By Geoff Fein
As the Navy continues to garner lessons learned from each of its aircraft carrier refueling complex overhauls (RCOH), personnel are finding new ways to trim months off the time ships are taken out of service while meeting the growing demand for carriers, according to a Navy official.
The Navy has gone to a 32-month operating cycle for a class of ships initially designed for a 24-month operating cycle, Capt. Frank Simei, program manager, in-service carrier program office, told Defense Daily recently.
“When you increase the operating cycle the opportunities for maintenance are lower. With the additional operational time line we have in a 32 month cycle we are seeing some challenges in getting on the ship and doing the maintenance,” he said.
Additionally, aircraft carriers are getting run a little harder if they are out to sea a little bit longer than what we had anticipated, Simei added.
“You are seeing them come in with more discrepancies. We are just getting our arms around the 32-month operational cycle and the impact…on readiness,” he said. “Right now we haven’t lost the edge. We have some very good programs to go out and assess the ship prior to availability so that we build the right work package.”
And the demand for having a ready fleet of carriers means there is more pressure to shorten the time those ships spend on maintenance availabiltiies, especially the lengthy RCOHs, Simei added.
“There is nothing more important to a fleet than getting the carriers back in operation as soon as possible,” he said “We’ve always had an objective to reduce the duration of RCOH and we haven’t been as successful as we I think we initially set out to accomplish.”
While Simei acknowledges there are a lot of reasons as to why the Navy hasn’t been as successful on cutting the time a carrier is offline for a RCOH, he noted that for the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) the Navy is on track to really show some improvements.
Upon completion of a RCOH a carrier is put through a shakedown period where the ship is delivered back to the fleet and take out to make sure systems are up and running. In the past, following the RCOH shakedown, the carrier would return to port for a four-and-a-half month post shakedown availability (PSA).
“For CVN-71 we said let’s not do that, let’s incorporate that four-and-a-half month availability into the RCOH so that when we deliver the ship it is mission ready and the ship can conduct her shakedown and work-up cycle at the same time,” Simei said.
“We do think we are going to have a small period for items that break that we did not anticipate, so we are going to incorporate that into the RCOH,” he added. “We’ve increased the work package of a RCOH to accomplish that work we would have typically done in that time frame.”
Additionally, the Navy has targeted Northrop Grumman [NOC] with a 39-month execution period for a RCOH, Simei added.
“We think we can achieve that because, we have a stabilized work package and we know the requirements,” he said. “Right now Northrop Grumman is resourced to execute that 39 month duration.”
Typically, the Navy begins planning for a RCOH three years before the carrier is due in port. It takes three years to execute a RCOH, which means it takes six years after the initial start of planning a RCOH, Simei said. Over the course of those six years, technologies can not only change, but possibly become obsolete, he added.
“How do we guarantee the ship comes out with the right technology, the latest technology that we possibly can install in a RCOH without having her be an outdated carrier after RCOH? Those two fight each other,” Simei noted.
With CVN-71 the Navy set up a design, budget, build strategy, Simei added.
“We have worked with Northrop Grumman and the program office responsible for the particular C5I system. What we are having the company do inside of RCOH is the infrastructure for the compartment–the heat, lighting, power, basically building in their scope of work in an empty compartment with all the power, heating, lighting, and air conditioning that’s required,” he said.
Then toward the end of the RCOH, right before the test program, the Navy will bring in the program office with their most up-to-date equipment and install the latest version that supports testing, Simei said.
“Typically what we have done in that four-and-a-half-month availability is updated what we installed during RCOH. It’s not cost effective to do it that way,” he said. “You are updating a system that got installed less than eight months ago. That’s not anyway to conduct a business.”
Getting the most up-to-date versions of software and hardware, prior to testing, along with eliminating the four-and-a-half-month PSA, are significant improvements that are giving carriers back to the fleet quicker, Simei said.
There is also an integrated product team (IPT) called Carrier Team 1 that executes maintenance and modernization inside availabilities, Simei noted. “We have taken all the maintenance providers, maintainers, and developed this IPT to plan and execute maintenance across the board.”
Integrated into the IPT are integrated warfare systems; command, control, communications, computers, combat systems and information (C5I), Naval Air Systems Command and a number of major system commands, Simei said.
“The submarines have a similar version called Team Submarine. The surface community is setting up a similar IPT,” he added. “We have summits between carriers and other SYSCOMS where not only do they give us a piece [of equipment] or component or system but they install that same type of system on surface ships, and in some cases submarines, when it comes to communications [systems]. So there is another forum for lessons learned.”