Back to news

January 14, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval

Sink Feeling: The Navy's 7 Big Problems (One Is the F-35)

by Michael Peck

“The Navy continues to struggle with rebuilding the readiness of the existing fleet due to enduring maintenance and manning challenges,” the report finds. “As the Navy seeks to expand its fleet by 25 percent, these challenges will likely be further exacerbated and the Navy will likely face additional affordability challenges.”

The Navy must fix the teething troubles of a new and complicated aircraft that lacks sufficient spare parts: in 2017, only 15 percent of Marine F-35Bs were rated fully mission-capable. “The Navy and the Marine Corps may have to decide whether they are willing to accept less reliable and maintainable aircraft than originally planned,” GAO warned.

How can the U.S. Navy buy more ships and planes when it can't maintain the ones it has?

That's the question posed by a new Government Accountability Office report .

“The Navy continues to struggle with rebuilding the readiness of the existing fleet due to enduring maintenance and manning challenges,” the report finds. “As the Navy seeks to expand its fleet by 25 percent, these challenges will likely be further exacerbated and the Navy will likely face additional affordability challenges.”

Auditors point to seven problems that GAO, Congress's watchdog agency, have highlighted over the past several years, but which have yet to solved:

Training:

After a series of embarrassing collisions at sea in 2017, which led to fears that Navy has forgotten basic ship-handling skills, training was revamped along with fewer waivers for required training. Still, “while the Navy has demonstrated its commitment to ensuring that crews are certified prior to deploying, training for amphibious operations and higher-level collective training may not be fully implemented for several years.”

Maintenance backlogs:

Between 2012 and 2018, only 30 percent of maintenance was completed on schedule. In particular, most Navy attack submarines have suffered maintenance delays. The backlog is caused by insufficient capacity in public shipyards as well as shortages of shipyard workers.

Overworked sailors:

In 2017, GAO concluded that the Navy was underestimating how many sailors were needed to man ships, leading to undersized crews and overworked sailors. The Navy says it is aiming for surface ships based overseas to have a minimum of 95 percent of their complement, but GAO auditors who interviewed crews in Japan were told that “the Navy's methods for tracking fit and fill do not account for sailor experience and may be inaccurately capturing the actual presence of sailors onboard and available for duty on its ships. Moreover, sailors consistently told us that ship workload has not decreased, and it is still extremely challenging to complete all required workload while getting enough sleep.”

Unrealistic budgeting:

The Navy wants to boost the number of ships by 25 percent, and is planning to buy 301 new ships between now and 2048 as well as extending the life of older destroyers and submarines. But GAO and the Congressional Budget Office have calculated that the Navy “has consistently and significantly underestimated the cost and timeframes for delivering new ships to the fleet. For example, the Navy estimates that buying the new ships specified in the fiscal year 2019 plan would cost $631 billion over 30 years while the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that those new ships would cost $801 billion—a difference of 27 percent.”

Aging aircraft:

Numerous aircraft models across the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps have been plagued by low availability rates due to aging aircraft, lack of spare parts for older planes, and too few mechanics.

Too few pilots:

The shortage of Marine Corps fighter pilots quadrupled to 24 percent between 2006 and 2017, while the Navy has been scrambling to fill pilot vacancies. “Further compounding their pilot shortages, we also found that the services have not recently reevaluated squadron requirements to reflect an increased fighter pilot workload,” said GAO. “As a result, the reported shortage actually could be greater.”

The F-35:

The Navy must fix the teething troubles of a new and complicated aircraft that lacks sufficient spare parts: in 2017, only 15 percent of Marine F-35Bs were rated fully mission-capable. “The Navy and the Marine Corps may have to decide whether they are willing to accept less reliable and maintainable aircraft than originally planned,” GAO warned.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/sink-feeling-navys-7-big-problems-one-f-35-41502

On the same subject

  • US State Department cleared $83.5 billion in foreign military sales in FY20

    October 2, 2020 | International, Aerospace

    US State Department cleared $83.5 billion in foreign military sales in FY20

    Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department cleared $83.5 billion in Foreign Military Sales cases in fiscal 2020, the highest annual total of FMS notifications since the start of the Trump administration. The dollar total — spread over 68 FMS cases notified to Congress — represent an increase of roughly $15 billion over FY19 figures. However, that dollar figure comes with a number of caveats that will lower the overall dollar figure of actual sales when negotiations are complete. FMS notification figures represent potential arms sales that the State Department internally cleared, then passed to Congress through the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. The notifications do not represent final sales; if Congress does not reject the potential sale, it then goes into negotiations, during which dollar figures and quantities of equipment can change. Four key members of Congress, either individually or collectively, have quietly frozen all major U.S. arms sales to Turkey for nearly two years. However, while not solid dollars, notifications are a notable way of tracking interest in American arms from foreign partners, and are seen as a leading indicator of final sales to come. Geographically, the Pacific region led the way with 25 requests totaling $44.1 billion in potential sales. Following that was Europe with 20 requests totaling $21.1 billion; the Middle East with 14 cases totaling $11.5 billion; and Africa with five cases totaling $5.1 billion. Central and South America (three cases) and Canada (one case) each totaled less than $1 billion. July was the busiest month, with 15 announcements worth $32.5 billion, followed by September with nine announcements worth $17.4 billion. Japan was the largest single customer, with five cases worth an estimated $27.9 billion. The second-highest dollar total for one nation was Switzerland — which leads to the biggest caveat from these numbers. FMS deals sometimes never come to fruition, and that is particularly true with two cases included in the FY20 figures: Switzerland and the Philippines. In both cases, the State Department moved to preapprove those nations to buy high-end American technology, even though the governments had not selected the winner of their respective internal competitions. That means that while the Philippines has not decided on its next military helicopter, the U.S. State Department in April announced it cleared potential sales for both AH-1Z helicopters at $450 million and AH-64E Apaches at $1.5 billion. The case was even starker in Switzerland, where the country was cleared this week to purchase both the F/A-18 Super Hornet for $7.45 billion and the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter for $6.58 billion. In both those situations, the country has yet to decide if it will purchase any American system, and will not be purchasing both; a decision to buy from elsewhere in both cases would drop the FMS total by almost $16 billion. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2020/10/01/us-state-department-cleared-835-billion-in-foreign-military-sales-in-fiscal-2020/

  • New Attack Technique 'Sleepy Pickle' Targets Machine Learning Models

    June 13, 2024 | International, Security

    New Attack Technique 'Sleepy Pickle' Targets Machine Learning Models

    Learn about Sleepy Pickle, a new threat exploiting machine learning models via pickle files. Protect your data now!

  • New cybersecurity standards for contractors could be finalized this week

    January 29, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security

    New cybersecurity standards for contractors could be finalized this week

    The first version of the new cybersecurity requirements the Pentagon wants military contractors to follow could be finalized as soon as Jan. 31. Katie Arrington, chief information security officer for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and the point person for the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), told an audience Jan. 28 that she will have the requirements by the end of the month. The CMMC is a tiered cybersecurity framework that grades companies on a scale of one to five. A score of one designates basic hygiene and a five represents advanced hygiene. Arrington said Jan. 28 that the lowest level will become the default for Department of Defense contracts and will include basic tasks such as changing passwords. Speaking at an event hosted by the law firm Holland and Knight, Arrington said the new standards won't be in effect overnight. The auditors and assessors who will grade companies need training and new contracts will be slowly phased in. “The likelihood that any awards will be made until 2021 [of the certification] is, I would say, highly unlikely,” she said. She noted that companies are not required to have CMMC certification until the time of award. “You have a full year to get yourselves set, to get yourself in position.” According to one slide in her presentation, all new contracts will have the requirements in fiscal year 2026. Arrington expects 1,500 companies to be certified by the end of 2021. The requirements are expected to be free of jargon and overly technical language that can often make military documents befuddling. “I asked if it could be created on an eighth grade reading level. Why? Because I'm not smart and I owned a small business and I fell prey to this,” she said. “I needed it to be in something that anybody could adapt to. We hear companies all the time say my nephew is doing my cybersecurity. I need your nephew to read what I need him to do.” Arrington promised that the requirement would not become a simple checklist, because if it does “I've failed. We failed.” Moreover, she suggested the framework be reevaluated at least once each year because cyber threats will continue to evolve. https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/2020/01/28/new-cybersecurity-standards-for-contractors-could-be-finalized-this-week/

All news