![]() ![]() The Navy will now be down an amphibious assault ship – and one that had been recently upgraded to accommodate the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter – which will be a blow to operators. 3rd Fleet a Naval Sea Systems Command failure review board, which will look at safety, structural and design issues related to the ship and how changes could be made to prevent a fire from moving through the hull the way it did on Bonhomme Richard and a NAVSEA safety investigation board to examine the events that look place on the ship leading up to the fire compared to existing policies and procedures. Once the investigations end, more substantive work can be done to take out larger systems that could be reused by other ships in the fleet, inactivate the ship, and either tow it to the Gulf Coast for scrapping or tow it to storage in the Pacific Northwest until a Gulf Coast yard is ready for it.įour investigations are taking place in parallel: a Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) criminal investigation, which now includes the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) a command investigation led by Vice Adm. Bonhomme Richard is already being prepped for towing, though, and Ver Hage said harvesting of some systems has been happening since September and will continue. The inactivation can’t start just yet, as four investigations into the fire are still ongoing. “Examining those three courses of action, we reached the conclusion that we needed to decommission the platform,” he said. Though cheaper than rebuilding to the original configuration, Ver Hage said it would be cheaper to just design and build a new tender or hospital ship from scratch.ĭecommissioning the ship – and the inactivation, harvesting of parts, towing and scrapping the hull – will cost about $30 million and take just nine to 12 months. Rebuilding the ship for a new purpose would have cost “in excess of a billion dollars” and also taken about five to seven years. ![]() That work would have taken place in the Gulf Coast, he said. Ver Hage said restoring Bonhomme Richard to its original form would have cost between $2.5 billion and $3.2 billion and taken five to seven years. Three main options were considered: rebuild and restore the ship to its original function of moving Marines and their gear around for amphibious warfare rebuild the ship to a new configuration for a new mission, such as a submarine or surface ship tender or a hospital ship or decommission and scrap the ship. ![]() In the weeks and months since that fire, the Navy conducted a comprehensive material assessment to determine the best path forward for that ship and our Navy,” he said. “After thorough consideration, the secretary of the Navy and the chief of naval operations have decided to decommission the Bonhomme Richard due to the extensive damage sustained during that July fire. Eric Ver Hage, the commander of Navy Regional Maintenance Center and the director of surface ship maintenance and modernization, told reporters today in a phone call. The ship remained watertight throughout the ordeal and hasn’t been moved from its spot on the pier at Naval Base San Diego, but between the fire itself and the days-long firefighting effort, about 60-percnet of the ship was ruined and would have had to be rebuilt or replaced, Rear Adm. The July 12 fire aboard USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) began in the lower vehicle storage area but ravaged the island, the mast and the flight deck as it burned its way through the inside of the big-deck amphib. The Navy decided to scrap the amphibious assault ship that burned for nearly five days earlier this year, concluding after months of investigations that trying to rebuild and restore the ship would take too much money and too much industrial base capacity. This post has been updated with additional historical details. USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) sits pier side at Naval Base San Diego on July 16, 2020. ![]()
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