NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — A new pilot program aimed at improving Navy amphibious ship readiness will kick off this year in shipyards on both the east and west coasts, service officials said Monday.
Under the program, the Navy will complete the proposed maintenance package 500 days before the start of the so-called “signature availability” and award the contract 360 days before the overhaul begins, Vice Adm. Brendan McLane said at the annual Sea Air Space symposium.
“With these complex avails for a big deck amphib, the lead maintenance activities are going to need some more time,” McLane, the commander of Naval Surface Force, said during a panel. “The [availability] minus 120 [days] is not going to cut it.”
The hope is that knowing what the work package is more than one year in advance and having more time to plan the availability will drive down the number of delay days on the amphibious ship maintenance.
This will also help the contractors order long lead time items ahead of the availability to ensure they have parts ready to go and a rotating stock of systems in the inventory once the ship is in the yard, McLane said.
The SWOBOSS also said big deck amphibious warships, like the carriers and submarines, need to have their own personnel focused on ordering material.
The forthcoming pilot program comes as the Navy and Marine Corps grapple with poor amphibious ship readiness percentages that are raising questions over whether a three-ship Amphibious Ready Group with an embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit will deploy from the continental United States this year.
“[P]oor material condition of the ships and delays in their maintenance has negatively affected availability of the amphibious fleet,” reads a Government Accountability Office report published in December. “Decisions in recent years to divest ships before reaching the end of their expected service lives and prior to completing a waiver process involving submitting a certification to congressional defense committees triggered decisions to forego critical maintenance and worsened the condition of those ships.”
Last year, the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group deployed in a disaggregated fashion after a bearing and the starboard rudder on flagship USS Boxer (LHD-4) failed. After initially leaving for the deployment on April 1, the ship was back in San Diego, Calif., for repairs just over one week later. Boxer didn’t leave for the deployment until the middle of July.
According to the GAO report, all three of the ships in the Boxer ARG – which also included USS Somerset (LPD-25) and USS Harpers Ferry (LSD-49) – deployed late due to individual maintenance problems.
“Moreover, the Navy has not yet implemented the recommendations from its May 2023 review to address the wide range of maintenance problems affecting readiness in the amphibious fleet,” the report reads. “Establishing performance measures to guide improvements to amphibious ship maintenance challenges identified in its May 2023 and April 2024 reviews will help the Navy improve amphibious ship readiness outcomes.”
Speaking to reporters on Monday at the conference, vice chief of naval operations Adm. Jim Kilby said he is committed to embarked Marines deploying with the three-ship ARG formation.
“We got to come through the Joint Strike Fighter mod, which is super complex, but we owe it to the Marine Corps,” Kilby said, referring to the overhauls the big deck amphibious ships are undergoing so they can accommodate the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Lightning II.
“The United States Navy owes it to the Marine Corps to produce a three-ship ARG where they can train and go through that certification process to deploy on time, not in a non-connected manner, as we saw with Boxer,” Kilby added.
Another problem facing the amphibious fleet is the high turnover in the supervisor of shipbuilding, conversion and repair role, said Naval Sea Systems Command chief Vice Adm. Jim Downey. To get after this problem, the Navy is assessing qualifications for the role and evaluating the processes used on the nuclear-powered ships.
“With a closer partnering between in-service and new construction, we’re able to convert some assets, we’re able to get folks working both rudder systems in the water, nonstop 24-7, by some minor enabling of equipment for the team,” he said.
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith said that in order for the Navy to achieve the congressionally-mandated goal of having 31 amphibious ships in its inventory, the service needs to improve the readiness of the current fleet while buying new warships.
“Maintaining a constant 3.0 ARG/MEU presence is a challenge right now,” Smith said Monday. “By law, we require a minimum of 31 amphibious warships. And with 31 amphibious warships that number is based on … 80 percent readiness, and we’re not close to that. We’re somewhere hovering around 50 percent readiness.”
