In testimony before members of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) lastThursday, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) official explained that his office found 37 percent of warfare certifications for U.S. cruiser and destroyer crews based in Japan had expired.
John Pendleton, the director of Defense Force Structure and Readiness Issues at the GAO, said that this is partially the result of the Navy doubling ships based overseas since 2006. While that provides additional forward presence and rapid crisis response, the GAO found in May 2015 that this also meant there were no dedicated training periods built into the operational schedules of the cruisers and destroyers.
Those 37 percent of warfare certifications, which includes seamanship, “represents more than a fivefold increase in the percentage of expired warfare certifications for these ships since GAO’s May 2015 report,” Pendleton told a joint hearing of the Seapower and Projection Forces and Readiness subcommittees.
Pendleton noted that over two-thirds of the expired certifications had been expired for five or more months and “there were specific areas that were higher than 37 percent and one of those was seamanship. Eight of the 11 ships had expired certification for seamanship.”
The hearing was held to interrogate Navy officials about what the Navy is doing about and what led to a series of at-sea mishaps.
In June, the USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62), an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided-missile destroyer, collided with a merchant vessel in the waters off Japan, causing severe damage and several sailor deaths. Then in August the USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) collided with a commercial vessel near the Straights of Malacca and Singapore (Defense Daily, Aug. 21).
Moreover, the USS Antietam (CG-54) was grounded in January and the USS Lake Champlain (CG-57) had a non-deadly collision with a South Korean fishing vessel in May.
Pendleton said the GAO has previously made 11 recommendations in areas that are related to the mishaps like crew training, deployment schedules, and maintenance availabilities. He said the Defense Department generally concurred with all but one of the recommendations but had not implemented many of them.
Pendleton said the Navy has made plans to revise its operational schedules to provide more dedicated training time for overseas-based ships, bit that has been implemented yet.
He also mentioned other factors: crew size reductions and an inability to complete maintenance on time. In May the GAO found that crew reductions the Navy decided on in the early 2000s “were not analytically supported and may now be creating safety risks.”
The Navy has reversed some of these changes but continues to use a workweek standard that does not reflect the actual time sailors spend working and does not account for in-port workloads. This all contributes to the forward-deployed sailors having workweeks greater than 100 hours, the GAO said.
Pendleton added the Navy’s recovery from persistently low readiness levels is premised on adhering to maintenance schedules, which it has not been able to do. A May 2016 GAO study found the service was having problems completing maintenance on time. When maintenance is deferred or delayed, it eventually takes ships out of service for longer to deal with more wear and tear.
“Based on updated data, GAO found that, in fiscal years 2011 through 2016, maintenance overruns on 107 of 169 surface ships (63 percent) resulted in 6,603 lost operational days (i.e., the ships were not available for training and operations),” he said in prepared remarks.
Pendleton agreed with committee members and the Navy officials that the decrease in total ships while maintaining about 100 deployed ships to maintain the same level of presence has put more pressure in the service. The Navy decreased from 333 ships in 1998 to 277 currently. Both congressional committees and the Trump Administration favor a long-term plan to increase the Navy to 355 ships, although that effort will take decades.
“According to the Navy, homeporting ships overseas is an efficient method for providing forward presence and rapid crisis response. Our prior work confirms that having ships homeported overseas provides additional presence, but it comes at a cost,” the GAO said.
In May 2015 GAO said it found that homeporting ships overseas “results in higher operations and support costs than homeporting ships in the United States. In addition, the operational schedules the Navy uses for overseas-homeported ships limit dedicated training and maintenance periods, resulting in difficulty keeping crews fully trained and ships maintained.”
The office said the main reason ahips homeported overseas provide more deployed time than those homeported in the U.S. is precisely because the overseas ships reduce their training and maintenance periods “in order to maximize their operational availability.”
Following the hearing, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was “deeply concerned” by the GAO findings made for the HASC hearing.
“While there is plenty of responsibility to go around, we cannot ignore Congress’s role—years of budget cuts have forced our military to try to do too much with too little.”
He said the consequences of underfunding the military has led to the deadly Pacific Fleet collisions.
“This summer, 17 Navy sailors lost their lives in two preventable ship collisions. Ship repairs are estimated to cost more than half a billion dollars, and the lives lost were priceless. And it is not only the Navy that has seen an uptick in fatal incidents; the recent Marine, Air Force, and Army aviation accidents remind us that all services face similar issues.”
McCain said Navy leaders have to hold the ships to higher readiness standards and request additional resources while Congress has to provide the resources required to ensure sailor safety.
“That is the only way to stop gambling and restore readiness. We owe nothing less to the brave U.S. Navy sailors who serve aboard these ships and the families who support their service,” he added.