Budget Concerns Led Huntington Ingalls to Sit Out Coast Guard Icebreaker Contest

By: Ben Werner

May 2, 2019 6:48 PM

• using.org

Ingalls Shipbuilding lands the 700-ton deckhouse on the amphibious assault ship Tripoli (LHA 7) on July 9, 2016. Ingalls Shipbuilding photo.

The U.S. Coast Guard offered industry the potential for a multi-ship, multi-year, multi-billion-dollar program in its heavy icebreaker competition – but funding uncertainties gave some of the nation’s largest shipbuilders cold feet when it came time to bid.

Mike Petters, chief executive of Huntington Ingalls Industries, said his company opted to pass on bidding for the Polar Security Program, even after being involved in the program early on, because of concerns over how it would fit into HII’s workload. Petters addressed the Polar Security Cutter contract and other shipbuilding issues during a conference call with analysts to discuss the company’s first quarter financial results.

“As the program evolved,” Petters said, “it appeared to us that the alignment of our capacity, the budget, and the requirements just didn’t’ really match up well for us.”

HII wasn’t alone in passing on the Polar Security Cutter project. Before the Coast Guard released its request for proposals in 2018, General Dynamics officials had told USNI News they were interested in the program. However, like HII, when it came time to bid General Dynamics also passed, according to company officials.

On April 24, the Coast Guard awarded VT Halter Marine Inc. a $745-million detailed design and construction contract to build the first-in-class heavy icebreaker.

The Polar Security Cutter program’s path to being funding during the past year highlights the current risks shipbuilders face when planning bids for new projects.

A year ago, when the Coast Guard released its requests for proposals, Coast Guard officials expected five shipbuilders to bid on the program, USNI News previously reported.

However, during the summer the Polar Security Cutter’s path to becoming a funded program hit a wall. The Senate appropriated $755 million for the program, but the House of Representatives’ budget zeroed out a variety of programs, including the Polar Security Cutter, to provide $5 billion to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. For months, until Congress passed a budget earlier this year, the contracting process was frozen.

Petters told analysts Thursday morning, “while we stayed involved technically, we made (the Polar Security Cutter) much less of a priority for our business.”

As for new programs coming, notably the Navy’s new future frigate (FFG(X)), Petters said HII is “intensely interested” but warned analysts the current spending-friendly atmosphere on Capitol Hill could quickly change, causing the Navy to scale back the scope of programs.

In the case of the frigate, Petters said the Navy, ahead of next year’s expected contract award, already appears to be preparing the industry for a possibly smaller program.

“As far as how that program is going to come out, there have been some changes, from a big contract for 20 ships to now maybe something different from that.”

The Navy’s Fiscal Year 2020 budget requests $1.3 billion to purchase its first-in-class guided-missile frigate, for a program now calling for buying nine hulls by 2024. Along with HII, the Navy awarded Austal USA, Lockheed Martin, Fincantieri Marine and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works each $15-million conceptual design contracts to hone their frigate designs.

Still, Petters said HII is preparing for the possibility of being awarded the frigate contract. The company already invested in its Ingalls Shipbuilding yard to support the frigate program. An award would come just as HII is winding down its production of the Coast Guard’s National Security Cutter.

“So, from a capacity standpoint, it feathers right into our business in a very productive way,” Petters said of a possible frigate award. “It’s a Coast Guard program kind of moving toward a Navy program, so I’d hate to say that that’s a hot production line, but it’s pretty warm.”

Taking a longer-term view, Petters said for most of his career the Navy’s shipbuilding budget, formally known as the Navy’s Shipbuilding and Conversion (SCN) appropriation account, hovered around $15 billion. During the past few years, the Navy increased its shipbuilding budget to between $24 billion and $25 billion.

“The question for us is, is this the new standard, are we going to be in this 23, 24 or 25 (billion dollar) range for a while, or are we going to at some point fall to that $15 billion level,” Petters said. “And the reason that is so important for us is because it all comes down to how does Columbia (ballistic missile submarine program) get paid for.”

An SCN appropriation of between $24 billion and $25 billion means there’s enough money to fund the Columbia-class submarine and the other programs HII is working on, Petters said. A higher SCN appropriation level would send industry the message that a second frigate block-buy could realistically occur after the initial contract award. Industry would know a block buy was possible for the platform the Navy pursues once the current Arleigh Burke Flight III guided-missile destroyer block buy expires. And there would be less uncertainty about the amphibious warship program, Petters said.

“We want to see that there’s going to be a sustained commitment to this current level of SCN account, for us to believe that the follow-on programs are going to get funded on time and efficiently, supporting hot production lines, supporting labor buildups, supporting the rhythm of the industry,” Petters said.

“At this point we’re hopeful, is the best way to put it,” Petters said. “But we’ve been here for a while, and we know these things can be cyclic.”

Report to Congress on Navy Shipbuilding, Force Structure

May 2, 2019 6:59 AM

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The following is the April 30, 2019 Congressional Research Service report, Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress.

From the report

The current and planned size and composition of the Navy, the rate of Navy ship procurement, and the prospective affordability of the Navy’s shipbuilding plans have been oversight matters for the congressional defense committees for many years.

On December 15, 2016, the Navy released a force-structure goal that calls for achieving and maintaining a fleet of 355 ships of certain types and numbers.The 355-ship force-level goal is the result of a Force Structure Assessment (FSA) conducted by the Navy in 2016. The Navy states that a new FSA is now underway as the successor to the 2016 FSA. This new FSA, Navy officials state, is to be completed by the end of 2019. Navy officials have suggested in their public remarks that this new FSA could change the 355-ship figure, the planned mix of ships, or both.

The Navy’s proposed FY2020 budget requests funding for the procurement of 12 new ships, including one Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) class aircraft carrier, three Virginia-class attack submarines, three DDG-51 class Aegis destroyers, one FFG(X) frigate, two John Lewis (TAO-205) class oilers, and twoTATS towing, salvage, and rescue ships. The Navy’s FY2020 five-year (FY2020-FY2024) shipbuilding plan includes 55 new ships, or an average of 11 new ships per year. The Navy’s FY2020 30-year (FY2020-FY2049) shipbuilding plan includes 304 ships, or an average of about 10 per year.

If the FY2020 30-year shipbuilding plan is implemented, the Navy projects that it will achieve a total of 355 ships by FY2034. This is about 20 years sooner than projected under the Navy’s FY2019 30-year shipbuilding plan — an acceleration primarily due to a decision announced by the Navy in April 2018, after the FY2019 plan was submitted, to increase the service lives of all DDG-51 destroyers to 45 years. Although the Navy projects that the fleet will reach a total of 355 ships in FY2034, the Navy in that year and subsequent years will not match the composition called for in the FY2016 FSA.

One issue for Congress is whether the new FSA that the Navy is conducting will change the 355-ship force-level objective established by the 2016 FSA and,if so, in what ways. Another oversight issue for Congress concerns the prospective affordability of the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan. Decisions that Congress makes regarding Navy force structure and shipbuilding planscan substantially affect Navy capabilities and funding requirements and the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base.

SECNAV, CNO Update Congress on Columbia SSBNs, New Large Surface Combatant

By: Sam LaGrone

May 1, 2019 8:28 PM

• usni.org

Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarine USS Rhode Island (SSBN-740) blue crew returns to its homeport at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Ga. in 2018. US Navy Photo

CAPITOL HILL – Navy leaders told House and Senate appropriators this week that the service is ready to move out on its first new large surface ship design in a decade. Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson also said the service is moving to build in more margin for its new ballistic missile submarine program.

Amid concerns the Navy’s cost and time margins for the service’s next nuclear ballistic missile submarine are growing thin, Navy leadership are meeting with contractors to ensure the program is on pace for the first boomer to move out on its first patrol in 2031.

Next week, Spencer and Richardson will meet with chief executives from Huntington Ingalls Industries and General Dynamics Electric Boat to make sure the design and construction of the Columbia-class SSBN is on track, Spencer told the House Appropriation defense subcommittee on Tuesday.

“We are sitting down with industry to do a collective assessment. While you know the Columbia-class submarine is our number-one acquisition program, it is in concert with the Virginia-class program, which is one of our most successful acquisition platforms that we have in the Navy,” Spencer said in a response to HAC-D ranking member Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.).
“We are balancing risk in both of those portfolios. We do have concern, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that. We’re sitting down with industry to look at the supply chain, to look at both primes that are involved to ensure that we can manage the risk that we can build in some margin where we can. If we do not do this in lock-step with industry it will run off the rails. I guarantee you that. We’re focused on this from the executive level on down.”

On Wednesday, Richardson told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee that there was a drive in the service to build more margin in the $102-billion program.

“We are on schedule, but just on schedule. We are on cost, but just on cost,” Richardson told the panel.
“The secretary and I have made it very clear that looking forward and anticipating those things that will inevitably arise during testing and everything in such a complex program, we need to work diligently to build more margin into the program.”

Among the delays, last month the Government Accountability Office disclosed the Navy had lost several months in the program due to problems at the land-based testing site for the submarine’s electric drive.

“A manufacturing defect that affected the system’s first production-representative propulsion motor required extensive repair that consumed nine months of schedule margin at the land-based test facility,” read the report. “The Navy now plans to test the motor at the same time it had originally scheduled to make any final design changes before starting production. This could constrain opportunities to implement timely, corrective actions if problems are discovered during testing.”

Columbia-class boomers will be built concurrently with the Virginia-class submarine program that will be built in a teaming arrangement with sections of both classes assembled by GD’s Electric Boat facilities in Connecticut and Rhode Island and at HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding.

The Columbia program is designed to build and test the first-in-class Columbia (SSBN-826) over a period of about 10 years, while at the same time the Virginia program will move to a larger Block V design that will demand more materials from an already-thinning supplier base.

Large Surface Combatant

Richardson and Spencer also fielded questions on Wednesday from Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who quizzed the pair on the Navy’s plan to move to a new hull design for the next large surface combatant by 2025 to supersede the Arleigh Burke-class (DDG-51) Flight III design.

“The Navy has moved ahead with those plans since last year, with procurement of a lead ship now scheduled for Fiscal Year 2025, which is just a couple of years after the end of the current multi-year procurement contract for the DDG-51 Flight IIIs,” she said.
“Many of us in Congress expected that we would see a subsequent multi-year contract for the Flight IIIs.”

Until recently, the Navy had planned to continue building a Flight III variant past the 10 hulls already under contract as part of a 2018 multi-year deal between HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works in Collins’ home state of Maine.

Instead, the service wants to develop a new large surface combatant that would use new kinds of sensors and weapons. Pentagon officials fear signals the service’s existing AN/SPY-1 and emerging AN/SPY-6 air search radars make them a target for long-range anti-ship ballistic missiles and want to develop a family of manned and unmanned ships that will take information from a variety of inputs. The lessons from the rapid acquisition program of the new guided-missile frigate and the MQ-25A Stingray unmanned aerial vehicle will help inform the program, Navy leaders have said.

“One of the things we’re doing differently is bringing in industry into a discussion of the requirements, so we don’t come up with something that’s impossible to invent and then build,” Richardson said on Wednesday. “The virtue of doing that with the frigate and the unmanned tanker has proven itself that we have much more confidence in cost and schedule, even on the lead ship.”

Truman Refueling

While the service leaders were outlining the budget before Congress, the White House had reversed a major point of the Fiscal Year 2020 budget: sidelining carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75).

At the same time Richardson and Spencer were testifying before the HAC-D on Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence told the crew of Truman the ship would not be retired and would instead undergo a refueling and complex overhaul. The Trump Administration’s FY 2020 budget had cut the refueling as part of a deal for a two-carrier buy on the next two Ford-class carriers; the RCOH cancelation and the two-ship buy would create about $8 billion in savings that would be used to fund new systems like high-energy weapons, hypersonic missiles and unmanned surface vessels.

The move had been panned by a bipartisan group in the House and the Senate, and the four defense committees were expected to insert funds for the refeuling in the upcoming FY 2020 budget bills.

While Pence and President Donald Trump said they had changed the terms of their budget, as of Wednesday afternoon the White House has not sent over a new budget guidance to Congress, several sources confirmed to USNI News. Several defense officials also confirmed to USNI News that neither the Pentagon nor the Navy were informed of Pence’s announcement ahead of his speech on Truman.

The topic did not come up at the Wednesday’s SAC-D hearing with Navy leadership nor by Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan’s House Appropriations defense subcommittee budget hearing.

Spencer told reporters following the Navy budget hearing that the service would carry out the White House instructions.

USS Stockdale (DDG-106) transits the Gulf of Oman on Jan. 5, 2019. US Navy Photo

An undated artist’s rendering of the planned Columbia-class submarine. Naval Sea Systems Command Image

Artists rendering of the first planned Flight III Arleigh Burke destroyer, Jack H. Lucas. HII Photo

Vice President Mike Pence speaks to Sailors during an all-hands call in the hangar bay aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) on April 30, 2019. US Navy Photo

The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) transits the Atlantic Ocean on Dec. 12, 2018. US Navy photo.

Report to Congress on U.S. Navy Frigate FFG(X) Program

USNI.org

April 24, 2019 7:37 AM

The following is the April 4, 2019 Congressional Research Service report, Navy Frigate (FFG[X]) Program: Background and Issues for Congress.

From the report

The FFG(X) programis a Navy program to build a class of 20 guided-missile frigates(FFGs). The Navy wants to procure the first FFG(X)in FY2020, the next 18 at a rate of two per year in FY2021-FY2029, and the 20thin FY2030. The Navy’s proposed FY2020 budget requests $1,281.2 million for the procurement of the first FFG(X). The Navy’s FY2020 budget submission shows that subsequent ships in the class are estimated by the Navy to cost roughly $900 million each in then-year dollars.

The Navy intends to build the FFG(X) to a modified version of an existing ship design—an approach called the parent-design approach. The parent design could be a U.S. ship design or a foreign ship design.At least five industry teams are reportedly competing for the FFG(X) program. Two of these teams are offering designs for the FFG(X) that are modified versions of the two Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)designs that the Navy has procured in prior years. The other three industry teams are offering designs for the FFG(X) that are based on other existing ship designs. One of these three other industry teams is proposing to build its design at one of the LCS shipyards. The Navy plans to announce the outcome of the FFG(X) competition in July 2020. The LCSprogram is covered in detail in another CRS report.

The FFG(X) program presents several potential oversight issues for Congress, including the following:

• whether to approve, reject, or modify the Navy’s FY2020funding request for the program;whether the Navy has appropriately defined the cost, capabilities, and growth margin of the FFG(X);

• the Navy’s intent to use a parent-design approach for the FFG(X) program rather than develop an entirely new (i.e., clean-sheet) design for the ship;

• cost, schedule, and technical risk in the FFG(X) program;

• whether any additional LCSs should be procured in FY2020 as a hedge against potential delays in the FFG(X) program;

• the potential industrial-base impacts of the Navy’s plan to shift in FY2020 from procuring LCSs to procuring FFG(X)s;

• whether to build FFG(X)s at a single shipyard, as the Navy’s baseline plan calls for, or at two or three shipyards;and

• the potential impact of the FFG(X) program required numbers or capabilities of U.S. Navy cruisers and destroyers

New Defense Strategy, Commitment to Readiness Drove Major Shifts in Navy Budget

By: Megan Eckstein

USNI.org

April 9, 2019 9:49 AM

Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group participates in a strait exercise in the Atlantic Ocean on April 7, 2019. US Navy Photo

THE PENTAGON – The Navy’s Fiscal Year 2020 budget request includes tectonic shifts in how the Navy does business – swapping a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier for unmanned surface vehicles and other technologies – and it comes even as the service is reevaluating what sized fleet and what mix of ships the Navy needs to meet future challenges.

Though a force structure assessment tends to guide acquisition decisions in the budget process, the Navy has made clear that the most recent FSA is dated and that service leaders are going through the process of compiling a new one, due out at the end of this calendar year.

So, with the current FSA being null and void, what guided the Navy’s big budget decisions this year?

“The National Defense Strategy defines the vision of the military,” Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Systems (OPNAV N9) Vice Adm. Bill Merz told USNI News.
“The Navy is going to be a part of a much more lethal, distributed, agile joint force.”

“That vision has not changed, and that’s what we’re after. That’s what drove the 355-ship navy under the last FSA, and we’ll see what this one – we expect the requirement probably to go up this time just because of the distributed maritime operations concept that the fleets are employing now that drives a lot of enabling requirements like logistics,” the admiral continued.

Merz noted that FSAs typically only last a few budget cycles and that it’s normal to redo them periodically. But many things have changed since the last FSA was released in December 2016: the Trump Administration took office, former Defense Secretary James Mattis penned a new National Defense Strategy, the Navy adopted a distributed maritime operations concept that changes how the fleet would operate and sustain itself, new leadership in all the combatant commands have taken over, the frigate program has matured and appears much more capable than previously thought, the submarine industrial base is struggling to keep up even as its workload is increasing, and much more.

Merz acknowledged that the upcoming FSA will likely be very different than the one on the books today. But he also said that the Navy’s budget submission was well informed despite the lack of an FSA to guide it.

“We are constantly doing wargames and analysis. It’s the same analysis, threat vectors, intelligence reports that get fed into the FSA. So it’s not the FSA driving those; the FSA’s just a beneficiary of it, like so many other things we look at,” he said.
“So we don’t need the FSA to tell us we need unmanned systems or directed energy, rail guns and that sort of stuff. Those are done by threat analysis for specific threats and capability gaps that those threats generate that we know we have to fill. How much of it we need based on a campaign plan or an [operational] plan? The FSA will have an opinion on how many of those things do you need, where do you need them, what kind of platforms need to be carrying them, that sort of stuff. But the actual capabilities, we have other methods through our research labs and everything else that determine that.”

Another driving factor in the Navy’s FY 2020 budget request is balance. Merz brought up balance many times during the interview with USNI News, noting that the fleet could not outsize the Navy’s ability to sustain it, man it and modernize it.

“Understanding exactly what we need for readiness drives how much we can invest in the future. So the readiness is the here and now, and the investments are the capabilities we’re trying to bring into these accounts,” he said.
“We have funded virtually every maintenance account, whether air or surface ship, to what we call the max executable rate. … Matter of fact, we have an unfunded priority list that adds even more because industry has told us, hey, we think we can execute a little more.”

Still, the Navy is struggling to understand what those costs will be as the Navy grows larger.

“We had been shrinking the Navy for 40 straight years – that includes aircraft and ships and everything else – so there’s a new addendum in the shipbuilding plan about sustainment, what the cost is going to be to sustain that 355-ship navy. We don’t really even have the complex modeling to figure that out, so that’s one of the things we’re working on is developing the models,” Merz said.
“We have one of the largest budgets ever, and it’s sustaining about a 300-ship navy, not a 355-ship navy. We have to get a lot more efficient, we’re going to need a lot more resources, or god forbid we have to get smaller again – and that just creates a lot of risk in what we’re trying to do. Good news is, I think everybody is rallying around this. They understand the chore, it’s ahead of the panic, it’s about 10 to 20 years out – but it does give you a sense for what that challenge is going to be and we’re going to have to start working on it.”

The Navy took a turn under former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to grow in size, ending that decades-long shrinkage, but Merz said sequestration and other factors led the Navy to make the decision to grow in an unbalanced way.

“We came through a period, and Secretary Mabus did what he could, but that was an era of untenable decisions: you’re either going to buy a ship or you’re going to pay for readiness. Some years we did one, some years we did the other. And in the end we found ourselves pretty far out of balance on readiness. And some of the challenges have manifested in horrible ways, and we’re not going to go back to being an unbalanced navy – so whatever sized navy we are, it’s going to be a balanced navy. The proper investments in readiness versus the proper investments in the advanced capability.”

Merz said the renewed focus on readiness to create a balanced force began in 2016 and is already showing results. Aviation readiness rates, which at times dropped below 50 percent, have “taken dramatic turns lately in a positive direction” thanks to funding spares, logistics, engineering and depot maintenance accounts to the maximum executable levels for the last few budget cycles. Rear Adm. Scott Conn told lawmakers last week that those rates now bounce between about 63 percent and 75 percent for Super Hornets – just short of the 80-percent mission capable rate the services are aiming for in their fighter fleets.

“We’re on a very aggressive recovery ramp. We’re very pleased that the recovery effort that essentially started in FY ’16 and ’17. When we turned that spigot wide open, we all kind of got into a pile-on with industry trying to make this maintenance a lot more efficient, and it’s starting to pay off now. I think we’re pretty satisfied that we turned it; we’re not satisfied until we see that we can sustain this ramp. And then once we get to the target of 80 percent, which is the [tactical aircraft] number but internally we’re applying that to [all aircraft] … is there enough enduring reform there and efficiencies to make sure we stay there? And that’s what we’re after. Right now the vectors are positive … and now the trick is to not take your foot off that pedal.”

Balance also means making the fleet more lethal and more netted, to support the distributed maritime operations concept, Merz said.

“Directed energy, hypersonics – those are the types of capabilities we’re most interested in, and you see a fairly significant push and support money to get those things fielded. Railgun is still a little bit nascent for us, that’ll just compete against a lot of other capabilities in that same family. We’re not wedded to railgun; we’re very interested in the technology, but like a lot of technologies, we’re committed to it until we have to compete it against something else and we’ll see how it does,” Merz said on the lethality piece.

On networks, he declined to dive into too many details, but he said the Navy Tactical Grid and the Joint Tactical Grid will be important to the way the Navy hopes to do business in the future.

“We know these netted effects are really where we need to get to to maximize the lethality out of any fighting force we have. We’re a large, powerful navy; but we’re a large, powerful navy distributed all over the planet. So in any particular part of the world, we may not be so large, and the way we get after that is just making sure we’re connected and netted and we can coordinate the effects we need,” he said.

Merz said the Navy had lost sight of this balance before but vowed not to do it in the future. A top priority, he said, is “remaining balanced in the Navy – don’t over-commit to readiness, don’t over-commit to investment. It’s kind of like the rising tide floats all ships kind of thing – we have a history of leaving a few of those ships behind, and I don’t think you’re going to see us do that again.”

Navy’s 355 Ship Fleet Infogram

US Navy’s unmanned surface concept. NAVSEA Image

Artist’s concept of a HELIOS laser system aboard a U.S. destroyer. Lockheed Martin Image

Navy Simulating Efficient Shipyard Layouts as Part of 20-Year Modernization, Optimization Effort

By: Megan Eckstein

USNI.org

April 5, 2019 11:59 AM

Sailors assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) observe as the ship pulls into Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Va., on Aug. 5, 2017. US Navy photo.

The Navy is creating “digital twins” of its four public shipyards so engineers can conduct modeling and simulation and identify ideal new configurations for the yards to boost productivity.

As part of its 20-year, $21-billion effort to modernize and optimize the four yards, the Navy is in the early stages of this simulation work, meant to show potential new layouts of the yards’ welding shops, pump shops, material storage, office spaces and more could contribute to better workflow and reduced man hours.

The Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan (SIOP) effort will also include repairing and enhancing dry docks and replacing aging capital equipment, but the Navy hopes to hash out the layout issues early on to avoid installing large capital equipment and then having to move it a few years later.

“The Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan articulated a vision that shipyard infrastructure has three interdependent components: the dry docks, the facilities and the capital equipment; and that these configurations are fundamentally linked to the shipyards’ ability to execute the mission they are tasked to do,” Steven Lagana, program manager for the SIOP effort at Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), said in a Navy news release this week.
“We are utilizing modeling and simulation as a tool to integrate these components to better inform the desired infrastructure layout. Through this, the Navy will be in a better position to make meaningful, long-lasting investments that not only address the condition of the facilities and equipment but also change the way the work is conducted. Once we’re finished, the Navy will recover more than 300,000 work days per year, every year.”

A first step is the digital twin effort, where the yards as they exist today will be put into a modeling and simulation system that can then generate numerous options to optimize work flow.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James Geurts told reporters last week that a pilot program is taking place now at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Hawaii. A master planner there has designed a notional new design for the yard and is running simulations on transit times for various types of personnel to understand what shops, offices and other facilities need to be located near what other facilities to help optimize travel flow.

The impact of each individual having to walk an inefficient path from location to location to do their job may seem minute, but when multiplied by the total workforce over the span of a maintenance availability, an inefficient yard design can extend the amount of time it takes to repair a ship quite a bit.

NAVSEA commander Vice Adm. Tom Moore told USNI News previously that at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia, “the workforce walks the circumference of the earth every day getting to and from the worksite.” He said a 6-percent inefficiency in their time spent walking around the yard that could be eliminated with a more appropriate flow from the shops down to the drydocks.

The SIOP program office is holding its first industry day on April 8 at Washington Navy Yard, and the event is filled to capacity.

“We’re sold out,” Lagana said in the news release. “We have more than 100 companies from 19 states and the District of Columbia who are coming to hear about the program and see how they can be part of this once-in-a-century team that will deliver the shipyards the Navy needs.”

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

By: Megan Eckstein

using.org

April 2, 2019 5:18 PM

Water is drained from a dry dock at U.S. Naval Ship Repair Facility and Japan Regional Maintenance Center (SRF JRMC) Yokosuka preparing the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Shiloh (CG 67) for a scheduled maintenance availability on July 20, 2015. US Navy photo.

CAPITOL HILL – 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.

“When I looked at it, we had spent a lot of time analyzing and building the 30-year shipbuilding plan, which gave the industrial base a real clear signal on what was to come and then they could start making capital investment decisions. We were less clear and less transparent about the repair work,” Geurts told reporters last week.
“And that, in combination with kind of awarding each ship repair individually, was causing us to sub-optimize performance. So my whole purpose for that plan was to make sure we were very clear for us with the Navy, with Congress, with all of our industrial partners, the workload coming forward and then get better at planning the work, which would allow our industrial partners to get more efficient at executing the work.”

The long-range plan does multiple things. First, it lays out the expected workload for the repair and modernization industry based on anticipated ship inventory. Identifying the number of availabilities, the number of man hours, and the dollar value of the work helps both industry leaders and Navy planners see the wave of work coming in terms that make sense to them.

It also outlines two ongoing initiatives with the private yards to help address today’s maintenance backlogs. The Private Shipyard Optimization (PSO) looks for opportunities to invest in the yards’ layout and capital equipment to create a more efficient place to do ship repairs and upgrades. The Private Sector Improvement (PSI) plan looks to create better workload stability and thereby be able to use new contracting models that promote efficiency and on-time delivery of ships.

Today, the Navy awards contracts an average of 90 days before the start of a maintenance availability, limiting yards’ ability to hire new people or rearrange their workload to accommodate a new ship. Geurts’ goal is to bring that average to 180 days to allow for better planning. Geurts also said he had already reduced the number of inspections associated with ship maintenance work by 30 percent and hoped to eventually bring that down to 50 percent. He’s also increased on-the-scene leaders’ ability to approve changes to the work package once an availability starts, helping to curtail what can be lengthy pauses in work while the approval request goes up the chain of command.

Geurts said he hopes these better business practices will help ships get in and out of maintenance in a timelier manner, as well as encourage companies to spend money on yard and workforce investments that will be pivotal to the Navy’s and industry’s ability to keep up with demand in the next few decades.

“Our on-time availability is improving out of both the public and the private yards, but it’s not yet to the point where we need it to be,” he said of efforts so far.

“It’s not done in a vacuum; recently I met with all the CEOs of the major ship repair companies to talk about other things we can do, and I think there’s cautious optimism,” he added.
“I’m starting to see performance improve, I’m starting to see we’re using shipyards we hadn’t used previously. As noted, the demand is there, the challenge is to meet that demand as efficiently as we can with the right acquisition strategy.”

The Navy is also looking to increase the number of certified dry docks that can work on Navy warships. Currently, just 21 dry docks can be used for the surface ship fleet – and just seven are located in the Pacific to service the 60 surface ships there.

The service is in talks with other shipyards that have dry docks to see if they want to do business with the Navy, and Geurts said his organization has offered to certify facilities before companies even bid on any repair contracts to reduce the risk the yard takes and to grow the field of possible repair yards. The Navy has also spoken previously of talking to industry to gauge any interest in existing yards adding new dry docks – such as BAE Systems’ addition of a floating dry dock in its San Diego repair yard that took in its first ship in February 2017.

Despite the efforts to find more dry docks to work with, it’s unlikely the Navy will increase its dry dock capacity by 60 percent to keep up with the 60-percent increase in ships needing them. Asked if the business practice reforms were enough to make up for the difference, or if the Navy would need to take additional measures going forward to deal with the upcoming surge in surface ship maintenance needs, Geurts told USNI News, “when we’ve looked at it, industry responds to the demand signal we put out there. We were not clear in showing the composite demand signal, so a key element of that 30-year maintenance plan was so we could show the entire demand signal. And my experience has been, when we clearly articulate the demand, industry makes really good decisions on how to invest to help us deliver on that demand.”

The littoral combat ship USS Montgomery (LCS 8) enters dry dock for Post Shakedown Availability (PSA) at San Diego Ship Repair on May 19, 2017. PSA is designed to harness results of a thorough test and evaluation period and pave the way to operational employment by the Navy. It is the last availability in the ship construction period and required repairs identified during combat systems ship qualifications trials and final contractor trials are made using contractor and program office money. US Navy photo.

Navy Needs More Dry Docks for Repairs, Says First-Ever Maintenance Report

By: Megan Eckstein

usni.org

March 21, 2019 7:11 PM

Sailors watch as the portside anchor of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) is lowered into a dry dock for maintenance on March 15, 2019. US Navy Photo

The Navy released its first-ever long-range ship maintenance and modernization plan amid a growing fleet and a growing backlog of repair work, and the report highlights challenges in dealing with chronic mismatches between maintenance requirements and yards’ capacity.

The report, Report to Congress on the Long-Range Plan for Maintenance and Modernization of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2020, highlights a shortage of dry docks for surface ship maintenance and the need to improve existing infrastructure at public and private yards to keep up with newer classes of ships, as well as the need for process improvements to allow private shipyards and the supply chain to grow their capacity and move faster to respond to a growing fleet size.

“Sustaining the 355-ship fleet will require changes to both public and private industrial capability and capacity. Current infrastructure will require update and refurbishment to support modern classes of ships and repair. Likewise, additional dry docks will be needed to address the growing fleet size. Navy and industry partners must create work environments where talented Americans will want to work and contribute to the national defense. This includes investments in updating facilities and capital equipment, and as well as providing that workforce training that is both modern and relevant and compensation commensurate with the skill required to repair Navy ships,” reads the report.
“Finally, we must avoid feast and famine cycles that erode both the repair industrial base and the underlying vendor supply base. Consistent funding matched to steady demand for work will enable the repair base, public and private, to grow to meet the needs of the 355-ship Navy.”

Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James Geurts announced the creation of this 30-year ship maintenance plan last summer, telling reporters that “we build a 30-year shipbuilding plan, that’s only as good as our ability to continue to repair and modernize those ships once we build them. So what we’d like to do is build a companion plan that then takes the 30-year shipbuilding plan, both what we have in inventory and what we build in that 30-year [shipbuilding] plan, and then forecast and plan for all the repairs and modernizations we’ll have to do.”

Navy spokesman Capt. Danny Hernandez told USNI News today that the report “is part of a strategic look at how we maintain and modernize ships. The report identifies key enablers such as industrial base capability and capacity, shipyard level loading, and workforce and facility investments to meet requirements of the long-range shipbuilding plan.”

On capacity, the Navy has talked about the need for more certified dry docks to conduct maintenance for surface ships, but the service has struggled to entice either existing Navy contractors to build new dry docks or commercial shipyards to agree to do business with the Navy. The report makes clear just how bad that need is: for 109 surface ships that are homeported in the United States, only 21 dry docks exist to conduct routine maintenance. The situation is even worse on the West Coast, where only four dry docks service the 45 surface ships – including Independence-variant Littoral Combat Ships, which require dry docks more frequently than other classes of ships due to the trimaran hull design.

“The ratio of ships to dry docks present in the Pacific presents a significant challenge that reduces margin for schedule changes and growth. The Navy has conducted a market survey of available/potential dry docks and is developing a long-range plan to increase the number of certified dry docks in the Pacific (and elsewhere if required) to reduce this shortfall,” reads the report.

On the public yard side, the Navy’s four naval shipyards have a combined 18 dry docks to tend to all aircraft carriers and submarines.

From the Report to Congress on the Long-Range Plan for Maintenance and Modernization of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2020.

While capacity is clearly an issue for the Navy, the service will also struggle with the timing of its maintenance availabilities. Backlogs have built up in recent years due to ships coming in for maintenance, workers finding additional problems beyond the scope of the work package, and delays building up – which have a domino effect on the ships waiting to come into the yard next. Navy officials have long said they aim for better planning, where work packages are accurate and workload can be matched to workforce capacity ahead of time.

Though gains had been made in reducing that backlog, as currently laid out in the plan, the Navy is chronically overbooked at its four public yards, at times thousands of people short of the workforce that would be required to conduct maintenance on the subs and carriers that will be at the four yards on any given day.

Looking forward, with the number of submarine depot-level maintenance availabilities per year oscillating from 14 to six at one point, planning will continue to be a challenge.

While upfront planning and workload management will be important for the Navy as the fleet continues to grow, so too will be finishing the maintenance availabilities on time and on budget.

To that end, the Navy has embarked on several initiatives. The Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan – a 20-year, $21-billion plan pitched to lawmakers last year – would look at optimizing the layout of the four naval shipyards, modernizing aging capital equipment and improving old dry docks.

“In 2018, most naval shipyard capital equipment was assessed as beyond effective service life, obsolete, unsupported by original equipment manufacturers, and at operational risk. This aged equipment increases submarine and aircraft carrier depot maintenance costs, schedules and reduced NSY capacity. Modernizing naval shipyard capital equipment is therefore essential to meeting future capacity and capability requirements, and maximizing fleet readiness,” reads the report.

Additionally, engineering analysis to support optimized layouts at the four yards “will restore badly outdated facilities while simultaneously reducing total personnel and material travel and movement by an average of 65 percent, which equates to recovering 328K man-days per year.”

On the private yard side, “the Navy, in conjunction with the ship repair industry, is developing Private Shipyard Optimization (PSO) initiatives for optimal placement of facilities and major equipment in each region. This includes an investment plan for infrastructure needed to support availability maintenance in support of a 355-ship Navy. The PSO results are expected in time to support the FY 2021 budget request. Working closely with private shipyards, the Navy is also implementing a Private Sector Improvement (PSI) program that addresses workload stability, governance, contracting and process optimization. The goal of the PSO and PSI initiatives is to identify and eliminate barriers to private sector ship availability throughput to affordably achieve on time delivery of surface ships.”

“The PSO/PSI initiatives will address appropriate risk sharing, timely repair availability completion, and streamlined business processes at private shipyards and the supporting vendor base,” the report adds. For example, it notes, a leading cause of delays at these private shipyards is unexpected work growth, the approval process for which can halt a maintenance availability while the request goes high up the chain of command. The report notes that 70 percent of growth work consists for small-value items, and so raising the dollar amount at which lower-level managers could approve the changes would “significantly reduce cycle time for approval” and allow maintenance availabilities to continue with fewer interruptions.

The report makes clear the Navy needs industry to invest in greater repair capacity, both at the private shipyards and at the vendors that make materials and components to support maintenance and modernization. But for industry to invest, the Navy also owes industry some predictability in funding and in workload forecasts, the report acknowledges.

“Maintenance and modernization requirements must be fully funded and efficiently executed to reduce deferred maintenance that adds risk to future fleet readiness. Risks to be addressed during the next 30 years include optimizing maintenance and modernization business processes (e.g., availability planning and execution) and adjusting the industrial base capacity and capability as the fleet grows to 355 ships,” it reads.
“Finally, the Navy must stabilize the vendor base by forecasting future logistics requirements (material availability) required to maintain fleet reliability and reduce the risk to readiness.”

From the Report to Congress on the Long-Range Plan for Maintenance and Modernization of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2020.

From the Report to Congress on the Long-Range Plan for Maintenance and Modernization of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2020.

From the Report to Congress on the Long-Range Plan for Maintenance and Modernization of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2020.

From the Report to Congress on the Long-Range Plan for Maintenance and Modernization of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2020.

Littoral Combat Ship USS Charleston Commissions in South Carolina

By: Ben Werner

using.org

March 3, 2019 2:14 PM

Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer delivers his remarks during the commissioning ceremony of USS Charleston (LCS-18) on March 2, 2019. US Navy Photo

The Littoral Combat Ship USS Charleston (LCS-18) officially joined the fleet during a Saturday commissioning ceremony in downtown Charleston, S.C.

“USS Charleston is proof of what the teamwork of all of our people — civilian, contractor and military — can accomplish together,” Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer said in a statement. “This ship will extend the maneuverability and lethality of our fleet to confront the many challenges of a complex world, from maintaining the sea lanes to countering instability to maintaining our edge against renewed great power competition.”

The Independence-class Charleston is the 16th LCS to join the fleet and is scheduled to be homeported in San Diego, Calif.

The Navy plans to build 34 LCS before shifting to its surface combatant priority, the future frigate program, USNI News previously reported. The Navy still has one LCS contract to award.

Work building the LCS is divided among two prime contractors – Austal USA who builds the Independence variants, and Lockheed Martin, the builder of the Freedom-class variants.

Austal is either in the process of constructing or working on the pre-production of 10 more LCS, according to the service.

Charleston is the fifth ship named for the South Carolina city. Former Charleston Mayor Joe Riley and his wife Charlotte are the ship’s sponsor.

“The sea is history,” Charleston Mayor John T. Tecklenburg said during the ceremony. “Nowhere will you find a people who understand those words more fully than the people of Charleston.”

The future USS Charleston (LCS-18) during acceptance trials on July 18, 2018. Austal photo.

The future USS Charleston (LCS-18) during acceptance trials on July 18, 2018. Austal photo.

CS Marine LLC is Currently Hiring

Career Opportunities

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Project Manager/Technical supervisor

Location: Jacksonville, FL or Marinette, WI

Entry level opportunity to grow a skilled marine service team.  

Must be able to manage various marine mechanical repair and troubleshooting projects.

Ability to handle multiple project simultaneously while using resources efficiently and maintaining budget and schedule.

Highly Motivated, Self-Starter, Resourceful, Problem Solver

Experience:

Previous project management experience preferred

Previous hands on mechanical experience required

Skilled in Office Suite

Good communication skills

Experience supervising skilled technicians (welders, pipefitters, die makers, etc…)

Minimum Technical Degree preferred

Pay/Benefits/Relocation: All Negotiable for right candidate

Project Engineer

Location: Jacksonville, FL or Marinette, WI

Entry level opportunity to grow a skilled marine service team. 

Ability to read and create manufacturing prints and technical procedures

Communicate instructions to customer and workforce with confidence

Ability to problem solve and find information to complete various tasks

Ability to comprehend complex mechanical projects

Highly Motivated, Self-Starter, Resourceful, Problem Solver

Technical Bachelor’s Degree

Experience:

Previous hands on mechanical experience required

Technical Bachelors Degree

Skilled in Office Suite

Good communication skills

Pay/Benefits/Relocation: All Negotiable for right candidate

Marine Diesel Mechanic/Technician

Location: Miami, FL or Jacksonville, FL or Marinette, WI

Diagnose and repair large marine diesels

Install engine hardware and software upgrades

Willing to travel about 50% of time, some international traveled required

Highly Motivated, Self-Starter, Resourceful, Problem Solver

Experience:

Diesel engine repair and troubleshooting

Good communication skills

Knowledge of basic mechanical system troubleshooting

Must have own basic toolset

Must have valid passport

Minimum Technical Degree preferred

Pay/Benefits/Relocation: All Negotiable for right candidate

General Technician

Location: Jacksonville, FL or Marinette, WI

Diagnose and repair large mechanical equipment

Experience with precision measuring equipment (dial indicators, micrometers, etc)

Willing to travel about 20% of time, potential international travel

Highly Motivated, Self-Starter, Resourceful, Problem Solver

Experience:

Mechanical system diagnosis and repair experience

Good communication skills

Knowledge of basic mechanical system troubleshooting

Must have own basic toolset

Must have valid US passport

Minimum Technical Degree preferred

Pay/Benefits/Relocation: All Negotiable for right candidate

Please, fill out the form on our careers page and make sure to attach your resume and a brief note. Thank you from CS Marine, LLC.