By Tony Capaccio

(Bloomberg) — A U.S. Navy Littoral Combat Ship is sidelined in port in Singapore due to harm to gears that propel the vessel, in line with a memo from the service, which blamed failure to make use of sufficient lubricating oil.

The USS Fort Worth constructed by Lockheed Martin Corp. had harm to combining gears that allow the ship run on a mixture of diesel and fuel turbine engines, in line with the memo obtained by Bloomberg News. “There is no estimated date of completion” to the repairs, it mentioned.

The incident is the second in little greater than a month involving the vessels, which value on common about $440 million every, in line with the Congressional Research Service. The Navy towed the USS Milwaukee greater than 40 nautical miles to port in Virginia final month within the Atlantic after its gears failed on Dec. 11, in line with the Navy Times. The Navy memo mentioned the 2 incidents weren’t associated.

Initial indications are that the gear harm in Singapore “appears to be caused by a failure to follow established procedures during maintenance,” in line with the memo. “During startup of the main propulsion diesel engines, lube oil was not supplied to the ship’s combining gears.”

Temperature Alarms

The lack of oil “resulted in high-temperature alarms on the port and starboard combining gears,” it mentioned. It mentioned a upkeep crew of representatives from the corporate that made the gears and Navy personnel based mostly in Yokosuka, Japan, is “on board to evaluate the gears and make the necessary repairs.”

Lieutenant Commander Matt Knight, a spokesman for the Navy’s Pacific Fleet, mentioned the ship will stay in Singapore whereas it undergoes “a series of inspections to determine the extent of necessary repairs.” He mentioned the ship’s crew was liable for the failure to correctly lubricate the gears.

The Fort Worth is on a 16-month deployment to Asia — a high-profile instance of the Obama administration’s promised rebalance to Asia. The Navy needs to completely base 4 littoral ships in Singapore. The service can also be testing a brand new crew-rotation strategy supposed to permit for lengthy deployments with out exhausting sailors.

The newest incident is a setback for a vessel whose critics say is unreliable and never survivable in fight. The final two protection secretaries have cited shortcomings of the ship, in-built separate variations by Lockheed and Austal Ltd., and each truncated plans for it. The newest effort got here final month when Defense Secretary Ash Carter directed the Navy to cut back this system to 40 vessels from this system’s authentic 52.

‘Needed Investments’

In a memo to Navy leaders, Carter wrote that the service “has overemphasized resources used to incrementally increase total ship numbers at the expense of critically needed investments in areas where our adversaries are not standing still, such as strike, ship survivability, electronic warfare and other capabilities.”

The episode in Singapore additionally might name into query the Navy’s upkeep plan for the ship, which is designed to have a minimal crew of about 50, in contrast with a crew of 200 on Navy frigates.

The Littoral Combat Ship, supposed for operations in shallow coastal waters, will face a brand new spherical of criticism when the Pentagon operational take a look at workplace publishes its subsequent annual report later this month. In previous assessments, the workplace has cited doubts concerning the ship’s reliability and vulnerability.

©2016 Bloomberg News