Thoughts on the impact of the USS Bonhomme Richard fire.

The US Navy ‘WASP’ class assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard (BHR) has been subject to an enormous fire that has, at time of writing lasted over 24hrs. The blaze has gutted the ship, causing significant damage, and is likely to have probably caused sufficient damage to warrant the writing off of the entire vessel.

The impact of this fire will be felt for years to come. By the authors reckoning, this is the largest single ship loss by the US Navy in peacetime, and second only to the loss of the USS Lexington in WW2. The US Navy is rightly fiercely proud of its reputation of both saving ships and returning them to service – look at both the veterans of Pearl Harbour, and more recently ships like the USS Cole. The US Navy does not give up the fight.

While the US Navy is hopeful of trying to save the vessel, the reality is that 24hrs of uncontrolled fire throughout the platform at temperatures approaching 1000 degrees will be placing the entire ship under enormous pressure.

Masts have collapsed, indicating that steel is melting, and the internal structures of the ship are likely to be unstable as a result. The exposure of water internally too is likely to have caused huge internal longer term damage, and all the combustible materials including electrical items, wiring and even office supplies are likely to have been destroyed.

In very practical terms it is hard to see how the ship can be safely recommissioned without many years of extensive refit work, probably involving gutting and rebuilding the majority of the vessel internally and externally and rewiring from scratch. In practical terms, the cost of repairing this multi-billion dollar vessel is likely to be far beyond the point where it is sensible to do so – particularly not for a 22 year old ship.

The fire serves as a timely reminder of several key issues around operating warships at sea. Firstly, bizzarely it is good to recall that paradoxically this fire has shown just how hard it is to actually let a fire ‘mission kill’ a major capital ship.

Fire at sea is a danger well known to all mariners – the risks on a warship, full of fuel, explosives and all manner of highly combustible material means that fires must be dealt with quickly and effectively, lest they potentially get out of hand.

Not only can fire damage itself threaten a ship, but too much fire fighting response can lead to internal challenges as water begins to build up inside the vessel, needing to be drained quickly before it poses stability challenges.

Yet for all this, modern warships are inherently survivable if built to the right standard and the right investment in protection. Had the BHR been in full commission with crew embarked and the ship ready to respond with a worked up damage control party, a ships company fully trained in fire fighting and quick response, and the ability to close the ship up to fight the fire properly then things may have been very different.

Modern warships can be sealed up tight using a wide variety of watertight compartments, intended to make it difficult for fire or flooding to spread, and making it easier to fight fires locally. With modern fire fighting systems in use, and the ability to close large parts of the ship down, had the ship been operational then the chances are that while damage would have  been done, the fire would quickly have been contained.

The fact is though that the ship was in fact in dockyard hands, coming to the end of a refit in which she was being converted to operate the F35B Joint Strike Fighter for the US Marine Corps. This meant that on a quiet Sunday morning in San Diego, there were barely 160 people onboard – both US Navy and contractors.

The ship in dockyard hands will not have been able to close up effectively – not enough people available to do so and it is likely that many parts of the ships may not be able to assume full integrity – potentially doors out of action, or missing compartment hatches linked to the refit. Add to this wires around the place trailing all over, or some of the other systems being out of commission and you quickly realise it would have been very difficult to do much once the fire spread beyond step back to safety.

This was a grim situation, but it demonstrates that actually a worked up modern warship is remarkably hard to kill. Had she been in different circumstances, then this fire would have been quickly contained and dealt with – it took literally the ‘worst case scenario’ to combine lack of resources, too few people and too big a fire to get to the stage where control was lost.

While there will inevitably be a search for people to blame, and scapegoats to find, it is worth reflecting on what could realistically have been done given the circumstances that the ship was in, and the likely internal situation onboard at the time.

The next thought is that this incident demonstrates why it is worth spending more on ships ‘below the skin’. The constant demands in some parts of the internet for either more heavily armed ships, or for ships that are constantly cheaper ignores that ship design and procurement is a game of trade-offs.

While it may sound appealing to buy a ship that is a fraction of the price of an expensive Royal Navy escort, and while many navies have done just that, you have to ask what compromises they made to the design to make this possible?

The chances are that sacrifices around survivability, design standards and ensuring that the ship can both take damage and fight its way out of it were probably chosen as a compromise to ensure more guns, missiles, bombs could be carried.  While modern ships are expensive, and while it is easy to carp about the cost and say ‘but the X navy got four of the same design for the price of one of ours’ it is worth asking whether these ships could survive a fire like this?

The reality is that the answer is probably not – its easier to save on systems that the owners think won’t be used than it is to invest in the underpinning support and damage control that may make the difference between life and death.

Go on any Royal Navy warship and you are quickly struck by the fanaticism around both fire fighting and preventing flooding. The RN learnt the hard way in 1982 that these incidents kill people, and has over the years invested heavily in ensuring its designs can take the sort of punishment that is afflicting the BHR right now.

There is no compromise given in pursuit of excellence when it comes to getting these drills right, and it is vital that they are taken seriously. There is a good reason why everyone in the Royal Navy who goes to sea spends time on how to put out fires and keep the ship afloat – because you never know when they may need to use those skills for real.

One of the most powerful images of this debate was the image sent today of a group of US Navy sailors suited up from a neighbouring warship marching up to the BHR and preparing to board her to fight the fire.

To willingly march towards one of the largest warships in the world, knowing it is in the middle of an uncontrollable fire, that the situation is challenging and that there are two million gallons of petroleum onboard that could, in the worst case, explode and kill you, takes a special breed of courage. This bravery is in the finest tradition of the US Navy, and speaks volumes about their people and willingness to do their duty.  

Much will be written about the wider impact on the loss of an F35 capable LHD from the Pacific Fleet at a time when there appears to be a new Cold War with a peer military rival underway.

The loss will be keenly felt by the USMC, particularly as they pivot towards an island hopping strategy and were going to rely on ships like BHR to carry their aircraft, people and equipment into harms way. Coming on the day that the US Government confirmed it would not recognise the ‘9 dash line’ it seems likely that with tensions likely to rise further between the US and China, further F35 capable platforms will be needed as soon as possible.

There has been some suggestion that a replacement could be drawn from the two Tarawa class hulls currently in the reserve fleet. These ships were never intended for F35 operations though and are also over 40 years old and have been in reserve for nearly a decade.

The likely refit costs would be astronomically expensive, and may be a price too high to get the F35B to sea, even as a stand in basis. Historically reactivations of ships is far more expensive than people expect, and requires people with knowledge of the platform to crew and get to sea again. The eventual work may be almost as great as that required to repair and recommission BHR.

In this case the US Navy will need to decide if the cost of pulling two 40 year old LHDs from reserve is worth it, or if another alternative needs to be found. Realistically only two other ways of filling the gap exist – either to accelerate production of the America class LHDs, of which there are one in service, one on trials and one under construction.

Alternatively, the request may come to the UK to see what can be done about making use of the RN and its carrier force to support USMC F35 operations in a significant manner. The QUEEN ELIZABETH class has been designed from the outset to embark and support USMC F35 squadrons, and this is an integral part of the operating plan for them.

With the National Audit Office confirming that the Carrier Strike capability faces real challenges to meeting full operating capability due to reduced F35 orders, delays to FSS (which may even be scrapped according to the Daily Telegraph) and wider problems in getting the Carrier Strike concept off the ground, this may be an opportunity in disguise for the RN and/or the USMC.

It is possible that the RN may be informally asked if it could support the gap in the Asia Pacific region, or backfill elsewhere to free up another LHD to redeploy. In turn the USMC could deploy in greater numbers, and do so from a platform intended for their needs.

The US Navy could even offer to provide a couple of solid support ships too, in order to help meet the issue of the RFA gap, and help keep the capability going. This may help secure the future for Carrier Strike through the defence review when things are looking pretty financially tough for the Royal Navy.

Of course, the ultimate option may be for the USN to ask to lease the carrier from the UK after all. Although this story emerged and was widely discredited months ago, in these strange and turbulent times, perhaps now it could be seen as an entirely sensible option for the UK to provide a ship to cover the gap to the US Navy , while freeing up resources, personnel and equipment to focus on keeping just one carrier in service for a few years, pending the others return in due course.

Indeed the Royal Navy appears to have considered what it can do for supporting the US Navy, given that according to the Times, the UK is actively considering basing an aircraft carrier in the Far East to support efforts to counter China.

This would be a nice returning of the offer of a US Navy supercarrier to help the UK out in 1982 and perhaps shows that these two allies do have a genuinely special relationship. Right now, given the way that 2020 is going,  nothing can be ruled out anymore.