Navy Dry Dock Closures Make a Bad Problem Worse
By Maiya Clark & Anna Given
March 23, 2023
In the flurry of news stories about munitions production and aid to Ukraine, the closure of four dry docks at a U.S. Navy shipyard six weeks ago went largely unnoticed. This development, however, will create massive problems for the Navy’s submarines and aircraft carriers, the industrial base, and national defense as a whole.
Why did the Navy close three dry docks at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and another at the nearby Trident Refit Facility in Bangor, Washington? Seismic concerns. These dry docks lie on a fault line, and the Navy determined that the risk of damage to ships using these facilities outweighed the risk of more maintenance delays caused by shutting them down.
How bad is it? A Navy report concluded that the earth under one dry dock at Puget Sound may be “subject to liquefaction in a seismic event.” In other words, there is a good chance that the dry dock—ship and all—could be sucked into a sinkhole during a significant earthquake.
The U.S. has only four public shipyards: Puget Sound and Pearl Harbor on the west coast, and Norfolk and Portsmouth on the east. These yards are responsible for maintaining the Navy’s nuclear-powered fleet, i.e., aircraft carriers and submarines. Between them, these shipyards had 18 dry docks. Now four of them (22 percent) are out of commission.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/03/23/navy_dry_dock_closures_make_a_bad_problem_worse_888902.html
