A major fire this week aboard the USS Higgins knocked out the warship’s electricity and propulsion systems, leaving the Navy’s forward-deployed destroyer unable to move or power itself normally. No injuries to service members had been reported by Wednesday, but the cause of the blaze remained unclear.
The extent of the damage was also still unknown, along with how long repairs might take. The loss of propulsion and power significantly limits a warship’s ability to maneuver, defend itself or respond to contingencies in contested waters, making the fire a serious setback for a ship built to operate on the front line of the Pacific.
Tracking data showed the Higgins had been docked in Singapore as recently as February, though its precise location within the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of operations was not clear on Wednesday. The destroyer is homeported at Naval Station Yokosuka in Japan, assigned to Destroyer Squadron 15 and part of the 7th Fleet’s forward-deployed surface force.
The fire is the third shipboard blaze to strike the U.S. Navy in a matter of weeks, following an earlier fire this month aboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower that injured eight sailors and another in the laundry spaces of the USS Gerald R. Ford that wounded two sailors. A U.S. official said Wednesday that the Ford and its accompanying strike group are expected to depart the Middle East in the coming days.
The Higgins is an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer equipped with the Aegis combat system, vertical-launch missile cells and anti-submarine warfare capabilities. It carries the name of Marine Col. William R. Higgins, who was serving with a United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon when Hezbollah-linked militants kidnapped him in February 1988. He was tortured and interrogated before being killed, promoted to colonel while still in captivity, and his remains were recovered from a Beirut street in December 1991.
The unresolved questions now are not about whether the fire mattered. They are about whether the Navy can get the ship back into service quickly enough to restore a destroyer that is built to be ready, and has now been taken out of action by a blaze whose cause is still unknown.