Navy probes whether exhausted sailors set fire to $13B warship to go home

When the best theory is that sailors tried to burn their way off the mission, maybe the problem isn’t the sailors.

After nearly a year at sea, being shuffled around the globe to serve an unfocused and overly aggressive Trump administration, and deployment extensions stacked on top of extensions, the U.S. Navy is now investigating whether sailors aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford deliberately set the ship ablaze.

This is reminiscent of troops defecating in Humvees during Trump’s Los Angeles deployment.

The US Navy is investigating whether sailors aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford deliberately started the fire that tore through the aircraft carrier’s main laundry spaces on 12 March — a blaze that took more than 30 hours to extinguish and left over 600 crew members without proper sleeping quarters. The carrier, the most expensive warship ever built, is now diverting to Souda Naval Base in Crete for repairs and a formal investigation into the incident, according to sources with direct knowledge of the planned port call.

The investigation explicitly includes the possibility of deliberate sabotage by crew members, with one theory suggesting the fire was intentionally set to interrupt the carrier’s lengthy and repeatedly extended mission. The Ford has now entered its tenth month of deployment, with crew members told their assignment will likely stretch into May — twice the length of a normal aircraft carrier deployment.

IB Times

When the best theory is that sailors tried to burn their way off the mission, maybe the problem isn’t the sailors.