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Mine ship crews in limbo waiting for homeport

Last spring, two minesweepers began an “extended deployment” to the Western Pacific with the promise of exotic Asian port visits, but instead of adventure, the ships got delays, confusion and lots of requests for spare parts.

Now, the mine countermeasures ships Avenger and Defender are stuck in bureaucratic limbo, their sailors told Navy Times, because Navy, U.S. and Japanese officials haven’t decided where the ships will be permanently based. They’re both in Sasebo, Japan, but some of the crews’ families are in Ingleside, Texas — site of their former home port — while others are scattered across the country, waiting to learn where the ships will finally end up.

The ships, their crews and families have waited months without a decision, and in the meantime, the sailors haven’t been home to the U.S. or seen their loved ones. They’ve been given no end date for their deployment, and their ships are falling apart while they wait. The situation is unsatisfactory, one sailor told Navy Times.

“I have done deployments before, so my family and I were prepared for a deployment, but not being able to tell my wife where she will be living, or the fact that I may be moving to Japan and she cannot come, is unsat,” he said.

The sailors who spoke with Navy Times asked not to be identified because they feared command repercussions for discussing the ships’ plight.

Since the Base Closure and Realignment Commission recommended closing Ingleside, the longtime home of mine warfare, fleet officials have eliminated the Osprey-class coastal minesweepers and moved Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command to Naval Base San Diego. As part of the closure, the remaining Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships had to get out of Texas. Although the others went to San Diego, Avenger and Defender were sent directly to Japan.

Piece by piece

Within a month after the Avenger arrived, it had to loan its anchor windlass to one of the permanently forward-deployed minesweepers in Sasebo so the other ship could pass an inspection from the Board of Inspection and Survey. It gave up parts from its sonar system to another ship so the other crew could join a fleet exercise. Wear and tear began to take their toll, especially in the Avenger’s machinery spaces, where sailors have struggled to keep its main engines going, a second sailor said.

The Defender has had a better time since the move to Japan, and it has spent more time than its sibling at sea, taking part in exercises with other U.S. and South Korean warships. Still, the crews of both ships have grown weary.

“From what I’ve heard, everybody on board, from the top level all the way to the bottom, is really frustrated,” said Marla Perez, the Avenger’s ombudsman.

Their situation is made even more acute because the sailors aboard both minesweepers are the same ones who deployed with them, and they have not been given the chance to rotate off the ships, as is typical with MCMs. The Navy maintains multiple crews for each minesweeper hull, which enables it to keep the same ships in the Persian Gulf, for example, but to alternate crews regularly. Not so for Avenger and Defender, the first sailor said.

“As far as the crews, we are it. They took us out of rotation and put us on these hulls and said, ‘You are now a permanent crew, and you will be moving to Japan eventually.’ This situation I am not complaining about; I do not mind Japan or even being on a deployment, but we are not getting any information about when our families will come or if they even can.”

That’s another sticky aspect to this situation. When the Avenger and Defender were moved from Ingleside, neither their crews nor their families were clear on where they should relocate. Some moved to San Diego, some stayed in Ingleside, and many moved in with other family members in their homes around the U.S. Perez estimated most of the ships’ families had scattered.

When the Navy eventually chooses a home port, it isn’t clear whether the service will pay to relocate those families again, the first sailor said, or at least whether it would move them to Sasebo.

Lt. Matt Galan, a spokesman for Pacific Fleet, said he had no information about the Avenger’s and Defender’s home-port situation, or whether the crews’ families would be relocated if the ships stay in Japan. Other Navy spokesmen, with 7th Fleet and at the Pentagon, also said they had no information.

That’s just what the minesweeper crews and their families have gotten used to hearing.

“The answers remain the same,” the second sailor said: “‘As soon as we hear something, we’ll let you know.’”