By Geoff Fein
To ensure that it can reach the goal of a 313-ship fleet, the Navy is undertaking several efforts to make sure its ships reach their full design life, a top Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) official said.
NAVSEA, along with the leadership of the surface warfare enterprise, is taking a targeted focus on in-service ships to make sure officials know those assets will reach their full design life, Vice Adm. Kevin McCoy, commander NAVSEA, said during a briefing at last week’s Surface Navy Association symposium.
“We are standing up a new organization…about 50 to 60 people, some in Norfolk some in San Diego, to really focus on what is it going to take, now that most of our ships are mid life…to make sure they get up to their full design life,” he said.
“A very key part of 313, along with the acquisition side, really about 75 to 80 percent of 313 is already out there in the fleet,” McCoy added. “We want to make sure we are doing the right engineered maintenance at the right time, that we got it budgeted, that we know what it is, and that we stick to discipline and make sure these ships get to their full design life. That’s a real key initiative for NAVSEA this year.”
On the acquisition side, NAVSEA is working with the Program Executive Offices (PEO), Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley and the Navy’s Research, Development and Acquisition (RDA) community to really make sure that programs are affordable, McCoy said. “We are looking inside the Navy as well as outside.”
“One thing we are doing inside the Navy, we are taking a very hard look at our specs and standards and at the things we are telling industry to do,” McCoy added. “As a matter fact, we are taking our top 10 costliest specs, working with industry and going around to factories, test facilities and shipyards to make sure we really understand the cost of every word and what is it we want industry to do, what are we willing to pay for, what are we not willing to pay for, and things like that.”
The Navy needs industry to hold the line as well, and for both the service and industry to hold off on making changes and stick to budgets, McCoy added.
“Affordability is a huge issue that we really need to stick to if we are going to have the 313 piece,” he said.
Additionally, the Navy is continuing to explore where it can cut the cost of building new ships by relying more on common parts and even looking at common hull forms.
For example, McCoy said NAVSEA is looking at whether it can use either the T-AKE cargo ship hull or the LPD-17 hull for the Amphibious Command Ship (LCC) replacement.
McCoy added the Navy wants to make sure that it gets the most out of its investments.
“We are looking out into the future for common platforms. We recognize that every time we tweak an existing design to customize it for some future application, it comes with a significant bill associated with that,” he said.
At the system level, McCoy said NAVSEA is already moving out on the component level with the technical warrant holders and the PEOs and necking down systems.
For example, about six to nine months ago, the Navy has had a process in house between NAVSEA and the PEOs in which they have begun to neck down on certain systems. For example, the Navy has gone from 23 different machinery control consoles down to about seven, McCoy noted. “We are doing same thing for pumps and freshwater systems…doing it for air conditioning systems.”
“We are working with folks who do this for the automotive industry, looking at how do we take these 250 sea water pumps, for example, and neck them down to something more like 30…and is that enough,” he said. “We are targeting a number of these deep dives every year…where are we spending the most of our money, where do we have the least commonality…[we] spent a year understating the metrics and where we are spending our money, doing it in a systematic manner and doing it with our technical warrant holders and PEOs.”