US Navy removes 7th Fleet commander
Divers find remains of 3 missing sailors
TOKYO — The US Navy on Wednesday said it had removed 7 th Fleet Commander Vice-Admiral Joseph Aucoin after a series of collisions involving its warships in Asia as the search goes on for 10 sailors missing since the latest mishap.
In a news release, the Navy said Aucoin was removed because of the leadership’s loss of confidence in his ability to command.
Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Scott Swift, who traveled to Japan to relieve Aucoin, ordered his deputy Pacific Fleet commander, Rear Admiral Phil Sawyer, to immediately take command of the powerful US force.
The move followed four accidents in the Pacific involving US naval vessels since late January, including two that left sailors dead and missing.
“While each of these four incidents is unique, they cannot be viewed in isolation,” Swift said on Tuesday. The Navy previously announced a broad review of the 7th Fleet’s performance in light of the incidents.
Seven sailors died in June after the USS Fitzgerald collided with a container ship off Japan. On Monday, the USS John S. McCain collided with an oil tanker off Singapore, injuring five sailors and leaving 10 others missing.
Swift said on Tuesday at a news conference in Singapore, where the McCain is now docked, that Navy divers had found remains of some of the missing in a flooded compartment in the ship. He also said that Malaysian officials had found a body, but it had not been determined if it was a McCain crew member.
“We will continue the search and rescue operations until the probability of discovering sailors is exhausted,” Swift said, adding that the Navy would conduct an investigation “to find out if there is a common cause ... and if so, how do we solve that”.
He said he had heard some reports speculating that the Navy could have been a victim of a cyberattack. “We’ve seen no indications of that as yet, but ... we are not taking any consideration off the table.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the 7th Fleet said the sea search by aircraft and ships from the US, Singaporean and Malaysian navies would continue east of Singapore where the McCain and the tanker collided.
The pre-dawn collision tore a gaping hole in the McCain’s left rear hull and flooded adjacent compartments including crew berths and machinery and communication rooms.
Analysts said the two latest accidents are especially sobering. In both collisions, no data on the warships’ movements are publicly available. In a common security practice by US Navy commanders, neither had switched on their Automated Identification Systems, which involve radio transponders to help prevent such collisions.
“It is truly extraordinary, not only that it should happen, and not only that it should happen to the US Navy, but that it should happen repeatedly within weeks in the same geographic area,” said John Blaxland, head of the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at the Australian National University in Sydney.
There were two lesserknown incidents in the first half of the year. In January, the USS Antietam guided missile cruiser ran aground near Yokosuka base, the home port of the 7th Fleet, and in May another cruiser, the USS Lake Champlain from the Navy’s 3rd Fleet, had a minor collision with a South Korean fishing boat.
The 7th Fleet, headquartered in Japan, operates as many as 70 ships, including the US Navy’s only forwarddeployed aircraft carrier, and has around 140 aircraft and 20,000 sailors.
It operates over an area of 124 million square kilometers from bases in Japan, South Korea and Singapore.
While each of these four incidents is unique, they cannot be viewed in isolation.”
commander of the US Pacific Fleet