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9:23 27.09.2024 •
The USNS Big Horn was traveling with an aircraft carrier strike group nearby when it suffered an undisclosed “incident” and began to flood, ‘The Washington Post’ reports.
The U.S. Navy disclosed that one of its oil tankers in the Middle East suffered significant damage while at sea, complicating a fraught deterrence mission as hostilities between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah threaten to engulf the region in violence.
The USNS Big Horn experienced an unspecified emergency early Tuesday local time and the incident is under investigation, the Navy said in a statement. The vessel, which has a crew of about 80 people, is being towed to a port for evaluation and repairs, two military officials said.
One of the officials said the ship was damaged in the Arabian Sea, where an aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and several other warships have operated for months amid tensions stemming from Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip. The other official said the ship encountered trouble while close to a shoreline, without elaborating. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military movements.
It’s too early to say what caused the Big Horn’s damage, the two military officials said, but it is not believed that the oiler collided with another vessel. At least one of the ship’s compartments began flooding, requiring embarked personnel to take action, the second military official said. Other possibilities include the ship having run aground in shallow water or a collision with some other object. Officials did not immediately rule out a mine strikey.
The situation could leave the Navy challenged, for the foreseeable future, to conduct sea-based refueling for ships involved in its Middle East deterrence mission. The military officials said a near-term solution could entail the transfer of fuel between vessels.
The Navy has kept an armada in the region for much of the past year, bolstering the Pentagon’s ability to defend Israel and protect commercial shipping as the war in Gaza has inspired Hezbollah and other like-minded groups backed by Iran to wage attacks of their own.
Yemen’s Houthi militant group, whom Tehran also supplies with weapons and other support, has greatly disrupted commercial traffic in the Red Sea, targeting container ships and the U.S.-led military vessels that have swarmed the Arabian Peninsula in a bid to halt those and other attacks.
The aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln relies on nuclear propulsion, but the fighter jets aboard it need fuel transfers to fly. Other warships accompanying the Abraham Lincoln include the destroyers USS O’Kane, USS Spruance and USS Stockdale, all requiring fuel too.
…It is highly likely, the ship was holed after being hit by an anti-ship missile from an unnamed coastal missile system.
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