​Pentagon budget increases lacks a focus on readiness and sustainment all while the size of the services in the last several years have decreased.

By not investing in the future, there “are few programs ready right now to accept funds.” Growing the size of the fleet to at least 350 ships as one of those programs that “cannot be accomplished anytime soon” and will required sustained investment.

“You can’t buy perfect security. With the current budget, including overseas contingency funding, the situation in the Pentagon “is not a resource problem” but a “management problem.”

The Budget Control Act” is not the way to run the government,” even while using emergency spending accounts “to get around the caps. “How are you going to pay for” stepped-up defense spending even if the caps of the Budget Control Act are removed without increasing revenue coming in””

“We’re currently in a downward spiral” in terms of manning, equipping and modernizing the armed forces. We currently have two-thirds if the force we need.”

“Navy Needs Capacity, Readiness, Not Just Capability”

Navy needs to move past the Third Offset Strategy’s focus on developing new capabilities and instead balance those technologies with improved readiness and a larger fleet.

Capability, capacity and readiness were not separate funding silos that could be rebalanced as needed, but rather were overlapping pools that spill into one another. Taking money out of readiness to add an Aegis Combat System upgrade for a destroyer, for example, may mean canceling two other ship’s maintenance availabilities, which ultimately decreases readiness and capacity for the sake of one more-capable ship.

“When you ask me which we want to buy – capability, or capacity, or readiness? The only answer is yes,.”

A dozen Littoral Combat Ships were cut from the shipbuilding plans and instead the money was invested in high-tech upgrades such as developing an anti-ship mode for the Standard Missile-6 and Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, and quickening development of future Flight III destroyer and Block V attack submarine technologies. 

While some these new capabilities such as the anti-surface missiles – which have been rapidly developed and are in various stages of testing and fielding – have supported the Navy’s distributed lethality concept, leaders called for the end of this sole focus on capability advances via the Third Offset Strategy and a shift in focus to fleet size and readiness.

The time is now  for a bigger, more capable and more ready Navy. “One argument we’ve heard is, the Navy has prioritized shipbuilding to the detriment of new technologies, weapon systems, things like that,.”

What are we going to build? We need ships, and we need enough of those ships. But how are we going to deliver those new weapons? How are you going to get them there if you don’t have the platforms? How are you going to be present around the globe, around the clock, if you don’t have those platforms?”

The path forward isn’t going to be easy, going from a 274-ship fleet today that the Navy has struggled to keep ready due to budget constraints to a 355-ship fleet as called for by the new Force Structure Assessment “Well which is it, what do you want? Do you want 274 ready, or do you want 355? That’s a false choice.” Discussions about how to balance capacity, capability and readiness come amid a complex threat environment around the world.

“It’s a pretty sporty environment out there, and when leaders started talking about a gray hybrid environment that was going to be moving at a slow boil, that would require our people to sort peacetime from wartime and respond appropriately and accurately.

“How Ready Are We?”

The mismatch between readiness reporting methods and the fiscal realities of training causes readiness to be reported at lower levels than expected. Commanders-in-chief need a picture that synthesizes operational tasks and the real-world training process. 

Navy has at its core 12 aircraft carriers and 10 aircraft carrier wings with which to form carrier battle groups. These warfighting units are subdivided into smaller tactical elements based on platform and mission. 

The primary tool within a carrier battle group to project power is the embarked carrier air wing, specifically the strike aircraft in that air wing. The smallest of these air wing units, the squadron, generates readiness reports that form the readiness picture of the larger units they create. 

Because the units that report readiness do so with such a narrow focus, their reports create an inaccurate picture of the real capabilities of the larger element they represent. Current reporting does not give the commanders-in-chief an accurate picture of the readiness and capability of this basic warfighting unit to project into a crisis situation.

Why should leaders care about the readiness of a single aircraft carrier and its air wing? The numbers speak for themselves. Short of a major theater war and operations plan execution, it’s unlikely to have more than a single carrier battle group to provide naval air support in his or her area of responsibility. 

Because the battle group is important to the combatant command, the readiness of a carrier battle group and its embarked air wing is a highly visible measure of capabilities and those of the echelons of command responsible for training, equipping, and manning the air wing.

The service is responsible for training the air wing for commander’s use. Therefore, when one of the ten carrier air wings appears unready to do its mission, support is focused on that air wing to fix the problem. Readiness reporting has become a serious benchmark of a unit's performance.

What has caused this problem? Generally, readiness is tied to reporting, and the Navy reports on people, supplies, equipment, and training. Intense management of supplies and equipment at a macro level continues to allow units to progress through the interdeployment training cycle and deployment. The long pole in the tent of overall readiness issues is training.

This realization raises some questions. Does the Navy train right? Has training doctrine kept pace with the operational realities commanders face? Maybe the reporting system is not measuring readiness accurately. "An automated system that links tactical readiness data to joint operational and strategic readiness data does not exist"

Instead of focusing on the symptoms associated with lowered readiness reporting, the focus should be on why readiness is not being reported at desired levels. Carrier air wing training and readiness can be used as an example for a problem plaguing all the services.

“Readiness Reporting and the Interdeployment Training Cycle”

The Navy's primary method of reporting readiness is the Status of Resources and Training System, the single, automated reporting system that functions as the central registry of all operational units in the military. It provides unit-level readiness "in four critical areas: personnel, equipment-on-hand, equipment serviceability, and training." 

Unit readiness "the ability to provide capabilities required by commanders to execute their assigned missions. This is derived from the ability of each unit to deliver the outputs for which it was designed."

Along with the evolution of readiness reporting has been an evolution in how and for what the Navy trains. If this process were synergistic, the interdeployment training cycle would be a roadmap for how training achieves the "whats" in doctrine. Ultimately, concurrent actions are required between how we train, for what we train, and how that training is reported. A disconnect between any of the three distorts the final output of measured readiness.

The commanders are responsible to ensure the required training of aircraft carriers and their embarked air wings. The goal of the training cycle is to provide "battle group commanders, carrier commanding officers and air wing commanders with well-trained air wings capable of immediate integration into a combat ready carrier battle group." The process has developed into a building-block approach to achieving increasingly more complex operational capability in both scope of unit involvement and complexity of events.

 Each squadron level unit must learn to work within itself. Then individual squadrons integrate with the other squadrons in the air wing. The air wing unit then learns to coalesce with the carrier to conduct routine day and night operations while embarked. Next, the ship/air wing unit joins the battle group for inclusion into the composite warfare commander concept of operations. Finally, joint and fleet operations are conducted as a battle group unit prior to deployment.

In a world of unconstrained resources, the best method to achieve large-unit cohesion would be to keep smaller units at a high level of readiness at all times. Instead, the training cycle is built around battle group deployment dates. Units not involved in deployment or deployment preparation are relegated to supporting those units that are involved in such activities. This tiered system of readiness is not the most desirable, but it does have the advantage of some cost effectiveness and predictability.

Because of these financial constraints, training is just-in-time. Every second of available at-sea time or flight time is precious. Units in the post-deployment to pre-interdeployment training cycle phase are expected to be at very low readiness levels. 

Equipment and parts are stripped from them to support others. They have a very low funding line for flying or at-sea periods. Periodicity between training events increases well beyond the training standards. Personnel billets are gapped as their overall priority for manning decreases. These constraints, on both dollars and personnel, also constrain the type and timing of training. Combining just-in-time training with limited resources produces competition among units for scarce training time and resources.

The consequences of the current interdeployment training cycle are twofold. First, unit proficiency is low and integration is slow early in the phase. Second, later in the cycle, when units do have the right personnel, equipment, and budget to train, their training priorities are overwhelmed by larger unit requirements that do not translate into the training matrices of the individual units. A disconnect exists between how the Navy trains and how the Navy reports its training.

Problems with Readiness Reporting

The Status of Resources and Training System is a tool ill suited to quantify readiness at the operational level. Since the units reporting are tactical in size, tactical terminology defines their training standards. For instance, the F/A- 18 training matrix has taken all the tasks expected to be accomplished by this platform and laid them out in dozens of events. 

With most events falling in a one-, two-, or three-month periodicity window, this list remains robust. The problem is the inability to transfer these tasks into the training environment of the larger unit. The larger unit focuses on the interoperability of the lesser units that make it up. 

This leads to the second problem in readiness reporting. The unit required to report readiness simply is not in the best position to effect readiness. Even when the resources are provided to the unit commander, support of higher unit training requirements is the primary mission. 

This creates tension in the training process. The units determining the readiness of the battle group chase events that do not fold into the requirements of the larger whole. One of two things happens as a result. The tactical unit responsible for reporting can play along without complaint, then can report honestly its readiness based on the training matrix, or can massage its readiness data to conform to higher headquarters expectations. The other possibility is that the unit can shift the focus of the entire exercise away from the operational level to the tactical training requirements of the individual units, regardless of whether this switch achieves the exercise's stated goal. 

Neither of these results is desired.

One recommendation is to create new reports that address higher levels of training and readiness. Two new reports are required at the end of each major event in the interdeployment training cycle phase . The first would be a report on the planned level of training, generated by the event coordinator, the Naval Strike Air Warfare Center, a type wing, a training carrier group, or a numbered fleet staff member. 

The report would use the appropriate level of tasks from the Universal Naval Task List to depict the training goal, and would apply accepted measures of successful completion of these tasks to the unit evaluated. It should report not what was done, but how well it was done. A concurrent readiness report would follow from the unit evaluated. This report would tie in current capabilities as depicted in the training report with current manning, equipment, and parts to accomplish the mission as required by the next superior in the chain of command. 

At the completion of the readiness program, the report would be from the type wing and the squadron. At the end of the phase the report would be from the air wing commander and the carrier commander, addressing how the air wing and ship currently are manned and their demonstrated collective capabilities. 

Following excercise, the training carrier group would publish a readiness report on the battle group's composite warfare commanders' ability to function together. The battle group commander would combine that report with his or her own concerns of manning and equipment at that stage in the cycle. 

The Naval Strike Air Warfare Center and the air wing commander would follow after the air wing detachment. Following excercise, the numbered fleet commander would report on the readiness of the battle group to conduct joint and combined operations for a geographic commander.

 These reports would allow a commander the ability to compare the performance of one battle group to another throughout the interdeployment training cycle. Reporting how well a universally accepted training program was accomplished, versus explaining what or how much training was accomplished, is the best measure of readiness a commander can receive.

To give the commander an accurate picture of friendly strengths and weaknesses in his or her area of responsibility, new reports are required that combine operational tasks with the real-world training process. Only by focusing on these higher levels of war, toward which the majority of training is directed, can the commander be assured that the tasking he or she gives the battle group can be executed feasibly during the next crisis.

DoD may not be providing its leaders with the analytic support they need to prioritize force structure investments that would best manage risk and address the threats outlined in the National Defense Strategy

 1. Advise on defense policy and the integration and oversight of DoD policy and plans to achieve national security objectives.  

2. Provide direction regarding service analytic priorities for the budget priorities/development process.
 
3. Conduct net assessments in support of the development of force structure plans 

4. Assess plans/requirements of the Combatant Commands 

5. Review their missions, responsibilities, and force structure of Combatant Commands

6. Ensure  DoD cost estimation and cost analysis processes 

7. Provide accurate information and realistic estimates of cost for the acquisition programs.

8. Provide direction regarding service analytic priorities for the budget development process. 

9.Ensure DoD cost estimation and cost analysis processes provide accurate information and realistic estimates of cost for the acquisition programs.  
​
10. Present and justify positions on the plans, programs, and policies 

The Navy’s aviation budget is out of balance for rebuilding readiness among non-deployed units, with more flight hours funded than can be executed due to logistics shortfalls that prevent the service from having enough ready-to-fly airplanes.

Though the most visible challenge to aviation readiness is a backlog of legacy F/A-18 Hornets at depots awaiting service life extension work, Commander of Naval Air Forces said some pilots could be flying more if smaller “enabler accounts” – such as those that allow squadrons to buy spare parts ahead of need and pay for contract logistics support – were sufficiently funded.

“We  pay attention to the flight hours accounts because that directly translates to readiness.

“But what we’ve seen since we’ve come through the heavy-use period and recovering from sequestration, we’ve seen that we’re not able to fully execute those accounts because we don’t have sufficient up airplanes on the flight lines to fly.”

One enabler account in particular, the air systems support account, that “gets at the emergent readiness issues on the flight line, so the people and processes that allow us to nip things in the bud quickly” and keep squadrons’ planes ready to fly so pilots can actually make the most of the flight hours Congress has funded.

“These accounts have not been resourced” properly since sequestration hit and whereas adding to flight hours accounts would not increase readiness, adding to this type of account would. The Navy is now trying to figure out how to dig out of the funding deficit they see in these “absolutely critical” accounts.

The units that most often face this flight line readiness challenge are the squadrons that have just come back from deployment and are in their maintenance phase – when the aircraft carrier is at the shipyard to get ready for the next deployment cycle, though not all type/model/series planes have been affected equally.

The Marine Corps has the same challenge of keeping enough aircraft ready for pilots to train with, but unlike the Navy, the Marine Corps does not have tiered readiness – Navy squadrons’ readiness dips down during the maintenance phase whereas non-deployed Marine Corps squadrons are supposed to stay ready in case they are called on to respond to world events. 

Pilots in some squadrons are only flying four to six hours a month, partly due to depot maintenance backlogs but also stemming from the same spares and logistics challenges that create flight line readiness challenges for the Navy.

Despite these challenges, leaders don’t see a tie between readiness and recent plane crashes. Overall the Navy is trending downwards on mishaps.

“As we look back at those and in the last couple of years, trying to make a tie to readiness or proficiency, in every case that’s not there. There’s some other lower-level mishaps, ground-related mishaps where experience levels of folks may play into it. … In the review of those Class A mishaps you can’t make that connection. There are other procedural things, crew resource management things, but not a direct tie to readiness.”

“Marine Aviation Logistics Plan To Boost Readiness With Focus on Supplies and Training”.

The Marine Corps is focused on aviation logistics as a means of regaining readiness, and an extensive “Marine Aviation Logistics Plan” outlines ideas to boost professional development opportunities and modernize sustainment to keep up with how the fleet employs its aviation squadrons.

The aviation logistics plan seeks to “modernize existing and time-tested  safety, training, and support strategies, as well as capitalize on emerging capabilities and technologies offered by today’s commercial and military industrial base. Collectively, these efforts will enhance the air combat element by improving the readiness e.g. safety, effectiveness, reliability and availability of Marine Corps aircraft.”’

The plan’s first line of effort focuses on the maintainers themselves. The aviation logistics community will look for opportunities for Marines to step outside the corps and learn new skills and new approaches to aircraft maintenance.

For example, the plan recommends industry exchanges to let Marines see how other businesses conduct aviation maintenance and bring back best practices, and it calls for non-traditional training opportunities such as a 3D scanning and printing training events.

Courses will be created to address issues such as “Aircraft Survivability Equipment, Electronic Countermeasures Equipment, Electronic Keying Material, Laser System Safety, Digital Interoperability, and 5th Generation Avionics systems.

We have to develop long-term maintenance, manpower, and materiel planning to improve aviation readiness,” with a focus on maintenance management, manpower management, training management, and advanced skills management.

New advanced wire repair training, plus increased participation in joint wiring training and working group events, will seek to directly affect flight line readiness rates. “Declining material condition across every [type/model/series] is impacting all wiring types and severely affecting current readiness. 

“There is inadequate training and familiarity within the maintenance community. Lack of familiarity regarding the importance of wiring systems and apparent lack of focus on funding priorities for wiring at the system level are all contributing factors needing resolution to affect current readiness.”

After conducting independent readiness reviews for each type/model/series aircraft in the Marine Corps, the Marines found they did not have “the right density of maintainers with the right qualifications” in all of their squadrons.

“We had it right in F-35, and a lot of the other type/model/series we didn’t have enough of the qualifications, we weren’t measuring the military occupational specialties of those Marines.

“We are doing that now, and that’s going to have an outsized impact on our ability to retain the right folks with qualifications”

The second line of effort in the aviation logistics plan deals with “increasing the depth, capacity and reach of our operations sustainment capability” to keep up with the demands and keeping up with the changing nature of how the Marines fight.

“Today’s dynamic global environment demands flexible and scalable capabilities. Increased operational tempo, split and disaggregated operations and constrained resources mandate the modernization of written doctrine and its associated enablers.”

We are attacking our current unacceptable Not Mission Capable- Supply rate, and the root causes for it. The supply chain that supports Marine aviation is fragmented, antiquated, and not optimized to enable the required state of readiness in our current fleet.”

“This fact is clearly evidenced by the low rate of Ready Basic Aircraft RBA and unsatisfactory high Non Mission Capable Supply NMCS rates across nearly every T/M/S the Marine Corps currently operates. 

Each of the Independent Readiness Reviews conducted to date for AV-8B, CH-53E, and V-22. identified systematic shortfalls in the sustainment organizations, processes, and resources of the supply chain that supports Marine Aviation. 

Accordingly, our focus will be on continuing to aggressively attack these daunting challenges. The strategy to reduce the  non-mission capable supply challenge will be focused on the areas of consumables, repairable, and manpower.”

Going forward the Marines will work with the Defense Logistics Agency to improve the accuracy of bills of material and to “monitor fleet demand for consumables on long-term contracts and ensure vendors receive accurate demand forecasts,” and work with the Naval Supply Systems Command to improve depot component repair performance.

“Consumable forecasting is an issue that was identified in by all the reviews. Lack of consumable material accounts for greater than 80% of non-mission capable supply demands.”

“To address this issue HQ will assist in developing local Marine Aviation Logistics Squadrons stocking procedures to include an enterprise-wide approach to managing consumable demand data. We are evaluation tools and allowancing parameters to ensure the correct items and quantities are stocked ‘plane side’ and included in pack-ups to support detachments and deployments.”

Additionally, on avionics, the plan suggests keeping the two Aviation Logistics Support Ships for a decade beyond their 2020 decommissioning dates, or until a replacement is in place, to maintain a “dedicated sea based capability for rapid movement and employment of Marine aviation Intermediate-Level maintenance facilities, supply support and personnel to sustain fixed and rotary wing aircraft operations.” 

The plan advocates a distributed laydown of avionics support to support the rebalance and notes the need for mobile facilities across the region to put avionics repair support wherever the expeditionary forces are operating.

“ Navy, Marine Aviation See Funding Boost for Spares, Depots, Logistics Contracts”

After more than a year of talk from Navy and Marine Corps aviation leaders about needing to fund “aviation enablers” to boost readiness, the budget request shows exactly the investments that are needed to get more planes ready to fly.

A number of conditions have led to naval aviators having a shortfall of ready-to-fly aircraft – everything from a backlog at maintenance depots, to not enough contractor support, to a lack of spare parts – and no amount of investment in flying hours accounts will help the aviation readiness issue unless these enabler accounts are properly funded as well.

Marines couldn’t reduce its “not mission capable- supply” rates – when aircraft cannot be fixed due to lack of spare parts, which at times has reached a quarter of the fleet for older airplanes like the AV-8B Harrier – if it didn’t increase spending on spares. The lack of spares was “the number-one readiness degrader” aside from the sheer age of some of the aircraft.

“Increased funding for spare parts will not impact readiness right away, but without this investment the readiness trajectory would never change.

Outside of the day-in, day-out maintenance that takes place at the squadrons, some types of aircraft make use of performance-based logistics contracts with industry and others’ readiness is the responsibility of the military. Both strategies are addressed through increased funding in the budget request.

Other types of aircraft are kept ready through Navy- and Marine Corps-led maintenance efforts at Fleet Readiness Centers, with the services responsible for their own engineering, logistics and supplies associated with repairs and overhauls. For those aircraft, more money is on the way too.

“Capacity is limited for different reasons at our fleet readiness centers. Some are limited by the hiring of  personnel, others by physical space and aging tools and materials. In all cases, we are investing to correct these limitations.

“This account also funds critical chain initiatives to improve depot throughput and increase hiring of planning, engineering and maintenance support manpower to align the workforce to the projected workload.”
As a result of the additional aviation enabler spending, the services should be able to fly more.

Maintaining very high readiness during a carrier strike group’s post-deployment sustainment phase actually saves the Navy money later on, despite concerns that budget constraints might hinder the Navy from making the most of that time in a ship’s deployment cycle.

Under the Navy’s Optimized Fleet Response Plan, a ship undergoes routine maintenance and modernization, conducts pre-deployment workups, deploys overseas, and then comes home for a “sustainment phase” of as long as a year before heading back to the shipyard for more maintenance. 

Carrier strike groups in the sustainment phase could be sent back overseas for a full-length deployment in a major contingency, used locally for training, sent to do whatever it is tasked with.

When OFRP was rolled out and first implemented, Navy officials and observers alike were concerned that the sustainment phase wouldn’t be properly funded and noted that the Navy had a poor track record of funding ships post-deployment. Under the Budget Control Act, the operations and maintenance budget has been a major bill-payer for other needs, and ships just back from deployment could be especially vulnerable to budget cuts.

With OFRP now in full swing, Commanders received the funding needed to keep carrier highly maintained and its crew highly trained during its sustainment phase earlier this year, and that those investments are now paying off as the carrier heads into maintenance.

“The carrier was kept at a very high readiness level. Ready to deploy, should we need that ship to do this. And so she was ready to go; when it comes back we’ll enter maintenance phase after months of very high support.”

“There was no a casualty report or system on there that we did not go after and fix – usually with the help the shipyard, if it was a big job. So again, readiness is as good or better than any deployed carrier out there. And the air wing was too. So that actually, when you keep the ship at a high state of readiness, when you come in for the planned incremental availability, you haven’t thrown all these extra jobs into the work package there.”

“In the long run, spending a little bit of money like this actually saves you money. A lot of times we can’t do that with the way our budget is, but this funding was prioritised even during a continuing resolution to make sure the carrier remained at peak readiness.

Because the carrier could have been called to deploy during its sustainment phase, we ensured it was being manned and maintained with that potentiality in mind. We treated them as if they were out on deployment. So whenever anything broke, we were right on it fixing it. “And then we also manned them, kept the manning all the way though the sustainment phase, so that if they were called, they were at that highest readiness level.”

On the training side, the carrier strike group commander oversaw training leading up to and after a Sustainment Exercise to ensure the ship’s and air wing’s crews were sharp. The Carrier Strike Group returned from its deployment,and had an easy schedule for crew rest. .

“The strike group commander says they know the strike group best. During deployment and this was a lot of air-to-ground, but we didn’t do a lot of air-to-air, not a lot of war at sea, and  didn’t defend against missiles.”

“So we worked with the commander of Strike Group  to develop a scenario sustainment excercise that will get him the training that commander needs. … They did a live missile ex, shooting at supersonic targets with jamming and all high-end types of things here, to do that, the missile shot. And there was a lot of air-to-air fighting, both live, but we also inserted virtual. 

So now whoever is on the scope sees five aircraft coming in, but there’s only one real one coming in for our guys to fight against. … And now they will see missiles coming in, constructive missiles. So we are pushing our live, virtual, constructive LCV – that’s how we are accelerating along the capability curve.”

“We put that investment into LVC opportunities and that got their training up, and their readiness ratings were all green in the sustainment phase.

Of course this high level of readiness had an upfront cost and we did the “maneuvers” it took to keep the carrier funded during the sustainment phase, never wanted for money required to keep them at that high level.

Still, the aircraft carrier’s readiness is only one piece of the puzzle. The carrier was fully funded, and the air wing’s Flight Hour Program account was fully funded, but that shortfalls in areas like supplies and logistics led to airplanes that were not properly maintained and therefore could not fly. We need attention to fully funding these enabler accounts as the brass have shown to ship maintenance and flying hours.

1. Force Structure Transit

Ability to see and act upon supply/troop circumstances access real-time information of units and items entering theater of operations

2. Force Structure Sustainment

Requirements to keep weapons systems operating at an acceptable operational tempo until adjustment made to redeploy

3. Supply/Equipment Stocks

Cross-functional approach to procuring, producing and delivering products/services for military applications

4. Global Network Requirements

Used by military units with emphasis on real-time info rate, fast routing during mobility and integration with existing systems.

5. Resource Capability/Risk

Effective process for preserving resources to address challenging circumstances of conflict risk for military operations

6. Field Maintenance Activities

Involves on-equipment or organisational maintenance performed by operating unit on day-to-day basis to support assigned weapon systems operations

7. Depot Maintenance Activities

Entails materiel maintenance requiring major repair, overhaul, or complete rebuilding of weapon systems, end items, parts, assemblies

8. Base/Installation Support

Site directly operated by or for military to shield military equipment/personnel, and promote training/operations

9. Contract Support Integration

Task executed under expedited agreement authority to provide supplies/services from commercial sources in operational areas

10. General/Combat Engineering
​
Forward positioned unit performs construction tasks under combat conditions with goals to involve facilitating mobile/support of Troops

​One challenge to achieving high readiness is the lagging provision of things like vital spare parts, technical manuals and ground support equipment. As Marine Corps replaced the UH-1N, UH-1Y Venom helicopter deployed with inadequate spare parts, manuals and ground support equipment as the Navy continued to buy the aircraft while shorting the necessary support. 

Congress often is focused more on the quantities of aircraft — the “above-line costs” — rather than the supporting items — the “below-line” costs.   

“This is just not the way to align our fleet.” 

Navy is establishing a new program executive office for common parts, such as radios and other systems used in multiple platforms let by a program executive officer to raise the procurement of such systems to a higher visibility. 

Throwing money and spare parts at the Navy is not going to solve the readiness problem, but the sea service needed to change its way of fostering reliability and maintenance, balancing sustainment with new capability. 

Fleet readiness centers have made progress in improving the readiness of Navy and Marine Corps aircraft. The Navy has looked to industry for best practices to sustain high aircraft availability and every supporting function had to own the outcome. 

“It’s really about bringing accountability to everyone involved.” 

One factor in improvement was bringing the management, planning, logistics and maintenance all at the same site.  Navy established a reliability control board to identify the factors that degrade aircraft readiness. 

For one example, the Navy found that a component of the E-2D’s APY-9 radar was lasting only 600 hours rather than 6,000 hours. 

In another example, an F/A-18 that had been inducted into a fleet readiness center had not flown a single hour since it emerged from its last induction six years prior. 

Fleet readiness centers delivered 36 F/A-18 strike fighters in fiscal 2019, each of which was completed in 60 days and flown within seven days after delivery. 

The 80% readiness goal for the F/A-18 fleet set  by SECDEF was met and exceeded by the Navy. The goal of 341 of 550 aircraft to be mission-capable was exceeded, reaching 379 aircraft by the deadline.

“People are starting to believe we can do it. It’s not all about efficiency.”

After a year of reforms across Navy squadrons, maintenance and supply depots and other key readiness-enabling commands, Super Hornet and Growler readiness each stand above 80 percent of Primary Mission Aircraft Inventory PMAI at 343 and 95 aircraft, respectively.

To achieve the 80% readiness goal, the Naval Aviation Enterprise NAE implemented the Naval Sustainment System-Aviation NSS-A.  The NSS-A initiative leverages best practices from commercial industry to update and improve aspects of Naval Aviation’s maintenance practices in squadrons as well as at intermediate and depot Fleet Readiness Centers.  

Additional reform efforts greatly improved supply chain management, engineering practices, governance activities and safety.  Initially, NSS-A focused on getting the Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fleet healthy, but quickly grew to include the Navy’s EA-18G Growler fleet due to the similarities in the two platforms.  Ultimately, the Navy and Marine Corps will apply NSS-A reforms to recover and sustain readiness and improve safety for each type, model and series of aircraft.

After a decade of regularly maintaining between 250-260 mission capable MC F/A-18s, the Navy is now sustaining over 320 MC Super Hornets and surged to attain service goals of 341 MC Super Hornet and 93 MC Growler aircraft this month.

“This has been a year of results for Naval Aviation, developing and implementing the NSS and then drove readiness numbers that haven’t been seen in over a decade.  Results are incredible and the improvement is inspirational.” 

“The tremendous efforts of our Fleet Readiness Centers were vital to achieving our readiness goals. Aviator flight hours is the leading indicator of aviation readiness moving in the right direction.

“This is the first year in some time that we have executed our allocation of flight hours completely. That stands as a sign of health that we have a lot of ‘up’ aircraft, and that the parts are moving. We’re getting healthy and we’re on the right track.”

The Air Boss said achievement of the 80 percent goal was an important milestone, but not a completed mission.
“To be clear, there is no finish line to the NSS effort. We don’t get to choose when we are called to fight.  Sustainment is the key. Continuously improving the reforms implemented by our military/industry teams will be critical in maintaining our advantage in this age of great power competition.”

We developed and implemented the Naval Sustainment System and then drove readiness numbers that haven't been seen in over a decade. As of 2015, the Navy had 545 F/A-18E/F models in the inventory, but it's unclear how many of those are part of the primary mission aircraft inventory.

The NSS program also brought in additional experts to watch how maintainers perform.

"What's different this time is the expertise of the outside industry that we're bringing in. This is supported at the highest levels of the Defense Department, so we have confidence that if we ... require changes in policy, that we will have complete support moving forward. This ... is a proven system.

The Navy began looking to its fleet readiness centers and depot supply chain to spearhead the effort, starting with the Super Hornet lines. Experts were brought in to tour fleet readiness centers, working with Navy counterparts on where they see inefficiencies in the system.

The Navy officials said maintenance sustainment for the fleets will continue in order to keep the older fleets as ready as possible.

The Navy did not mention its readiness numbers for its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter variants -- the Navy C-model and Marine Corps B-model -- even though the Pentagon included the JSF fleet in the supercharged readiness plan.
F-35 variants are still on track to meet the target even though both services have limited quantities in comparison to the Air Force.

Earlier this month, Air Force officials acknowledged that the service wouldn't immediately meet the Pentagon's goal of boosting readiness across its fighter fleet. "The F-16 MC rate in our active-duty units is above 80%. The service has 941 of the fourth-generation fighter in its inventory.

The F-22 Raptor and F-35A Lightning II fleets will come up short, he said, but for different reasons. The F-22's low-observable skin, which makes it stealthy, has been demanding to maintain. The F-35, meanwhile, has seen greater operational use even as bases are still activating F-35 squadrons. 

"We learned a lot from the mission-capable effort. It would only be easy to achieve an 80% mission-capable rate for its jets if only the Air Force would stop flying altogether.

"But we didn't do that during that time frame; we actually flew more. We've flown more every year since 2017 to give aviators more experience and have them more ready.”

Pentagon officials said maintenance sustainment for the fleets will continue in order to keep the older fleets as ready as possible.

Navy has avoided repair costs, improved fleet safety and increased H-1 flight line availability—all by using one of several new analytical tools to identify failing subcomponents in the H-1 main gearbox.

“Our goal is to increase time on wing and increase mission readiness.”

The tool, a new algorithm detection capability developed by NAVAIR helps spot main gearbox system faults. By isolating the fault, the engineer can recommend removing components proactively, such as a failing quill gear.
“So instead of sending the aircraft gearbox to depot repair, the fleet is able to replace the subcomponent on the flight line, reducing fleet maintenance burden, reducing costs and improving safety.”

Crews have initially focused on rotorcraft platforms: H-53, H-60, H-1 and V-22. The data NAVAIR engineers and logisticians are analyzing is generated by smart aircraft equipped with sensors—similar to tire pressure sensors in today’s automobiles.

“We’re at the point where we can process massive amounts of data, take action and save millions of dollars on repairs as a result of Conditioned-Based Maintenance CBM practices.”

To date, the CBM diagnostic strategy has not only saved millions in main gearbox repair costs, but avoided more than a dozen mission aborts and possible precautionary emergency landings and reduced the number of drain-and-flush cycles associated with the main gearbox.

Deploying Proactive Tools

NAVAIR has also developed Vector, a readiness analysis toolset, with input from Naval Aviation Enterprise stakeholders. Vector is the successor to the powerful Integrated Logistics Support Management System.

“Our tool, Vector, whose name indicates direction and magnitude, is enabling proactive maintenance and supply.”

Serving as a data warehouse, Vector aggregates 10 years of historical readiness data from 20 disparate data systems into a single source to provide cost, inventory, maintenance, supply and operational flight-hour data in a standard format.

“Vector automates what used to take us months to do and provides information in minutes. Instead of only focusing on the top 20 parts that are challenging the fleet today, we’re working to prevent the next 20 challenges from actually occurring. 

“We want to get out ahead of problems, but we have to do both—fight the current readiness battle and enable the fleet to avoid the next one.”

Vector produces more than 100 top-level metrics to identify components that perform outside their established parameters. With this information, Naval Aviation leaders can see early indicators of potential readiness issues and address them proactively before they impact the fleet.

For example, Vector could have helped prevent a recent fleet maintenance issue involving a potential shortage of brake replacement parts on F/A-18E-F Super Hornets two years before it happened.

By monitoring the databases in real time, Vector indicates when the demand and status of a given part is outside the norm by producing a heat chart—red indicates the part is three standard deviations outside its normal performance bounds; if orange, two standard deviations, and someone needs to take action; and yellow signals one standard deviation outside the norm, and we should “pay attention and find out why this item is no longer green.”

Vector would have shown an increase in demand for the brake part, which would have prompted the program office or logistician to question the change.

“Today, when Vector indicates a change in part usage, the program office or logisticians can investigate the cause and determine whether they need to order more parts if the part is still available or get the Fleet Readiness Center to manufacture the part.

Predicting the Future

The Logistics and Industrial Operations competency, in collaboration with NAVAIR’s Engineering Modeling Division, is also developing forecast models designed to predict which components or parts may need to be replaced based on maintenance schedules.

Developed by the H-53 Program Office, the Readiness Forecast Model RFM uses existing Naval Aviation data—such as the current status of parts and aircraft and historical scheduled and unscheduled maintenance rates—to forecast future behavior and assess the near-term impact of specific actions, such as stocking up on a specific part or upgrading a component that requires frequent maintenance.

“RFM provides a one-year forecast of ready basic aircraft, non-mission capable aircraft and out-of-reporting aircraft, enabling a quick look on near-term readiness posture. This allows us to understand near-term impacts of top-level actions; essentially ‘what if’ scenarios of major changes/adjustments at system level.”

RFM output on CH-53E and MH-53E simulations are currently being analyzed for accuracy by comparing model output to actual historical data and will be followed by a strategy to deploy RFM rapidly for other key type/model/series TMS over the next year.

The Predictive Analytics Model PAM, an RFM companion, takes a more strategic view at looking at the next 10 years.

PAM runs discrete event simulations using probabilistic decisions and business rules to model TMS flight operations and resulting maintenance and supply demand and effects. The model employs several discrete factors, processes and resources in areas of supply chain, maintenance, flight hour changes, component reliability, life limit increases, depot capacity and performance improvements. PAM output includes metrics on the numbers of aircraft in various states of mission capability readiness.

“PAM will allow us to run a simulation on a part, component or system to see how it would impact the number of mission capable aircraft. For example, what would the result be in X number of years if we upgraded the fuel control on a particular aircraft? 

PAM will predict the fleet readiness impact of an improvement by accounting for component reliability, impact to supply demand and impact to required maintenance. This way, we can see readiness advantages or disadvantages before we decide to invest in making a change.”

“Bottom line, we have created a series of maintenance planning tools and initiatives that provide decision makers at all levels with the right information to make informed decisions.”

1. Improve design efforts to make information system processes available & consistent

2. Charter efforts to make user support tech information timely & accurate

3. Reduce unnecessary duplication of information collection requirements generation

4. Cut down time & effort to maintain, use & disseminate information

5. Improve personnel productivity by making use of communications updates between information units

6. Aim to achieve efficient procurement of automated information collection systems

7. Coordinate information policy/programmes with collection requirements definition efforts

8. Establish accountability for resources designated for assignment to information systems

9. Foster information sharing & make compatible with systems from other Services
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10. Ensure information policies are consistent with changes in unit requirements

“Do What You Are Best Fitted For.” Having a broader variety of capabilities and potentially platforms is key so you’re not sending a high-end platform to do a low-end job and not a low end platform to do a high-end job.

Acquisition approach we are working our way through is how can we provide Navy and Marine Corps leaders and the fleets they represent a wide range of capabilities and do that at an affordable costs that can maintain supplier base.

Can’t have one-trick platforms and can’t have too many platforms all completely unique.

What we’ve done to separate combat systems and put common systems across platforms helps from a maintenance standpoint and helps with training.

Having interchangable and modular systems better integrates requirements and acquisition planning so they aren’t done in hand-off vacuums that are transactional.

We can achieve better acquisition outcomes by creating much more integrated teams looking at that and as we add these new types of ships we’ve got to be very smart as we approach difficult task of building a fleet that can fight and win.

Navy continues to increase capacity, lethality, and availability with the shipbuilding, aviation, and expeditionary programs.  New capabilities are continually being delivered to the fleet and retrofitted on existing platforms to provide enhanced lethality and survivability to the warfighter.  

Modernization is a vital component of our readiness and hits to our modernization accounts defer future capabilities and infrastructure improvements prolong our reliance on legacy systems that lack the required capabilities for the future.  Over time, legacy systems cost more to repair and sustain.  Prioritizing modernization, particularly where we can leverage joint buys, will reduce average unit procurement costs and achieve efficiencies.

Navy is aggressively pursuing efforts to accelerate acquisition timelines and schedules and further drive affordability into our programs, in order to deliver capability to our warfighters faster and be as effective as possible within our resources. As we look at cost, sustainment encompasses the majority, yet it receives little focus in our research and development portfolio. Many commercial technologies and practices—advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, augmented/virtual reality, Digital Twins—have the potential to reduce cost while simultaneously increasing the availability of our systems.

Prototyping provides an excellent method for managing cost while maturing both technologies and requirements. allowing for transitioning from basic analysis of capabilities to systems of systems analysis to resolve integration of capabilities with existing systems or platforms.  Each prototyping effort is worked in partnership with Program Offices, providing engineering, test, and contracting expertise to speed development and  transition when concepts succeed.

An acquisition pathway is the execution route a program takes from inception-- identification of a materiel solution need to completion. The pathway is defined by a series of  rule-based activities, milestones, and decision points. Acquisition executive or portfolio manager can establish tailored acquisition pathways into a program-specific model to enable programs to navigate the complex acquisition environment faster by having pre-filtering and clearly identifying the specific processes, documents, and reviews relevant for that type of acquisition. This is an upfront enterprise/portfolio investment to enable acceleration of current and future programs.

If a Service or Portfolio Acquisition Executive approves these models for their organization, programs no longer have to request tailoring permission and obtain waivers from multiple oversight organizations. Programs can operate with pre-authorization to streamline specific procedures and documents based on the type of product or service being acquired.

Each acquisition program has unique requirements and features; however, several categories or groupings of acquisitions could benefit from having their own tailored acquisition model. DoD could develop a suite of proactively tailored acquisition models to cover a broad range of commonly acquired products and services, such as aircraft, ships, ground vehicles, space systems, missile/munition, communications and networks, business systems, and technical services. Conversely they can be designed around acquisition type or methodology.

In acquisition enterprises, each program navigates the acquisition life cycle independently. Initial conceptual requirements drive program budgets, scope and solution space. Acquisition programs design, develop, test and produce individual systems that meet a defined set of requirements within an allocated budget. However, today’s complex and ever-changing environment requires integrated systems and services to produce capabilities greater than the sum of the individual parts. 

Analyzing alternatives and making trade-off decisions at the broader enterprise level rather than the program level would provide an opportunity to optimize performance, costs and/or risks. Guiding large systems independently through the acquisition life cycle over a period of 10 to 20 years has proven inefficient. Agencies can vastly improve the performance and outcomes of its acquisition system by incrementally delivering integrated capabilities via acquisition portfolios that feature tailored processes.

Just as industry constructs product lines, agencies can structure acquisition portfolios around the system-of-systems concept. A portfolio could decompose large systems into multiple smaller programs, projects or increments, and group those that contain similar capabilities, commercial off-the-shelf products, and services. 

For example, a portfolio for command and control or logistics could develop a suite of applications and services that run on a common infrastructure platform. Aircraft portfolios could be based on a common airframe with different payloads, or on different airframes using common subsystems such as engines, communication suites or avionics software.

 This approach would not require a new top-down-driven structure; portfolio leaders could start today by grouping a few related programs and tailoring a structure and process for increased efficiencies. Acquisition executives could scale up these initial efforts after demonstrated success.

The early phases of a traditional program could have a broader aperture in a portfolio approach, opening up the potential solution space As envisioned, acquisition programs would be smaller than the programs used for today’s major systems, scoped in three- to five-year development increments. Smaller programs carry lower risk, as they simplify design, cost and schedule estimates— and ultimately delivery. Once managers effectively scope a program, operational and acquisition stakeholders develop and approve a subordinate set of requirements and acquisition documents. 

By adopting the commercial product-line approach, agencies would address longstanding issues associated with acquisition speed, agility and system interoperability. Elevating the time-consuming acquisition processes to the portfolio level would reduce program workload, allowing each program to deliver products faster. In a complex, integrated environment, agency acquisition systems can no longer rely on a structure based on individual systems but rather should embrace a capability-focused, portfolio-centric structure modeled on the commercial sector. Managing requirements, budgets and staffs at the portfolio level would enable dynamic allocation to high-priority programs. Portfolio strategies, roadmaps and architectures would guide program development.

An active DoD and industry portfolio community must collaboratively develop technologies and designs and employ continuous competition to develop and produce the individual programs. Portfolios would design and optimize acquisition processes to deliver a suite of smaller programs rapidly, ensuring that warfighters regularly receive incremental capabilities that incorporate the latest technologies designed to achieve their operational missions.

Contracting is often one of the longest lead-items in the acquisition life-cycle, and also one of the riskiest. The time it takes to develop, solicit, and award a contract can inhibit DoD ability to keep pace with the rapid changes in technology advancement. Discovering avenues to speed the contracting process, while also preserving the inherent values of the  contracting process is essential.

When it comes to finding the right contracting approach, it is important to understand that there are numerous contracting strategies, tools, and methods available. There is no single “right” way to contract, and that there are several available paths to achieve the desired outcome. It is important to bear in mind that each organization should have a “diversified” contracting approach – just like the private sector companies are advised to diversify investments, organizations should do the same for their contracting strategy. 

Often a program or Agency wants to seek the “path of least resistance” or “crack the code” with contracting, only to continue to exploit that contract strategy over and over again. While this may solve short-term or temporary needs, it is not a long-term sustainable strategy, and an organization is best positioned for repeatable success if it can diversify its contracting mechanisms to enable continuous speed, agility, and innovation.

Talk to users about the possibility and probability of additional requirements, however unclear, and any potential quick-reaction needs dependent on Real World situations and the likelihood of needing to have a contract vehicle that can flex to related surges in effort. One easy way to reduce procurement lead time is to add work to existing contracts, even if it’s out of scope. 

The biggest benefit to adding work to an existing contract is that the contract and all the lead time that went into writing it and negotiating it has already been done. Terms and conditions are in place and, if the Contractor agrees, you can use what’s already on contract or you can change whatever is necessary without starting from scratch. You may need to add new clauses, depending on how old the contract is, but it’s still faster than starting from zero.

The best way to show the importance of Rapid Acquisition to others, specifically the customer/end user/warfighter, is to drag your Contracting folks kicking and screaming to see what they are buying, to talk to the people needing those products or services, and to demonstrate to them that they are doing more that pushing paper around their desk or words around a screen. You might also be surprised that you don’t have to drag them anywhere—they’ve just never been invited and actually want to understand what they’re buying.

When we want Industry to understand our requirements, we hold Industry Days, allow site visits, show briefings charts and road maps, explain why we need Industry on our team. Why not try something similar with the DoD team, including Contracting, Policy, cost/price analysts, financial managers, Small Business reps, etc.?  Not to brainstorm Acquisition Strategy meeting or dig into market research, but so non-program managers have a better idea of what is needed and why—and how their efforts fit into the big picture.

This doesn’t have to be a big deal: it can be as simple as bringing your Contracting team and their staff support into a conference room for an hour or two and showing them the problem that must be solved and who it affects. Show them video of successful—and unsuccessful tests. Show them how hardware fits together and how the guys on the flight line can take it apart and put it together in no time flat and let your Contracting Officer try it, too. Make it a show and tell. 

Remember that “prototypes” in design are not like proofs of concept. Their purpose is to facilitate discussion and feedback from customers and stakeholders. Flowcharts, Lego structures, storyboards, and sketches can all be appropriate mediums for an initial prototype

Capture feedback from prototypes and incorporate lessons learned into future iterations of the design process. You may go back to the Problem Exploration phase as a result of prototypes. 

The Pentagon believes that, though DoD acquisiton leadership has changed, our mission to support the war fighter through acquisition innovation remains constant and holds much promise for the future. Over the past year, our team has worked to refine the A&S strategy using the National Defense Strategy as our guidebook. Several goals, each with nested sub-priorities, emerged from our senior leadership planning sessions: 

1. Enable innovative acquisition approaches that deliver war-fighting capability at the speed of relevance

2. Build a safe, secure and resilient defense-industrial base to include both commercial and organic

3. Ensure safe and resilient DoD installations

4. Increase weapon system mission capability while reducing operating cost

5. Promote acquisition and sustainment initiatives with key international partners

6. Recruit, develop and retain a diverse acquisition and sustainment workforce

7. Measure supply chain partner’s ability to protect sensitive information through an independent third-party certification 

8. Adopt a framework capability to cut extra bureaucratic process by choosing pathway based on product/service being acquired

9. Provide assistance in acquisition, licensing and management to protect data rights by ensuring network security at start of progam

10.  Strengthen supply chain against adversaries by forming marketplace where tech service companies connect with trusted investors

Acquisition Acceleration can reduce the risk of delivering weapons systems that are technologically obsolete or late-to-need. Acceleration can also reduce the risk of waste associated with delays. Shortening the development cycle time helps teams learn faster and thus reduces the risk of uninformed decision-making. 

Accelerated programs tend to have a greater degree of personnel stability, which reduces the risk of losing key personnel and reduces the cost of on-boarding new personnel. Faster programs are less likely to be impacted by changes to the threat environment or changes in technology, and thus are less likely to deliver a system that is operationally irrelevant, technologically obsolete, or both.

But going too fast can lead to hasty decision-making and cutting corners inappropriately. An accelerated team has a heightened risk of overlooking a crucial step in the process, overlooking a valuable opportunity, or of making a decision without the benefit of a critical piece of information. Going fast can also increase the risk of burnout, so program leaders should make sure the pace is sustainable.

Program leaders must consider how speed affects the risk items on their watch list. It is important to recognise that acceleration can be an important part of a risk reduction strategy, and should not be viewed simply as a high-risk proposition. Program leaders must take steps to ensure the acceleration strategy is aligned with the program’s overall risk appetite, and should encourage “speed with discipline” as a guiding principle. 

Experiments come in many forms. The simplest form involves an intervention followed by an observation followed by reflection. The intervention introduces a change, while the observation records the impact of that change and the reflection translates the experience into learning. This formula can be applied to experiments related to processes, technologies, documentation,  requirements, and other program activities. It is important to recognise that the only failed experiment is one we do not learn from.

Experiments are most effective when done as part of a regular practice rather than as isolated, occasional activities. We ask a question, perform an experiment that produces an answer… which leads to another question.

Clear, consistent communication from leadership, across multiple channels, is essential to guide individuals to operate confidently at increased speed. Senior executives, senior staff, and middle managers must regularly communicate to the workforce, using meetings, program and portfolio reviews, memos and emails, public speeches, articles, and other forums, to reinforce the desired norms and behaviors.  Start with Why.  Leaders are able to inspire others by first communicating why they need to do what they do. Why do we need to deliver capabilities faster?

Going faster is not just a tag line for us; it’s a serious business about keeping the force competitive and dominant. It starts with our warfighters, everything is about their mission. We are competing against peer adversaries who can match its technology. At a time of unprecedented technological advancement, we must have the fastest acquisition system to keep on winning. 

The strategy is fairly simple: empowering program managers with design tradespace, prototyping, flexible contracting, and appropriate decision authorities to take the reins of the programs. Resulting organizational byproducts—speed, agility, and accountability. Must expand human-driven approach: delegating decisions to the lowest appropriate level; increasing rapid experimentation and prototyping for “fast failing”, early risk reduction, and keeping flawed concepts out of programs of record; and expanding use of commercial technology and practices, including designing for upgradeability and sustainment. 

Empowering decision-making as close as possible to the sources of the most critical information reduces decision latency and enables the team to integrate more of the relevant data into the decision.  A team that operates with the shortest possible decision-making path is more able to respond and adapt to rapidly changing conditions, move faster through its own decision-making process, and inform or implement decisions made higher in the organization.  

Allowing decisions to be made at lower tiers of the organization also frees up capacity for upper level leaders to take broader strategic actions and clear away the obstacles that degrade implementation.  And most importantly, the individuals who are personally involved in decision-making take greater care throughout the process and feel greater ownership for the outcomes of the decision, making this a best practice and key enabler for acceleration.  As a general principle, issues should be resolved at the lowest level possible. 

Decision authority must be accepted as well as delegated.  While senior leaders can initiate this change, personnel in lower-tier organizations must be willing to accept the accountability that accompanies empowerment.  Both parties have a role in avoiding an overly cautious approach where all decisions are automatically pushed to the highest possible level.

Requirements set the foundation of an acquisition program. They must be clearly defined, realistic, affordable, and testable. Given the rapidly changing pace of operations, technologies, and threats, DoD cannot afford to spend two years authoring and coordinating JCIDS documents to lock down requirements for a decade or more.
 
Effectively scoping a program, increment, or release is a critical element to being able to deliver capabilities in a timely manner. Far too many programs attempt to do too much at once which risks delivering any capabilities. The key is to scope the work that leverages mature technologies, is affordable within the available budget, and can realistically be delivered within the desired/needed timelines. 

To help meet expected delivery dates, some degree of flexibility is needed in the requirements. The operational command or business unit should convey requirements via high level objectives for the acquiring organization to deliver as much capability as possible based on budgets, schedules, risks, and other factors.

It’s better to have an 80% solution today than risk the entire program trying to get it perfect. If your program is under pressure to deliver sooner, ask yourself: What functionality could be removed or deferred and still achieve the desired outcomes? If you effectively scope the program and manage requirements as outlined below, you should be able to regularly deliver capabilities. 

How a program is structured is critical to determining when capabilities can be delivered to users. After decades of attempting to build exquisite large complex systems via a single “big bang” approach with limited success, agencies have embraced more iterative, spiral, and Agile development with greater success. Breaking the scope of work into multiple smaller releases enables organizations to be responsive to changes in operations, risks, budgets, priorities, contractors, technology, and more.

A program’s acquisition strategy must assess the environmental factors and structure development, integration, and delivery accordingly. A major weapon system that delivers all of its planned capabilities after 10–15 years will not satisfy its customers as much as a system that delivers 60 percent of its capabilities in 6–8 years, with the program office involving the customer in iterative deliveries thereafter. This principle holds true for acquisitions from small software programs to large aircraft systems. 

“Streamline rapid, iterative approaches from development to fielding. A rapid, iterative approach to capability development will reduce costs, technological obsolescence, and acquisition risk. The Department will realign the incentive and reporting structure to increase speed of delivery, enable design tradeoffs in the requirements process, expand the role of warfighters and intelligence analysts throughout the acquisitions process, and utilize non-traditional suppliers. 

Over the life of a program, a considerable amount of time is spent developing strategies, coordinating them within the Program Management Office PMO and the many external stakeholder and oversight organizations. PMOs will spend months and years developing thousands of pages of documentation and hundreds of Power Point slides and spend countless hours in meetings.
 
How much of that contributes to delivering the capabilities? While there needs to be sufficient rigor to ensure the program is addressing the fundamentals and complying with required elements, months and sometimes years are lost in seeking consensus from dozens of organizations to ensure the documentation and presentations are “perfect” or low enough risk to proceed. Many executives encourage tailoring processes and documents to what makes sense for the program, and while there are some barriers, programs should leverage this empowerment to streamline smartly to deliver capabilities sooner.

The “start up favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional “big design up front” development. New ventures of all kinds are attempting to improve their chances of success by following its principles of failing fast and continually learning. And despite the methodology’s name, in the long term some of its biggest payoffs may be gained by the large companies that embrace it.

In acquisitions, the conventional wisdom is to define a program’s requirements and acquisition strategy upfront to describe the operational challenges and proposed solution. Budgets are determined early, often with a two-year lead time for Congress to appropriate funds. These plans are written before the system is developed based on the assumption that the program’s design and risks can be worked out ahead of time. After 5-10 years of development, developmental test, and production of initial quantities, users are first able to see the system in operational test. It is at this point when agencies realize the program’s features don’t effectively address the operational challenges as they weren’t effectively defined upfront or the environment has changed significantly over the last decade.

Ask potential users, purchasers, and partners for feedback on all elements of the business model, including product features, pricing, distribution channels, and affordable customer acquisition strategies. The emphasis is on nimbleness and speed: New ventures rapidly assemble minimum viable products and immediately elicit customer feedback.

Unlike yearlong product development cycles that presuppose knowledge of customers’ problems and product needs, agile development eliminates wasted time and resources by developing the product iteratively and incrementally. It’s the process by which start-ups create the minimum viable products they test.

An acceleration team should aim to only produce the documents that are useful and needed to manage the program, rather than writing “compliance only” documents which exist only to satisfy the interests of an outside stakeholder.

If there are requirements in policy that don’t make sense for your program, identify them and offer recommendations to tailor or waive that requirement. Be sure to include the information on the waiver authority organization, duty title, etc.

Understand the difference between a requirement that a program must have an XYZ strategy which complies with an organization’s template vs a requirement that a program capture and convey the core elements of their strategy to decision authorities and stakeholders. Ultimately the documentation is designed to ensure the program office has done sufficient critical thinking to execute the next phase of the program.

Develop an outline of the documentation the program office plans to compile, with the intended content in each document. Identify how this proposed set meets the documentation requirements. Present the proposed documentation outline with the decision authorities early in the process to solicit their approval. As some functional oversight organizations may resist tailoring their functional document, this may require the program’s leadership chain assuming they agree with the approach to engage on this is how we need to move forward for the program.

Program offices should be empowered to tailor documentation to their program’s environment. Based on type of acquisition, size, scope, complexity, and risk, the documents are there to help the program develop and execute sound strategies. The documentation is not intended to ensure compliance with some oversight organization’s standardized approach. Oversight organizations should develop and publish templates and guides for each major document to help the program offices apply the best practices from past programs and ensure critical areas are addressed.

A small, empowered, high-performing team is often able to deliver focused impact more quickly than larger teams or organizations made up of multiple teams. One of the primary reasons large teams or organizations don’t move quickly is the amount of formal coordination required before decisions can be made and actions taken. In a small team, members often work nearby and conduct regular brief check-ins to ensure each member is aware of the others’ efforts and challenges. This compact design enables the team to accomplish its purpose quickly and efficiently. 

The number of communication lines between individuals multiplies when the team gets bigger, making it increasingly difficult to coordinate activities and sustain a high tempo. To facilitate control, large teams are broken into multiple smaller teams, and required coordination between them further increases. Over time, a greater proportion of the team’s resources are diverted to meetings, reports, emails, and other administrative activities to maintain alignment and coordination between the components. Thus, keep the team small to move fast. 

Have a problem-solving mindset A key quality of a high-performing team is their ability to overcome obstacles. In a workplace, nothing is ever smooth-sailing. Problems come in many forms; it could be a delay from a supplier, technical breakdowns or an idea that didn’t translate in the real world. 

1. Leaders support experimentation as a learning method

2. Workforce understands the methods, procedures, and purposes of experimentation

3. Workforce has access to resources e.g. a sandbox environment that replicates the operational environment and can be used for doing experiments without impacting operations

4. Workforce has access to mechanisms for sharing observations and lessons learned

5. Introduce experimentation principles and practices to team.

6. Quickly design and execute simple, informative experiments.

7. Craft a “campaign of experiments” to provide regular pace of learning and discovery.

8. Leverage existing communication reporting channels to inform leadership.

9. Pass along leadership guidance insights to your team so they understand the Big Picture

10. Start communications with the “why go fast” first — then articulate the “how.

11. Review policy on decentralized decision authority and publicize local application for your project.

12. As specifically as possible, identify decisions that can and should be delegated to lower levels.

13. When in doubt, delegate Assuming no explicit statutory or regulatory policy preventing the delegation

14. Establish shared expectations about decision-making authorities.

15. Continuously watch for instances where decision-making is slowed down by unnecessary involvement by higher-level authorities.

16. Encourage team members to sign up for additional training.

17. Arrange a group training session for the team.

18. Take a course yourself and share the lessons with the rest of the team.

19. Challenge a team member to research, develop, and deliver a course.

20. Who are the formal and informal leaders in the organization?

21. What messages are these leaders currently sending, and are these messages consistent with the desired culture?

22. What new messages should the leaders begin sending, in order to introduce the desired culture?

23. What measures are the leaders currently using to assess the organization’s performance, and how do these align with the desired culture?

24. What measures should the leaders focus on, in order to reinforce the desired culture?

25. What incentives are currently in place, and do they align with the desired culture?

26. What new incentives and rewards can be established to reinforce the desired culture?

27. Have leaders identified groups within the organization that already exhibit the desired culture?

28. What steps are leaders taking to hold up these groups as models or exemplars for others to emulate?

29. Don’t overly define the solution – Operational sponsors outline high level objectives 

30. Empower “product owner” to set vision, shape requirements, and actively collaborate with users, acquirers, developers

31. Lower level requirements require flexibility to be responsive to changing operations, threats, risks, performance, and budgets

32. Requirements for current release should leverage only mature technologies and/or COTS solutions

33. Delivers capabilities to the users quickly

34. Enables iteration based on user behavior and feedback

35. Restrain system complexity, avoid over-engineered solutions.

36. Demonstrate and measure value accurately; rapidly iterate deliveries

37. Involve non-traditional vendors

38. Provides clarity and builds consensus about the problem to be solved.

39. Facilitates prioritization and focus, reduces wasted effort and mis-aligned, unproductive activities.

40. Identify an area that is overly complex or contains a large collection of unsorted ideas, designs, components, or facets.

41. Assess the outcome – briefly discuss whether the smaller set of remaining items is a better collection than what you started with.

42. A program in the early stages should plan to structure the delivery of systems or services of the full envisioned scope in multiple iterations.

43. Allow for iterative deliveries without having to meet the full set of performance requirements envisioned for the complete solution.

44. Understand the potential constraints and tradespace in determining iterative breakpoints based on major groupings of scope or a repeatable timeline e.g. annual deliveries

45.  Identify dependencies with external programs and discuss with stakeholders the required functionality, interfaces/integration, and timelines.

46.  Acquisition, contracting, engineering, and testing strategies should reflect the iterative structure to include the processes, resources, and decisions needed to field each release.

47. If establishing a new capability area, explore the opportunity to structure high level requirements via a new Portfolio 

48. Setup a series of discussions with stakeholders from the operational/requirements organizations on managing requirements with greater agility.

49. Review existing contracts in your buying office to see if similar work is being done by the same contractor or subcontractor.

50. The best way to cure a sleepless night—yours and theirs–is to take action.

Prototyping and experimentation should be used prior to defining requirements for many weapons systems. Some platforms are designed for routine replacement instead of static configurations that last more than a decade. This approach, a major departure from previous practices, will allow the Department to more quickly respond to changes in the security environment and make it harder for competitors to offset our systems.”

“Advanced technology must be integrated into producible systems and deployed in the shortest time practicable. Approved, time-phased capability needs matched with available technology and resources enable bold acquisition strategies as preferred approach to satisfying operational needs. Incremental development is the preferred process for executing such strategies.”

“A bias toward evolutionary development mitigates against over-engineered solutions, requirements creep, and premature technology insertion. Over time, with quick learning, rapid course corrections, and more opportunities to insert evolving technology, a series of  incremental projects fulfills the overall portfolio mission needs by following a step-wise path, instead of attempting large and risky episodic jumps in capability.”

Acquisition, contracting, engineering, and testing strategies should reflect the iterative structure to include the processes, resources, and decisions needed to field each release.

Many operational commands overly define system requirements for the acquisition community, who in turn overly define system specifications for industry. This results in many stovepiped solutions that are not responsive to changes in operations, threats, and technologies. Most DoD systems don’t operate as standalone stovepipes, but are part of a systems-of-systems or portfolio of capabilities. Instead of overly defining system requirements, operational commands can enable greater speed and flexibility by capturing operational requirements at a broader portfolio level. 

DoD’s requirements system is under-resourced and lacks the speed, agility, and innovative approaches needed to effectively exploit leading technologies for military advantage. DoD’s requirements processes, including implementation of JCIDS policies, contribute to lengthy development timelines, limited flexibility, and stove-piped systems. Although this process is important to provide joint warfighting priorities, the lengthy series of system-centric analyses, requirements documents, and reviews can limit innovation and interoperability by prematurely defining and constraining requirements.

“The purpose of an Initial Capabilities Document ICD is to document joint military capability requirements and associated capability gaps in cases where the Sponsor deems the operational risk of unmitigated capability gaps to be unacceptable. The ICD provides traceability to the operational context, threats, and other relevant factors that determine the joint military capability requirements. The ICD quantifies capability gaps associated with the requirements, operational risks across the joint force, and proposes materiel and/or non-materiel approaches to closing or mitigating some or all of the identified capability gaps.”

ICDs are traditionally scoped for an acquisition program to address. DoD organizations should consider authoring Portfolio ICDs to cover a broad mission or capability area and align with the scope of a portfolio rather than that of a single program. They would be broad documents central to ensuring that the operational, acquisition, and intelligence communities align around common outcomes, priorities, and expectations. In coordination with stakeholder operational commands, operational sponsors could manage capstone requirements via portfolio ICDs as living documents. This could include periodic updates to reflect their current concept of operations, strategic guidance, priorities, threats, capability gaps, and desired effects.

A Portfolio ICD must serve as an umbrella requirements document to allow future programs and rapid acquisition efforts to leverage and iteratively define capability gaps within that mission or capability area via capability development documents or check box alternatives. As operational commands develop and coordinate ICDs, they should consider structuring them to cover a broader capability or mission area vice a specific materiel solution to enable speed in future efforts. As new threats, operational demands, or technology opportunities arise, organizations will no longer have to develop and staff an ICD, but rather proceed to the analysis and subsequent requirements documentation activities. 

During the early stages, the program works with its operational sponsors to refine and structure the program’s requirements. To set the stage, the team should have a clear understanding of the users’ Concept of Operations CONOPS, performance objectives, and operational environment. 

The requirements are prioritized to support an Analysis of Alternatives tradeoffs, and the advantages and disadvantages of structuring development via releases. As requirements mature, frequent collaboration with end users is critical to ensure the requirements capture users’ priority needs and that all stakeholders have a common understanding of current and future CONOPS. 

Collaboration with other stakeholders e.g., engineers, testers, and enterprise architects is also critical during the shaping of the requirements. The program identifies a Product Owner, structures the requirements documents, and establishes the requirements management processes. Once a contractor is selected, the development team refines the program and release backlogs with the Product Owner and PMO.

The program backlog contains all desired functionality and requirements. A release backlog typically comprises the highest priority requirements from a program backlog that a team can complete within the established timeframe. Each sprint consists of the highest priority requirements from the release backlog. Once the development team commits to the scope of work for a sprint, that scope is locked. Sprint demonstrations conducted by the contractor at the end of a sprint may identify new features or defects that the team would add to the release or program backlogs.

The Product Owner, in collaboration with operational sponsors, requirements organizations, legacy system operators, a broad user base, architects, systems engineers, enterprise architects, and other stakeholders captures, integrates, refines, and prioritizes items on a program backlog. 

The portfolio’s operational representative should be empowered to dynamically reprioritize, add or delete, and shape capability requirements based on operational needs, threats, technical performance, systems engineering, security, feedback from earlier releases, and other factors. These representatives would actively collaborate with operational commanders, end users, organizations providing threat assessments, and enterprise architects to curate the portfolio backlog. During portfolio reviews with Military Service leadership and operational commands, operational representatives could present the requirements backlog to ensure alignment with operational priorities and outcomes.

Each program or increment must also manage its requirements via dynamic backlogs. As interim developments are demonstrated or fielded, user feedback and system performance might generate new capability requirements or shift priorities for the backlog. The goal should be to ensure that each successive iteration addresses the users’ highest priority needs and strengthens force effectiveness.

A close partnership between users and materiel developers is critical to the success of defense acquisition programs and is a key tenet.. Users must remain actively involved throughout the development process to ensure a mutual understanding across the acquisition and user communities. While most users maintain operational responsibilities associated with their day job, the more actively they can engage in the development, the better chances for success. Operational commanders must make a commitment to allocate time for users to engage in development activities.

Users share the vision and details of their concepts of operations, business processes, and the desired effects of the intended capabilities. Through ongoing discussions, the program office and developers gain a better understanding of the operational or business environment, identify alternatives, and explore solutions. 

Users can describe and validate the requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria. The program office must make certain that the requirements can be put on contract and are affordable given funding, schedule, and technological constraints. Testers should also take an active part in these discussions to ensure common expectations and tests of performance.

User forums enhance collaboration and ensure that all stakeholders understand and agree on the priorities and objectives of the program. The forums can serve as a valuable mechanism for gathering the full community of stakeholders and fostering collaboration. They give users an opportunity to familiarize developers with their operational requirements to communicate their expectations for how the system would support these needs

Continuous engagement of users, developers, acquirers, testers, trainers, and the many other stakeholders at these forums also enables responsive updates and a consistent understanding of the program definition.
Accelerating the pace of delivery requires making adjustments to the design of the system being developed. It is not sufficient to simply “turn the crank faster,” we must also take a different approach to system design. Reuse – Someone probably solved your problem already

“Systems thinking has been defined as an approach to problem solving that attempts to balance whole thinking and reductionist thinking. By taking the overall system as well as its parts into account systems thinking is designed to avoid potentially contributing to further development of unintended consequences.

Apply to problem solving when components as part of entity should best be understood in the context of its relationship with other components of the entity, rather than in isolation. The orientation and connections between the project components and how the project itself fits within the larger environmental structure. The internal structure leads to the project function while the external structure influences and modifies the project operations and outcomes.

The interactions, links and dependencies between the project components. Also, the connections between the project and the components and systems in the external environment. These relationships lead to the system dynamics, behavior and performance of the project.

Characteristics of the environment and context within which the project exists. These set boundaries and conditions for the project operations and may be inherent to the environment or dictated by the sponsor.
Initial conditions and definitions which impact a project’s definition, scope and performance. The assumptions can cover different aspects of the project e.g., conceptual, geographical, temporal, stakeholder etc. and their applicability varies.

Although there are numerous and highly popular process models for design approach, they are consistent in that they begin with problem exploration, move into ideation of solution concepts, and include some element of prototyping and testing those solution concepts for feedback.

While the process is depicted as linear, in practice, it is often highly iterative and may require jumping across process steps depending on the circumstance of the team, problem complexity, and other variables unique to the space by which the problem exists.

The START point. The design is simple, basic, immature, and delivers little value. The best move involves additive strategies that increase complexity and introduce new components, features, or concepts e.g. brainstorming, prototyping.

The SHIFT point. The design has accumulated a critical mass of complexity and now delivers significant value. Now the best move is to adopt reductive strategies that decrease complexity 

The STOP point. The design has accumulated too much complexity, which overwhelms value. The best move is to take a pause, then use reductive tools to significantly reduce complexity. At this point, it may be wise to scrap it and start over from scratch.

 The SHIP point. The design is elegant: simple and effective, providing maximum value. Declare it complete and send it out into the field.

Trimming is an iterative technique for removing unnecessary elements from a design. It can be applied to technical designs and system architectures, as well as process designs, communications products, and organizational structures. The ideal candidate for trimming is an object that has been accumulating components over time i.e. a system with many features, a process with many steps, a presentation with many charts, etc.
This method is typically used during the middle to late phases of design effort, at a point when the design has accumulated a significant quantity of components, parts, or steps. It can be applied to a finished, mature design as well as to a work-in-progress. 

Modular Open Systems Approach is a systems engineering approach that involves dividing large entities into smaller modules with standard interfaces. It builds on principles such as “high cohesion, low coupling”  to produce systems that are more robust, maintainable, and easier to update over time.

The term “modular design” refers to building a large system out of discrete pieces, usually built to standard dimensions and attributes. This often allows for rapid assembly of modules into a system, as well as easy customization, depending on which modules are incorporated. Lego blocks are an example of modular design.
Open Systems use standards that are independent of a particular vendor or designer, increasing the diversity of potential suppliers. These standards are particularly important at interfaces. Again, a Lego block’s standardized interfaces allow for connections between any two blocks.

Program management is responsible for evaluating and implementing a modular approach to the maximum extent feasible and cost effective. This approach integrates technical requirements with contracting mechanisms to support a more rapid evolution of capabilities and technologies throughout the product life cycle through the use of architecture modularity, open systems standards, and appropriate business practices. 

Modular approach is subjected to verification to ensure major system interfaces comply with, if available and suitable, widely supported and consensus-based standards; uses a system architecture that allows severable major system components at the appropriate level to be incrementally added, removed, or replaced throughout the life cycle of a major system platform to afford opportunities for enhanced competition and innovation.

1. New programs without an approved requirements document are ideal to effectively shape an Agile requirements management structure. 

2. Programs with an existing requirements document, could explore tailoring the implementation details or restructuring of the document. 

3. Work with Program Manager to effectively scope out high level requirements and managing requirements details via backlogs of user stories.

4. Outline key roles and responsibilities and identify the right individual(s) to serve as Product Owner and related roles. 

5. In collaboration with the flag-level requirements board, a program could propose they approve the release backlog prior to the start of each release.

6. Sprint backlogs should be agreed upon by the product owner and development team and not require the requirements board approval prior to beginning each sprint.

7. Provide insight into the larger grouping of requirements/user storiesplanned, priorities of items on the backlog, and insight into the notional items planned for the next few releases.

8. Assign cost estimators to develop annual and lifecycle cost estimates, Identify sources of funding from applicable budget portfolios

9. Operational command identify high-level capability requirements, attributes, and initial minimum values.

10. Hold regularly scheduled user forums and fund travel by stakeholders across the user community; alternatively, or in addition, provide virtual participation.

11. Arrange for developers to demonstrate existing capabilities, prototypes, and emerging technologies. 

12. User feedback guides developers and acquirers in shaping the program and R&D investments.

13. Give stakeholders the opportunity to convey expectations and obtain informed feedback.

14. Communicate the acquisition pathways and associated program execution strategies – especially the operational impacts associated with experimentation and testing as they relate to the user training and fielding activities.

15. Identify the current engagements between the acquisition and operational/business organizations to include the level, frequency, and methods of engagement 

16. Look to reduce the number of components, minimize the tight coupling of components, break feedback loops in the system

17. Limit the autonomy of independent behaviors of the components 

18. Prototype and iterate early and often. Welcome failure and learn from each iteration.

19. A framework for front-end requirements in agile systems development efforts

20. Incorporate principles and some tools in context of collaborative engineering of decisions among diverse stakeholders

21. Decompose Complex Challenge Areas into Problem Statements

22. Enhance competition – open architecture with severable modules, allowing elements to be openly competed.

23. Facilitate technology refresh – delivery of new capabilities or replacement technology without requiring change to all elements in the entire system.

24. Incorporate innovation – operational flexibility to configure and reconfigure available assets to meet rapidly changing operational requirements.

25. Enable cost savings/cost avoidance – reuse of technology, modules, and/or elements from any supplier across the acquisition life cycle.

26. Improve interoperability modules that can be changed independently

27. Understand and discuss transition likelihood across several types of technologies transitions

28. Quick identification of portfolio technology transition imbalances to both S&T and program communities

29. Draft transition and/or integration strategy templates that individual efforts can tailor for their efforts

30. Identify forums for S&T project leads, program offices, innovation groups to share capabilities and program needs and opportunities

31. Regularly collaborate with traditional and non-traditional companies via multiple-award contracts

32. Deep understanding of system and sub-system designs and architectures

33. Ability to conduct end-to-end performance models of the system combined with a continuous technical effort to update and validate system models, using testing and engineering data

34. Quantitative understanding of how related legacy systems or the system being upgraded is used and how it performs operationally e.g., reliability/availability, key performance metrics, etc.

35. Establishment and maintenance of open interface standards, with the ability of the government program office to compete block upgrades to the system

36. Perform an  Business Case Analysis to determine where, why, and when to prioritize limited engineering resources.

37. Improve chances of program success by failing fast, continual learning through experimentation, customer feedback, iterative design

38. Structuring programs and processes around small, frequent capability releases

39. Ask potential users, purchasers, and partners for feedback on all elements of the business model, including product features, pricing, distribution channels, and affordable customer acquisition strategies

40. Eliminate wasted time and resources by developing the product iteratively and incremental process start-ups create the minimum viable products they test.

41. Visit customer organizations to meet face-to-face with end users to understand their environment, frustrations, constraints, new threats, and operational priorities. 

42. Tailor a business model canvas for your program to understand who your true customers are, what they value

43. Make investments in rapid prototyping and experimentation to share notional solutions with users to solicit their feedback on features, tradespace, and design considerations.

44. Establish a regular collaborative environment to engage users, testers, and maintainers as part of a continual learning mindset throughout development.

45. Limit the number of core team members. Connect with outside experts as needed, but keep the core team small for day-to-day operations.

46. Collaboratively identify the team’s priority outcomes and shared responsibilities in achieving the outcomes. 

47. include functional representatives from program management, engineering, contracting, finance, cost, and logistics to ensure holistic discussion across the program’s lifecycle.

48. Provide the teams a set of guiding principles e.g. speed and simplicity are priorities identify the core processes, reviews, documentation for the type of acquisition and applicable policies and statute.

49. Direct connectivity to those who will use the systems they provide, which enables tight coordination on how requirements will be met over time within a portfolio construct.
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50. Review upcoming contract actions for similar scope, sole source or restricted competitors, and related requirements. 

The Navy faces high-tempo operations, budget pressures, and a fragile industrial base that has resulted in a maintenance backlog and reduced readiness of Navy ships. Having a stable and predictable budget is crucial to the Navy’s ability to execute contracts and maintenance actions required to keep our Navy in the fight.  

Delaying planned activities has drastic downstream impacts – injecting instability in the industrial base and creating large cost impacts and inefficiencies that can extend beyond the duration of the uncertainty. 

Navy has undertaken a multipronged approach focused on increasing accountability and improving productivity.  

In our public yards, we are growing the capacity of the shipyards to meet the workload demand, improving the training and productivity of the workforce, and making the needed investments in our shipyards to ensure they can support our growing needs.  

In the private shipyards, we have focused on improving the completeness, accuracy, and timeliness of planning; working with the Fleet to adjust maintenance schedules to level load the ports, revising acquisition strategies to improve stability and predictability, and streamlining Navy inspection points to improve efficiencies. 

The Navy is preparing the second Long-Range Plan for Maintenance and Modernization of Naval Vessels to forecast maintenance workloads for all in-service ship classes over the next 30 years to establish the framework to effectively sustain our investments in today's fleet.  The intent is to build a framework of continuous evaluation of the industrial base capacity and capability and provide the industrial base with stable and predictable workloads.  

To get new hires trained more efficiently, the shipyards have transformed how they train their new employees through learning centers that use both virtual learning tools and hands-on work.  The Navy has carried that innovative concept to the waterfront by developing “safe-to-fail” areas where artisans can experiment with new and innovative techniques to improve throughput or save time during an availability.  

Navy is working to create efficiencies in workforce training by standardizing and reducing regional variability in processes across the public shipyards.  Developing Navy-wide procedures in areas such as welding will enable authorized welders to work in different locations without the need to be requalified.   

New technologies such as cold spray and hull crawling robots have the potential to produce significant results.  Cold spray is a technology in which metal powders are accelerated at high speeds and sprayed through a nozzle, impacting and mechanically bonding to a surface.  This produces high performance coatings that can extend the life of legacy weapon and hull mechanical systems, and reduces the time to accomplish valve repair from 10 months at a vendor site to three days.  

Cold spray is currently in use at three of our naval shipyards and will be delivered to a fourth in FY 2020.  Hull crawling robots are able to carry a variety of test equipment to conduct hull inspections, non-destructive testing and biofouling removal.  This obviates the need for scaffolding or lifting equipment and is estimated to reduce dry docking periods 

The innovation project team at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard accomplished a complete 3D imagining of a submarine, to plan and execute maintenance, reducing cost and schedule by limiting the need for travel, excessive interference removal and lost material.   

Norfolk Naval Shipyard and Puget Sound Naval Shipyard now has a mobile passive Radio Frequency Identification system, which is similar to a GPS that tracks material throughout the shipyard. This creates a way for material targeting to record the distance items under maintenance travel. It will also eventually reduce costs by eliminating lost material and work hours associated with locating misplaced material. 

Navy is now in its second year of the planned 20-year, $21 billion Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program SIOP that will fully transform shipyards, will deliver required dry-dock repairs and upgrades to support both current and future classes of ships, optimize workflow within the shipyards through significant changes to their physical layout, and recapitalize obsolete capital equipment with modern machines that will dramatically increase productivity and safety. 
 
Navy and its industry partner tracked every aspect of the recent submarine maintenance availability to build a “Digital Twin” of the shipyard.  This dynamic virtual shipyard will enable the Navy to manipulate data and measure the impact of moving certain shops and workspaces to different areas within the existing footprint.  Once the full capability is delivered, the Navy will use this data to reimagine the shipyard to improve productivity and safety.

Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility PSNS&IMF will be the second naval shipyard to have a Digital Twin built.  To ensure the Navy properly understands the complex workflow, it will track both aircraft carrier and submarine availability.  

Portsmouth Naval Shipyard PNSY replaced an obsolete and maintenance-intensive lathe with a computer operated Horizontal Turning Center.  The center will improve productivity at PNSY and reduces the maintenance burden on our workforce.  

Work has also begun on Dry Dock #1 in preparation for refueling selected Los Angeles Class submarines.  Efforts include building a super flood basin and P1074 which will be dedicated to the Los Angeles Class Service Life Extension.  Work on PNSY’s Digital Twin is scheduled to begin in 2020. 

Navy is in negotiations to award a contract to build a new defueling and inactivation complex that will replace a 25-year old facility.  The new M-140 Complex will alleviate frequently required repair work and support the increase in submarine inactivations planned for the 2020s.  

Navy also awarded a contract for a horizontal boring mill for NNSY’s Navy Foundry and Propeller Center to support Columbia Class and Virginia Class propulsor manufacturing.  NNSY took possession of a Bridge Mill which replaces two obsolete and less effective machines to support aircraft carrier and submarine shaft, rudder, and fairwater plane work.  The Navy plans to begin NNSY’s Digital Twin effort in early 2020. 

The net result of all these integrated efforts is that the Navy is seeing positive results across the naval shipyard enterprise.  This includes completing nine of the last ten CVN availabilities on time or early including the recent early delivery of USS Nimitz CVN 68, the Navy’s oldest combat ship, from a docking availability at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. 

Currently, 13 submarines and two aircraft carriers are undergoing CNO-level maintenance at the four public shipyards. Of those, eight submarines and both aircraft carriers are on track to deliver on time.  

Navy is focusing on several lines of effort in private sector maintenance.  This includes improvements in planning, improvements in forecasting availability durations, working with the fleet to adjust maintenance schedules to level load the ports, and acquisition strategies that are designed to improve the long term stability and predictability of private sector surface ship maintenance planning and execution.

There are 45 CNO surface ship availabilities in execution at private shipyards across the country, and over 100 ships in planning.   Successful execution of complex ship maintenance and modernization availabilities requires solid planning.  

Accurate assessment of the ship’s maintenance needs, early identification of the scope of modernization, and timely procurement of Long Lead Time Material are all key tenets of solid planning.  The Navy is accelerating its planning milestones to drive earlier identification of availability scope, ordering material earlier and soliciting contracts earlier - ultimately leading to earlier contract awards.  

The migration to earlier milestones is enabled by improvements in the Navy’s ability to use maintenance data coupled with engineering analysis to determine lifecycle maintenance requirements and accurately estimate the scope of future repairs.  

Navy’s goal is to award all contracts 120 days prior to the start of an availability vice 60 days, which gives industry double the time they previously had to develop planning products and buy materials.  This initiative was informed by industry’s feedback, and has proven successful. 

The Navy understands the importance of workload stability to a healthy and efficient industrial base.  The method of contracting that workload is evolving from a complete one ship availability at a time strategy that did not provide long term workload predictability to a strategy that groups ship availabilities both horizontally and vertically to provide longer term predictability to incentive industry to grow the needed capacity.  Vertical groupings for ships with similar start dates will include multiple overlapping availabilities within a single solicitation.  

The Navy awarded the first three-ship vertical grouping contract. Horizontal groupings for ship availabilities occurring in a series will include multiple sequential availabilities within a single solicitation.  Based on industry feedback on ways to improve, the Navy also recently awarded a double docking availability. By awarding multiple availabilities, industry gets a backlog of work that creates confidence in hiring and retaining a skilled workforce and investment in infrastructure.     
 
Navy has implemented multiple initiatives that are improving performance in contract execution.  Initiatives include utilizing pre-priced changes to eliminate previously-required approvals for small dollar changes, which typically account for 70 percent of growth work schedule delays.  The approval cycle time was reduced to two days as compared to the historical average of 31 days.  The Navy and industry also worked together to implement an initiative to right-size quality assurance checkpoints, reducing the number by 50 percent by eliminating overlapping or duplicative requirements.  

The Navy has worked to become more proactive in availability planning by increasing directive maintenance strategies to improve the forecasting model for ship availability durations and port industrial capacity.  All five of the FY 2019 availabilities that incorporated this model have delivered on time.  

With better estimates of projected availability durations and capacity to accomplish the work, the Navy has been able to reduce workload peaks and valleys at each port to create a more balanced and executable schedule for the industrial base.  

The Navy will need to balance the workload across the public and private sectors to support future maintenance and modernization as well as ensuring new ship construction efforts are adequately supported.   The biggest risks to execution of this plan are continuing resolutions and lack of an on-time budget. Under a CR, the Navy has less cash available than requested which limits decision space for maintenance and operations.  As a result, the Navy is forced to make hard decisions about what to fund and what to defer or cancel. 
 
Budget uncertainty significantly undermines our efforts to provide greater stability and predictability to industry, and limits industry’s ability to plan for future work by hiring workers, ordering materials, and investing in maintenance and infrastructure upgrades.  

Navy fully understands that the on-time delivery of ships and submarines out of maintenance availabilities is a national security imperative.  The Department is taking a holistic approach to ensure both our public and private yards have the information, people, and equipment needed to maintain the world’s greatest Navy.  

The Navy will continue to work with Congress and our industry partners to address our challenges and to efficiently maintain and modernize the Navy’s growing fleet by growing the capacity and capability of the industrial base.

The Navy does not believe that carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower CVN-69 overran its last maintenance period because of classwide issues that could affect the next ships as they age, but rather the work tripled in length due to challenges specific to that hull and the shipyard at that time.

Lessons are learned and shared from each carrier maintenance availability, but the challenges with IKE – whose six-month work period at Norfolk Naval Shipyard more than tripled in duration – are something of a unique situation.

“In the case of Eisenhower, its not blaming the ship, but it was specific to the time and place of that ship and the work that went into the ship, and there were performance issues as well as material issues.

The delays were partly due to the age of the ship and partly due to the work that the Shipyard was able to perform at that time. “General terms: every single maintenance availability is its unique combination of the material condition of the ship, its required modernization, and workload capacity with some specific low-density/high-demand skillsets in the yard that’s been assigned the work. So it’s sort of a combination of all of the above. There are lessons learned – and they have been learned and shared.

“While no one is satisfied with making an avail longer than the notional, if that’s what’s required and we’re able to articulate those requirements ahead of time, it’s better for everyone to know this is going to be a long one so they can make the necessary adjustments to operational cycles than it is for us to push through an avail and have it run late.

Efforts are underway to facilitate conversations and coordination between the PEO, the shipyards, the carriers and the fleet, and to manage lessons learned, quite a bit of effort continues to go into “tweaking that class maintenance plan, making sure we’ve got the right time periodicity and condition-based periodicity for all the various systems and components on the ship.

It’s about building any unique availability work packages, … managing the modernization and configuration data management as well as ensuring that as we go through maintenance avails we’re getting actual cost data so we can better forecast and budget future avails.” 
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1.  Difficulties in develop/producing systems to solve unplanned requirements

2. Reductions in the number of competitors in sub-markets 

3. Losing tech/engineering work force and facilities capabilities 

4. Strong barriers to entry in many segments 

5.  Declining numbers of lower-tier suppliers

6. Limited capacity to increase production rates

7. Inability to reduce the time required to deliver systems.

8.  Difficulties incorporating commercial technology

9. Insufficient R&D due to focus on near-term fiscal performance

10.  Excess competitive actions leading to delays and cost overruns.

​Navy consistently underestimates how much ship maintenance is going to cost, a problem that derives primarily from the fact that the availabilities are budgeted for more than a year in advance of the actual start.

“You have to build the program a year before the budget cycle starts, so you are really two years out from when you are going to spend the money that you are initially building that program for. “So you are really estimating two years into the future what your maintenance requirements are going to be.”

There are class maintenance plans and class maintenance planners for each class of ship, but sometimes the data is incomplete because an inspection regime isn’t what it should be, something that has particularly hampered the surface fleet. However, the Navy has improved its planning and prework inspections.

Regarding private shipyards, the Navy is working toward giving them more notice — six months instead of 30 days — ahead of maintenance availabilities to help shipyards drive down workforce costs by better controlling their workflow.

“What we’re trying to do for the ships returning from deployment is we’re moving away from executing a contract 30 days before we needed to start the maintenance. So now we’re back to a six-month goal.

“We’re never going to be able to control every variable. It’s not a commercial effort where you own every route and you can control every variable to hyper-optimize. And, quite frankly, we don’t want to hyper-optimize because then you lose some resiliency. But we’re trying to find that sweet space of enough predictability so that we can be efficient.”

But our lack of either planning or adhering to plan has been one of the core issues and a new 30-year ship maintenance plan would help industry understand the demand signal from the fleet.

Maintenance to ships that was supposed to be over by now threatens to snowball into an ever-larger mass of deferred maintenance as more ships in later years may have to sacrifice needed repairs to pay for the maintenance pushed off from current avails.

In the 2020 unfunded priorities list, the deferred maintenance comes from three Los Angeles-class submarines — the Boise, Hartford and Columbus — and cites shipyard capacity. The lack of capacity is driven primarily by the midlife overhauls for the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines and aircraft carriers, which take priority and dry-dock space away from attack boats. An additional $51 million came from the maintenance of surface ships.

In 2019, the same factors applied: Some of the deferred maintenance was due to lack of capacity and some growth work, meaning that it’s likely that some of the 2020 deferred maintenance is the same as the 2019 maintenance.

The Navy asked for $280.6 million to be reprogrammed in a request to Congress, which would reduce the overall deferred maintenance tally, though it remains unclear by how much.

But the fact that the maintenance bill grew significantly in 2019 may not be all bad. Some of the increased cost has resulted from better planning and more comprehensive work agendas heading into the availabilities, the result of recently implemented changes.

“The Navy has improved some of its planning processes, and we have a better understanding of the work that’s required. It has resulted in better and more productive availabilities, but it has also increased the cost. They are more comprehensive

because in the past we haven’t understood what needed to be done. So we’re getting more efficient, but the efficiency is costing us more.”
While the Navy and shipyards are making some progress in cutting back on administrative and other burdens that slow down maintenance availabilities, the shipyards are so backed up that the Navy has received zero bids for several recent maintenance availabilities.

One of the most challenging fleet concentration areas for combatant and amphibious ship maintenance work have more than 3 dozen home ported with just four dry docks are available.

Couple the limited space with delays due to poor planning, material not showing up on time, expanding work package scope and more, and the shipyard has the potential to create a lot of headaches for ships in repair and the fleet operators planning to deploy them.

Fleetwide, the Navy has almost 50 ships availabilities right now, with more than 100 in the planning process. The Navy and its industry partners were just recently only completing about 36 percent of maintenance availabilities on time.

The shipyard had 20 concurrent availabilities recently, which fell down to 16. In a flurry of activity, the yards accomplished more after that-- about 45 percent of work on time but soon after only 33 percent.

“Our potential to be successful” is determined well before a maintenance availability even starts. When planning products and drawings aren’t completed on time, when items are added to the work scope late, and when materials don’t show up at the repair yard a month ahead of the start of work, the potential to be successful is greatly diminished.

Navy is trying to do better planning on its part, and ensure the yards are doing the same, to increase that chance of being successful. First is the need for a well-defined scope of work, that is finalized early, planned appropriately and has good work specifications.

To support that, the Navy has acknowledged that it is awarding contracts too close to the start of work and now allowing enough time for planning, so the Navy moving milestones to the left – including awarding a contract 120 days ahead of the start of the availability – to help the industry team properly prepare. The Navy should see a higher percentage of material arriving ahead of the A-30 mark, or 30 days before the start of the work.

“We have lots of data, and we use that data as we’re evaluating progress toward starting an avail. And we have not come across an availability yet” that has fully met the goal of having material on hand at A-30. Sometimes industry thinks it’s okay if the material arrives ahead of need, and sometimes the Navy simply awards contracts too late to support the A-30 material arrival.

Getting the material in on time for availabilities had been sitting between 50 and 60 percent of material on hand at A-30. Now, that figure is between 85 and 90 percent.

Another planning effort has to do with assumptions for how long the work should take: “you’re not going to make your schedules if you start out with availability durations that are unrealistic.”

“So we went and took a look at how long we were scheduling availabilities for, took a look at the model we used to estimate those availability durations, and we found some areas that probably weren’t giving us very good estimates.”

An Availability Duration Scorecard 3.0 was created, which took into consideration port capacities and other current data to more accurately predict how long work would take to help the fleet commanders level-load the ports, rather than creating a backup of ships waiting to get work done.

The scorecard initiative is designed to get better on-time delivery and creating predictable workloads for repair yards. The scorecard initiative includes efforts to contain growth in the scope of work packages, as primary ways to boost the shipyard’s low on-time delivery rates.

Once the availabilities begin, the Navy has a lot of requirements that bog repair workers down, further contributing to delays in the work and lengthier availabilities. A hard look at quality assurance checkpoints in particular highlighted to Navy leaders that redundancies and bureaucratic requirements were getting in the way of getting ships fixed up and returned back to the fleet for operations.

The number of Navy requirements for industry has grown in the last decades. The maintenance community committed to achieving a 50-percent reduction in QA checkpoints while still ensuring that quality work was being performed.

After being asked what requirements they’d like to see nixed, the shipyard came back with a list of ideas that constituted a 70 percent reduction. That was “a little far a leap for folks from a risk perspective,” the shipyard and Navy working together compromised on a list of QA checkpoints that represented a 50 percent reduction from previous requirements.

“We think, based on just how long these checkpoints take, it potentially – again, potential, because we haven’t realized anything – it could save us about 20 days. For the company to be doing blast and paint or something like that under the hull, to stop, to do a four-hour checkpoint callout … there’s a lot of impact to the schedule in wait time that that creates..”

This agreement with the shipyard is being tested with Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Shoup DDG-86. Navy expects the outcome will be positive and will lead to more formalized changes in the QA requirements.

“What we noticed when we started going through it was, there was a lot of duplication of effort already in what we were doing, so that was pretty easy. We really pulled back on non-critical coded areas, we took a lot of risk in cutting back checkpoints … on non-critically coded areas., so there’s a lot more work we can still do there.

“It’s less about capacity. If there’s enough capacity if we just are smarter and more willing to look for that path to yes.”

Tandem docking is a great idea the shipyard pitched to the Navy and that “we’re transparent and willing to work with anything that they’re interested in trying.” An example is the shipyard will double-dock two destroyers – USS Stethem DDG-63 and USS Decatur DDG-73 – in the same dry dock at the shipyard beginning.

There is some risk but not as much as one might think: both ships would have to be undocked at the same time, so a delay in one would delay both, but these two particular warships were chosen because the docking portion of their work scopes were almost identical.

Stethem and Decatur may diverge in the work they need done once the under-hull portion is completed in the dry dock, but they should remain on similar timelines in the dry dock as long as something “extreme” doesn’t happen.

Innovative ideas like tandem docking help, and new technologies and processes that shave days or weeks off of availabilities help. Tandem docking helps increase the capacity of the waterfront – getting five ships into the four dry docks at any given time, if the Navy chooses to fully make use of capacity through double-docking at the shipyard.

“There’s all kinds of ways to leverage that capacity with innovative initiatives and the willingness to find a path to yes. Innovative initiatives aimed at shortening the duration of the availabilities – and therefore making better use of available capacity – are coming from shipyards constantly looking for better and more efficient ways to pull shafting, do paint and blast work and more.

There is room for improvement on the Navy and shipyard side – and an imperative to improve, with operational pressures on the surface fleet increasing when more ships are stuck in port waiting for maintenance. Navy said no ships will go out on deployment with material deficiencies, so the repair industry must figure out how to get the full scope of work conducted in a shorter timeline without sacrificing quality and safety.

But systematic challenges remain that the Navy/industry team will have to continue to tackle in the long-term. “The scope of the work is getting much more complex, and that’s challenged some of our shipyards.”

“There’s an excess of work in the port. We routinely see no bids on work, especially on some of the continuous and emergent maintenance availabilities. No one has the capacity.”

The workload is excessive and the shipyards will have to look at growing their workforce in particular trade skills to keep up. They are at times limited in taking on work because they don’t have enough welders – specifically aluminum welders – so the Navy needs to prove it can provide stable and predictable workloads over the long-term.

“We have to get to the point where we’re providing shipyards the incentive to go and hire and retain the workers.

1. Capacity constrained supply market: Capacity is unavailable in required quantities or time due to competing market demands

2. Dependence on external markets: Domestic industry does not produce the product, or does not produce it in sufficient quantities

3. Diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages: Product or material obsolescence resulting from decline in relevant suppliers

4. Gaps in domestic workforce talent/capital: Industry is unable to hire or retain workers with the necessary skill sets

5. Erosion of domestic Infrastructure: Loss of specialised capital equipment needed to integrate, manufacture, or maintain capability

6. Product security: Lack of network/physical protection results in eroding integrity, confidence, and competitive advantage

7. Sole source: Only one supplier is able to provide the required capability

8. Single source: Only one supplier is qualified to provide the required capability

9. Fragile supplier: A specific supplier is fiscally challenged/distressed

10. Fragile market: Structurally poor industry economics, potentially approaching domestic extinction

Despite record budgets, the Navy is short hundreds of millions for maintenance. Navy is short hundreds of millions of dollars for ship depot maintenance this year and is looking at just shy of $1 billion in unfunded maintenance in 2020, shortfalls that threaten to upend progress toward improved readiness and clearing its maintenance backlog.

During a midyear review of 2019 budget spending, the Navy found it had more than $3 billion in emergency costs that needed to be covered, including nearly $1 billion for ship depot maintenance. There is at the very least nearly $1 billion in unfunded ship repair, meaning the fleet will need to find money or defer to later dates.

That move could have a cascading effect that means other ships may not get the full maintenance packages they need, putting pressure on an already beleaguered ship maintenance system. The shortages come in a year that saw a  $750 billion defense budget. That means that while the Navy should be toasting its good financial fortunes, it will instead be scrambling to find money to fix its ships.

Budget cuts are forcing the Navy to take a fleetwide look and identify what issues are most important — a triage process that ensures that some issues that could be addressed in scheduled maintenance availabilities today will instead be pushed off and become more expensive in the future.

The Navy is also hitting capacity at both its public and private shipyards and is having to defer maintenance simply because there is no room at the yards.

The problem is exacerbated by a reduction in the overall amount of money Congress allows for the Pentagon to reshuffle in any given year without having to go ask lawmakers for new legislation and new authorities in that year. In years past, the DoD had $4.5 billion of authority to reshuffle money. In 2018, that was reduced to $4.25 billion; and in 2019, the year that’s causing the problems, that was reduced to $4 billion.

For the Navy’s beleaguered maintenance accounts, the fiscal mess plays out this way: Growth work discovered during maintenance periods combined with insufficient capacity at the shipyards caused maintenance budgets to run over by almost $1 billion. The Navy points to the reduced cap authority as a primary driver in the situation, as well as a series of unplanned expenses.

The Navy’s ability to maintain its attack submarines has been strained in recent years, as the shipyards are overwhelmed with work on the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines and the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, with Los Angeles- and Virginia-class attack subs being the lowest priority work. 

These SSNs have often seen delayed inductions or delays once in the shipyard due to the workforce being tied up with higher-priority availabilities. As a result, the Navy a couple of years ago tried to send some of this work out to industry but those two yards saw their own delays and cost-overruns with USS Helena SSN-725 and USS Montpelier SSN-765.

Navy has framed the problem as one of basic workforce skill and program management that arose as the private yards tried to reconstitute an in-house repair capability. 

But many of the challenges arose when the yard tried to take on repair work without the same benefits of lessons learned and advanced planning that the public yards have access to. Both sides, however, are committed to doing better and hope to continue performing submarine maintenance for years to come.

Delays with Helena had led to delays in the ongoing USS Columbus SSN-762 availability now and the expected upcoming availability of USS Boise SSN-764 there in 2020.

“What we’re trying to do at the shipyard is to help them … establish a workforce, to regain some proficiency, get better at the planning. We’ve actually offered up resources from the public shipyards to go down and help them, from a lead maintenance activity perspective and project management perspective,” 

“There’s some basic fundamental blocking and tackling that they’ve got to get better at, and the shipyard recognizes that. We would like to keep them in the submarine maintenance business for the long-haul for a number of reasons.

Shipyards are “getting better. We’re close to delivering Helena. Columbus will be undocking probably sometime in near future, and then we’ll get Boise in there as well. So they’re making improvements. We’d certainly like to see the pace of that increase, and we’re working pretty closely with them because we need them to be successful.”

The shipyard has extensive experience with submarines – to build all the Navy’s subs – and with repair work – conducting aircraft carrier mid-life overhauls at the shipyard and sending personnel to repair yards and bases around the world to work on carriers and subs. Doing submarine repair work at the shipyard, though, is something that hasn’t been done since since a decade ago.

“We did reconstitute a workforce and facilities here in the yard to pick up some of the submarine maintenance where the naval shipyards found themselves with a heavy workload.”

“We did stand that team up pretty rapidly and picked up Helena. Subsequent to Helena, which we’re looking to complete early next year, we have the Columbus in the yard, and that’s an engineered overhaul. So we have been fortunate to have really great support from the Navy on their experiences in submarine fleet support and maintenance. 

We’ve had good communications and had solid teamwork on opportunities to learn from one another and continuously improve, and they’ve shared a lot with us and we’ve shared a lot in return to try to provide the best outcome possible for all of us, for the Navy, for the nation, to get these boats back out in the fleet where we all want them.”

But much of that sharing didn’t start until after Helena was in the yard and overran its docking selected restricted availability that was set to last 6 months. Helena is expected to come out of the yard nearly two years late.

The shipyard has deep experience in hiring and training the right personnel, investing in the right facilities and tools and managing programs to be successful; similarly, the DoD/industry team has long ago learned the lessons that contracting and planning have to be done early, and materials have to be on hand at the beginning of the work period to be successful.

And yet, the shipyard did not have access to the right information for early planning or materials acquisition ahead of starting Helena in the same way that the four public yards would have, setting up a difficult first-in-a-decade private sub repair.

For example, the shipyards have a “contingent material list” of items that should be kept on hand in case they are needed. This covers items not in the official work scope but that have arisen in past maintenance availabilities often enough that it’s common knowledge within the Navy that the materials should be on hand so as to avoid delays if emergent work arises. The shipyard did not have that list before Helena was inducted into its docking availability, leading to some delays as the contractor had to pause while material was ordered and eventually delivered.

Navy has access to more information than the shipyards on ship conditions and work scope than the yards do. That information can’t always be shared due to rules related to competitively contracting out the maintenance work, but the Navy and the private yards have worked diligently recently to find ways to award contracts earlier, conduct more thorough planning earlier, assemble better materials lists, and other steps to ensure better outcomes: chiefly, on-time and on-budget deliveries back to the fleet. Those lessons could likely be applied to contractors bidding for submarine repair work to see similar improvements in performance.

The shipyard learned a lot about expected and emergent work, as well as expected and emergent testing, that will be required for future work on Los Angeles-class SSNs. These lessons learned the hard way, plus information recently shared by the Navy, should set the yard up for greater success in upcoming availabilities, including the Boise engineered overhaul that will start as soon as Columbus finishes.

“The lessons from Helena, where they apply, and certainly from Columbus are very significantly deployed into the Boise plans,” The shipyard is looking for opportunities to team company and Navy personnel and share lessons learned to ensure significant improvement in the next availability.

Despite the challenges with these first LA-class availabilities, the shipyard is committed to continuing this work with the Navy and achieving better outcomes.

“Our efforts to support the Navy maintenance community includes continued execution and support of ship maintenance on-site around the world at naval shipyards and naval bases, and the more recent reconstitution of the resources and capabilities to perform submarine maintenance work at our shipyard. 

If the shipyard can bounce back from these two challenging maintenance availabilities, it appears the workload will become more manageable. The shipyard has determined its best workload would be one availability right after the next, heel to toe, rather than having two boats in at once as was inadvertently the case with Helena and Columbus. 

Additionally, as the Los Angeles-class submarines near the end of their service life, after a few more LA-class jobs the workload would likely switch over to the newer Virginia-class submarines.

“That would be something we would expect to execute very, very well because we know the boats; they’re earlier in their life, so their material condition is a little bit more completely known; the supply base is out there for new construction and available; we are executing the post-shakedown availabilities. So it’s likely that we’ll see transition into mostly, if not all, Virginia-class boats after a couple more 688s.”

Having already invested in capital improvements and the standup and training of a large team to do submarine repair work, we’re in this business for the long haul. It’s an area that we know the Navy needs support from us on, and it’s work that we want to provide support to for years into the future.”

Navy shipyards infrastructure in need of major improvements so a series of major modernization projects are being kicked off at Shipyards where equipment is aging and projects are being completed late.

Shipyard officials say the on-time delivery and modernization efforts are continuing. Shipyard has broken ground on more than $80 million worth of projects, including a paint and sandblasting facility. The Navy also announced a contract for a dry dock overhaul project of 150 million dollars.

The shipyard is moving in the right direction with upgrades and improved workflows. “These infrastructure projects are critical to the shipyard's effort to meet mission requirements and return vessels to the fleet.”

The shipyard also has hired many workers over recent years, in line with hiring trends at all of the yards, but new workers are not as efficient as experienced workers who are retiring out of the workforce.

The Navy might be failing to properly estimate the cost and time necessary to complete the upgrades. The Navy understands the concerns and is working to complete a full infrastructure survey and to create a computer model to ensure its projections are accurate.

More than $200 million worth of projects that have been in the works for years are taking shape at the Shipyard, promising to boost efficiency and continue the modernization of the shipyard. Navy needs to speed shipyard improvements in the face of a massive backlog of projects.

Because of growing demands on the fleet, it's important to minimize the length of repairs and maintenance in shipyards. And equipment is aging beyond the expected life at the shipyards.

The contract for the drydock is crucial. The improvements will allow Los Angeles-class attack submarines to float into the dry dock without a buoyancy system. It will also allow the dry dock to accommodate newer Virginia-class submarines.

The Navy's Shipyard Optimization Plan, created to address deficiencies and an aging infrastructure, calls for $21 billion worth of investment in public shipyards over the next 20 years.

It’s estimated to take at least 20 years to clear the backlogs at naval shipyards -- having grown by 40 percent over five years -- connecting directly to the need for expanded workload capacity and expedited processes.

“Training on a more modern plant design provides a major upgrade and equips our sailors with a reliable platform for the years ahead, which is key to ensuring maximum effectiveness across the Fleet.”
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1. Few opportunities for growth without increasing market share or expand foreign sales despite tough competition and export controls.

2. Cash flow, long a strength of defense industry now sub par for most 
 companies.

3. Consolidations create higher liabilities for some defense firms, resulting in lower market value

4. Market capitalisation of defense companies subject to significant losses even beyond those of most other older firms.

5. Innovative R&D down and R&D profits were sharply constrained by dated DoD approach of having the companies “get well on production.”

6. Key personnel leaving defense firms or retiring while the recruitment and 
 retention of high-quality technical talents becoming more difficult

7. Integrating different operating styles of the acquired companies as well as their product lines.

8. Reducing costs by eliminating facilities and personnel in order to achieve the 
 returns that had been forecasted to justify making the acquisitions.

9. Capturing additional market share or new business to sustain growth rates.

10. Making decisions about how to enable new concepts of operations and capability for warfighters and improved business operations