US Navy caught in Catch-22 court battle over warship skipper

A US guided-missile destroyer has been prevented from deploying on an overseas mission because of a court battle over its commanding officer after he refused to have a coronavirus vaccination. In a legal impasse described by Pentagon officials in court evidence as a “manifest national security concern”, the US Navy has been told by a federal judge that it cannot fire the commanding officer who has served for nearly 18 years. Unable to remove him from command or replace him with another officer of the same rank, the navy has had to keep the Arleigh Burke-class warship docked at the Norfolk naval base in Virginia. The navy has not named either the commanding officer or the ship. The guided-missile destroyer is one of 68 of this class which are playing an increasingly crucial role in the Indo-Pacific and also currently in the eastern Mediterranean. The commanding officer refused to be vaccinated on religious grounds. His application for exemption was rejected by navy chiefs. His superiors subsequently lost confidence in his ability to command the ship because of an incident in which he was accused of putting other crew members at risk. Court documents show that he boarded the warship before it was due to leave on an exercise and could hardly speak when addressing up to 60 members of the crew. Captain Frank Brandon, his superior officer, ordered him to take a Covid test when he admitted he had a sore throat. The test was positive. In another incident, the commanding officer left the Norfolk base to pursue his legal case against the navy without telling Brandon. “My loss of confidence is not based on his vaccination status or his denied request for a religious exemption. It is based on the fact that I cannot trust his judgment, I cannot trust him to look after the welfare of his sailors and I cannot trust him to be honest with me,” Brandon wrote in a report to the district court in Florida. However, Judge Steven Merryday ruled that the navy could neither demote nor reassign the commanding officer of the destroyer. The officer’s counsel had said the case was about his constitutional and religious freedom rights. US government court filings stated the injunction served on the navy was “an extraordinary intrusion upon the inner workings of the military”. As a consequence the navy was now short of a warship, the documents said. Further legal steps are to be taken by the navy’s lawyers.