line asset. Even when the work is done, the ship will be nearing the end of its service life.
The Boise has thus emerged as an example of overstretched and under-resourced shipyards, insufficient planning, and the challenges of budget instabilities that affect Navy readiness. The sea service did not immediately respond to request for comment from Business Insider.
Work on US nuclear-powered submarines is typically handled by one of the Navy's four public shipyards, which have seen dramatic demands in recent decades due to a lack of investment in maintenance from the Navy and the increased complexity of the subs and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, Bryan Clark, a retired Navy submarine officer and defense expert at the Hudson Institute, told Business Insider.
A "combination of factors created a huge backlog at the shipyards," Clark said.
The long tail of COVID-19 disruptions, particularly for supply chains and labor pools, added strain to Navy shipyards in the early 2020s. In more recent years, experts have pointed to persistent workforce shortages, uneven investment, and inconsistent Navy planning as critical causes of ongoing delays in major shipbuilding programs and maintenance backlogs.
The Navy's long-standing struggles with routine maintenance stretch back decades, with challenges including persistent shipyard bottlenecks, limited dry dock availability, troubling scheduling missteps, workforce shortages, unreliable or inconsistent maintenance data, and unforeseen issues that tend to emerge during repairs and cause significant delays.
Supply chain problems and shortages of spare parts and critical materials have also added to the strain.
These issues, combined with broader weaknesses in the Navy's shipbuilding enterprise, have raised concerns within the service and on Capitol Hill about the fleet's size and overall readiness, particularly as the US emphasizes the need to deter or, if necessary, fight a potential conflict with a major power like China, which has far greater shipbuilding and repair capacity.