SAD: Navy Calls It Quits On Attack Submarine USS Boise’s Never Ending Overhaul.

The U.S. Navy has abandoned plans to return the Los Angeles class attack submarine USS Boise to active duty. This brings an end to the saga of a still-incomplete major overhaul of the boat, which has lasted more than a decade now. In that time, it has become a poster child for the Navy’s worrisome struggles to tackle huge maintenance backlogs, as well as larger concerns about the availability, or lack thereof, of naval shipyard capacity in the United States.

The Navy announced its decision to inactivate Boise, which was first commissioned into service in 1992, earlier today.

“After a rigorous, data-driven analysis, we’ve made the tough but necessary decision to inactivate the USS Boise,” Navy Adm. Daryl Caudle, Chief of Naval Operations, the service’s top officer, said in a statement. “This strategic move allows us to reallocate America’s highly-skilled workforce to our highest priorities: delivering new Virginia and Columbia class submarines and improving the readiness of the current fleet. We owe it to our Sailors and the nation to make these tough calls to build a more capable and ready Navy.”

We lost years and years of service life from a billion-dollar attack sub because we the Navy couldn’t perform scheduled maintenance.

Decades of bipartisan neglect of our maritime logistics have expensive — and potentially dangerous — real-world consequences.