RAND - Funding Ship Maintenance a Big Problem

San Diego Ship Repair to Expand Capabilities

Navy Surface Fleet Faces Rough Waters Trying to Maintain Ships

The Navy in the past decade has found itself in a downward spiral of maintenance problems. It has subjected the fleet to high operational tempos that increased wear and tear and has cut back routine practices that help identify onboard repair needs, such as ship inspections and assessments.

The service is trying to revamp its maintenance policies to include more inspections, new technology and a shift in culture. Progress is occurring, but changes will take a while to stick, and the service will likely have to deal with budget cuts that make it more difficult to maintain its ships, Navy and industry officials said.

Water is drained from a dry dock at U.S. Naval Ship Repair
Facility and Japan Regional Maintenance Center (SRF JRMC)
Yokosuka preparing the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile
cruiser USS Shiloh (CG 67) for a scheduled maintenance
availability in July 2015. US Navy photo.

Navy Refining Surface Ship Master Plan to Balance Shipyard, Operational Needs - USNI News
SAN DIEGO – The Navy’s maintenance and operational communities have completed the first iterations of a surface ship master plan for maintenance and modernization work, in the hopes of balancing out peaks and valleys in shipyard workload without impacting operational needs.
The effort began after Fiscal Year 2013, when the Navy’s regional maintenance centers were performing as much as 40 percent more work than predicted, Rear Adm. Bill Galinis, deputy commander of surface warfare at Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) and commander of Navy Regional Maintenance Center, said at the American Society of Naval Engineers’ annual Fleet Maintenance and Modernization Symposium. In some cases, the estimates did not accurately predict how much repair work was needed, and in some cases the predictions only included mid-life work on older ships but forgot to include post-shakedown availabilities for brand new ships.

Assessment of Surface Ship Maintenance Requirements | RAND

Key Findings

Since the Late 1990s, Expenditures per Ship Are Growing at an Increasing Rate

• This fact runs parallel to the legislative environment, which impact available resources. Annual shortfalls now amount to $8 billion between requested budget and legislatively authorized possible if legislation does not change.
• Pressure on maintenance budgets is expected to grow as the effects of sequestration are felt, with no expected diminishment in the demand for naval forces.
• Even absent sequestration, continued growth in per-ship maintenance cost is likely unsustainable, at least at the rate seen in the last 15 years. At the rate seen, maintenance would either become a larger component of the operations and management budget or come at the expense of new construction or modernization or require deferral.

A Study of the DDG-51 Class Shows the Mismatch Between Navy's Claims for Maintenance and What Is Spent

• A comparison between the cumulative maintenance levels for the DDG-51 and the levels specified in the Navy's technical foundation papers showed that the Navy is not in general funding to the level as stated in the technical foundation papers.
• This casts doubt on the validity of the technical foundation papers' requirements and the Navy's commitment to carrying out the maintenance stated in these published papers.
• Given this, the Navy will need to consider alternatives to the technical foundation papers' process as it formulates requirements and source plans.

Deferred Maintenance of Ships Affected by Individual History of Ships

• Ships of similar age and operating histories whose major difference is basing histories — with the attendant effects on maintenance — can show dramatic differences between the overall costs to maintain.
• Maintenance deferrals exact an extremely high premium that drives ship cost up in ways inconsistent with the need to contain costs.
• Any maintenance construct needs to understand and budget for the high cost of deferral or devise mitigations for cases where deferral is inevitable.

Recommendations

This report recommends actions the Navy can take to address surface ship maintenance and operations requirements in the context of fiscal constraints.

• A maintenance strategy that prioritizes selected restricted availabilities (SRAs), which are relatively lengthy and well funded, but the time and money available for maintenance in SRAs is limited. Maintenance priorities within SRAs are assigned based on safety concerns, the predictability of failures, the consequences of failures, and the future cost of deferring maintenance.
• If the maintenance required is relatively straightforward, and can be conducted with available personnel or can be broken down into manageable segments, then a continuous maintenance availability can provide an efficient and cost-effective alternative to an SRA.