Righting LPD-17

A fatal accident on the San Antonio (LPD-17) in 2009 and a subsequent court martial trial is prompting Naval Sea Systems Command to take a second look at its small-boat-launching procedures for the ship class, as well as life jacket design, according to the Navy's program executive office for ships.

“We are reviewing the boat handling and recovery procedures for the ship,” Rear Adm. David Lewis told Inside the Navy in a Jan. 7 interview. “There's multiple ways of doing that off of both sides of the ship, and I'm working with the pre-commissioning crews to do a review of the procedures. It hasn't resulted in any design changes at this point that I'm aware of.”

A sailor drowned in February 2009 in the Gulf of Aden when he was tipped out of a rigid-hulled inflatable boat as it was being launched. After a Navy investigation, the executive officer of the ship, Lt. Cdr Sean Kearns, was accused of negligence. However, a military jury last year found him not guilty after his defense team successfully argued that the accident was the result of issues related to the ship's design and contradictory instructions on RHIB operations.

Lewis said NAVSEA is also reexamining life jacket designs because Petty Officer 1st Class Theophilus Ansong, the sailor who was lost at sea, slipped out of his jacket when he was thrown overboard.

The LPD-17 class has been plagued by technical problems, including engine trouble that took the first ships in the class temporarily out of commission. Lewis said engineering change proposals have been issued on the ships still under construction to make sure the same problems don't show up on the remaining vessels in the class. Solutions are also being backfitted onto the existing ships.

“In the new construction world, we have implemented pretty much everything, I think,” Lewis said. “In the backfit world, I can't speak with clarity, but I believe that they have also implemented every fix that we know of.”