NAVAL BASE SAN DIEGO, Calif. – At one point this summer, four of the Navy’s nine big-deck amphibious assault ships sat at their home berths on San Diego Bay.
USS Boxer (LHD-4), currently deployed in the western Pacific, had returned for emergency rudder repairs done pierside at the base. USS Essex (LHD-2) was going through maintenance and upgrades that stretched over two years, including a 12-month dry-docking selected restricted availability. USS Makin Island (LHD-8) has been going through maintenance and upgrades in a selected restricted availability. USS Tripoli (LHA-7) was cycling back into underway periods after its post-deployment Selected Restricted Availability, which it completed in March five days ahead of schedule at the base’s Pier 13.
“They were all at various stages of maintenance,” said Capt. Robert “Bob” Heely, who commands Naval Base San Diego.
All that simultaneous repair and related maintenance brought more contractors and support vehicles, along with the amphib ships’ large crews, than typically seen along the waterfront on any given day when several dozen ships may be in port at any time. Home to 59 surface ships, the San Diego naval station is the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s largest base.
Many ships here start their maintenance and upgrade period at one of the three private shipyards in San Diego and then, depending on capacity and berthing space, “come back to the base to finish their availabilities,” Heely said in an interview. That continuing maintenance work can swell activity along the two miles of waterfront, depending on the day and as ships get underway for training or certification.
It isn’t easing up anytime soon.
The San Diego base, just in the last year, has seen “a 40 percent increase in contractors, mainly shipyard contractors, coming through the gates,” Heely said during a Surface Navy Association waterfront symposium discussion in August. And surface ships have been spending more days sidelined at shipyards for scheduled maintenance and unplanned repairs, with more than half sidelined longer than planned.
So for base officials, that means an exercise in logistics and coordination with Naval Surface Forces Pacific and the shipyards to ensure the work and daily operations are done with minimal disruptions, in a safe and secure environment,and that ships have places to berth. “We were able to manage that. And certainly, based on lessons learned from the past, we spread them out across the base to manage the risk and for fire risk,” and to ease parking issues for sailors and contractors, he said.
Moreover, he added, “the crews appreciate getting back to the base, because we have all the creature comforts and the accessibility to all of the things we have… to support them. So we have seen a lot more ships finish their (shipyard) avails and then come back here to finish the remaining portion.”
To Heely, a surface warfare officer and former commander and executive officer of the destroyer USS Michael Murphy (DDG-112), the surface ships and their crews aren’t just tenant commands but represent the base’s foundation.
“We have 59 warfighting platforms here… the center of gravity are the ships,” Heely told the SNA audience. “And it’s our job to really focus on, you know, really advancing your readiness in every aspect.”
It’s not always easy.
“The crux of what we do here at the base is to enhance the readiness through many different facets of what this warfighting platform does,” Heely told the SNA audience, describing the base as akin to “an aircraft carrier, without some of the lethality” in the variety of fleet and family support and services it provides sailors, families and base workers.
He described the job of installation commander as “trying to solve one frustration at a time… The frustration from the traffic. The frustration from trolleys and trains. The frustration from finding a parking spot.”
Pacific Rebalance Impacts
It’s not just more contractors crowding the base lately. The Navy’s rebalancing of operational forces to the Pacific region in the past decade has brought more ships and tenants to the San Diego base, which already sees 55,000 people come through its gates daily. The latest growth has base officials working to manage and find space to accommodate new commands.
That includes Naval Surface Readiness Group Southwest, one of several SURFGRUs that Naval Surface Force established in each fleet concentration area to support ships and crews through the maintenance life cycle. The Navy also is building a Reconfigurable Combat Information Center Trainer, bringing more realistic warfare training for watch standing teams to practice real-world drills with the Aegis combat system.
And a “center of excellence” is growing at the base driven by the reorganization of Naval Surface Mine and Warfare Development Center and establishment of the Surface Advanced Warfighting School (SAWS), which is producing warfare tactics instructors (WTIs or “witties”). Several buildings and land away from the waterfront will provide space for more classrooms, virtual simulators and a high-classification tactical training space across a campus-like environment.
“The center of excellence that we have over on the dry side is growing, and it is phenomenal,” Cmdr. Phillip Jolley, a branch head at San Diego-based SMWDC, said during the Surface Navy Association panel discussion. “The base has gone to bat working with SURFOR to get them some buildings to build that infrastructure up, to build the classification facilities that we need, to give them additional land to build the classrooms, the training environments, the simulator, the virtual reality. All of that stuff has come into fruition because of the partnership of the two of us, and certainly the base is benefiting from that.”
The work includes a single, consolidated SWAS schoolhouse, which will centralize training for all four WTI pipelines, expected to be operational by January, Jolley said.
All that adds up to more people and vehicles, further adding to the parking challenge at a base that is constrained physically by highways, train tracks and the bay. Rush-hour traffic congests around base gates – it’s 100 percent identification checks – and jams onto base and city roads.
“I do this job as trying to reduce one frustration at a time – and that frustration starts with getting onto the base and getting past the trolley tracks and getting past the train tracks,” Heely told USNI.
Base officials have worked with local officials to get changes to the timing cycles of turn signals at gates already congested at times by base and local traffic and are working to adjust trolley schedules to allow more time for vehicles to cross, he said. They have “raised the red flag” and are bracing for impacts when the region removes one of two pedestrian overpasses near the main gate that lets sailors walk between the base’s “dry” side and the waterfront. Building more parking lots or garages through the military construction budgeting process takes longer, so officials are eyeing creative ideas for quicker solutions.
One is shifting commands with more people to areas with more available parking. For example, a pre-commissioning unit with about 1,000 personnel doesn’t need to be next to the waterfront, where there’s already tight demand for parking spaces for ships’ crews, Heely said. And by reallocating parking spaces, even where it would shift a dozen or so spots, “you’re making big dividends.”
“We did a big shuffle with SURFOR commands as we stood up SURFGRU,” he added. “We moved some commands and consolidated some of their commands in different buildings.”
Tending to sailors, ships
Other initiatives aim at easing sailors’ daily stresses of getting to and from their ships and work spaces and close that “last tactical mile.”
Some sailors have used the local e-bike company, Lyft Bikes. Heely said that data collected showed the average ride was just under one mile, which is roughly the distance between the middle of the waterfront to Pier 13 on the southernmost end, or “about a 14, 15 minute walk or so.” Although another e-bike company left the region, “we’re trying to contract with another company now to bring that capability back,” he added.
Sailors also can jump on a shuttle bus to get around the waterfront.
Many sailors live away from the waterfront on the “dry” side, with 5,000 just in unaccompanied housing, and that requires a long walk over pedestrian bridges or a drive through gates that at rush-hour periods are congested. “I didn’t really have a great shuttle system on base. So I made a pitch to SURFOR and they invested in the shuttle program,” Heely said.
“We’ve seen a 33 percent increase in the first three months of ridership, and we’ve started to see about 1,000-sailor increase each month since then,” he noted. Along with less traffic, “that has really helped just to get that last tactical mile of transportation.”
The base has contracted with a company for a shuttle app so sailors using their smartphones can track the shuttles. “That app will hopefully increase the reliability for those sailors, because that’s a frustration for them,” he said. “And at the end of the day, if we can provide more predictable and reliable transportation on the ‘dry’ side or on ‘wet’ side, that’s huge.”
“We are also bringing ‘Forces Afloat’ parking back,” he added. With redesigned and re-designated parking lots, “I can make sure the shipboard sailors have the preeminent parking up close to the piers.”
Buoying Waterfront Culture
The San Diego is working to refine services along the waterfront with the goal of building surface force readiness, with the sailor in mind.
The base plans to turn old racquetball courts into a tactical warfighting readiness center, Heely said. “We’re going to be taking some old racquetball courts and make it into a, basically a human optimization training center,” he said. Sailors at the facility would be able to exercise and work with trainers and nutrition experts, all with an eye on conditioning them for the rigors of work aboard ship.
“Ideally, this would start while they’re here on the maintenance phase, so you can start physically grooming their bodies to the work that they’re going to do,” he added. “We’ve got components of this, we’ve been doing it for many years, but it really hasn’t been a comprehensive program.”
In a partnership, SURFOR is covering the cost to renovate and modernize the existing base theater to support fleet and force training, not just for movies, Heely said. “It’s a big win for us,” he added.
A nearby waterfront recreation center that’s home to a Starbucks and Brew House will be reimagined and updated, so sailors can relax with a meal, connect with loved ones via wi-fi or shoot pool. Such improvements, said Heely, can help build and sustain the Navy culture among sailors along the waterfront.
With that in mind, the base will revive the old Main Brace that once stood by the waterfront. “The Main Brace used to be kind of the club, so to speak, where you could go in and get a beer after work and do some team bonding, similar to the old officers’ clubs,” he said. “So we’re going to bring it back.”
The indoor-outdoor concept will have a bar and food, and “we’re going to bring back some of the ship swag in there, where commands can bring in things that show their ship’s crests and their mug racks and things like… what they have at the I Bar of the North Island,” he added, referring to the naval air station club made famous by the “Top Gun” movies.
“It just gives a place for wardrooms or chiefs’ mess or just teams to get together and enjoy the camaraderie. It’s really bringing back kind of that team-bonding aspect,” he said. “We’re really excited about it. We should see in the next couple of years.”
