Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer last week said the service has made large strides in readiness in his first year on the job and also revealed a new two-aircraft carrier buy analysis is looking at $2.5 billion in savings.
Spencer told a media roundtable on Aug. 7 that his biggest surprise upon becoming Secretary of the Navy was that “I didn’t have a full appreciation for the size of the readiness hole, how deep it was, and how wide it was. It’s pretty amazing.”
Comparing the situation to having a racehorse running a race every day with some injury eventually happening, “we’ve gotten over that. We’ve gotten through that.”
Now, compared to this time last year, he said the Navy and Marine Corps are a more ready and lethal force.
Although part of that was changed with more funding in FY ’17 and ’18, Spencer also said “the message that’s out there now is we have to leverage every resource, look for every best practices, leading practices, and every efficiency we can find.”
Spencer highlighted that Marine Corps aviation readiness specifically improved 10 percent over last year.
“I’m certainly not hanging my hat on that because, as you know, it was in what I would call dismal shape. If I was the CEO of an airline, with the readiness that the Marine Corps and the Navy aviation wing had, I would have been fired and stripped of any sort of benefits I had. We’re working on this tooth and nail.”
He said while the Marine Corps’ aviation combat element (ACE) was “probably one of the most readiness-challenged major force elements that I had in my portfolio,” they are now seeing improvement across every type-model in the group.
Compared to 2016 figures, Spencer said air crew hours increased 13.4 percent in FY ’17 and 32 percent in FY ’18.
He pointed out the Marine Corps is adding many more fifth generation aircraft, with the transition at “46 percent complete in the Marine Corps by adding 94 aircraft to the fleet. Some pretty meaningful numbers when you think about it.”
Separately, Spencer revealed the Navy and shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII] are looking at $2.5 billion in preliminary savings for a two-carrier buy of the third and fourth Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers, CVN-80 and 81.
“We’ve been working hand-in-hand with HII. We have their latest data set. We’re analyzing that. We’re probably going to have some conversations about it.”
Spencer said the Navy hopes to reply to Congress on how much this purchase will save by mid-fall.
The final FY ’19 defense authorization bill authorized CVN-81 for early procurement as part of a possible two-carrier buy, counting as an addition to the contract covering CVN-80 (Defense Daily, July 24).
Back in April, James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition, told a House panel that the Navy released a request for proposal (RFP) to HII on how much the block buy would save (Defense Daily, April 13). The RFP was issued in March (Defense Daily, March 19).
That month. HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) president told reporters the company saw a two-carrier purchase saving up to $1.6 billion in commercially furnished equipment and might push the carrier centers to three-and-a-half to four years apart (Defense Daily, April 10).
Geurts said the service is also looking at savings in government furnished equipment too, which takes up one-third of the ship cost.
Spencer said HII has already had an “impressive learning curve” in reducing man hours 13 to 17 percent in the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), the second Ford-class carrier. That led him to call it a mature program by now.
“I would stand and defend myself to any taxpayer who would say why should we buy two in that we’re going to get the savings out of it,” Spencer said.
Spencer said the Navy has been taking the months since it submitted the RFP to HII on the two-carrier buy to use an iterative process to really analyze how much can be saved.
“This is why it’s taken so much time, to be very frank with you, is that we’ve sat there and said, ‘Okay, you know, what is in this original six percent savings?’ And we said, ‘Okay, are you doing modular construction on superstructure? No, well, have you – well, how about if you do that. Would modular construction give us any more savings?’ Yep, came back another 2 percent.”
He said they are trying to increase the savings but “I think it’s pretty good. I’d take 2.5 billion [dollars] now.”
However, Spencer admitted there have been problems with first Ford-class carrier, CVN-78.
Last month the Navy asked Congress’ permission to move $62.7 million to the CN-78 to correct deficiencies found in testing. Part of that money is meant to address continuing technical deficiencies with the Advanced Weapons Elevator as well as engineering, tooling, and repair of the Main Thrust Bearings (Defense Daily, July 19).
“I think what we had on 78 was five to seven whiz-bang technologies that hadn’t been proved, and that was probably not the way to do it.”
Spencer said by now the Navy has a handle on problems with the carrier elevators, is conducting Advanced Arresting Gear rework, and the carrier’s new electromagnetic aircraft launch system catapult is working with 787 shots and traps.
“I actually do feel fairly comfortable. The elevators still are something we’re working on. That’s our open Achilles’ heel.”
He also defended the Navy’s role in CVN-78’s recent problems with main thrust bearings, which become a problem in January.
“You know, there’s only so much the Navy can do. We got to work with our suppliers. I mean, I don’t know how that’s our fault, per se. I mean, that could happen if we buy a DDG that we have well under a matured plan.”