WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Navy is refining its plan to create an 80 percent combat-ready surge force to meet the deployment goals included CNO Adm. Lisa Franchetti’s new navigation plan, the service’s second-highest officer said.
Under the new NAVPLAN, Franchetti set the goal to 80 percent of surface ships, aircraft and submarines ready to deploy on short notice in the event of combat need. Surging six destroyers for deterrence missions in the Mediterranean Sea after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine provided a template for the effort, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jim Kilby said during a Thursday Maritime Security Dialogue event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the U.S. Naval Institute.
“There is an ability, as we saw with the Ukraine crisis, to flow ships forward that haven’t completely gone through that [training] cycle, that are manned, trained and equipped to do those mission sets.
“It is really a formalization of that process to understand where our ships are at any given time and what they need to be ready to go.”
The model is based on naval aviators push starting in 2018 to get up to 80 percent of aircraft to be mission-capable acting under a mandate from then Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.
“Since then the naval aviation enterprise has maintained it day-to-day,” Kilby said.
“Every Friday, I get a report from the Air Boss that says where they are for every type model series, and it’s either green or red, and if it’s red, it explains what they’re doing about it.”
Naval Surface Forces commander Vice. Adm. Brendan McLane is working on a parallel program to have 75 surface ships to be ready for deployment in a short time frame.
That surge construct was applied again to sending ships to the Red Sea as part of the Operation Prosperity Guardian deployments to protect merchant traffic from Houthi attacks.
USS Carney (DDG-64) and USS Mason (DDG-87) were dispatched to the region in late 2023.
“We quickly gave them an intelligence brief. Gave them some synthetic training on what we thought they would see and within a couple of weeks we were pushing two more DDGs across the Atlantic,” US Fleet Forces Commanding Officer Adm. Daryl Caudle said last month.
For surface ships, that means keeping closer track of where they are in the deployment cycle and their ability to surge, Kilby said.
“Where are they in the manning perspective? What munitions do we have at Yorktown? What is the state of their material condition, and which ones can we flow in what priority order?” Kilby said.
Part of that job will mean the Navy has to do a better job at getting ships out of maintenance on time. The service has struggled for more than a decade to get surface ships out of maintenance on time. Consistent complaints from repair yards include the Navy’s contracting structure making it difficult to order contract changes for availabilities, parts can show up late and planning time can be short.
Kilby said the Navy was working on a program with shorter and more frequent maintenance periods requiring better coordination with the myriad of repair yards on both coasts and Hawaii. That includes having a 120-day planning period for shipyards before the availability, ensuring long lead materials are there with plenty of time and cutting the time it takes to modify contracts for change orders.
“I believe, with every fiber of my being, that you must have a stretch goal that is uncomfortable to push the enterprise in a manner that they’re going to produce differently,” he said.
The surge is becoming a crucial consideration for the Navy as it eyes a 2027 date for when China could move on Taiwan – the toughest challenge for the service in the immediate future, according to Pentagon planners.
Between now and then, the service has to maximize the assets it has available.
“That is a bigger Navy by definition because I can use those assets to do something where I couldn’t use them before,” Kilby said.
