[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 116-47]
SHIP AND SUBMARINE MAINTENANCE: COST AND SCHEDULE CHALLENGES
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
OCTOBER 22, 2019
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
39-805 WASHINGTON : 2020
SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
JOHN GARAMENDI, California, Chairman
TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
ANDY KIM, New Jersey, Vice Chair AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia
KENDRA S. HORN, Oklahoma JOE WILSON, South Carolina
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania ROB BISHOP, Utah
JASON CROW, Colorado MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
XOCHITL TORRES SMALL, New Mexico MO BROOKS, Alabama
ELISSA SLOTKIN, Michigan ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas JACK BERGMAN, Michigan
DEBRA A. HAALAND, New Mexico
Melanie Harris, Professional Staff Member
John Muller, Professional Staff Member
Megan Handal, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Garamendi, Hon. John, a Representative from California, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Readiness...................................... 1
Lamborn, Hon. Doug, a Representative from Colorado, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Readiness.............................. 2
WITNESSES
Geurts, Hon. James F., Assistant Secretary of the Navy for
Research, Development and Acquisition, Department of the Navy,
and VADM Thomas J. Moore, Commander, Naval Sea Systems Command. 4
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Garamendi, Hon. John......................................... 37
Geurts, Hon. James F., joint with VADM Thomas J. Moore....... 41
Lamborn, Hon. Doug........................................... 39
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Ms. Houlahan................................................. 51
SHIP AND SUBMARINE MAINTENANCE:
COST AND SCHEDULE CHALLENGES
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Readiness,
Washington, DC, Tuesday, October 22, 2019.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m., in
room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Garamendi
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN GARAMENDI, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
Mr. Garamendi. The committee will come to order. We note
that we have guests from other parts of the Armed Services
Committee. They will be coming in. And as they come in, without
objection, they will join us and ask questions at the--I know.
Everybody here is.
But there are others that will be coming in a little later.
And when they come in----
Mr. Lamborn. It depends on who they are.
Mr. Garamendi. Are you objecting, Doug? Are we going to
have one of those days? Good.
Good afternoon. I would like to welcome everyone here
including anybody that shows up from the other committees that
would like to join us.
This subcommittee has conducted multiple inquiries into the
damaging consequences of failing to sufficiently maintain our
ships, our aircraft, and ground vehicles. A series of alarming
mishaps in recent years and subsequent committee investigations
into the surface Navy readiness revealed how degraded material
conditions of ships and poor maintenance practices adversely
impacted readiness and put our sailors at risk. Ship and
submarine maintenance is particularly high stakes as the Navy's
fleet is the foundation of global power projection. Rigorous
and timely maintenance means we can have more ships at sea and
it is necessary to preserve our ships' availability for their
expected service life.
Unlike other platforms, major ship maintenance work is
complex, enormously expensive, and relatively infrequent, so it
is critical that we get this right. Yet we have seen troubling
delays in recent years. Perhaps most infamously, the USS Boise,
an attack submarine, has been idling pierside in Norfolk for
over 5 years and it lost its dive certification and it still
awaits maintenance. I might even ask you when it is going to
find its turn in line.
Even our aircraft carriers have not been spared. The USS
Dwight D. Eisenhower recent maintenance period tripled its
intended length, and the USS George H.W. Bush is starting an
anticipated 28-month maintenance availability that should take
just 10 [months]. Indeed, since 2012, the Navy has completed
only 30 percent of its ship and submarine maintenance
availability on time, leading to 27,000 lost operational and
training days. If the Navy has difficulty maintaining its
current fleet, this raises serious questions about its ability
to support a 355-ship fleet in the future. So maybe we ought
not build any more until you guys get it right. Where is Joe?
Oh, he is not here yet. Well, I will repeat that when he shows
up.
If we look forward to hearing about the Navy's efforts to
address this problem--we do look forward to that and I
understand there are several initiatives underway to improve
the Navy's maintenance operations: a ship hiring and
modernization plan, implementation of new contracting
strategies, and analytical efforts to better forecast
maintenance needs among other projects underway.
But the solution should also involve grappling with the
broader systemic cause. For years, the Navy has operated at an
untenable pace, sustaining global presence it maintained 25
years ago with a much smaller fleet. Leadership has prioritized
building new ships over directing resources and management
attention to maintaining the current fleet, and the Navy has
struggled to honestly assess the amount of maintenance its
ships need and how much that maintenance will cost. A holistic
strategy must be put in place to confront these issues.
We should applaud the Navy, and I will do so, for its
efforts to create a culture of excellence and accountability in
the surface community after the devastating collisions in the
Pacific in 2017. A similar mindset is essential to ensure the
Navy elevates ship maintenance. A similar mindset is necessary
to elevate ship maintenance. I will repeat it for a third time.
A similar mindset is necessary to elevate ship maintenance to
be on par with shipbuilding. The success of our Navy depends
upon it.
With that I would like to turn to our ranking member, good
friend, who never has seen an ocean from his front window, Doug
Lamborn of Colorado.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Garamendi can be found in
the Appendix on page 37.]
STATEMENT OF HON. DOUG LAMBORN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM COLORADO,
RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Chairman Garamendi. We had the
opportunity to meet last week with Secretary Geurts and Admiral
Moore to discuss the important issue that is in our hearing
today, and I look forward to a productive hearing today as
well.
What strikes me most about the challenges with ship and
submarine maintenance is that it took several years to get us
to this point, but it will likely take decades to get us to
where we need to go. From my perspective, the scheduling aspect
of ship and submarine maintenance is the key driver to whether
the Navy succeeds or fails. Failure to strike the balance
between today's operational requirements and sustainment will
diminish strategic depth within the fleet, undermine investment
in private shipyards, and cause industry to suboptimize its
workforce of skilled artisans available to do this work.
Candidly, I see it as a national issue when the Navy
cancels an availability, and it should only be done in the
direst of circumstances. The Navy is not on this journey alone.
It already utilizes 21 certified private dry docks for
maintenance availabilities. Our private partners want more Navy
contracts, but past contracting and scheduling practices
prevented them from seeing a steady stream of work. This caused
them not to make the necessary capital investments to modernize
their facilities and resulted in them suboptimizing their
workforces.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about how the
Navy plans to structure maintenance contracts going forward and
that we provide the requisite level of certainty to our
industry partners. Our witnesses updated the chairman and me
last week regarding their efforts to expand the number of
private shipyards through their efforts to reduce the
administrative burden for certifying a yard for Navy work. This
is a positive step that I believe will foster additional
competition. It will expand capacity and it has the potential
to benefit both the government and the private sector.
The state of the Navy's four public shipyards in
Portsmouth, Norfolk, Puget Sound, and Pearl Harbor is so
serious that Congress directed the Navy to develop a Shipyard
Infrastructure Optimization Plan in 2018. These shipyards do
most of the Navy's nuclear maintenance. GAO [Government
Accountability Office] has categorized most of them as being in
poor condition. The 20-year, $21 billion investment plan would
overhaul the antiquated facilities, recapitalize equipment, and
optimize the workflow to reduce wasted time and effort.
While I am satisfied with the personnel investments being
made in our public sector, this investment plan will fail if it
is not supported by an adequate facility recapitalization plan.
Candidly, gentlemen, my view is that the fiscal year 2020
budget request did not demonstrate a serious enough commitment
to this plan. We expect to begin seeing a significant
commitment to the investment plan in the budget request each
year and we want to see it funded across the FYDP [Future Years
Defense Program]. One to two billion dollars per year is
probably about right.
From my perspective, we also need to send enough of the
submarine availability work to private shipyards so that they
can build the capacity to do that work efficiently. This would
seem to be the way to avoid future issues like those we
experienced and was mentioned earlier with the USS Boise which
lost its dive certification in 2016 and has yet to begin depot-
level maintenance. The Navy is now sending some of its attack
submarine works to General Dynamics Electric Boat and to
Huntington Ingalls Industries. I am encouraged by this
development, particularly given that we will likely need some
industry capacity while we recapitalize the public yards.
As with everything associated with this problem set though,
the key is predictability. Finally, we must do a better job of
forecasting the work that will be performed for each
maintenance availability. My understanding is that
approximately 40 percent of the work to be performed during
each availability is unknown. The Navy and their industry
partners will never meet schedule and cost objectives with that
level of fidelity, particularly with the additional supply
chain challenges that this creates.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses regarding
their efforts to better leverage data and testing to reduce
uncertainty before the availabilities even begin. Our two
witnesses are fully engaged to address the myriad of problems
facing this system of systems, as Secretary Geurts likes to
call it. I appreciate the continued service and experience that
you both bring to the nation and thank you for being here
today.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lamborn can be found in the
Appendix on page 39.]
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Lamborn. We will now turn to
our witnesses. Mr. Geurts, Vice Admiral Moore, have you decided
which will go first?
Secretary Geurts. Sir, if it is all right with you, I will
have an opening statement for the both of us.
Mr. Garamendi. Very good.
Secretary Geurts. And then submit a written testimony for
the record.
Mr. Garamendi. Please continue.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES F. GEURTS, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE
NAVY FOR RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND ACQUISITION, DEPARTMENT OF
THE NAVY, AND VADM THOMAS J. MOORE, COMMANDER, NAVAL SEA
SYSTEMS COMMAND
Secretary Geurts. Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member
Lamborn, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thanks
for the opportunity to appear before you today so we can
discuss the Department of the Navy's ship and submarine
maintenance. I am joined today with Vice Admiral Tom Moore,
commander of the Naval Sea Systems Command.
The Navy faces a high-tempo operation, significant budget
pressures, and a fragile industrial base. All those together
have resulted in a maintenance backlog and reduced maintenance,
or reduced readiness for our Navy ships. Through our focused
efforts over the last 2 years and with the great support of
Congress, we have begun to reverse those negative trends. While
recent on-time performance trends in both the public and
private yards are improving, we have a lot of work to go to
meet the ultimate goal of delivering every ship and submarine
for maintenance on time and in full. The Navy fully understands
the on-time delivery of ships and submarines out of maintenance
is a national security imperative. The Navy has undertaken a
comprehensive approach to address these challenges at both the
public and private yards and we are starting to see the
tangible benefits from these initiatives. We look forward to
discussing those with the subcommittee today.
Last year, Congress changed title 10 to place sustainment
as a core responsibility under my office. It has enabled the
Navy to better focus on this issue with clearer lines of
accountability. Now I have since established a Deputy Assistant
Secretary of the Navy for Sustainment to improve our ability to
plan, budget, and execute the Navy's sustainment mission. I am
proud to announce today that I have selected our first Deputy
ASN for Sustainment, Mr. Sean Burke, who will be starting next
week and will have this as his primary responsibility.
Thank you for the strong support this subcommittee has
always provided to the Department of the Navy, and the
opportunity to appear before you today. We look forward to
answering your questions.
[The joint prepared statement of Secretary Geurts and
Admiral Moore can be found in the Appendix on page 41.]
Mr. Garamendi. Well, we do have a lot of questions and
hopefully we see some answers out ahead of us that will solve
them.
Could you describe, as you did last week in a preliminary
briefing, how you intend to go about the scheduling issues?
Admiral, you, or Mr. Geurts, whichever you would like to
do.
Secretary Geurts. Sir, maybe I will kick it off and then
Admiral Moore can join in. I think, you know, a key to this
whole maintenance activity is getting the planning right. If we
don't get the planning right, then it is really hard to make
that up in execution, particularly when we have got to plan a
budget cycle or two in advance.
And so, I think we have a couple of initiatives that are
really starting to improve that planning and that will carry
all the way through contract execution and then execution of
the maintenance period. And the first is working really closely
with the fleet, and I will ask Admiral Moore to kind of discuss
how he has worked with the fleet commanders so that we get the
input into the system regulated and balanced. And so we input
ships into the maintenance cycle in a way we can best absorb
them and that is both a macro issue in terms of in the private
yards, ports and port loading, as well as micro issue for each
individual availability.
The other key is Admiral Moore's team has really worked
hard on the modeling so that we estimate the actual
availability more accurately. We have a new model there at the
last, I think, five availabilities; we have used that model and
I have delivered on time. And those two things help us, I would
say, at that macro level at planning. And then working closely
when we get into execution with either the contracts or in the
public yards maintaining our baseline, not adding work in late
in the system, having the discipline similar that we do in new
construction so that we work the work planned.
There will always be some variability because, you know, as
you open up a ship you learn things. But we are seeing already
kind of that positive trend, being kind of a leading indicator
is better planning, better planning means better budgeting, and
then better budgeting leads to better execution.
But, Tom, if you want to add in.
Admiral Moore. Yeah, if I could add on top of that just to
the ranking member's comment about the importance of
predictability and stability in the work. Our past practice has
been to--the fleet would give us a demand signal when they
needed the ship back, and then we would build schedules, in
many cases unrealistic schedules, to get the ship back, more
work than we could handle based on the capacity, and we would
deliver late.
For the first time, both Admiral Grady and Admiral Aquilino
have come to us and said, okay, as an input, please come to us
with a realistic length for the availability based on the
capacity you have in the yard, the work that you have to do on
the ship, the modernization, the concurrency, how many other
avails, and tell us how long you think you would like to have.
Then we will take that, and we will input that into our fleet
schedules, and we will come back and tell you whether that
schedule will support what we need from a deployment
standpoint.
And so that back and forth between the fleets and NAVSEA
[Naval Sea Systems Command] has been critical to doing two
things. One, it allows us to get lengths which are executable
lengths. And the other thing is, importantly, it has allowed us
to do is to actually move these availabilities and create
stable, predictable work in both the naval shipyards and
probably even more importantly in the private sector for the
private sector shipyards. That stable work is exactly what they
need to hire and exactly what they need to make the
investments.
And so, as the Secretary alluded to, under the new system,
the last five private sector surface ship availabilities, where
we were able to work with the fleet to get the length right and
put the place at the right time, they have all delivered on
time. So I think that has probably been the key step is this
working with the fleet in an integrative fashion to build a
maintenance schedule that supports operations, but also
supports the maintenance, the capacity that we have in the
ports.
Mr. Garamendi. I want to get into this in great detail. It
seems to me that this is one of the foundational problems. You
have 290 ships. Do you know when those ships need to be
maintained?
Admiral Moore. We do. Each one of them has a class
maintenance plan and so we have a very good idea when they need
to be maintained. There is a class maintenance plan. They all
have, you know, I would say they have some--because of
redundancy there is an ability to surge them if we need them
operationally and then put them back in later. But, in general,
we know exactly when we would like to have them go into
maintenance availabilities in accordance with the class
maintenance plan.
Mr. Garamendi. You just used the word that I think is the
problem, ``like to have.'' The ship maintenance is secondary to
the demand for the ship by the COCOM [combatant command]
commander; is that correct?
Admiral Moore. Well, in most cases if the ship can operate,
you know, we will send it forward. There are red lines that we
operate to. The fleet commanders are working very closely with
us to try and make sure that we don't pass those red lines.
Mr. Garamendi. Well, again you just answered the question
and the problem. There is, you know at the outset when a ship
needs to be maintained, there is a schedule. It can vary
somewhat, but that maintenance requirement to get it back into
the shipyard is subject to the demand of the COCOM commander
and in recent years they have had sway. They have said it, and
therefore your scheduling in the yards is dependent upon their
sense of need.
You have indicated that you have been able to find some
accommodation on this conflict with, I think that is the
Pacific Fleet, and that is great as long as you have
communication and I guess some sort of camaraderie, but that
can end over a bad cup of coffee and--which I hope I didn't
give you. It seems to me this is the heart of the problem.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. Maybe from a macro perspective,
so we are doing a couple things. One, last year for the first
time, we published a 30-year maintenance plan to go along with
the shipbuilding plan. Now that was a first-generation product,
we need to mature that over time. But that started laying out
your earlier point in your opening comment that we were--we
have got demand now we are having a hard time satisfying. That
demand will grow.
Mr. Garamendi. Now that Mr. Courtney is here, I will repeat
my comment that you cannot take care of a 290 fleet, and
therefore we ought to stop building new ships until you can
take care of what you have.
Sorry, Joe, but do we have a conflict?
Please continue.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. The other thing that we are
measuring now, so we have this kind of a performance plan where
the Navy is getting together to really look at the balance
between operations and maintenance. And as Admiral Moore says,
you know, if there is an operational need, we will understand
that. Give the options.
What that looking at the whole system allows though is it
gives us measures of performance like how many ships are behind
on their annual maintenance plan. Where have we deferred work,
where do we have--where are we putting ourselves in the hole,
and then understanding that and then creating a plan to bring
back that deferred work. Over the last 2 years we have been
working very hard, particularly in the destroyer fleet, to
bring all those destroyers back up to their maintenance
standard, to get rid of--through sequestration and a lot of
other things, we built a hole of deferred work.
And so, it is not only getting the system working, whether
it is getting that deferred work so everybody is back on their
class maintenance schedule, that is an important measure that
gives us looking at the entire system an indication that we
haven't made, you know, a number of small tactical decisions on
a ship-by-ship basis which has created a strategic shortfall.
Mr. Garamendi. I am going to stay with this. Not this
series of questions, but over the rest of this hearing and in
future hearings, because I perceive this scheduling issue to be
fundamental. And it is basically a power issue. Who has the
power to determine where that ship is, and until that is
rationalized in a way that deals with this maintenance backlog
and therefore the unavailability of critical ships because they
simply are not able to be at sea, we are not going to get very
far.
So I am going to drive this issue insofar as I have power
here to try to bring about some rationalization between the
demand of the COCOM commanders and the need for the ships to be
maintained, and so we are going to have to deal with that over
time.
I am going to put one more issue on the table, but I am not
going to deal with it, I am going to pass over to Mr. Lamborn
in a second, and that is the yards themselves.
Mr. Lamborn, you raised this issue rather well in your
opening remarks. It is the second foundational issue, so your
turn.
Mr. Lamborn. All right. Yeah, thank you. And maybe we
should have a second round of questions, too, if you weren't
already planning on that.
In reading your joint statement, I am not yet convinced
that it fully reflects your actions. In the case of the SIOP,
the Shipyard Investment Optimization Plan, the first 2 years of
investment have underfunded the overall requirement. Now while
I appreciate that large investments take time to plan, the slow
start needs to be reversed. For example, GAO detailed that
today the Norfolk Naval Shipyard's equipment was retained in
operation more than twice the expected service life of that
equipment. Additionally, the facility condition there and at
Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard are
all considered in a poor condition.
When will the Navy's investment strategy match the required
recapitalization requirement?
Admiral Moore. Yes, sir. Well, thanks for the question. So,
two things. One, we are ramping up significantly. I will tell
you I have been in the Navy now going on 38-plus years, been
doing the maintenance business for the last 25. We have gotten
twice in funding what we have had in my history in both MILCON
[Military Construction] and FSRM [Facilities Sustainment,
Restoration and Modernization], MILCON in the naval shipyards
than we had in the previous years. So, we have probably gotten
about 90 percent of what we asked for being a forward program
manager and that is not a bad life to lead.
Your opening statement said the investment should be in the
one to two billion-dollar range. You are spot on, but we have
to do some planning up front. So what you are seeing now is a
ramp-up. We got a little over $500 million in fiscal year 2019.
I think the PB20 [President's budget] request is in that order.
I think you will see as we head towards fiscal year 2021 it is
going to continue that ramp-up. And the major projects that we
are going to be doing, dry docks, moving things around the
shipyards, will start in the 2022, 2023 timeframe and we are
making those investments today to get the planning done and buy
the materials so that we are ready to go to execute.
So, you are absolutely right, we have to do this. I think
we have a good integrated plan across the four naval shipyards
and I think you are going to see, starting in fiscal year 2022-
2023, a substantial uptick. And we are going to get to a period
between about '23 and about '30, 2030, where we are at a stable
funding level in the order of about $1.5 billion per year.
Secretary Geurts. Sir, one other thing to note in terms of
our kind of seriousness and dedication to this, one of the
things as we started this it is a $20 billion program. In the
past we would probably attack that with a collection of small
efforts led independently and maybe not as synchronized as they
could.
So, one of the things Admiral Moore and I have done is
stood up as we would a regular program. We have put an
accountable leader in charge of that program. We have given
that leader all the authority from the program management side,
from the facility side, from the equipment side, and that
integrated team, I think it is the first time ever we have had
an integrated, I will say program management, civil public
works team held accountable to deliver that entire enterprise
to us.
Now it is being executed by each of the shipyards, but we
have one accountable team that we are looking forward and we
meet with them once a month to go through and make sure we are
executing on plan. And I think that will help us. I mean, one
will be putting the resources in place, and then the second
will be executing on time and on schedule with those resources.
That is the way we are attacking the second piece of it.
Mr. Lamborn. Okay, now that annual amount, will that be
protected in future fiscal years and how, even under times of
extreme stress on the budget?
Admiral Moore. Well, I can tell you in the last couple
years, as we work our way through the budget at the corporate
level, up at the senior level that money has because it is now
a program, it is looked at differently than the way we have
done it in the past where we kind of competed against
everything else. In fact, the problem in the past is the four
naval shipyards were competing against each other. They would
all independently submit programs. They had their local
constituencies that would support those, but it wasn't an
integrated plan. It would go into the mix with every other bit
of other MILCON that were going and it would get ranked and it
would compete against other needed things, but barracks and
base and piers.
And so, what we have been able to do is fence this off and
look at it as its own program. As the Secretary said, it is an
established program under NAVSEA. I report to the Secretary on
it. We have regular quarterly drumbeats at his level, they
brief me monthly, and we are briefing this from the budget
standpoint as a total program with both capital expenditures,
MILCON and FSRM, which we have never done before.
Mr. Lamborn. Okay, thank you. And to finish up on this
subject, in your joint statement you highlighted several recent
improvements at public shipyards to add new capabilities or to
replace failing infrastructure. Has the Navy made these
investments in concert with the overall investment plan or is
there risk that some of these investments will be found to be
suboptimized as the investment plan matures?
Secretary Geurts. Sure. All those are part of the
integrated plan. We may have mentioned them separately in the
statement, but they are all, they are just evidence that that
plan is off and running. So, we are not waiting 5 or 6 years
for the perfect plan, we are already moving out and
synchronizing. In some cases, we had preexisting MILCON
projects we brought into the program. A lot of really good work
on capital equipment in terms of machines and tooling. And the
other piece I am very optimistic on is, I will call it
deckplate innovation, using 3D printing, using new training
techniques, using other ideas. So I kind of view it as a living
plan and we always want them to be trying to bring anything
they can left. If there is a new innovation, we can do that. We
can, you know, change a plan to go take care of an opportunity.
That is what we are expecting out of this integrated team.
So those things listed in the plan weren't in addition to,
they were just what has occurred as part of that plan to date.
Mr. Lamborn. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Garamendi. I thank you, Mr. Lamborn, and I thank you
for raising those issues. We are going to go to the 5-minute
clock now.
Ms. Horn, you are next.
Ms. Horn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for being
here. It is a critical issue. I am going to put a few of my
questions through the lens of, I have Tinker Air Force Base,
which is clearly a depot in Oklahoma, and some of the
challenges they are different yet similar, right, of
maintaining aircraft which are 70-plus years old. We do the
complete depot maintenance for the KC-135s. And from years ago
having a very long overhaul time, they have been able to
significantly reduce it to play catch-up and there is
significant need for playing catch-up here.
So, my first question is, in this plan with the funding,
with the needs and how far behind you have gotten is, how
realistic do you think your projection is for growing the
capacity of the public shipyards? Let's start there with the
public shipyards.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am. Maybe I will start for a bit
and then turn it over to the admiral.
So, coming from a former Air Force guy, so I am very
familiar with that and actually they have done an incredible
job, which we have on the aviation side and not a subject of
this hearing, we are learning a ton from them and collaborating
with and have a good relationship with them. I think we have
been very careful, back to this integrated team, that we have
one team accountable for executing the whole program.
Where I struggled in past lives was where it was 10
different teams or all reporting through different chains with
different priorities and then we didn't get the synergy we
wanted. So, I am confident in the plan. We will continue to
update the plan.
Admiral Moore can talk about some of the simulation we have
done to ensure we have got the right plan, but we are learning
from everyone, whether it is out there in other depots or other
folks doing this in the commercial world.
Admiral Moore. Yes, thank you for the question. We have
actually been able to grow the capacity of the naval shipyards.
In 2010 we were down around 29,300. Today we are at 36,100.
That is where we need to be, so we got there, actually, a year
ahead of schedule. So, the public yards have been able to hire
and we are at the capacity we are going to need to be at given
where we are with our nuclear ships, the number of carriers we
have, and actually the number of nuclear-powered submarines for
maintenance is actually going to slightly go down here over the
next 10 years. So, I am satisfied where we need to be.
On the private sector side, I think that is the challenge,
is in surface ships, which is really going to be the bulk of
the growth as we go to 355 is on the surface ship side of the
house, how do you grow that capacity? And so back to the
initial comments, the way you get the private sector to grow
capacity is you provide them a stable, predictable plan that
they can see and believe and they will hire. And we have
started to see that in particular in San Diego and Norfolk
where they have started to grow the capacity.
What you can't do is have the sawtooth plans that we have
had in the past which does not incentivize them because they
are trying to make a reasonable profit to hire. So, to the
extent, back to even to the original question that the chairman
asked, this stable, predictable plan that we have been able to
accomplish working with the fleet commanders, I think, can give
us a chance. We need to go at about 2 to 3 percent per year.
Industry tells me that is reasonable, they can accommodate that
if necessary.
Ms. Horn. So that following up on that, I think there is a
couple things here that I am noticing. One is the schedule. I
think Chairman Garamendi hit on that, an anticipatory
maintenance schedule to reduce the significant degrees of
maintenance, and also understanding that getting back on that
schedule seems to me to be critical but without the capacity.
So, my question is in terms of public versus private and
where that is, it strikes me that the maintenance of all of
these ships is in our overall national security interest and
should be inherently something that is our responsibility. So,
if the--and I agree with you about the predictability, but if
the ships are not coming in, if we are having to push and they
are not coming in on a regular maintenance schedule that also
impacts the schedule and the predictability. So, is it a
question of going to support more private shipyards or is it
enhancing the capacity of public shipyards or some other
combination to ensure they are getting back in and not getting
pushed back out when they really should be in maintenance?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am. I think the biggest issue is
not operational pull. I know that is an issue we have had in
the past. We have to get ships out on time. If I can't get
ships out on time, it creates the demand signal and causes all
these stacked effects. The challenge for us in the public yard
are a little different than I think where Tinker faced is we
are executing. We have reduced backlog by 50 percent over the
last 2 years. Our challenge is we have to completely upgrade
our infrastructure while we do maintenance. So, in the public
yards that is going to be the critical element is while we
maintain it, be able to feather in the infrastructure upgrades
without causing a disruption.
Ms. Horn. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Garamendi. I might add that you have got a 20-year plan
to upgrade the infrastructure. I don't know how you can meet
today's demand with a 20-year plan for updating the
infrastructure. We will get into that in much more detail, but
I do want to turn to Mr. Scott. I will just let my question
hang out there for a while.
Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, I, too, represent a depot, an Air Force depot.
And in depot maintenance you have got parts, supplies, and
facilities. You have a process and you have people. And my
question gets to the constraint that has left the USS Boise
sitting at the dock for 3 years. What is the constraint that
has kept that ship sitting where it is?
Admiral Moore. Well, at its most basic element, the problem
with Boise is we did not have the capacity in the public
shipyards to do the work and we were slow to see that coming.
Mr. Scott. From a facility standpoint, Admiral, or from a--
--
Admiral Moore. No, just from a workforce, the ability to--
--
Mr. Scott. From a workforce.
Admiral Moore. Yes, sir.
Mr. Scott. Okay.
That brings me to another question then. When is the last
time the Navy has done a study with regard to the workforce and
I guess the need for improvement there as--the balance of the
workforce, I guess, is the word that I am looking for.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. And again, I will ask Tom to
jump in. I think the challenge in the public yard is we didn't
have the numbers and so we have actually accelerated our plan
and gotten to our target number of workforce a year early. Our
new challenge now or, you know, the next challenge is how do we
train that workforce as fast as we can and make them as
productive as they need to be. And again, a little bit
different than in the Air Force side, we have a nuclear, for
our nuclear ships they are maintained primarily in the public
yards so there is a limited ability to offload that work.
Mr. Scott. Sure.
Secretary Geurts. And so the real initiative we are taking
right now is we have got the workforce we need, now we need to
get them trained and productive to the level we need them to be
when the public, when the nuclear shipbuilding demand grows in
the out-years. We have got a little time until that grows, that
is our primary challenge right now.
Mr. Scott. How did we not see this coming?
Admiral Moore. Well, I wish I had a good answer for you.
Back in 2016 when I took the job over, one of the first
decisions I had to face was looking at the fact that we did not
have the capacity in the naval shipyards to induct Boise. That
led to a series of decisions about using the private sector to
reduce some of the surge volume, but I don't have a good answer
for you on that. Our past practice would have been stuff them
in there and have them be 500 or 600 days late like we did with
USS Asheville and Albany and that was just bad news for the
crew, and so I think we made a conscious decision not to do
that in going forward in the future. It was probably the right
decision, but we should have seen this coming. And we have
practices in place today to make sure that doesn't happen
again.
Mr. Scott. So we have 30 percent of the ships' maintenance
is done on time. If we are doing a major depot overhaul does
that 30 percent hold true or do we see a lower number there?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. So I think a couple things we
are doing. One, you have got to reduce the backlog, right, and
so we have reduced the backlog by 50 percent from the last 2
years. We are two-thirds less of maintenance mandate, so that
backlog is burning off. The second thing we have got to do, and
as you look at the number of nuclear ships, we are going to
time out. A lot of Los Angeles-class submarines are going, so
the demand signal is actually going to go down a little bit.
So, that is why we are feathering in that depot
infrastructure with that reduced demand signal. Then when we
have the infrastructure updated, we have got now an experienced
workforce, we can pick up as submarine demand picks back up
again in the 2030s.
Mr. Scott. If I can, Mr. Secretary, I guess what I am
getting at is, there is simple maintenance and then there is
depot overhauls and two totally different animals here. Does
that 30 percent hold true in both fields?
Admiral Moore. No, actually, if you look at just kind of
the work we do pierside and emergent work to get ships deployed
that are not in depot, 100 out of the last 103 have delivered
on time. So, we have a pretty good track record there.
Mr. Scott. Okay.
Admiral Moore. That tends to take the priority, obviously.
And then to your question on do I expect the avail--the number
is going to go up from 30 percent. My commitment to the CNO
[Chief of Naval Operations] is we will deliver them all on time
starting in 2021. And we have factored in this work in the SIOP
to make sure that we can do the work and work at the shipyard
at the same time. It is also another reason why we would like
to grow some surge capacity in the private sector to provide
kind of an outlet if we need that.
Mr. Scott. I have just a couple of seconds and just a
general comment. The total DOD [Department of Defense] budget
number is higher than it has ever been in the past. I know you
talk about constraints from a fiscal standpoint. I recognize
that the CRs [continuing resolutions] are on us on this side,
that is our fault for not getting them done and I know that
causes problems for you. But I do think it is important that
the people at the Pentagon and the DOD recognize that the
actual budget number is higher than it has ever been, and it is
going up at a pretty good pace. And I am not sure that that
increased pace continues, so as you forecast into the future, I
would not think that it would continue to increase at the same
pace that it has.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, you are absolutely--and we have got
to drive down the cost per unit readiness because it is
unaffordable at the current one. That is an absolute true fact.
Mr. Scott. Mr. Chairman, I am done.
Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Scott, very good series of questions.
Ms. Houlahan, it is your turn.
Oh, by the way, can I now ask permission for outsiders to
join us? Is that okay, Mr. Lamborn, without objection?
Mr. Lamborn. Didn't we already do that proactively?
Mr. Garamendi. Without objection, we will allow others not
on the subcommittee to join us.
Ms. Houlahan, your turn.
Ms. Houlahan. Thank you, sir. And thank you, gentlemen, for
joining. My grandfather and father were career naval officers.
I was the black sheep and was an Air Force person. But I happen
to represent the suburbs of Philadelphia, so the Philadelphia
shipyard is an important asset to me and to my community and so
most of my questions will be about the private shipbuilding
plan.
So I understand that the Navy is working to implement the
PSO or the private shipyard optimization and PSI, private
sector improvement, initiatives to enlist our private shipyards
to greater support and meet our readiness needs. Could you--
there is three parts to this question, so hang on. Could you
elaborate on the work that these initiatives and any guidance
or recommendations that you have to better utilize our private
shipyards?
And I also understand that we have language in the Senate-
side bill, $1.2 billion in naval operations maintenance funds
and other procurement account to contract with private shipyard
maintenance. What is your perspective on that, your perspective
on this pilot program? And finally, what obstacles, if any, are
preventing the Navy from better utilizing our private shipyards
and is there anything that we can do here in Congress to be
helpful with that?
I would assume that you would be probably the best person
to answer those questions?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am, I will start, certainly. And
we could have, you know, hourly, you know, an hour session on
this alone. Here is where I think--here is where I'd like to go
and we have talked a little bit about we have been doing a lot
of pilot programs, and so I am fully supportive of looking at a
multiyear appropriation as long as we have got the flexibility
as work adjusts between those to kind of work between ship
accounts. But I am fully supportive of the pilot, to answer
your second question.
What we are really trying to do in the private side, is
give a much better, and hold much more stable a site picture of
the total demand and get that out in time that allows folks to
make investments, to hire the right workforce, and to not have
to hire and fire workforce because we have shown that that
hasn't been stable.
So, we are looking to both increase our capacity--so Philly
shipyard now is doing maintenance. They are doing some
maintenance work for MSC [Military Sealift Command] and they
are doing by all accounts a great job there, so they are a new
partner kind of in that. That is an exciting--we have opened up
some other capacity. And then we are working hard on our side
to be as efficient as possible so we get the requirement out
there early enough so folks understand it, and then minimize or
make sure that everything we are doing on the Navy side in
terms of inspections and checkpoints are adding value and not
creating inefficiencies.
So, I think if we show the demand, keep it stable, better
contractor options, more players, and then steady and reliable
work, all that will play together to bring new players in and
have them feel like they can be a contributor and be profitable
in the private yard. Because as Admiral Moore said, that is
where the huge demand signal as we get to 355 ships.
Ms. Houlahan. My other question has to do with the
workforce that is required for this both on the private and
public side. Some of the reading that you prepared in your
statements had to do with the fact that our workforce, I think
demands have been met largely or are being met largely, but
with a younger or less skilled force. What kinds of things can
we be doing to be flexible and creative with bringing those
folks up to speed?
Admiral Moore. Yeah, I think that is a great question. And
we are fine in that the millennials and centennials learn
differently and so investments in the infrastructure and IT
[information technology], the way we do work is completely
different. We have a--it used to take us typically in the
public shipyards about 5 years to train an apprentice. They
would just basically follow the old hand around and learn his
trade from there. So we are going to state-of-the-art learning
centers, basically, where they are safe to fail, away from the
actual work, and we have been able to cut the time down to make
them somebody that we could put on the deckplate work cut by
half, and so we are going to have to continue to do that.
The other thing we are going to have to continue to embrace
is understanding the way the new, you know, the way this
generation thinks about work and not be afraid of IT and some
of the new technology that is out there, which, you know, if
you go talk to some of the older folks they don't quite get it.
But, you know, the kids today, they want an iPad in their hand.
They want to be able to work that way. And I think we are
worked in position that way to do well in both the public and
private sector, which will help the workforce out.
Ms. Houlahan. More virtual reality goggles or----
Admiral Moore. Absolutely.
Secretary Geurts. I am actually really excited. I mean, a
lot of folks will say that is an impediment. I actually think
we are at a generational level between construction and
sustainment, bringing a workforce on that will drive a lot of
the things this country needs. And I am actually really
excited, because when we have gotten the right tools in their
hands, their ability to accelerate learning and be productive
has exceeded our, I would say, fairly optimistic expectations.
Ms. Houlahan. Thank you, gentlemen. I have run out of time
and I yield back.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Ms. Houlahan.
I have heard the word ``plan'' multiple times here. I want
to hear more about actual implementation of whatever plan is in
place. I will now turn to Ms. Stefanik.
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you, Chairman Garamendi.
Mr. Geurts, Vice Admiral Moore, great to see you here
today. Thank you for your testimony. While I do not represent a
depot in my congressional district, I have a number of ship and
ship--submarine building suppliers in and around my district,
so we understand the need and necessity for skilled laborers. I
also serve, in addition to this committee, on the Education and
Workforce Committee, so we spend a lot of time thinking about
future of work and what that qualified workforce looks like.
So, for the long-range plan for maintenance and
modernization of naval vessels for fiscal year 2020, you
mentioned training the workforce several times. And my question
to you is, do you anticipate expanding training opportunities
with simulators and models similar to those used by naval
operators such as the facility like Kesselring, which I
represent? I see you guys nodding your heads, so I am looking
forward to the answer.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am. It is already occurring. We
talked, Admiral Moore talked about training safe and so, hey,
if I can 3D print a facsimile of a piece of equipment so we can
train somebody on it and not have to use an actual asset and
put that at risk in training, we are seeing astronomical
improvements in both the training curriculum kind of hands-on,
as well as training speed on there. But I think as a further,
you know, for all of us it is an important, how do we level
this talent that is available and bring it into these kind of
more manufacturing jobs? We have some of the most complex
digital models in the world. We are making digital models now
of legacy ships. And so, our ability to marry that digital
model of the work and put that with digital native workforce, I
think, is going to give us a way that we don't have to wait 20
years to get a 20-year experienced worker. Otherwise, you know,
if that is what we are relying on, just time, we are not going
to get there. And so, I think there is great opportunity.
Tom, I don't----
Admiral Moore. Yeah, I will just give you two additional
examples. We talked about virtual training. Today, you can go
to the naval shipyards and you can put a helmet on and paint
and weld, and they can, basically, you can qualify, you know, a
lot of your qualifications in terms of being a painter and a
welder can be done in a virtual environment, which we haven't
been able to do before, and that is a technology that the new
generation understands well.
So, exactly to your point, while I think we are working all
of those initiatives, there is probably more work to do in that
area. Obviously, the aviation community, through simulators, is
kind of a step ahead of us, but we are certainly leveraging off
a lot of that.
Ms. Stefanik. Great, thank you. Yield back.
Mr. Garamendi. Ms. Stefanik, thank you. We really need to
look and work on that issue of the training of the workforce.
There are many opportunities. Your experience on labor and ed
is important. I think there are others around that can share
with that. Fully implementing all of those training programs
that are out there that may or may not have ever been connected
to the public yards is something that we want to make sure
happens. I thank you for that series of questions.
Mr. Kim, I noticed that the chair of the committee that is
causing all this problem with all these new ships has deferred
the opportunity to ask questions and he continues to defer. So,
Mr. Kim, it is your turn.
Mr. Kim. Well, I just wanted to take a moment to just, you
know, reiterate some of the points. I don't necessarily have a
question myself. But, you know, I came here understanding just
the sheer complexities of what it is that you are faced with. I
understand how difficult this is and I have gotten a better
sense of the vision you are trying to set forward, but I do
reiterate the different concerns that some of my colleagues
have mentioned on the staffing, on the personnel side of things
as well as the maintenance component of this. I certainly leave
this hearing with a better understanding myself of some of
this, but there is still some areas where I either need greater
knowledge and learning on my own end or just more information
from you on how we can fill this.
But I just start by saying, you know, I appreciate the work
that you are doing in helping set the course for this vision. I
know how complicated it is and I hope to be able to continue to
work with you to try to make sure it is done in as responsible
way as possible for our armed services men and women who are
fighting the fight, so thank you so much. I yield back,
Chairman.
Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Bergman, your turn.
Mr. Bergman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thanks for
being here.
Mr. Geurts, you mentioned in your testimony--if I copied
this right--a fragile industrial base. Could you elaborate on
that?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. In the, you know, in the 1990s
into the early thousands as we reduced new ship construction
as, quite frankly, as the country reduced a lot of its
manufacturing capability, we went from many suppliers, many
shops, many trained tradesmen to very few. You know, if you
look at new construction on submarines, on aircraft carriers,
the number of suppliers have gone from tens of thousands to
thousands and in more cases than we are comfortable with we
only have one supplier.
Mr. Bergman. Okay, so basically we reduced the number of
facilities building ships, so therefore less capability, if you
will, because you are not doing day to day. Given the fact that
we are still going to have to maintain ships, is the best way
to create that maintenance and re-workforce of the future given
that we have fewer shipyards, is that best left to the people
who actually make the ships or, really, what is the Navy's role
in determining that? Because it is one thing to tell an entity
what you want done; it is another thing to tell them how to do
it.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. I don't think it is our role to
tell everyone exactly how to do the work. There is a fairly,
you know, there is lot of folks doing commercial ship repair.
Part of our challenge is making sure on the private yard side
that we have contracting vehicles, that we don't have barriers
that would prevent them from working.
So a way we got after that, for instance, we solicited
anybody who has a dry dock, we will come out and look at it and
certify it in advance of you having a contract so that you
could compete for our contract should you want to. In the past
we would say, well, only if you have a certified dry dock can
you compete for our contract, and we kind of, we created
barriers where we didn't need to create barriers.
We have now seen new players, Philly Shipyard, doing ship
maintenance. There is plenty of others coming into the
marketplace creating a more robust marketplace.
Mr. Bergman. If we had the folks doing the maintenance
sitting at the table instead of you all, what would they say
the barriers that are still there?
Secretary Geurts. So I was last Thursday with three of our
big ship, private shipyard maintainers in Norfolk: BAE, NASSCO,
and Colonna's [Shipyard]. What they told me was, hey, we are
happy with the trajectory you are going, we are seeing change,
getting, you know, non-value-added inspections out of the way,
awarding contracts earlier, giving us more stable workload, is
all good.
We just need to do it at scale and repeatably. If we can do
it at scale and repeatably, then they will have the business
ROI [return on investment] to start making the investments we
need to grow this capacity. One thing I think we have
opportunity to do which we haven't, I would say, figured out
how to do yet or want to work with the committee on it, are
what are the incentives, can we cost share in increasing
capability on our new construction.
We have mechanisms where we will invest in a shipyard, so
that they will build the ships, future ships, cheaper. There
are probably some of those we call CAPEX [capital expenditure]
opportunities. We have to figure out how to do that and I think
I would like to work with the committee on that because that
would help perhaps incentivize and accelerate investments which
will then give us return on cheaper prices. As Congressman
Scott said, we can't afford, you know, to just pay more and
more as we go forward. We have to get more productive and
reduce the cost.
Mr. Bergman. Okay, thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Garamendi. We now turn to the fellow that is creating
all the problems, adding more and more ships to the backlog.
Mr. Courtney.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, I want to again
salute the subcommittee for holding this hearing. Actually, if
you read the GAO report and the CBO [Congressional Budget
Office] report that came out last year, the problems, actually,
as Mr. Geurts said, the deterioration of maintenance actually
almost occurred in tandem with sort of the deterioration in
construction, and it is really an overall, you know, sort of
sector question that we are all faced with.
And I think actually trying to find ways to sort of blend
together is the way we get out of this. So, for example, I mean
the 30-year ship repair plan, really terrific, I mean, and it
is really, you know, a really important, you know, innovation
that I think you all can certainly take credit for. But one
thing that I think some of us struggled was when the 2020
budget came over, you know, the funding for private shipyard
repairs for Boise, Hartford, and Columbus was not included in
the baseline of the budget and was an unfunded priority.
Again, Mr. Garamendi's subcommittee as well as the other
three defense committees stepped up and, you know, are going to
once we get--knock on wood--you know, completion of the
conferences, you know, we are going to have some help going out
there to do that. So I guess, you know, one way again of
creating that stable signal that you just described is really
just to, you know, sort of give your--I mean, if you could sort
of share what your perspective is in terms of just moving
forward in future budget years, you know, whether we are going
to see that sort of funding for awards to private yards that
again helps smooth out workforce cuts that again help both
sides of the equation, both construction and maintenance.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. Sending over, you know, a
hundred million-dollar or billion-dollar offer is not a way to
create stability or advance planning. We were there for a
variety of reasons. I think one of the biggest ways we are
going to improve that is by getting our planning model right.
And we went from, I would say, a fairly simplistic model on how
we planned how long an availability was and made that a much
more complex model, and on the surface side we are having some
success there. On the submarine private side, we don't yet have
that level of planning and we didn't have the workforce
available and that created challenges because we just didn't
have the sets and reps in on the Electric Boat and Newport--and
good folks trying to do great work. We just didn't have a
workforce established that knew how to do that repeatably. So,
yeah, I think we will look on the submarine side is what is the
capability we want in the private yards for either surge or
for, you know, doing, you know, and then not overload it. We
overloaded it by dumping too many submarines in there too
quickly and that is what I think caused the condition. So we
are working much more closely with them. We have at some times
had some great initiatives to share everything we have in the
public yards to them so they don't have to learn something if
we already know it. We just need to professionalize that
private yard maintenance of nuclear submarines to the degree we
need that capacity.
Admiral Moore. Yeah, I would say, you know, what we have
learned from the private sector submarine work is if you have 4
or 5 years between doing the work, you know, to his comment on
sets and reps, it is different than building new and you lose a
little bit of proficiency. So, we want the surge capacity in
the private sector, so working with Naval Reactors and the
Secretary, we need to build a, you know, a plan that puts the
right amount of work in there in a predictable way that they
can manage.
You know, in this particular case, I think in hindsight,
you know, we pushed too much work into Newport News and they
were unable to execute multiple availabilities at one time,
which is, you know, one of the reasons we have had some
challenges with Boise. So, we owe a longer-term plan. We are
working on that which would really give us the ability to go
provide that surge capacity. It would also, as we get into SIOP
and if we have to go work a dry dock at a shipyard, we have
some options. So, I think that is certainly something we need
to have as a long-term plan going forward.
Mr. Courtney. I mean one thing, certainly, I have heard is
that as this work hopefully starts to flow in, and again I
think it really helps, it is a win-win across the board. You
know, early identification of the requirements and, frankly,
even maybe sharing of some parts, you know, it is just a way of
just shortening the whole effort so that you are getting the
boats out faster. So, I mean, I don't know if you would comment
on that.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. Again, I think we need to
professionalize it and create the right model where we are
leveraging the strengths of both sides to achieve outcome. We,
you know, we had to put a bunch of work there quickly. We
learned some things. So, our challenge now is going forward,
taking those lessons learned and applying them to the work. And
in particular making sure we have enough planning time and so
that we can plan the work right, so when the submarine gets
here, we can get it in and out on time in full.
Mr. Courtney. One just sort of slightly different sort of
angle or topic is just the, your international shipyards, you
know, in terms of Rota, Spain, and Yokosuka, Japan. You know,
the feedback we certainly got from GAO and staff is just that
they seem to be outperforming the folks domestically. And I am
just sort of wondering whether you sort of have any comment
about ways, you know, we can sort of match that domestically.
Admiral Moore. Well, they have a couple of advantages.
First, we send them ships that are fully maintained, so
basically, we make pretty much a big upfront investment before
we send them forward. We haven't done that all the time in
Yokosuka. That was I think some of the challenges we had
previously. We are committed now that they are only going to
stay over there for 8 years, so they are going to go fully
maintained when they get there.
The other thing is, we do the maintenance at very short-
focus maintenance periods. You have the same maintenance team
working on the ship every year. For instance, the ships in Rota
get maintenance every year, every, for 4 months and then they
go operate for 4 months, similar to the carrier in Yokosuka.
That is a very good model for the forward-deployed ships
because they are already over there and we have a rotational
force. It doesn't quite work quite as well at home, but there
are certainly things we are learning from Rota and Yokosuka we
want to fold back into the maintenance we are doing at home.
Sir.
Mr. Garamendi. Joe, thank you for joining us. You bring
extraordinarily important experience and knowledge to the whole
thing.
Joining us is Elaine Luria who represents a shipyard.
Mrs. Luria. Hi. Well, thank you, Admiral Moore and Mr.
Geurts, for being with us today. Unlike Mr. Courtney, I want to
focus mostly on aircraft carrier maintenance. And when we
developed the class maintenance plans for the Nimitz-class
carrier, are there specific times, durations for the
availabilities that were developed into the class maintenance
plan when we, you know, first brought the Nimitz class online?
Admiral Moore. Yeah, when we first built the class
maintenance plan, the incremental maintenance plan as it is
called today, the plan was developed with a 24-month cycle and
we expected to have ships in availability every six, you know,
every 2 years. At the time that included----
Mrs. Luria. Okay, so was the first DPIA, docking planned
incremental availability, in the ship's life, what was the
duration intended to be for that?
Admiral Moore. At the 24-month cycle it was at 10\1/2\
months.
Mrs. Luria. Okay. And so currently, the George H.W. Bush
[CVN 77] is in a DPIA, the first in its life cycle. What is the
duration of that availability?
Admiral Moore. The notional duration for the Nimitz class
today in the 36-month cycle is 16 months based on----
Mrs. Luria. Okay, so the notional is shifted based off of a
36-month, I assume, the OFRP [Optimized Fleet Response Plan]
model that we have gone to now. However, you say it is
notionally 16 months?
Admiral Moore. That is correct.
Mrs. Luria. And the Bush's availability is planned for 16
months?
Admiral Moore. No. George H.W. Bush, because of a unique
work on that ship and because of other work in the shipyard, is
going to execute at 28 months.
Mrs. Luria. Okay, so 28 months versus the 16 months that it
should be planned.
Admiral Moore. That is correct.
Mrs. Luria. Well, you say unique work. I visited the
shipyard myself. The shipyard CO [commanding officer] told me
that shafting and propellers was the limiting path work. I
don't find that to be too unique over the class of ships, so
can you explain the limiting work also going on in the
shipyard, MTS [moored training ship] conversion, other
submarine work? Have we prioritized that ahead of aircraft
carrier maintenance?
Admiral Moore. Well, I think it was a balanced approach. I
don't want to disagree with the shipyard commander, but there
is a number of other things on that ship that is driving the
length of that availability.
Mrs. Luria. Okay, I am familiar with the other things, but
I was told it was shafting and propellers which seems unlikely
to me to be the----
Admiral Moore. I would agree with you there.
Mrs. Luria. To move on, just to talk about successful
completion of availabilities within timeframes, we usually use
that as a milestone. And so, coming out of this avail, are you
going to say it is successful if we complete it in 28 months or
is it already a failure because it is 28 instead of 16 which it
should have been?
Admiral Moore. Oh, no. Based on the work that we have to do
and based on the work on the Wyoming to deliver a strategic
asset and the work that we have to do on the moored training
ship San Francisco, which is critical to training our nuclear
workforce, it is a balanced plan, and if we finish in 28 months
it will be successful. Obviously, we are trying to get that
done earlier.
But back to some of the earlier conversations, based on the
available capacity we had and the work, we tried to lay out a
realistic plan that we can deliver to, so 28 months for Bush
will be successful based on the work and the other work that
was in the shipyard at the time.
Mrs. Luria. So then if you are saying that only 30 percent
complete on time, they are completing on time to a much-
extended duration above what the class maintenance plan
originally subscribed when we invested in the Nimitz-class
carriers; is that correct?
Admiral Moore. Well, no. That is not correct. Bush is at 28
months, but 9 out of the last 10 carriers have delivered on
time.
Mrs. Luria. On time per the duration in the class
maintenance plan per the ship's design?
Admiral Moore. Yes. Yeah, on time and in accordance with
the class maintenance plan.
Mrs. Luria. Nine out of the last 10?
Admiral Moore. Nine out of the last 10.
Mrs. Luria. Okay, so I just happen to frequently look
around the waterfront in Norfolk and it appears to me that
there are currently six carriers in Norfolk that are not
deployable? I can go down the list. We have the Eisenhower not
deployable in its training cycle. We have the 73, the GW [USS
George Washington], which is in its RCOH [refueling and complex
overhaul]. The 74 [USS John C. Stennis] not deployable, it is
waiting for several years before its RCOH starts.
The 75 [USS Harry S. Truman] has an emergent casualty, is
not able to deploy and relieve in the Gulf, approximately 2
months behind schedule. [CVN] 77, we have discussed and its 28-
month availability which seems excessive based off of the
lifecycle maintenance plan. And then 78, the Ford. We have
basically invested $13 billion in a nuclear-powered floating
berthing barge that is not deployable because of the aircraft
elevators and the yet untested dual-band radar, catapults, and
arresting gear.
Is that an adequate assessment that 6 out of our 11
carriers are sitting in Norfolk and nondeployable?
Admiral Moore. Well, I mean Eisenhower is in a work-up
cycle like all carriers are. She will be ready to deploy right
after the first of the year.
Mrs. Luria. Okay. I will give you a by for that one. But.
Admiral Moore. Truman, will have her fixed here shortly. It
is not unusual that we would have two carriers at any one time
in depot maintenance. You always have one carrier in refueling.
Gerald R. Ford is new, obviously new construction; there is
four. Once we get Truman back----
Mrs. Luria. So, the taxpayers have made a good investment
to currently have 6 carriers on the east coast, plus I
understand 1 on the west coast, 7 of our 11 carriers in a
nondeployable status, and we are having to extend the Lincoln
on deployment because of 1 emergent casualty on 1 carrier. And
that is where you desire to be in our readiness status for the
aircraft carrier fleet?
Admiral Moore. Well, it is obviously not where we desire to
be. We certainly would have liked Truman to have deployed on
time. There are three other carriers ready to go right after
the first of the year that came out of maintenance. So yes, I
think the taxpayers have made a good investment.
Mrs. Luria. So, we were supposed to, by OFRP, develop a new
surge capability, but that doesn't seem to be the case when the
one carrier we have deployed can't be relieved on time. So, is
the OFRP actually generating that surge capability that we need
to maintain presence?
Admiral Moore. Well, I think that question is probably best
left to the fleet commanders, but in general the 36-month OFRP
provides a lot more surge capacity than the previous models
that we operated under. You basically get the carrier after you
consider 6 months' maintenance and 12 months' work-up, the
carriers deploy----
Mrs. Luria. Are we ever doing just 6 months' maintenance?
Admiral Moore. Sure.
Mrs. Luria. Is 6 months still the PIA [planned incremental
availability]----
Admiral Moore. Six months is the notional for a PIA, sure.
Mrs. Luria. And how many PIAs have we completed in 6 months
over the last 5 years?
Admiral Moore. Every one of them. Every one of the PIAs in
the 3 years I have been in this job have completed on time,
every single one.
Mrs. Luria. But not the DPIAs?
Admiral Moore. No, not the DPIAs. But we just finished
Nimitz, our oldest carrier, on time. In fact, 4 days early out
of a DPIA, going to----
Mrs. Luria. And what was the duration of that DPIA?
Admiral Moore. That was at 14 months.
Mrs. Luria. Okay.
Admiral Moore. And Carl Vinson is in the yard right now at
17 months because of some unique work we have to do on the
ship, but notionally 16 months is where we are trying to head
with the carriers in the 36-month----
Mrs. Luria. So then this seems endemic just on the east
coast, because you are listing the west coast carriers being
much more successful.
Admiral Moore. Well, no. I mean, I think the Bush is at the
28 months because of the issues I told you before. That is a
unique thing. We certainly----
Mrs. Luria. So, I mean we want to be here for readiness to
provide you the tools to get the carriers out to deploy on
time, so what else do you need to do that? I have been thinking
a lot about, you know, the situation we have with why the
Nimitz-class carriers are not successfully regenerating for
deployment, and there seems to be some point in time when we
went to an all-nuclear fleet we were just no longer able to
keep up with the capacity for the maintenance anymore.
You know, I think about my first deployment on Truman. I
did their first deployment. We came back. We did their first
PIA. We finished a few days early and that was a resounding
success. And over the course of time when we were doing the 24-
month cycle we were successfully completing the availabilities
on time, deploying within that timeframe. But then there was
some point when the conventional carriers went away, when you
lost Kitty Hawk, when you lost Independence, and all of the
work only relied on two nuclear-capable shipyards.
So, do we have the capacity we need between Norfolk Naval
Shipyard and Puget Sound to do the work that we need?
Admiral Moore. Absolutely, yes. We absolutely do.
Mrs. Luria. Well, then why do we have six carriers sitting
in Norfolk that can't deploy?
Admiral Moore. Well, you have two carriers in maintenance
which are scheduled to delivering on time. We are going to fix
the Truman. You have three other carriers which are----
Mrs. Luria. Well, explain to me 74. Why do we bring 74 back
2\1/2\ years before GW is going to be done with their refueling
and not deploy them? I was just there the other day and it
appears to me that they actually have enough fuel to deploy
again, at least a limited deployment. So why are we not
deploying them----
Admiral Moore. Vinson is available if we want to use it.
Mrs. Luria. Well, they told me they weren't. The ship's CO
specifically told me that they have already started down the
path of what they need to do to prep for the RCOH. They only
have two more underways and those are just, you know, VACAPES
[Virginia Capes], OPAREA [at-sea operating area], carrier quals
[CQ] underways. So, are you telling me that we are going to get
the rest of the use out of the fuel that we have in 74, or
changing the plan?
Admiral Moore. We are going to use 74 as a CQ carrier over
the course of the next year before she goes into RCOH. That is
the plan and we will make as maximal use of the fuel that is
available on that ship.
Mrs. Luria. Well, they told me they only have two more
underways. Should I refer to the operational fleet commander
about that?
Admiral Moore. Well, I think you should. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Luria. Okay. So, you are telling me that you have all
of the resources that you need to maintain our carriers?
Admiral Moore. We do.
Mr. Garamendi. This committee has been blessed with folks
that know the ins and outs of much of the military, and you
just heard an example of one of our knowledgeable new members
of the committee. The issues of the carriers are extremely
important to all of us. I have asked Ms. Luria to join us on
these committee hearings as much as possible, particularly when
we are dealing in an area of which she has significant history
and experience.
I don't believe she is satisfied with your answers,
Admiral. You worked very, very diligently and I think
completely, but I think you were talking past each other on a
couple of things along the way. And I want to make sure that we
hone in on this because it is an extraordinarily major,
valuable part of the total naval assets that were under
discussion just a few moments ago.
So, we will circle back on this. I am going to ask Ms.
Luria to hone in on her particular questions. She does
represent the shipyard in which most of this activity occurs.
We are going to do a second round of questions. I am going to
defer my questions and go to Mr. Lamborn and then I will come
back and see where we go on it.
Mr. Lamborn.
Mr. Lamborn. Okay, thank you. The Congressional Budget
Office has assessed that overhauls conducted at private
shipyards were 31 percent less expensive, on average, than in
the public sector. How can we make the public sector more cost
efficient? Are there options that we could pursue like public-
private competitions that were previous practices of a cost-
conscious government?
Secretary Geurts. Sir, maybe I will start in a time--I
think, you know, the Navy is on record of perhaps not agreeing
with all the assumptions in that report and our recent
experience in our private yard availability of submarines would
probably indicate the model isn't exactly right. Having said
all that, I think we need to absolutely leverage the power on
both sides of things. I am wide open to any ideas that would
allow us to fully leverage the strengths of both the public
yard and the private industry. I think there is a lot we need
to do on the private nonnuclear side which doesn't, you know,
necessarily impact the shipyards, the public shipyards. But
there is, probably, also things we can look at in the public
shipyards to make sure we are maximizing those resources and
ensuring we are doing only the work that is absolutely critical
that has to be done there.
As Rep. Luria said, we need to make sure we are getting
ships in and out on time, and anything we can do to partner
with the private industry to help that I think is a strength. I
am not sure just sending the nuclear work to the private yard
is going to be the panacea. We demonstrated the challenges with
that with the submarines we sent there previously.
Mr. Garamendi. Doug, could I just intervene for a moment?
Mr. Lamborn. Sure.
Mr. Garamendi. I agree. Nuclear power plants, public--
excuse me--private shipyards may be a problem. Is there some
work on these nuclear vessels that can be done in the private
yards and we might be able to split, do the nuclear piece in
the government yards and the others in the other yards and
maybe half and half during one----
Admiral Moore. Yeah, we have that model in San Diego where
we do maintenance on the carrier down there. In that case,
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard comes down to San Diego to do the
work in the propulsion plant and then we have an integrator for
the topside work. In general, though, once it is in the naval
shipyard in Puget and Norfolk Naval Shipyard it is probably
less efficient to kind of split the work up. We do have private
sector work on all of our carriers in the naval shipyards. A
lot of the non-skid on the flight deck is done that way, a lot
of the tank work, some of the--but in general, the most
efficient way is to let the workforce of the naval shipyard
execute that work, the complicated work that we do on the
carriers once she is in the yard.
Mr. Lamborn. Okay, I am going to shift gears and ask about
the level load working schedule that we were talking about last
week as well as it pertains to the private shipyards. Can you
walk us through the vertical and horizontal approaches to
grouping availabilities, the relative pros and cons of each
approach and how they work with the contracting system to
provide a more consistent demand signal to private industry?
Secretary Geurts. Yeah, I will start maybe at the macro
level and then Admiral Moore can jump in. So, you know, a long
time ago we had kind of long-duration cost-plus contracts. They
were not terribly effective in either cost or schedule. We
went, I think, probably a little too far to the other direction
where every ship was an individual fixed-price contract and
awarded very close to execution.
That didn't allow us to leverage the strength of the
shipyards and caused them a lot of work, rework, hire folks,
fire folks, you know. I was down at the private shipyards at
Norfolk and listening to the, you know, going from a 2,000-
person workforce to an 1,800-person workforce to a 1,500-person
workforce in a course of 2 years, and that is just not an
effective way to use business.
So, what we strive to do is not--is pick the right tool for
the job, break the work up a little bit more thoughtfully, and
then where possible leverage the strength of grouping
maintenance activities together, yet still retaining
competition and getting competitive pricing. And so that is
kind of where you hear this vertically or horizontally bundling
contracts is bundle the work so it can be done most
efficiently, but also competitively, because we do see about a
40 percent difference in cost if it is a competitive award
versus a sole-source award. So, competition works, but
competition too often and just-in-time competition, where I
would say we were over the last 18 months is not terribly
effective.
Admiral Moore. Yeah, they are part of our--really, part of
the strategy in particular on private sector maintenance as the
Secretary explained. Horizontal bundling is basically we take a
bunch of avails that are going to happen at about the same time
in the port and we have the contractors all bid on those. And
what that allows us to do then is to lay the bids out, see who
has the capacity to do the work, and arrange the ships at the
yards in the way that it is going to best guarantee that we
deliver them on time. The classic example at Norfolk is we were
able to allow Colonna's, who was teaming with MHI [Mitsubishi
Heavy Industries], a chance to get amphibious work. The
Secretary was down on [USS] Gunston Hall last week. They would
never have been able to get in the market before, only BAE and
NASSCO could do it. MHI said, I have a dock, and NASSCO and
Colonna's said, I have the workforce. They teamed up and we
were able to give them the work. The horizontal, what that
meant is we are going to take three heel-to-toe ships and we
are going to let you bid on those. And so, if you win that
award you basically know you have got now stable, predictable
work over the next 3 to 4 years and then you can plan and grow
the workforce, make the investments.
So, it is a mix between both of them that will allow us to,
I think, optimize and get to what the industry is looking for
in terms of stable, predictable work, but also allows the Navy
to make some good decisions about where the work goes in a
competitive environment so that you don't end up stacking too
much work in one yard, which is not executable.
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Garamendi. I thank you, Mr. Lamborn.
The issue of scheduling continually comes up. I am very,
very concerned that all of the best intentions that you may
have, Secretary Geurts and Admiral Moore, are going to be
pushed aside by the COCOM commanders that want to hang onto a
ship or multiple ships for whatever purpose. And as I look at
the structure you are going to have to endure, the COCOM
commanders are going to take the ships and that is that and
therefore your schedules are going to come unglued or won't
work.
You are talking about heel-to-toe, three or four ships,
excellent idea, all the things you described, all of which are
dependent upon the ships actually coming back for maintenance.
And if they don't come back on within, say, 2, 3, 4 weeks or
months, suddenly everything is out the door and you have got a
problem.
I am going to have a long, serious, longtime conversation
with the COCOM commanders and the Secretary. I am going to look
at the decision-making structure within the Department of
Defense because I think the best of plans that you have are
going to be overridden because the President wants to go out
and see the PACOM fleet at work. He doesn't want to do it in
June, but is available in September and therefore 3 months are
gone and now we have got a problem.
So, I want to really focus on that because I am convinced
that the scheduling is one of the two or three critical issues
here. If we don't have a clear schedule, if those ships are not
coming back on schedule, then the best of intentions are just
simply aren't going to work. So be aware, I am going to drive
this insofar as I can and we are going to take it all the way
up, Mr. Esper and down, and it will eventually land on your
desk and you will either have a schedule or you won't.
Otherwise it isn't going to work, in my view.
The other thing--and I see Mr. Lamborn left, and I just
wanted to poke him a bit. We have talked about upgrading the
public yards. You mentioned MILCON as a mechanism we have used
before. We are looking at perhaps another mechanism, this 20-
year plan, which by the way I think ought to be like a 5-year
plan and we, you know, we need to, again back to scheduling.
So, we are going to go into in-depth, look at your scheduling
and then look at the money you need to make those public yards
capable of carrying out that schedule. There is, also, the
private yards. I want to talk to our colleagues over in
Transportation and Infrastructure, the Maritime Committee, the
money that they have available for shipyards to be upgraded,
and then your certification process, I want to go into that in
detail. You are quite correct we don't need a catch-22 here,
but I want to know what you are doing reaching out to yards to
get them certified and/or at least informing them on what they
need to do to be certified so that that competition is in
place. And I think that is very, very important and therefore
this committee thinks it is very important, so we want to drive
that in some specific details.
I see the notetakers behind you taking notes. Gentlemen,
please, come back at us with regard to that.
Now, [section] 2808, your shipyards. Portsmouth, do we know
where that is? I think we do. Twenty-two-and-a-half million
dollars of high-priority hazardous material warehouse, gone,
not going to be done; $26.1 million for ship maintenance
facility at Portsmouth, gone; $18\1/2\ million for hazardous
material warehouse at Norfolk, gone; all to build a border
wall. I took this committee to Poland, 2, 3 weeks ago now, and
asked the Army, what are you going to do, and asked the Air
Force, what are you going to do since you are not going to
build your runway anytime soon?
So, gentlemen, what are you going to do since some $70
million just disappeared from what you thought were priority
infrastructure programs at Portsmouth and Norfolk? And don't
tell me we are going to backfill.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. I mean, obviously, all those
important projects are still important and the fact they were
put on that list does not mean they are not important nor do
they add value to us. You know, the Department as you know went
through a process of racking and stacking those and made a
decision. What we are going to do is, you know, continue to
plan for those projects where it goes back as we get them in
the budget. They are not core in terms of SIOP, you know, core
dry dock kind of infrastructure, but they are important
activities that we will continue to pursue as we go forward.
Mr. Garamendi. You know your answer isn't sufficient.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir.
Mr. Garamendi. So why don't you think about a sufficient
answer?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir.
Mr. Garamendi. Something is not going to be built soon, $70
million of work at Portsmouth, Norfolk isn't going to happen
soon. So, what is going to take place? You are going to
restack. I suspect when you said the Department, you were not
asked what was important. Is that correct?
Secretary Geurts. Sir, we were--we provided our input back
up to the SECDEF [Secretary of Defense] for the decision. We
have obviously those things in legacy facilities, so it is not
an immediate mission stoppage.
Mr. Garamendi. I would be remiss in saying that the power
of the purse lies with the Congress, not with the President,
and what the President did for $5.6 billion is contrary to the
Constitution. It is something we are going to wrestle with on
the power that we must maintain as an equal branch of
government and particularly the power to appropriate money. We
are not going to let it go.
Ms. Luria, you had another set of questions?
Mrs. Luria. Well, thank you again. Thank you again,
Chairman Garamendi, for allowing me to participate today. I
wanted to go back to aircraft carriers; specifically I wanted
to talk about the Ford.
And I know, Admiral Moore, dating back to 2011 you were PEO
Carriers before your current position. And, you know, over the
course of the Ford there are four particular technologies that
have been the most challenging: the dual-band radar, the
catapults, the arresting gear, and the aircraft elevators. Can
you give us a brief summary of where each of those are?
I am most interested in the aircraft elevators because my
understanding--not the aircraft elevators, the ammunition
elevators, because my understanding and my most recent visit
there were only two that were operable. None of those go to the
magazines. If you can't put ammunition in the magazines, you
can't deploy the ship and it is not really an asset that is
available for warfighting. And in addition to that, what is the
long-term focus for getting that work done? I have asked
several times from the Navy to have a specific schedule that
takes into account the shock trials, the eventual deployment,
and all of the other pieces that need to go into place, so I
would really like to focus on the Ford for a few minutes.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am. Maybe I can take that
question. So, I am happy to provide you a specific schedule
that works in all the timelines we will have the ship after it
goes on its PDT&T [post-delivery test and trials] over the next
18 months.
Mrs. Luria. So, is there an actual schedule?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, there is.
Mrs. Luria. Because I got the update to the Senate Armed
Services Committee and it didn't have an actual schedule that
included the deployment and all the other timelines.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am. I have got it here. I am
happy to sit down with you and share with you or schedule an
office call and go through that in whatever detail you would
like. Over the weekend we certified our third elevator, so that
is turned over to the crew.
Mrs. Luria. Right, but that only goes from the flight deck
to the hangar bay. You are still not putting anything in or out
of the magazines.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. So, we are on
track for the upper elevators. We have three of the lower
elevators in construction and test. They are moving. They are
going down. I am happy to run through the schedule with you. We
are ferrying in the completion of those with the need dates for
the crew for training certification when they start flight ops
in the calendar year and working in how we are going to finish
up those elevators in tandem with availability of the ship when
it is over at the naval station.
Mrs. Luria. Okay, so it is going to deploy on time? What is
on time? It should have already deployed by now, right? So, are
we looking at 2023? Are we looking at 2024? Is even that
optimistic?
Secretary Geurts. In terms of operational deployment we are
working that right now with the CNO and we should have that in
the next 30 days online.
Mrs. Luria. So, you do or you don't have a full schedule?
Secretary Geurts. We are re-looking at that full schedule
in lieu of shock trials and working with the CNO to make sure
we have got alignment between the CNO, the fleet, and myself in
delivering all the elements of the ship for deployment. So, we
should have that available to you. When it is available, I am
happy to come over and brief.
Mrs. Luria. Okay. I look forward to talking about that.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Luria. And I am not sure if Mr. Geurts or Admiral
Moore would like to provide the update on the dual-band radar,
catapults, and arresting gear and where we are with those
systems in testing and operability.
Secretary Geurts. So, we are working all those. We will go
test those in a PDT&E [post delivery test and evaluation]
session, so we have completed the work we had planned to do
over the PSA [post shakedown availability] with those. We will,
when the ship goes to--after PSA we will verify the maintenance
activities and we will in this next 18 months fully exercise
all those systems as we train and certify crew and get those
systems up and running. And our intent is to get, you know, and
we have had, you know, 787 or 747, I think, traps and launches.
Our intent is to put that in the thousands to fully check out
all those systems, shake them all out, make sure they are ready
to go to war.
Mrs. Luria. So, in that 700 or so launches and recoveries,
did we meet the operational design requirements for successful
launches and recoveries, or I believe there was a higher than
anticipated failure rate during that first set of testing, and
what have we done to----
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am. The biggest issue is just
sheer numbers to get any confidence and reliability that we
don't have a sample size large enough. And so our intent
working with the fleet and the captain in this next 18-month
cycle is to get thousands of reps and sets on those cycles,
make sure we are comfortable, that we understand the
reliability, confidence in their performance, and that we can
train and certify the crew to operate those in a wartime
environment.
Mrs. Luria. Okay. And my last question is, and maybe
Admiral Moore since you have a lot of history with this program
going back to 2011 as PEO Carriers, when was the ship
originally planned to deploy when construction started?
Admiral Moore. The original delivery was in the 2013
timeframe and so I think the original deployment date would
probably be in the 2018 timeframe, if you look back based on
what the schedules that were built for the original delivery
plan.
Mrs. Luria. So, the original deployment should have been
2018.
Admiral Moore. That is correct.
Mrs. Luria. A year ago. And best estimates we are looking
at 2024?
Admiral Moore. I think we will beat that, but----
Mrs. Luria. Six years past that?
Admiral Moore. I think the Secretary will come give you the
details. And we are working to pull it as far back to the left
as we can, but I think we are going to beat 2024 for sure.
Mrs. Luria. I just truly don't feel like this is a great
investment as a taxpayer, $13 billion in a ship that is going
to deploy 6 years past its original design timeline. And have
we incorporated any of the lessons learned from the
construction of the Ford and the 79 [USS John F. Kennedy]?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am. We have. Two things ongoing,
one is for those four systems also done an independent review
to make sure we have got the sustainment and all the things we
need to sustain those systems, not just operate them. Secondly,
we are seeing right now in Ford and 79 about an 18 percent
reduction in the man-hours to construct that ship. On the
contract we have for [aircraft carriers] 80 and 81 there will
be another 18 percent reduction. So yes, we have lots of
lessons learned from first-in-class of that ship. We are
incorporating even in elevators those lessons learned into the
future ships.
Mrs. Luria. So, we chose not to prototype some of these
systems on shore-based prototypes before building the Ford,
specifically the aircraft elevators. Is it my understanding
that we are now actually going to build a shore-based prototype
in order to test these and make sure they are fully
operational, functionable in the next-of-class?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am. For the weapons elevators we
are building both a digital twin. We have a software version of
that. We are doing a hardware and a loop version of that as
well as a full shore-based standalone system up at
Philadelphia, which will allow us to both test anything we need
as well as ensure we can support those as we work through the
N-class [next of class] of ships. It is a lesson learned
obviously.
Mrs. Luria. So I think I am out of time, but specifically,
you know, look forward to in the future talking about those
types of lessons learned on other ship construction programs
either currently underway--I had the opportunity to visit the
Zumwalt recently when I was out on the west coast--and then
also some of the planned classes that we have, the frigate, the
large surface combatant, the unmanned surface vessels, and, you
know, how we plan to avoid some of these pitfalls in those
newer programs that we have experienced in, say, the last five
ship construction programs that we have had.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Luria. Thank you.
Mr. Garamendi. That was excellent. That was really, really
well done by both of you. Your questions, Ms. Luria, are right
on and, Mr. Geurts, you answered the questions completely or at
least as complete as I could understand. Part of it is some of
that is over in Joe Courtney's turf and, you know, I don't want
to get into his way, but thank you. It was a very, very good
exchange and we will make use of it.
The last question asked is lessons learned and applied to
the future. Again, this is in Joe's turf, but some of that is
going to come back. The sustainment question that was asked,
the answer is blowing in the wind. You answered it, but the
proof of sustainment is our turf here. And I had not even
really thought about, okay, you are building these marvelous
aircraft carriers and it is only going to be a matter of days
or months before Ms. Luria is going to come in here and ask us
about sustainment on the Ford or whatever ship it is. So, I
want to pick that sustainment issue up and carry it forward.
I am going to ask Ms. Luria to continue to work with us on
this committee on the things that are pertinent to us and
whenever she wants to jump into Joe's turf, as long as Joe is
okay with that we are good.
Mrs. Luria. Well, I am on his subcommittee.
Mr. Garamendi. I know you are. I know you are. You are on
his subcommittee, so we are obviously going to work together on
these things. We have had, I think, a very, very good hearing
here. I am going to stay on this scheduling issue because we
are scheduling across two different very important parts of the
Department of Defense, the COCOM commanders out there who see
the world that they have got to address and then the
sustainment piece of it which is Admiral Moore and Mr. Geurts,
your turf, and there is definitely a conflict. And we should
expect that conflict forevermore. How do we rationalize it? How
do we deal with that conflict and overcome what will, which
could create an impossible sustainment?
Mr. Geurts, you seem to want to answer that question.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. I completely agree with you.
The one piece that we control--I can't control the combatant
commanders and their needs; I can control getting ships back
out on time and getting them out in full. And so, my part of
the deal that I have got to, that we have, Admiral Moore and
the private yards and the public shipyards have got to focus on
to Rep. Luria's observations is we have got to get ships out on
time and in full. That is an element we control that we have
got to do. That will help balance the challenges of the COCOM.
Mr. Garamendi. I respectfully disagree.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir.
Mr. Garamendi. You think you can do it only if the ships
are meeting your schedule, that is the ships are available by
your schedule. You don't control that and we have seen in the
past and I am absolutely certain we are going to see it again
and again that the COCOM commanders are going to delay and ruin
your schedule.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir.
Mr. Garamendi. And they will be gone before that ship that
didn't get deployed. It is the next COCOM commander that will
pay the price. That is the way things work here. We have got
two folks out in the west, out in the Pacific that are
coordinated. They are good buddies. Everything is good.
Everything is fine. One or the other of them will be gone in
the next year or so and maybe the personalities don't match.
This is something that the top brass has to understand and this
committee will help them understand.
The other thing that I want to bring to your attention, we
touched on it just briefly here, we are going to spend more
time on it, and that is the supply train. It is, you mentioned
one supplier. That may be the only supplier in the world that
deals with your shaft that isn't working on your aircraft
carrier, Ms. Luria, or maybe it is some other critical element.
We want to deal with that. I am not going to bring up the
energizing the shipbuilding industry bill here. I have talked
to you guys about it. We need to build commercial ships also,
big oceangoing commercial ships for the supply train as well as
for delivering fuel and supplies across the ocean. Another
issue. This has been very good, very, very helpful.
Admiral Moore, thank you very much for all of your work and
for staying on top of these issues. And, Secretary Geurts,
thank you very much. We are adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 3:40 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
October 22, 2019
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
October 22, 2019
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[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
October 22, 2019
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. HOULAHAN
Ms. Houlahan. Many studies have shown that America's four public
shipyards are overwhelmed--their workload far surpasses their current
capabilities. That problem isn't going away any time soon, and in fact
it will only get worse as our existing public yards need infrastructure
improvements to handle the latest additions to the Navy fleet. For
example, Norfolk Naval Shipyard will need upgrades just to be able to
maintain the new Ford-class aircraft carriers. Likewise, Portsmouth
Naval Shipyard will have a difficult time handling the new Virginia-
class subs without new investment in infrastructure. Given these harsh
realities, does it make sense to incorporate more private shipyards
into the Navy's long-term repair plans?
Secretary Geurts and Admiral Moore. The Navy considers both the
public and private industrial base when scheduling maintenance and
modernization of its ships and submarines. As such, the Navy values and
leverages the capabilities and capacities at our four public shipyards
and the two private sector nuclear capable shipyards, Electric Boat and
Huntington Ingalls Newport News, to support readiness requirements.
While modernization is needed at the public shipyards, the current
repair and maintenance industrial base represented by these six
shipyards provides sufficient capacity to dry dock and maintain the
Navy's aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. The Navy is currently
engaged in multiple lines of effort to enhance productivity and
optimize Naval shipyard infrastructure to ensure delivery of this
capability. With the upcoming retirements of LOS ANGELES Class
submarines as they reach the end of their service lives, the Navy does
not foresee a need for additional nuclear-capable private shipyards.
Ms. Houlahan. Is the ship dry-docking and maintenance capacity
impacted by the growing needs of commercial vessels or the cruise
industry?
Secretary Geurts and Admiral Moore. The Navy's current dry-docking
and maintenance capacity is not directly impacted by the needs of the
commercial industry.
Ms. Houlahan. The Senate Appropriations Committee is recommending a
pilot program for ship maintenance that would transfer $1.2 billion in
Operations and Maintenance, Navy funds to the Other Procurement Navy
account in order to contract for private shipyard maintenance of our
Navy's Pacific Fleet. I would like to get your perspective on the
record. Are you in favor of this Senate provision becoming law?
Further, assuming that we do reach agreement and enact appropriations
for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2020, I would like to ask
you both about the ground rules for this potential funding and how the
Department of the Navy would go about executing the pilot program. What
ship classes would you consider for maintenance? The pending Senate
report language calls for the pilot project to address Pacific Fleet
vessels only--would you be in favor of amending the Senate language to
include maintenance for ships on the east coast as well? Would any
competitions for availabilities be limited to homeports and/or fleet
concentration areas? Do you foresee any impact on the public naval
shipyards as a result of the pilot?
Secretary Geurts and Admiral Moore. The Navy supports a pilot
effort to explore the use of OPN funding vice O&M, Navy (OMN) to
mitigate challenges associated with single year funding of multi-year
ship maintenance availabilities for ships in Pacific Fleet.
The following ships that have maintenance in private
sector shipyards would be considered:
Cruisers (CG)
Destroyers (DDG)
Littoral Combat Ships (LCS)
Landing Helicopter Assault (LHA)
Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD)
Landing Platform/Dock (LPD)
Landing Ship Dock (LSD)
Mine Countermeasure (MCM)
Patrol Ship (PC)
Pending the results of this pilot, the Navy would support
expanding the authority to the east coast.
The Navy must comply with 10 United States Code
Sec. 8669a which restricts short-term availabilities (less than 10
months long) to the homeport. However, competition can be expanded if
there is insufficient capacity and/or competition in the homeport.
Availabilities over 10 months long are competed coast wide.
The Navy expects no impact to the public shipyards.