Commentary
This is certainly an important need, but given the shortage of shipyards to build new ships, repair ships, and perform major maintenance, it won’t happen unless we stop fooling around and spend the billions of dollars necessary to significantly expand our shipyard capacity.
But there’s another important, more immediately urgent goal discussed earlier this year by Commander of Naval Surface Forces Vice Adm. Roy Kitchener. That goal, described by Vice Adm. Kitchener as his “north star” goal, is to keep 75 surface warfare ships at “mission-capable” levels.
The 75 ships he’s referencing come out of a
pool of 164 surface warfare ships, including the Navy’s cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat ships, mine-counter-measures ships, and amphibious warfare/assault ships. It doesn’t include the Navy’s three
Zumwalt-class destroyers, aircraft carriers, command-class ships, or expeditionary sea bases. So the goal, an apparently ambitious goal, is to get to the point that on any given day, just below one-half of our Navy’s surface warfare ships are at least “mission-capable.”
Due to operational security issues, we don’t know how many ships are currently “mission-capable,” but we do know that the Navy has been having a tough time keeping its ships combat-capable. Indeed, a May Government Accountability Office report (
pdf) found “that sustainment challenges worsened from fiscal year 2011 through 2021 for 10 ship classes.” And those ship classes include the 75 ships that Vice Adm. Kitchener wants to keep at least “mission-capable.”
Given all the sustainment issues, having 75 “mission-capable” surface combat ships versus whatever lesser amount we currently have now sounds great, but in Navy parlance, being “mission-capable” doesn’t mean the same thing as what it means in the broader community. Hence, it’s important to understand the various levels of mission capability as defined by the Navy before getting too excited.
Along with being “mission-capable,” ships can be broadly classified as being “non-mission-capable” and “fully mission-capable.” Non-mission-capable ships are those vessels undergoing maintenance that would prevent them from being deployed in any useful operational capacity. A ship is fully mission-capable (
pdf) when its hull machinery; command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence; medical treatment facility systems; and manning requirements to support the missions for which it was designed are operational and onboard. This is the state Navy ships should be in when deployed.
The “mission-capable” category, around which Vice Adm. Kitchener is setting his goals and designing his readiness improvement program, doesn’t mean a ship is fully mission-capable and deployable. But on the positive side, it should be noted that its goal for the 75 ships includes
standardizing on a significant level of readiness that exceeds what we’re seeing with many of our surface ships today.
Of course, one of the program goals will be to have the surface ships that the Navy isn’t targeting for decommissioning and expedited sinking exercises (
SINKEX) brought up to full mission capability. Still, the program does contain elements of uncertainty and ambiguity, as described in Vice Adm. Kitchener’s
own words:
“When I talk about mission-capable, that sort of implies, ‘OK, I’ve got a standard of readiness that will allow us to deploy or perhaps to accelerate to deploy, and that includes a level of certification that enables that.’”
So there’s uncertainty about how fast any particular ship at the standard level of Vice Adm. Kitchener’s program readiness can be brought up to a state of full mission capability/unrestricted deployability. The uncertainty about how fast a ship will be able to achieve full mission capability comes from the fact that resource availability will vary based on time of need and that the exact resources needed for each and every individual ship will vary. For example, one particular Flight II Arleigh Burke-class destroyer will require a different set of material resources, personnel additions, and training to get to full mission capability than another Flight II Arleigh Burke.
Then there’s the fact that improving the readiness of littoral combat ships doesn’t have the same impact as improving the readiness of vastly more capable Ticonderoga-class cruisers, which have been suffering from what appears to be chronic, willful under-maintenance on their way to being “
ghost decommissioned.” And why stop at 75 surface warfare ships? Surely, U.S. Naval commitments and responsibilities far exceed 75 surface combat ships. Surely, we don’t want half our fleet lying fallow and being months or years away from being deployable?
So while this program sounds like an improvement over the current dismal state of affairs, the question remains, given the severe lack of readiness endemic to our fleet, why not go to Congress and secure the resources ASAP to get our current, already built surface warfare ships back to being fully updated with new threat upgrades and in good shape materially, so that all of them can be part of a normal availability cycle? And the programs developed to track and improve readiness to “mission-capable” level can be used to get us these desperately needed deployable ships.
Finally, only by leveraging the ships we currently have in our fleet, including the very powerful
Ticonderoga cruisers and first-generation Burkes, will the Navy have any chance of ever returning to the 381 ships it needs.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
