Not confirmed yet - but if true, this is a much bigger problem than if it was sabotage or poor flight training.
Some of us (especially @mercoglianos and yet to be confirmed US Merchant Marine Commandant Steve Carmel) have been warning about for years: The U.S. Navy and Air Force are dangerously dependent on foreign-flagged tankers for our aviation fuel supply. And those ships can’t be trusted to deliver contamination free fuel.
We only have 10 U.S.-flag ships in the Tanker Security Program. Ten. And one is out of service after being rammed by a Russian ship captain.
And after the Biden administration shut down the Red Hill fuel reserve in Hawaii (because the Navy replaced steel pipes with Home Depot grade PVC and they leaked fuel into the drinking water and poisoned children) - we no longer have the massive strategic storage buffer that backed our fleet and Pacific operations for generations.
Bottom line: When we rely on foreign refineries, foreign pipelines and foreign tankers for fuel and we remove our strategic reserves, we don’t have “energy security”. We have energy hope. And hope is not a maritime strategy. And it’s not even a “maritime” problem. It’s a single point of failure that all services - but especially the USAF - is facing.
