Watchdog finds significant issues with US Army’s boat fleet

[rangerrebew]

 Watchdog finds significant issues with US Army’s boat fleet
Story by Haley Britzky, CNN • 16h


US Army boats, which carried out the temporary Gaza pier mission earlier this year, are poorly maintained and largely unprepared to meet the military’s growing mission in the Pacific, a new government oversight report said this week.

The Government Accountability Office released a report on Wednesday that concluded there are “wide-ranging” issues facing Army watercraft, which limit the Army’s ability “to meet mission requirements in the Indo-Pacific theater where the need for Army watercraft is most pronounced.”
 
Despite Army policy requiring the vessels to be at least at a 90% mission capable rate — meaning the vessels are ready to perform their mission — the boats currently have a less than 40% capable rate this year. Overall, the fleet of watercraft has dropped by nearly half since 2018, going from 134 vessels to 70 as of May this year, in part due to divestment of vessels in 2018 and 2019.

“Army officials stated that these low mission capable rates, along with the smaller size of the watercraft fleet after divestment, hinder operational readiness and the ability to meet mission requirement,” the report said. “Army officials also stated that with such low rates, usually fewer than half the vessels in the fleet are available at any given time.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/watchdog-finds-significant-issues-with-us-army-s-boat-fleet/ar-AA1swt9L?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=dcfdde1b7538497d9ed1e5d52f52b763&ei=150

[rangerrebew]

  poorly maintained and largely unprepared 

These seem to be the buzz words of today's modern, woke military,

[Timber Rattler]

This is what happens when you try to turn soldiers into sailors...

The GAO report also said the Army is considering leasing civilian watercraft to bolster its existing fleet and moving all of its watercraft to the Pacific. Butler also said the Army was actively talking to Congress about leasing civilian vessels, and even hosted representatives recently in Hawaii on the Army watercraft to discuss the benefits of leasing.

And which civilian vessels would those be?  I guess the U.S. military did not get the memo that there is almost NO Merchant Marine left in this country, and foreign shippers generally refuse to haul American military equipment into war zones.