US Navy destroyer USS Benfold suffers four-day power blackout in South China Sea amid growing fleet crisis.

On July 24, 2026, the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold (DDG-65) suffered a four-day total electrical blackout during routine operations in the South China Sea. An engineering casualty involving its gas-turbine generators paralyzed propulsion, maneuvering, climate control, and life-support systems, requiring the warship to be towed to Subic Bay in the Philippines for repairs. The failure highlights acute maintenance and operational force-structure pressures on forward-deployed U.S. Navy surface combatants in the Indo-Pacific theatre.

The July 2026 power failure aboard the USS Benfold, the second such incident involving an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer in the Indo-Pacific within three months, underscores severe maintenance backlog and ship-availability deficits across the U.S. Navy surface fleet. With active battle-force numbers sitting well below long-term force-structure requirements and shipbuilding programs facing schedule delays, the Navy remains forced to sustain extended deployments using aging hulls that require exponentially higher maintenance overhead.

Related topic: US Navy submarine crisis worsens as first Improved Los Angeles-class submarine USS San Juan retires

The USS Benfold lost power for four days in the South China Sea after a generator failure, leaving roughly 300 sailors without propulsion, drinking water, working toilets, galley services, or air conditioning before the destroyer was towed to Subic Bay for repairs. (Picture source: US Navy)

On August 17, 2026, CNN revealed that the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Benfold (DDG-65) suffered a four-day electrical blackout in the South China Sea. The USS Benfold suffered an engineering casualty involving its generators on July 24 while operating with roughly 300 sailors aboard, losing electrical power and propulsion and disrupting potable water, toilets, galley services, and air conditioning. The ship remained unable to restore sufficient power to continue independently and had to be assisted for four days before tugboats brought it into Subic Bay on July 28. Power was restored on July 30; repairs continued through August 7; the destroyer departed the Philippines on August 8 before returning to Yokosuka and subsequently departing again on August 17.

The casualty happened less than three months after the April 28, 2026 shipwide power and propulsion failure aboard the USS Higgins (DDG-76), another Yokosuka-based Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. The two incidents illustrate a wider problem: the U.S. Navy is attempting to sustain global operations with fewer ships than its own force requirement, while older vessels spend increasing portions of their service lives in maintenance and new construction remains too slow to replace them at the required rate. The USS Benfold itself is intended to remain in service until at least 2036, potentially giving the Flight I destroyer approximately 40 years of service. That extension is important because it is part of a larger force-planning problem: the U.S. Navy cannot rapidly retire older Arleigh Burke destroyers as their maintenance demand rises because their replacements are not entering service fast enough to preserve fleet numbers. 

The USS Benfold's machinery arrangement also makes the July 24 failure more significant than a routine loss of one generator. The ship is approximately 154 m long, displaces roughly 9,000 tons at full load, exceeds 30 knots, and has a range of 4,400 nautical miles at 20 knots. Its Flight I configuration carries 90 Mk 41 vertical launch cells, an AN/SPY-1D radar, and three AN/SPG-62 fire control radars, meaning that a temporary breakdown removes an escort capable of air defense, missile defense, Tomahawk strike, and anti-submarine operations. Electrical generation comes from three AG9130F sets based on the Allison 501-K34 gas turbine, each rated at 2.5 MW and 450 V, giving the destroyer 7.5 MW of installed generating capacity. Two generator sets normally operate while the third is available as a reserve or can be removed from service for maintenance.

A simple failure of one set should therefore leave 5 MW available if the remaining two units and the distribution system are functioning normally. The complete blackout instead means that the casualty had to affect either multiple generating sets, a common component or common operating condition, one or more switchboards or electrical buses, or produce a cascading electrical failure that prevented available generation from reaching ship loads. The destroyer therefore lost the ability to maneuver under its own power and conduct normal combat operations in one of the most operationally sensitive maritime areas in the western Pacific. Daytime temperatures in the South China Sea during the period were roughly 32-37°C, making the loss of ventilation, air conditioning, potable water, and sanitation an immediate habitability problem in addition to the loss of combat capability.

Moreover, the casualty came after roughly 30 years of service and a decade of forward deployment in Japan, but only weeks after the USS Benfold participated in Valiant Shield 2026. The central destroyer issue is that the Arleigh Burke-class maintenance has already expanded far beyond the assumptions under which the US Navy planned the class's operational availability. CBO assessed 225 Arleigh Burke maintenance overhauls conducted from FY2011 through FY2024 and concluded that an average destroyer of this class is likely to spend more than nine years (27%) of a planned 35- or 40-year life away from the fleet for maintenance. Of those nine-plus years, roughly three years are projected to be spent in docking maintenance and six years in nondocking maintenance. That is more than twice the maintenance time contained in the class's 2012 planning assumptions. The problem is not uniform across every availability.

Docking Selected Restricted Availabilities, for example, had a 2012 class-plan estimate of 126 days but took roughly two and a half times that long on average, while realized durations were 63% longer than the Navy's first schedules and 20% longer than its final schedules. Across maintenance categories, actual overhaul durations were 20 to 150% longer than the 2012 class-plan estimates, and maintenance events frequently remained 20 to 100% longer than the Navy's final schedules even after individual ship inspections allowed schedules to be revised. Only 4% of destroyer overhauls were completed within the duration assumed in the original class plans, while 5% lasted more than five times as long; the observed range extended from roughly 60 days for the shortest event to approximately 2,300 days, or 6.3 years, for the longest. Costs rose in parallel.

Total destroyer maintenance funding increased from $0.4 billion in 2009 to $2.2 billion in 2024, a 400% increase, while the number of destroyers increased only about 25%. Average maintenance expenditure reached roughly $28 million per destroyer in 2024, more than 300% above the 2009 per-ship level. The age profile helps explain the trend: the average Arleigh Burke destroyer was 10 years old in 2011 and 20 years old in 2024, and some maintenance categories last roughly 100 additional days for ships older than 20 compared with younger hulls. Deferred surface maintenance had already accumulated to approximately $1.7 billion by 2021, adding later corrosion repair, machinery replacement, cabling, piping, and growth work. Between FY2020 and FY2023, the US Navy requested $24.9 billion for surface maintenance, received $25.9 billion, and obligated 99.7%, but late inspections, parts shortages, unexpected work, contract negotiations, modernization integration, and skilled-labor limitations continued to extend schedules. 

Fleet size magnifies the operational cost of every delayed destroyer because the US Navy does not possess enough excess hulls to treat nine years of lifetime maintenance per destroyer as a marginal problem. The 291 battle-force ships counted on May 1, 2026, represent only 76.4% of the 381-ship force-structure requirement. Reaching 381 from 291 requires a net addition of 90 ships, or 30.9%, while simultaneously replacing ships that retire during the buildup. The near-term inventory is instead projected to decline to roughly 283 ships in 2027, 98 below the requirement. The force also carried roughly 9,100 VLS cells across submarines and surface combatants in May 2026, but the missile capacity declines when VLS-equipped ships retire faster than replacements arrive, and a cell installed aboard a ship in depot maintenance does not contribute to immediate deployed capacity. Shipbuilding performance explains why older destroyers cannot simply be retired when their maintenance burden becomes excessive.

The US Navy's shipbuilding budget roughly doubled over two decades without delivering the planned fleet expansion, while the 11 most recent lead ships accumulated at least $8 billion in combined cost growth. The Constellation-class frigate further illustrates this. The Navy had contracted six frigates, but on November 25, 2025, it decided to cap the class at two ships and terminate the four remaining hulls before construction began. Congress had appropriated $7.6 billion for options covering the six ships, while roughly $2 billion had already been spent on the program; the subsequent FY2026 agreement rescinded $2.565 billion associated with the cancellation. The Constellation was intended to provide a less expensive small surface combatant alongside Arleigh Burkes, thereby allowing the US Navy to distribute escort, patrol and other missions across more hulls without purchasing a $2-billion-plus destroyer for every requirement.

Cutting the program to two ships therefore removes one intended source of numerical growth and places more weight on continued Arleigh Burke construction and life extensions. The Navy has moved toward an FF(X) design based on the Coast Guard's Legend-class National Security Cutter, to launch the first ship in 2028, but a design transition does not replace the four cancelled Constellations in the existing fleet today. In practical terms, a 30-year-old USS Benfold has to remain available because the Navy cannot remove several aging Flight I and Flight II destroyers while simultaneously absorbing frigate cancellations, late deliveries, and a near-term fleet decline. The submarine force provides an even clearer measurement of what maintenance delays do to the US Navy's combat capacity because each unavailable SSN represents a high-value asset that cannot be substituted easily by another ship type.

Attack submarine depot maintenance accumulated 3,040 days of delay during FY2016-FY2020 and 3,454 days during FY2021-FY2025, an increase of 414 days (13.6%). Over the same periods, average depot-maintenance duration increased from 744 to 809 days, adding 65 days (8.7%) to each average maintenance period. The 809-day figure measures total depot time, while the 3,454-day total represents accumulated delay beyond planned schedules. A submarine scheduled for a two-year availability that requires another year to finish therefore consumes the planned maintenance period plus an additional year during which the US Navy has paid for the boat and crew but receives no deployable capability. Roughly one-third of the attack-submarine force has at times been in or awaiting maintenance, against a US Navy objective approaching 80% operational availability.

The Los Angeles-class USS Boise is the extreme example: last deployed in 2015, it lost its dive certification in 2017, received a $1.2 billion overhaul contract in 2024, and was scheduled to complete the overhaul in 2029 before this plan was dropped on April 10, 2026. New production has not generated enough surplus capacity to compensate for these losses, especially since Ohio-class subs start to be retired. The Navy requires approximately two new Virginia-class attack submarines annually for its own force plans, while maintaining U.S. force requirements together with future AUKUS transfers requires an industrial rate closer to 2.33 SSNs annually. Actual sustained production has remained around 1-1.2 boats per year. At 1.2 submarines annually, output equals 60% of the Navy's two-per-year requirement and 51.5% of the 2.33-per-year rate associated with U.S. requirements plus AUKUS.

Two Virginia-class boats were accepted in 2025, but both arrived more than three years behind schedule. Maintenance and new construction ultimately compete for the same limited industrial inputs. The Navy's nuclear depot system relies on four public naval shipyards, Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington, and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii, to perform major maintenance on nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers. Infrastructure limitations at these yards threaten nearly one-third of planned carrier and submarine maintenance periods through 2040 if sufficient modernization and capacity are not delivered. At the same time, General Dynamics Electric Boat, HII Newport News Shipbuilding and thousands of suppliers must increase Virginia production while constructing the Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarines that will replace the Ohio-class.

The Columbia program receives scheduling priority because the first boat must enter service in time to maintain the sea-based nuclear deterrent, but Columbia and Virginia submarines draw on many of the same nuclear-qualified welders, engineers, shipfitters, component manufacturers, machining capacity, and production spaces. The constraint therefore cannot be solved by simply transferring unlimited labor from one program to another. A qualified nuclear welder or specialist supplier has a finite annual output, and adding skilled capacity requires years of training, tooling, quality certification, and often capital investment. The same logic applies to surface shipbuilding and repair. A congressional appropriation can be increased within a fiscal year, but an additional dry dock, shipyard workforce, or specialized supplier generally requires years to produce measurable throughput.

The second Trump administration's August 2026 decision to pursue a fifth public naval shipyard and expand use of foreign industrial capacity therefore addresses a real capacity deficit, but it cannot materially increase fleet availability in 2026 or 2027. In wartime, this becomes a battle-damage-repair problem. A damaged destroyer like the USS Benfold would enter a repair system already processing scheduled maintenance and modernization. A damaged submarine or carrier requiring depot-level nuclear work would compete for one of only four public nuclear shipyards. If several ships are damaged during the same period, a scenario that is currently happening, repair demand would rise precisely when the Navy also needed accelerated maintenance on surviving ships operating at higher tempo.

The current carrier rotation demonstrates that limited depth is already producing cross-theater consequences without requiring major wartime attrition. The USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) departed San Diego on November 21, 2025, for a scheduled Pacific deployment and was redirected after the Iran war began on February 28, 2026. By mid-August, the carrier had been deployed for more than 260 days, including roughly 250 consecutive days without a normal port call, while carrying approximately 5,000 sailors and Marines. Replacing the Lincoln required redirecting the USS George Washington (CVN-73), one of the Navy's 11 aircraft carriers and the forward-deployed carrier based in Japan, from the Indo-Pacific toward the Middle East.

The George Washington and accompanying ships were observed moving west through the Malacca Strait as the Navy prepared the rotation, and the USS Benfold had been operating with the George Washington Carrier Strike Group before the July 24 casualty. During the blackout, USS Robert Smalls supplied meals and other strike-group units provided assistance, but the USS Benfold still required towing and did not accompany the group west after completing repairs. The Navy was therefore managing three simultaneous availability demands: keeping the Lincoln CSG operational through a deployment exceeding eight months, generating the George Washington CSG to relieve it, and recovering a 30-year-old forward-deployed destroyer from a complete electrical casualty.

If one carrier deployment must be extended because its replacement is unavailable, that carrier accumulates additional reactor operating time, flight-deck cycles, aircraft sorties, equipment wear, and crew workload. If an Arleigh Burke destroyer then fails unexpectedly, another escort must cover its missions or the carrier group deploys with fewer escorts. If another destroyer is simultaneously in an overhaul running 50% beyond schedule, it cannot fill the gap. A 291-ship fleet can therefore support multiple global commitments, but the number of ships actually free to respond is substantially smaller after removing ships in depot maintenance, modernization, training, post-deployment sustainment, and unscheduled repair. The US Navy's principal vulnerability in a prolonged high-intensity conflict is therefore not its ability to generate substantial combat power at the outset, but whether shipyard throughput, repair capacity, submarine and surface ship construction, and missile production can replace the losses in ships, availability, and munitions that sustained combat would impose.

Written by Jérôme Brahy

Jérôme Brahy is a defense analyst and documentalist at Army Recognition. He specializes in naval modernization, aviation, drones, armored vehicles, and artillery, with a focus on strategic developments in the United States, China, Ukraine, Russia, Türkiye, and Belgium. His analyses go beyond the facts, providing context, identifying key actors, and explaining why defense news matters on a global scale.

Explore More Defense News

• Land Defense News
• Naval Defense News
• Defense Aerospace News