By Emelie Rutherford
Lawmakers voiced concerns yesterday about the readiness of the Navy’s surface fleet in light of the new mission destroyers will assume aiding in European missile defense.
A Navy-commissioned Fleet Review Panel concluded that the recent increase in unsatisfactory surface ship inspections by the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey resulted from cost cutting that led to reductions to ship manning, ship-maintenance capability and capacity, training programs, maintenance funding, and assessment and inspection programs.
Two House Armed Services Committee (HASC) subcommittees yesterday questioned Navy officials about what corrective actions are being taken to counter the degradated surface force readiness and prevent truncation of ships’ service lives.
The “failure to hold the line on time-tested, combat proven standards for how we operate, maintain, inspect, and certify our forces” is the root problem, according to joint written testimony from Fleet Forces Command head Adm. J.C. Harvey, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Fleet Readiness and Logistics Vice Adm. William Burke, and Naval Sea System Command leader Vice Adm. Kevin McCoy.
To address the negative surface force operational and material-health trends, they said, changes are being pursued including: clarifying the chain of command for ship manning, training, equipping and maintenance; making a single technical person responsible for enforcing class-maintenance standards, reestablishing a “material readiness training continuum;” and tackling needed cultural changes.
HASC Seapower subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) sound he found several things “very alarming” about the Fleet Review Panel’s report regarding the health of the AN/SPY-1 radar, which is a key part of the Aegis combat system used on the destroyers that are key to President Barack Obama’s new ship-and-land based setup for defending European allies from missiles.
The report found radar technicians can’t get money to buy spare parts, haven’t been properly trained, and can’t go to supervisors in the case of the DDG destroyers beause they likely are the supervisors. Taylor also highlighted the report’s warning of a culture that tolerates poor system performance.
The congressman said the Navy’s destroyers and cruisers, which use the AN/SPY-1 radar, are the backbone of its fleet.
“I’m…an early supporter of (Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead’s) decision to put our nation’s missile defense on our Aegis destroyers, which makes this particular report all the more damning, since that is now the mainstay of our fleet,” Taylor said, adding he is alarmed “if the radars for the mainstay of our fleet are not working because of lack of spare parts, because people aren’t trained, because it’s now become accepted for them not to work.”
Harvey said he is responsible for ensuring the surface fleet’s readiness and knows if he fails he will be replaced.
“In terms of the overall picture of the fleet I believe I am on track to reverse these (negative) trends in the next two years, if we stay on track with the investments we know we need to make in terms of our training, in terms of sustaining our maintenance availabilities, in terms of making sure our spare-parts lockers are filled up appropriately, and we will drive to that via the (Ballistic Missile Defense) BMD mission that we’ve been given,” Harvey said. “That is a big driving factor for us.”
Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), ranking member of the HASC Readiness subcommittee that held the hearing with the Seapower panel, lamented that the Navy does not have a long-term ship plan that better balances sustainment with modernization and recapitalization.
“(The Department of Defense) DoD has taken a view that fiscal restraint means they take actions that are contrary to their own best interests,” the congressman said.