Category: Business Insider

• Columbia University's president took a much stronger stance against antisemitism than her peers did. 
• She told Congress Wednesday that calling for a Jewish genocide would violate Columbia policies.  
• The presidents of MIT, Harvard, and UPenn wavered when asked the same question.

In her testimony to Congress on Wednesday, Columbia University's president avoided making the same viral mistakes her fellow college presidents did during their hearings last year.

Nemat "Minouche" Shafik, Columbia's president, appeared before the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Wednesday. Republican members of the Committee, including New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, have harshly criticized elite US colleges, accusing their leaders of failing to protect students against antisemitic hate speech.

Shafik was called to Congress to discuss her school's response to antisemitism on campus following Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel and Israel's subsequent war in Gaza. The presidents of UPenn, Harvard, and MIT had testified before Congress back in December for the same reason.

But there was a big difference between what those presidents said at their hearing and what Shafik said at hers. During her four-hour testimony, which was largely devoid of headline-grabbing moments, Shafik took a much stronger stance against antisemitism than her peers did.

When asked if students calling for the genocide of Jewish people would violate Columbia's rules, Shafik and three other Columbia leaders testifying with her all said yes, it would. Shafik added that any student who called for a Jewish genocide would be punished.

The presidents of MIT, Harvard, and UPenn, in contrast, waffled when asked the same question during a five-hour-long session in December — and two of them suffered the consequences.

Harvard President Claudine Gay answered with, "It can be, depending on the context," while MIT President Sally Kornbluth said, "I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews on our campus." In a similarly soft response, UPenn's president Elizabeth Magill responded, "If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment."

All three presidents faced harsh criticism for their answers, which many argued did not adequately condemn hate speech. The backlash led to the resignations of both Gay and Magill, while Kornbluth has so far managed to hold onto her position.

Shafik was invited to the December hearing, but was unable to attend because she was speaking in Dubai at the time, The Wall Street Journal reported.

And that granted her more than just extra time to prepare — she also had the advantage of witnessing the fallout her peers faced, and making sure she avoided their mistakes.

She made herself especially clear. On Tuesday, the eve of her hearing, Shafik wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in which she explained the complexity of protecting free speech and political expression while also ensuring students' safety and condemning discrimination.

"Calling for the genocide of a people — whether they are Israelis or Palestinians, Jews, Muslims or anyone else — has no place in a university community," Shafik wrote in the Journal. "Such words are outside the bounds of legitimate debate and unimaginably harmful."

In Wednesday's hearing, Shafik also commented on a few controversial professors. She said that Mohamed Abdou, a visiting professor at Columbia's Middle East Institute, would "never work at Columbia again" after he voiced support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad.

Shafik was also questioned about a tenured professor in Columbia's Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department, Joseph Massad, who had previously called Hamas' attack on Israel "awesome." Shafik said Massah had been "spoken to" about his comments. But when Stefanik pressed her on the issue, Shafik said she would get back to the committee on whether Massad would be removed from his position as chair of the academic review committee.

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/6y5KswD
via IFTTT

• Cloud seeding involves spraying salts into incoming storm clouds to increase rainfall.
• Photos show how the UAE, United States, and other countries have been seeding clouds for decades.
• Historic floods in Dubai didn't come from cloud seeding, but humans' climate impacts are playing a role.

As the desert city of Dubai flooded on Monday, onlookers pointed the finger at the government's "cloud seeding" efforts.

The program sends planes into oncoming storm clouds to inject them with substances that can help make more rain. Could it be the culprit for two years' worth of rain falling on the United Arab Emirates city in just a day?

It's a tantalizing explanation. Trying to control the weather can sound tantamount to playing god. And if thousands of years of media and oral tradition tell us anything — from Prometheus to Frankenstein — playing god has bad consequences.

But the United Arab Emirates has been seeding clouds to encourage rainfall and battle drought for 20 years. Some US states have been doing it for even longer. These programs have found that the practice has a small effect on precipitation, increasing it by about 5 to 15%, though a UAE official told Reuters that it can be as high as 30% for them.

Many other countries, including China and Australia, have experimented with the technique.

According to several scientists, cloud seeding isn't the driving force behind Dubai's historic floods.

How cloud seeding works

To "seed" a cloud, you have to spray it with microscopic particles of a salt such as silver iodide, calcium chloride, or potassium chloride.

In the UAE and many US states, planes do the job. In some places, like Utah, machines on the ground shoot the substance into air currents that can carry it into the clouds.

All these particles have a crystalline structure, similar to ice, which gives water droplets something to stick to. As the water converges, it forms an ice crystal and eventually falls as snow or rain.

This mimics the natural rain-making process that happens inside the cloud.

"Cloud seeding can't create clouds from nothing. It encourages water that is already in the sky to condense faster and drop water in certain places. So first, you need moisture. Without it, there'd be no clouds," Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at the Imperial College London, and co-founder of the groundbreaking science collaboration World Weather Attribution, said in a statement to the Science Media Centre (SMC).

The real threat behind Dubai's floods

Many atmospheric scientists have dismissed the idea that cloud seeding was behind Dubai's floods. Experts told the SMC that the rains came from a rare thundercloud system, which was already forecast to bring heavy rainfall, and the effect of any cloud seeding would have been tiny.

"This is a distraction from the real story here — that due to our collective failure to phase out fossil fuels, we must prepare for unprecedented extremes, which will worsen until we reach 'net zero,'" John Marsham, an atmospheric scientist and Met Office Joint Chair at the University of Leeds, told the SMC.

Rising global temperatures are leading to heavier bouts of rainfall across the planet, even in places that are typically dry or even in the middle of a drought. This type of weather whiplash happens because of a fundamental fact of physics: Warmer air holds more water.

"Any possible effect of any cloud seeding in these circumstances would be tiny," Marsham added.

Indeed, the UAE isn't the only desert or drought-stricken region that's been devastated by heavy rainfall in recent years. Death Valley catastrophically and historically flooded in 2022, 2023, and this February.

A series of moisture-laden atmospheric rivers interrupted California's years-long drought last winter, killing at least 22 people, by the Los Angeles Times' count.

"If humans continue to burn oil, gas, and coal, the climate will continue to warm, rainfall will continue to get heavier, and people will continue to lose their lives in floods," Otto said.

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/RyWMBIY
via IFTTT

• Iran and Israel have fought a deadly shadow war for decades.
• The two enemies have relied on proxy forces, assassinations, and strikes abroad to hit each other.
• Iran's unprecedented attack last weekend introduced a new dynamic into the simmering conflict.

A decades-long shadow war between Iran and Israel has been thrust into broad daylight.

For years, the two bitter foes have relied on strikes in other countries, covert assassinations, and proxy forces to trade blows as part of a simmering — but deadly — conflict. Iran's unprecedented attack on Israel last weekend has notably changed the dynamics of this conflict, and it's now more dangerous.

A senior US defense official told reporters on Sunday that "it was the first-ever direct attack on Israel from Iranian soil," calling the barrage "reckless" and warning that it "risks dragging the region into broader conflict."

The fierce animosity between Iran and Israel can be traced back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which ushered in a theocratic regime in Tehran that has long opposed Israel's existence and has vowed to ultimately destroy the state.

Iran over the years has supported, funded, and armed proxy forces across the Middle East, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and has relied on them to attack Israeli interests. This has essentially allowed Tehran to strike at Israel indirectly.

Israel, on the other hand, has carried out airstrikes against Iranian assets abroad, including in Iraq and Syria, in an attempt to limit Tehran's ability to funnel lethal weaponry across the Middle East to its proxy forces, especially those close to Israel's borders.

Jonathan Lord, formerly a political military analyst at the Pentagon, told Business Insider Israel has found limited tactical success in this space, "so over time, those strikes have become more public and less covert, and certainly, we've sort of seen that grow and grow."

Israel has also tried to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, believing it to be an existential threat. It has assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists and launched cyberattacks on Tehran's facilities. The shadowy conflict has seen tit-for-tat exchanges at sea, too, including the recent Iranian seizure of an Israel-linked cargo ship in the Straight of Hormuz.

Amid persistent tensions, the two enemies managed to avoid a direct military confrontation with each other, but that is no longer the case.

An 'escalation' in the shadow war

On April 1, an Israeli airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus, Syria, killed several military officials, including two generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, responsible for supporting Iran's proxy network, the so-called "Axis of Resistance."

The brazen strike marked a significant moment in the shadow war between Israel and Iran, distinguishing itself from past Israeli actions in Syria because it targeted an Iranian government-affiliated site and high-ranking individuals. Tehran vowed to retaliate, and nearly two weeks later, it did.

Iran and its proxies launched more than 300 one-way attack drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at Israel — in a large and unprecedented attack. Nearly all of the Iranian munitions were shot down by Israel and partner forces in the region, including the US.

"Clearly, firing these missiles and drones from Iranian territory directly at Israel is an escalation" in the conflict, retired Gen. Joseph Votel, who oversaw US military operations in the Middle East as the commander of US Central Command, told BI.

One country attacking the other's homeland, he added, had generally been off the radar.

"That has been shattered, and that has been changed here," Votel said, noting that what normally tends to play out behind the scenes has now been brought "much more into the open."

Israel has promised its own retaliation for the Iranian attack and appears to be calculating its next move, despite some of its Western partners calling for the country to show restraint. Any Israeli military response to the attack risks an all-out confrontation with Iran and could plunge the region into even more violence.

"We're on the edge of the cliff and we have to move away from it," the European Union's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, told Spanish radio station Onda Cero this week, stressing that "we have to step on the brakes and reverse gear."

Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, the IRGC commander, suggested that regardless of whether Israel attacks Iran or its assets abroad, Tehran will retaliate directly like it did last weekend, rather than rely on its proxies, as it has historically done. But it remains to be seen whether such remarks would actually translate into action.

Going forward, the long-standing shadow war has very much been exposed. Neither party is concerned anymore about hiding attribution for its actions, Lord said, but rather, everything is now aimed more at establishing deterrence and limiting the activities of the other party.

"There was nothing shadow about what we saw over the weekend," Lord said. What used to be kept in the shadows, he said, was no longer the case after it became so overt "and the list of usual suspects that could be involved were reduced down to two: Iran and Israel."

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/FMdZSg3
via IFTTT

• Trump is cracking down on GOP campaigns that use his name and face to raise money.
• He wants them to send him a 5% cut of any money raised that way.
• His team is also reminding other campaigns not to impersonate the former president.

Republicans have long used former President Donald Trump's name and face to raise money from GOP voters.

Now, Trump's cracking down, asking campaigns to give him a 5% cut of any money that they raise that way.

"Beginning tomorrow, we ask that all candidates and committees who choose to use President Trump's name, image, and likeness split a minimum of 5% of all fundraising solicitations to Trump National Committee JFC," the Trump campaign wrote in a letter to GOP vendors this week, according to POLITICO.

The campaign is also asking fundraising Republicans not to impersonate Trump, suggest that donors aren't loyal to Trump if they don't donate, or mention the Trump family without his campaign's consent.

"Any vendor whose clients ignore the guidelines mentioned above will be held responsible for their clients' actions," reads the letter. "Repeated violations will result in the suspension of business relationships between the vendor and Trump National Committee JFC."

Trump has long trailed President Joe Biden in fundraising, and the apparent crackdown may be an attempt to make up lost ground.

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/s6XIzq1
via IFTTT

• The Toronto Raptors' Jontay Porter received a lifetime ban from the NBA over a betting scandal.
• If you think that's a crisis for the NBA, think again: The NBA is happy to make an example of Porter.
• The NBA — and lots of other institutions — really wants sports betting to thrive. This move is supposed to give bettors confidence to keep betting.

How dumb do you have to be to throw away an NBA career in a betting scandal?

Or, if you don't like that framing, try this: How much trouble do you have to be in — financial or otherwise — to throw away an NBA career in a betting scandal?

I have no idea. I can't fathom what led the Toronto Raptors' Jontay Porter to allegedly 1) conspire with bettors about a game he was playing in and 2) bet on NBA games, including betting against his own team.

But it's easy to understand why Porter's case resulted in a lifetime ban from the NBA, where he had reportedly earned at least $2.3 million in three years.

In fact, you can argue that Porter's case is good for the NBA: It allows the league to set a clear-as-day bright line for any other players dumb or desperate enough to do this stuff. And, crucially, it allows everyone else to believe that Porter's case is an anomaly and that they should get right back to betting on NBA games.

And the NBA, like every other pro sports league, really wants people betting on games. It believes sports betting — mostly illegal in the US until 2018 and now a booming business — is important for its future growth.

You can debate the accuracy of that theory — yes, people are betting tons of money on sports now ($120 billion in the US last year alone). But is that a narrow-but-deep niche of bettors or a wide swath of people who occasionally drop a couple dollars on a game? And you can also debate the morality of the theory — even if gambling is something people like to do, should we encourage it?

But the NBA and the rest of big-time sports — along with a sports media ecosystem that expects sports betting to generate huge payouts for TV networks, publishers, podcasts, and many other outlets — is all-in on betting now. It seems unlikely it will ever go back.

You may see some tweaks in the future to make it even less likely to see future Porters — even though sports betting scandals keep cropping up in all kinds of sports. NBA boss Adam Silver, in a statement about Porter's ban, referenced "important issues about the sufficiency of the regulatory framework currently in place, including the types of bets offered on our games and players."

Silver is presumably talking about "prop bets," which move beyond basic who's going to win/by how much bets even non-betters may have heard of, and to much more narrowly focused bets, like how many points an individual player might score — or even how long the national anthem might last at a Super Bowl.

Sportsbooks often push props because they can entice betters with big payouts. (The entire plot of "Uncut Gems" hinges on the preposterous, low-odds, high-return prop bets Adam Sandler's character makes.) But you can see the obvious downside there, especially with prop bets focused on individual players — it gives players the ability to directly affect the results.

And that's reportedly happened with Porter: The NBA says a bettor placed an $80,000 prop bet that could have won $1.1 million wagering that Porter would have a bad game — and then Porter took himself out of that game after a few minutes, saying he was sick.

But these are details: What the NBA can't — or at least thinks it can't — allow is to give lawmakers a chance to rethink their stance on sports betting and make it illegal again. There's simply too much money at stake.

Which made Porter's fate an easy call.

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/hyMqLQB
via IFTTT

• The Senate voted on party lines to effectively end Alejandro Mayorkas's impeachment trial.
• GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski voted "present" on both votes.
• It caps off a months-long drama that helped spur one House Republican's resignation.

And just like that, it's over.

On Wednesday, Senate Democrats voted to declare as unconstitutional both articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — effectively ending the trial.

It put a swift end to what had been a months-long process by House Republicans, championed originally by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

Democrats were ultimately unable to convince any Republicans to side with them.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted "present" on the first article, alleging "willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law," while voting against the second article, alleging "breach of public trust."

Some Republicans, including Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, had long questioned the case against Mayorkas but ultimately sided with his party on Wednesday — a break from the last two impeachments he's dealt with.

Senators did not officially vote to dismiss the case. Rather, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer moved for each article to be declared unconstitutional because neither article alleged an impeachable offense. Democrats agreed with Schumer's move, effectively rendering the articles moot and the trial over before House Republicans could present their case.

Schumer proposed to effectively end the trial after Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican, rejected a deal that would have allowed Republicans a few hours to debate the case. Without the consent of all senators, Republicans were left with little other power to delay the trial, as no public debate is allowed during an impeachment trial without an agreement. The only other ways the Senate could have held such a debate is either behind closed doors or for the impeachment trial to be temporarily put on hold. Republicans unsuccessfully tried to pursue both of those options.

"We gave your side a chance for a debate in public where it should be, and your side objected," Schumer said on the Senate floor after Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, proposed a private debate. "We are moving forward."

Senate Republicans were also unsuccessful in their effort to pressure vulnerable Democrats to back their push for a longer trial. Ultimately, Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, who faces perhaps the toughest reelection race of any senator, voted with his party.

House Republicans struggled to even get the impeachment articles over to the Senate in the first place, initially failing to impeach Mayorkas in an initial vote in early February.

Shortly thereafter, Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin — once seen as a rising star in his party — announced his resignation soon after voting against the impeachment. His resignation is set to take effect sometime this week.

The GOP was ultimately successful on their second attempt, ramming through what is only the second impeachment of a Cabinet secretary in history.

Unable to get a full trial, a handful of Senate Republicans resorted to needling their colleagues over their historic decision to dismiss the charges against a sitting administration official before really even holding a trial. Democrats have countered that they are not worried about establishing a new impeachment precedent, since they viewed the case against Mayorkas as especially weak. The White House has repeatedly pointed out that leading conservatives, and even House lawmakers, long questioned whether the charges against Mayorkas truly met the constitutional bar of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Republicans have hammered the White House for months over President Joe Biden's immigration policies. Polling shows that Americans largely agree with their disdain over Biden's handling of the US Southern border, and they likely hoped a trial would offer a grander stage for their attacks.

Former President Donald Trump pushed Republicans to press their case against Mayorkas. But even his involvement could not paper over the disputes about what to do about the Homeland Security secretary. Greene forced her colleagues to vote on moving forward with Mayorkas' impeachment last November. In response, eight Republicans joined Democrats to punt the issue to the House Homeland Security Committee. Greene railed against the eight Republicans but ultimately ceded the ground to Homeland Security Committee chairman Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee.

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/6xcMn2v
via IFTTT

• A Boeing engineer told lawmakers the company threatened him for voicing safety concerns.
• He said his manager would keep him out of meetings and call his personal phone to "berate" him.
• The comments surfaced at a hearing to address the safety culture at the once-revered planemaker.

A veteran Boeing engineer told a panel of lawmakers that he received verbal and physical threats for voicing safety concerns to the company.

In a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Sam Salehpour, a veteran Boeing employee turned whistleblower, said the company repeatedly ignored his reports of safety lapses during the production of at least 1,400 widebody airplanes.

Salehpour said a Boeing quality manager told him not to document concerns or notify experts of the gaps he said exist on the fuselage of hundreds of Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Salehpour said the boss insinuated that he should instead keep quiet.

Boeing has denied any safety lapses in its 787 planes.

Salehpour also said his boss retaliated against him by keeping him out of meetings, silencing him, transferring his department, making him cancel doctor appointments, and calling his personal phone to "berate" him.

"It reminds me of, ya know, people who stalk people," Salehpour said at the hearing, noting he has a work phone his manager could call him on. "They call you on your personal phone to let you know that they know where you live, they know where you are, and they can hurt you."

Salehpour — who said he still has his job thanks to whistleblower-protection laws — told lawmakers that has has also received threats against his physical safety.

A photo of a nail in Salehpour's car tire was shown at the Wednesday hearing, which he said a mechanic told him was intentionally put there and not something the tire picked up on the road. He told lawmakers that although he has "no proof" of where or who the nail came from, he believes it happened at work.

In another instance, Salehpour told lawmakers that his boss once said in a meeting that he "would have killed someone who said what you said."

Salehpour said this retaliation is part of a greater trend at Boeing, where engineers are threatened into overlooking quality concerns due to a culture that puts "schedule over safety" and punishes employees for speaking up.

One case Salehpour told lawmakers involved his colleague inspecting 787 fuselage gaps that could have debris, and the boss suggested he should not stop production over the concern.

"The attitude at Boeing from the highest level is just to push the defective parts regardless of what it is, unfortunately," he said.

Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Boeing backs its widebodies

Wednesday's hearing came a week after Salehpour's whistleblower complaint to aviation regulators became public.

Salehpour, who has worked on both the 777 and 787 assembly lines, said he witnessed misaligned parts that could more quickly fatigue over time and potentially lead to a catastrophic event.

"After the threats and after all this, it really scares me, but I am at peace," Salehpour said. "If something happens to me, I am at peace because I feel like by coming forward, I will be saving a lot of lives."

Boeing has backed its widebody planes despite Salehpour's complaint, telling BI in an email statement prior to the hearing that the allegations are not representative of the work it has done to "ensure the quality and long-term safety of the aircraft."

The company said it conducted a detailed analysis of the Dreamliner that involved "testing up to 165,000 cycles," as well as "extensive gathering, testing, modeling, and analysis from 2020 to today" and found the jet can fly for more than 30 years before heavy maintenance is required to keep it flying.

"Boeing currently expects these issues will not change or affect the expected lifespan of the 787 fuselages," a spokesperson told BI.

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/ZEDfSp8
via IFTTT

• Rivian is undergoing another round of layoffs.
• Its the company's fourth wave of job cuts in recent years.
• Over a dozen employees have begun posting about the layoffs on LinkedIn.

Rivian is going through another round of layoffs.

Over a dozen workers began posting on LinkedIn about cuts at the company on Wednesday afternoon. A spokesperson later confirmed the layoffs.

"We continue to work to right-size the business and ensure lignment to our priorities," they told Business Insider. "As a follow-up to some of the changes we made to teams in February, today we shared some additional changes to groups supporting the business. Around 1 percent of our workforce was affected by this change.  This was a difficult decision, but a necessary one to support our goal to be gross margin positive by the end of the year."

This is Rivian's fourth round of layoffs in recent years. Rivian cut 10% of its staff in February, 6% in February 2023, and another 6% in July 2022, BI previously reported.

At the end of 2023, Rivian employed nearly 17,000 workers in North America and Europe.

In March, Rivian delayed the opening of a planned factory in Georgia, opting to build its recently announced R2 vehicle at its existing factory in Illinois.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/0I1LlQb
via IFTTT

• USS Boxer, a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, is returning home just 10 days after deploying.
• The US Navy said the Boxer is undergoing "additional maintenance" due to an engineering issue.
• Deploying months late due to mechanical issues, the big deck departed for the Indo-Pacific on April 1.

The maintenance-embattled USS Boxer is heading back to San Diego just 10 days after deploying due to an engineering issue, as first reported by USNI News and confirmed to Military.com by Navy officials.

Sailing as the big deck, or lead ship, of its amphibious ready group, the Boxer had already been delayed by months when it deployed April 1. Its return further comes on the heels of an announcement by the Navy's top leader earlier this week that the service, in conjunction with the Marine Corps, is conducting an inquiry into amphibious operations that will include problems with the ship.

"USS Boxer is returning to San Diego to undergo additional maintenance in support of its deployment in the Indo-Pacific region," Lt. Cmdr. Jesus Uranga, a spokesperson for the Navy's 3rd Fleet in the Pacific, told Military.com in an email.

The Boxer had departed for its "Indo-Pacific deployment and was conducting integration exercises with the MV-22 Osprey in the 3rd Fleet area of operations," when it was forced to return, Uranga said.

While further details were not provided regarding the nature of the malfunction, Uranga said the ship would return to its deployment "in the near future."

Marines and aircraft with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit were onboard the Boxer and have already been offloaded, officials told USNI News, although the ship had not yet made it back to port as of Thursday evening. 

On April 8, the Navy's top leader, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, said that she had ordered a "deep dive" into numerous maintenance and readiness issues faced by the ship.

"I think there's some good lessons learned with Boxer," Franchetti told reporters at the Navy's annual Sea-Air-Space conference earlier this week.

Meanwhile, last month, the Boxer was given seven Navy-wide awards for "sustained superior performance," including the Battle Effectiveness Award and the Maritime Warfare Excellence Award, according to the service.

Franchetti's inquiry will be led by three-star admirals in the Navy's operations and plans and policy offices, she said, adding she anticipates they will come to her with initial recommendations on how to proceed "in the May timeframe, and that will start to outline the shape of the the deep dive going forward."

While the investigation's timing may seem coincidental, the four-star admiral said Monday that the branch was trying to be proactive and keep delays to just the Boxer.

"We're seeing some potential delays on [the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp]," Franchetti said. "We're trying to look ahead to make sure that we can, I want to say, nip this in the bud."

The Wasp, which is the same class of ship as the Boxer, departed Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, in early March only to return shortly afterward. A spokesperson for Surface Force Atlantic told Military.com following the incident that "during the underway, the ship discovered an engineering irregularity" and "returned to port to effect repairs."

The ship got underway again at the end of March without issue.

A defense official told Military.com in March that the Boxer had originally been slated to deploy late last year, but it was held up thanks to a series of delays and mechanical issues that were driven, at least partly, by poor leadership aboard the ship.

Two previous command investigations conducted on at least three different engineering breakdowns showed "a lack of procedural compliance, substandard supervisory oversight, and general complacency by the crew," according to the ship's strike group commander.

Those breakdowns, information on which was released to Military.com as part of a Freedom of Information Act request, revealed that the ship had experienced damage to two "forced draft blowers" on Nov. 8, 2022. A separate investigation into that incident, also provided to Military.com via FOIA request, faulted "poor quality craftsmanship, lack of industry repair skill set/capabilities" and a "lack of supervisory oversight" from the Navy offices overseeing the work.

Then on May 14, the ship had a "boiler safety" breakdown. That investigation "once again revealed a lack of procedural compliance and overall complacency of all personnel involved," documents from the strike group commander revealed.

The two other ships that the Boxer commands, the USS Somerset and USS Harpers Ferry, both have successfully deployed. The Somerset and its contingent of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit are currently in the waters off India, according to a Marine Corps press release from April 4.

The Somerset deployed in January, and the Harpers Ferry in mid-March.

Editor's Note: After publication, a Navy spokesperson contacted Military.com to clarify that the probe into the Boxer is part of a broader inquiry into amphibious operations that is being conducted in conjunction with the Marine Corps. The article has been updated accordingly.

Konstantin Toropin contributed to this story.

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/aCSnRV6
via IFTTT

• The US Navy's highly-anticipated shipbuilding projects are years behind schedule, a review found.
• The Navy attributed the delays to pandemic-related supply chain issues.
• The delayed warships include submarines, guided missile destroyers, and a new aircraft carrier.

All of the US Navy's highly anticipated shipbuilding projects face yearslong delays, the service said earlier this month.

The delayed ships include a new fleet of Virginia-class attack submarines, guided-missile destroyers, and a new Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier.

The announcement came after a 45-day review ordered by Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro in January. The review identified the "shortfalls" that caused the delays, including labor shortages and supply chain issues.

Speaking at the Navy League's Sea Air Space conference on April 9, Del Toro said the review found that "too many of our industry partners are behind schedule and over budget on our highest priority programs."

Del Toro also said the Navy's Office of Strategic Assessment will perform a "deep dive" to find solutions to address the delays, including advanced material procurement and multi-ship buys.

"I think there's a lot of promise about being able to reduce those timelines into the future," he said.

The major delays come amid concerns that China is outpacing American shipbuilding and increasing its naval capabilities. The US Department of Defense said China now has "the largest navy in the world with a battle force of over 370 platforms," and it is only expected to grow — with up to 435 ships by the end of the decade.

But China isn't the only shipbuilding superpower in the Indo-Pacific. The Navy secretary said he and his team were "floored" by US ally South Korea's shipbuilding capabilities.

In a February statement, the Navy recognized Korean and Japanese shipbuilding as an asset to the US as "China continues to aggressively pursue worldwide shipbuilding dominance."

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/j6qIyXU
via IFTTT