Navy Confident That Maintenance Workload Transparency, Better Business Practices Will Avoid...

For all the struggles the Navy has today caring for its 106 surface combatants, the problem will only get worse: the fleet is set to increase by 60 percent between now and 2034, when the Navy will have 169 combatants in its inventory.

The Navy’s top acquisition chief said he’s confident that transparently laying out those upcoming challenges will encourage industry to make the right investments in their infrastructure and workforce and avoid further ship maintenance troubles in the coming decades.

Today, the Navy does not have enough dry docks at its disposal to care for cruisers, destroyers and Littoral Combat Ships. A mismatch in the number of ships and number of dry docks is one issue; ships coming into the yards late due to deployment extensions and ships coming out of repairs late due to unplanned work popping up exacerbate the situation.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James Geurts decided nearly a year ago that more analysis and discussion of long-range ship maintenance requirements was needed. To that end, the first-ever long-range ship maintenance plan was released March 21. Geurts remains firm that having this discussion now will help the Navy and industry create more capacity and more efficient processes by the time the surface fleet peaks in size in the 2030s.