The USS Helena was preparing to leave dock after more than six years of stop-start repairs when a young sailor was electrocuted and died. His death further delayed the return to action of a submarine that epitomizes the Navy’s struggles to maintain its fleet.

Sonar technician Timothy Sanders had told his mother several times that he was concerned substandard repair work on the submarine would get someone hurt. A Navy report concluded that he died last May after inadvertently touching an electrical source left uncovered by repair workers, his mother said.

President Trump has called attention to U.S. shortcomings in [building new naval vessels](https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/warship-shows-why-u-s-navy-is-falling-behind-china-94cb9a87). The Helena’s history of costly, sometimes chaotic repairs highlights another problem: America is also struggling to fix the ships and submarines it already has.

While Sanders’ death is an extreme example of what can go wrong in U.S. shipyards, the shipbuilding and repair industries have long complained that a lack of experienced staff has led to mistakes and delays. Limited dry dock capacity and aging equipment are also challenges.

Timothy Sanders was a sonar technician who had expressed worries about substandard work on Navy vessels, his mother said. 

The problems reflect a lack of investment in public yards after the Cold War-era and a [broader decline](https://www.wsj.com/business/logistics/in-shipbuilding-the-u-s-is-tiny-and-rusty-03fb214e) in the American maritime industry. Those issues are now coming into sharp relief amid a greater focus on naval preparedness.

Naval experts are concerned that tardy or substandard work in repair yards will keep ships and submarines out of action during a potential war in Asia—a conflict expected to be fought in large part at sea.

Maintenance delays are already causing disruptions. The Marine Corps, for instance, has been prevented from deploying and training on schedule because of the poor upkeep of amphibious warships.

The importance of naval readiness was underscored Friday when [Trump ordered two submarines](https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/trump-positions-nuclear-submarines-following-criticism-from-former-russian-leader-79f8006c) to be “positioned in the appropriate regions,” in response to comments by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Repairing naval vessels often takes longer than scheduled. Roughly a third of surface ship maintenance wasn’t completed on time last year, Navy officials have said. In recent years as much as two-thirds has been late, and officials have said improvement is needed to hit the Navy’s combat-readiness target.

One submarine, the USS Boise, will have been out of action for 14 years before it is scheduled to head back to sea in 2029 after more than $1.2 billion worth of maintenance work.

Repairing ships on time has become a persistent challenge, Admiral Daryl Caudle, Trump’s pick as chief of naval operations, told a Senate confirmation hearing in July.

“We need a better approach to how we’re doing maintenance,” Caudle said. The Navy could learn from cruise lines, he added, which typically have better ship availability. 

Getting vessels back to sea quickly matters more than ever because the U.S. fleet has shrunk. In the late 1980s, the Navy had some 600 vessels. Today it has about 295.

Fewer vessels coupled with longer maintenance times creates a vicious circle. Available ships spend longer at sea, suffer more wear and tear, and then require greater attention back at dock.

A Navy official said maintenance times were improving, and that there were 49 construction projects under way—worth about $6 billion—that would bolster repair infrastructure.

The Navy is committed to addressing the findings of the probe into Sanders’ death, and preventing future incidents, the official added.

# Persistent delays

The Navy’s difficulties with ship repair increased in the 1990s, when the U.S. halved the number of public shipyards mandated to maintain nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines.

The four remaining government-owned yards were set up over a century ago, designed to build wind- and steam-powered ships. They suffer from aging infrastructure, with more than half their equipment past its expected service life, according to the Government Accountability Office.

A shortage of experienced workers is a major problem. With some shipyard welders earning roughly the same as fast-food workers, many have left the profession, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office. Inexperience reduces productivity and increases accidents, adding to delays, the CBO said.

To tackle the resulting backlogs, the U.S. needs to invest in more dry docks, naval experts say.

Delays in maintaining and fixing ships means the Navy has fewer vessels to deploy at times of increased activity, said Bryan Clark, a naval expert at the Hudson Institute think tank.

At one point in 2019, all but one of the Navy’s six East Coast stationed aircraft carriers were stuck in docks. The USS Abraham Lincoln had to endure an extended, 295-day trip to the Middle East—the longest carrier deployment in the post-Cold War era—partly because its replacement suffered electrical issues that took longer than anticipated to fix.

Delays persist. U.S. destroyers took a combined 2,633 extra days to repair than planned last year, according to a Navy official. The figure was an improvement, they said, without giving comparable data.

The Navy has struggled to maintain its ships and submarines, such as the USS Helena, on schedule. 

# ‘A waste of time and money’

The USS Helena, a Los Angeles-class attack submarine first launched in 1986, has become a poster child for the Navy’s maintenance problems. In recent years, the vessel has spent more time in dock than out at sea.

Submarines have a particularly strict cycle of inspections and maintenance, typically going into dry dock every two years for up to six months.

But the Navy has been behind on submarine repairs since the 2010s, when it decided to give priority to other tasks including overhauling aircraft carriers, Clark said.

To ease the backlog, the Navy in 2016 decided to send the Helena to shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries’ yard in Newport News, Va. The move was supposed to herald the return of private yards to repairing nuclear-powered vessels. However, HII hadn’t done repair work in nine years and its skills base had atrophied.

Work on Helena, which started in late 2017, was initially slated to take months but the vessel ended up staying at the company’s yard for several years.

Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on everything from painting and cleaning to fitting new hull tiles that help avoid detection and adding underwater microphones, contract data shows.

Delays on the Helena were cascading, deferring work on other vessels, including the Boise.

The Navy said the Helena was the oldest submarine of its type in the fleet and the maintenance required was more complex than initially envisaged. HII declined to comment.

Helena was delivered back to the Navy in January 2022, HII said at the time. The vessel, however, soon needed further work done at a Navy yard.

On May 24 last year, Nicole Sanders was at home when she answered the door to see uniformed naval officers.

Her son had been killed by a 440-volt shock, almost four times the voltage that feeds a standard U.S. lightbulb, she said the Navy report found. The report hasn’t been made public.

“It’s akin to having an electrician come into your house and leave wires exposed,” Sanders said.

After weeks of NCIS inquiries and grief counseling for the crew, Helena sailed to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The visit coincided with the arrival in the area of a new Russian submarine.

Shortly after, the Helena left for Puget Sound on what would be her final voyage. Last month, the submarine was decommissioned.

“That long period of repair and maintenance ended up being a waste of time and money,” said the Hudson Institute’s Clark.

U.S. Navy Ships Are Languishing in Repair Yards