When asked why the three firings were not made public, a Navy spokesman said that the sea service does not publicly announce reliefs that are not the result of a loss of the trust and confidence in the officers' ability to command.
Captain Abigail Yablonsky Marter was removed as head of Naval Medical Research Unit South, whose research focuses on diseases like malaria, as well as STIs.
Capt. Kurt Balagna, who until last week was the commanding officer of the USS Ohio sub's gold crew, was arrested March 5 by Washington state police for driving with a blood alcohol content of around 0.24%.
With a more assertive China, Biden faces growing tensions in Asia 03:22
In the past two weeks, Washington has sent a guided-missile destroyer through the Taiwan Strait, demonstrating the US continued commitment to the self-governed democratic island. The same destroyer then continued to the Paracel Islands to challenge Beijing s island claims in the South China Sea. Washington also deployed two of its massive aircraft carriers for exercises in the same waters and dispatched one of its newest destroyers to Japan.
And last week it gave the region a fresh look at the Ohio, showing off the 18,000-ton guided-missile submarine as it participated in exercises with US Marines around the Japanese island of Okinawa.
Analysis by Brad Lendon, CNN Born of the Cold War and launched with enough firepower to destroy well over a dozen Soviet cities in a single salvo, the USS Ohio, the largest submarine the.