Submissions Due: September 12, 2025
Week Dates: September 22-26, 2025
Submission Length: 500 words
Submit to: Content@cimsec.org
In 500 words or less, what do you want the new Chief of Naval Operations to know? CIMSEC is launching a special series featuring short articles that look to convey pressing points to the U.S. Navy’s new top leadership.
Admiral Daryl Caudle was sworn in as the U.S. Navy’s 34th Chief of Naval Operations on August 25, 2025. In his speech, Caudle articulated:
“The Sailor will be front and center in my vision throughout my tenure as CNO…To ensure that they are ready to fight and win decisively–today, tomorrow, and well into the future—we will view everything we do we through an operational lens focused on three priorities: the foundry, the fleet, and the way we fight.”
How can Admiral Caudle accomplish these priorities? What challenges are underappreciated by Navy leadership and deserve stronger priority? How can the new CNO make major reforms to better meet great power threats? Contributors can address these questions and more as they convey their message.
Given the broadly international nature of the U.S. Navy’s mandate and the numerous partners and allies that closely work with American naval forces, international contributors are highly encouraged to share their perspectives.
This is an independent CIMSEC initiative and is not produced in cooperation with any U.S. Navy entity. Read previous editions of “Notes to the New CNO” for the 33rd and 32nd Chiefs of Naval Operations.
Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at Content@cimsec.org.
Featured Image: Adm. Daryl Caudle assumes duties as the 34th chief of naval operations during an assumption of office ceremony at the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 25. (MCS Joe J. Cardona Gonzalez/U.S. Navy)
The US military is expanding its inventory of long-range maritime strike missiles such as the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), Maritime Strike Tomahawk (MST), Standard Missile 6 (SM-6), Long-Range Anti-ship Missile (LRASM), and Naval Strike Missile (NSM). These capable weapons all have ranges well beyond the effective range of the sensor systems organic to their launch platforms – meaning their effective employment relies on third party targeting data.
While these missiles all have terminal seekers for target acquisition and aim point selection, they require target location and identification information from deep-reach external sensor systems for mission planning, missile launch decisions, target location updates to in-flight missiles, and battle damage assessments (BDA).
The threat of long-range (400 km/160 nm), hypersonic, air-to-air missiles such as the PLAAF’s new PL-21 indicate that US conventional reconnaissance and targeting aircraft must now operate within protected airspace limiting their ability to target enemy ships out to the maximum ranges of US anti-ship missiles. As a result, targeting for US long-range anti-ship missiles is increasingly dependent on NRO and Space Force satellite reconnaissance and targeting systems.
A fundamental problem facing the US military is that the services have fielded capable, long-range missile systems, but only possesses limited deep-reach Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Targeting (ISRT) capabilities, limiting the effective employment of long-range missile systems. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and Air Force/Space Force are developing satellite ISRT constellations to address the problem, but the services need to use a ‘Maritime Strike System of Systems’ approach to address the true functionality of US maritime strike capability.
A System of Systems Approach
The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition & Technology) Systems Engineering Guide for Systems of Systems defines a System of Systems (SOS) as: “a set or arrangement of systems that results when independent and useful systems are integrated into a larger system that delivers unique capabilities.” The “Maritime Strike SOS” is the set of systems and human processes integrated into a larger system of systems that provide engagement quality tracks on moving enemy ships within stringent time latency requirements for the successful engagement by the various long-range, anti-ship missiles fielded by the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and the Army.
A Maritime Strike SOS analysis would address the functionality of not only NRO and Air Force/Space Force space systems; but also, the other essential components and processes of the end-to-end architecture, such as requirements submission and adjudication, satellite/constellation tasking, satellite data relay, ground processing and exploitation, and information/data dissemination to tactical forces. The SOS analysis would ensure that the end-to-end architecture and its timeliness will provide the targeting required for effective anti-ship missile engagements.
Without guaranteed performance across this entire architecture—particularly its timeliness—these substantial space investments will fail to enable anti-ship missile engagements.
Maritime Strike SOS Analysis
Missile
Range
Velocity
Service
Naval Strike Missile
(NSM)
115 nm
450 kts
Navy, USMC
Maritime Strike Tomahawk (MST)
1000 nm
450 kts
Navy, USMC, Army
Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM)
200 nm
450 kts
Navy, USAF
Precision Strike Missile (PrSM)
350 nm
3334 kts
Army
Standard Missile 6
(SM-6)
130 nm
2334 kts
Navy, USMC, Army
The first step in a Maritime Strike SOS analysis is to determine the capability required of the SOS for each type of anti-ship missile and launch platform combination. The objective is to determine the sequence and timing of events from receipt of a mission task by a launch platform to the acquisition of the moving target ship by the missile seeker.
In the final analysis, the missile must arrive at the target ship location area of uncertainty and begin its search before the moving ship has time to exit the area of uncertainty. This analysis will determine the maximum usable time latency from satellite target sensing to entry of the target information into the missile by the launch platform.
The SOS performance requirements are derived from the performance attributes of these five existing missile systems fielded by the Services for use in the context of joint force operations.
Maritime Strike SOS Baseline
Once the SOS performance requirements are defined for each type of missile, the next step is to identify and evaluate the baseline and alternatives. The targeting timeline for the SOS analysis would begin with receipt of a Maritime Strike mission order, and include the following:
Processes for the submission of collection requirements
Adjudication of collection tasking priorities
Planning of satellite mission or constellation coverage
Tasking of satellites
Time for satellites to access the target area
Collection of data by the satellites
Dissemination of sensor data to ground/shipboard systems for data processing and image exploitation
Dissemination of target information to missile launch platforms
The combination of all these factors has to occur within the maximum allowable time latency for successful missile engagement.
The SOS Satellite Baseline
Satellite communications, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and weapons targeting systems are well into the transition from a small number of operational systems to proliferated architectures that take advantage of lower launch costs, and cheaper satellites to form mega constellations of hundreds of satellites. The following satellite mega constellations designed for or capable of supporting anti-ship missile targeting should be included in the baseline SOS analysis.
NRO Proliferated Architecture
On 22 May 2024, the NRO launched the first set of 21 Star Shield imaging satellites into low earth orbit (LEO) in what the NRO calls the NRO Proliferated Architecture. As of 30 April 2025, 179 Star Shield satellites have been launched. According to the NRO, six more launches are scheduled in 2025. Assuming the previous pattern of 21 satellites per launch the constellation is projected to reach approximately 300 three hundred satellites in late 2025. The NRO also indicates that launches will continue through 2029 but has not disclosed specifics on schedule or the total number of launches. The SOS analysis would address the performance of the satellite sensors and the processes and timelines involved from submission of fleet requirements to delivery of the sensed information to the fleet.
Space Force Long-Range Kill Chains Program
In August 2024, the Space Force Long-Range Kill Chains Program was approved for Milestone B indicating that this satellite-based Moving Target Indicator (MTI) constellation designed to track ships and land targets can proceed to acquisition. Program cost, constellation size, and the technical details of the overall architecture and performance are classified. The schedule and performance parameters are established, and the program is funded for an Initial Operational Capability (IOC) in the early 2030s. The size of this mega-constellation, arrangement of the satellites in space, and the technical details of the overall architecture and performance remain classified.
Space Defense Agency Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA)
The Space Force/Space Development Agency (SDA) is fielding the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) that includes Link 16 and Integrated Broadcast Service (IBS) for the dissemination of information to tactical forces. In August 2024, SDA demonstrated the capability to make a PWSA Link 16 connection with a carrier and an aircraft on its deck.
In late summer 2025, the SDA is expected to begin launching its first set of PWSA satellites with limited operational capabilities. This will include 126 Transport Layer data relay satellites, and 28 Tracking Layer satellites, and 4 demonstration satellites for missile tracking. The SOS should determine the role of the PWSA in the overall SOS architecture for targeting anti-ship missiles.
Maritime Strike Command and Control Baseline
Maritime Strike is a mission that now involves platforms and missiles from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and USAF. The Maritime Strike SOS analysis must address the command and control relationships and processes among the components to ensure the arrangements are in place for the sharing of target information; and, for the planning, and execution of coordinated multiple component maritime strike operations.
The Services are fielding systems for the receipt and exploitation of targeting information. The Army is fielding Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) variants for Division and above, and a basic variant for division and below. The Navy and Marine Corps are developing and fielding Navy Maritime Targeting Cells (MTC) ashore and afloat; and, the Marine Corps is fielding a Family of Integrated Targeting Cells (MTC-X, MTC-Mobile, and Tactical Edge Node TEN-X). The details of Navy and Marine Corps MTC systems are classified, but they are expected to have capabilities similar to those of TITAN, e.g., direct satellite tasking, satellite sensor control, direct downlink of satellite data, data processing and analysis for the purpose of weapons targeting. The Maritime Strike SOS analysis would assure that these tactical terminal systems are fully integrated with the overall maritime strike SOS architecture.
Conclusion
The SOS analysis could consist of a relatively modest approach based on the integration of the detailed architectures of each of the components of the SOS as should be available from the NRO, NGA, Space Force, and the Services/Joint Force components. The investment in this analysis is justified given the looming conflict with China over Taiwan, one dominated by anti-ship missile operations. The SOS analysis would ensure that the anti-ship missiles operated by Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps will have the timely and comprehensive targeting support required for their effective use against moving ships.
Dick Mosier served as a Naval Flight Officer (VQ and VP); OPNAV N2 civilian intelligence analyst; OSD (Intelligence and Space Policy); SES 4 ASD(C3I) Director Tactical Intelligence Systems; and Deputy Director of a support activity leading OSD studies on space and unmanned airborne ISRT system alternatives. His career-long interest in improving the effectiveness of US Navy tactical operations, with a particular focus on the challenges of assuring the integration of national-tactical ISRT combat support capabilities. The article represents the author’s personal views and do not necessarily reflect the official views of any U.S. government department or agency.
Featured Image: RED SEA (Sept. 19, 2021) Fire Controlman (Aegis) 2nd Class Garrett Town stands watch in the combat information center aboard guided-missile destroyer USS O’Kane (DDG 77) in the Red Sea. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Elisha Smith)
As conflicts from Europe to the Middle East draw on U.S. munition stocks, many of which are already insufficient for great power conflict, leaders are calling on the U.S. military and defense industrial base to rapidly increase munitions production. In doing so, many reference the United States’ industrial mobilization during World War II, which transformed the nation into the indispensable “arsenal of democracy” and greatly contributed to Allied victory.
A protracted war between the United States and China would demand immense quantities of munitions and would require the industrial base to grow to meet these demands. This is industrial mobilization, a topic the nation has not seriously considered since the end of the Cold War. Given this lapse in focus, it is only natural to look to the nation’s last major mobilization for great power war, World War II, as a model for the future.
Interwar Mobilization Planning and Its Continued Relevance
Examining the history of World War II industrial mobilization begins in the interwar period, a time when the U.S. military spent nearly two decades planning for industrial mobilization. The nation’s chaotic mobilization for World War I in 1917—an effort which proved too late to equip doughboys sent to Europe—spurred Army planners to develop a series of procurement and mobilization plans and actively engage with the nation’s industrial base during the 1920s and 30s. Although President Franklin Roosevelt did not implement these plans in their entirety when he began readying the nation for war in the late 1930s, many of the plans’ elements and the preparations they spurred left the nation in a much better position relative to 1917.
Nevertheless, the nation’s mobilization for World War II and interwar planning efforts hold many enduring lessons for contemporary policymakers as they consider industrial expansion in the modern era. The details of mobilization such as the military hardware that must be produced, essential industrial sectors, and critical materials and their sources may be very different today, but the enduring relationship between strategy and logistics, as well as the interactions between the U.S. government, the military services, and the industrial base, remain the same in many ways.
March 20, 1942: Launch of the U.S. Navy light cruiser USS Birmingham (CL-62) at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company shipyard, Newport News, Virginia. (Naval History and Heritage Command photo)
If a war between the United States and China requires increased production of military hardware, then the history of World War II’s mobilization contains numerous insights into the fundamental planning considerations, tradeoffs, and risks inherent to industrial mobilization in the United States. Moreover, the period provides an opportunity to examine how prewar preparations and plans played out once mobilization began and how industrial output progressed alongside military demands and expenditures in campaigns from 1942 to 1945.
Other periods, such as the Cold War, may also hold relevant lessons on mobilization planning, but World War II remains a valuable case study and a significant touchpoint for American leaders and the public alike. These factors invite a reexamination of the period with an eye toward applying its lessons to today’s strategic environment and industrial base. This analysis highlights five lessons for today’s military planners as they consider industrial mobilization in the 21st century.
Lesson One: Establishing Requirements is Central to Mobilization Planning
A recurring theme in interwar mobilization planning is the central importance of determining military requirements for protracted war. Before mobilization can begin, the military must determine the types and quantities of materiel it requires to execute its strategy and, in turn, that industry must produce. Throughout World War II, these requirements were intimately linked to allied strategy, with changes in either often dictating modifications to the other.
President Roosevelt set expansive production goals in his December 1940 “arsenal of democracy” fireside chat, but the details of exactly which guns, planes, and ships to produce were left unanswered. Industrial expansion could not be completed until the military services developed firm, specific requirements. Amid these efforts, the president requested an assessment of “over-all production requirements” in August 1941, which tasked the military with estimating the total number of men it would put in uniform, how these men would be organized into fighting units, what equipment these units would field, and the rates at which they would expend consumable goods like ammunition and fuel. With this information, civilian mobilization agencies could coordinate production and material requirements into a scheme that became known as the Victory Program. Even so, the feasibility of fulfilling these requirements was hotly debated and ultimately forced the Army to modify its strategic approach, reduced its planned end strength, and modify the composition of fielded forces.
Determining military requirements remains an essential aspect of planning for protracted war and industrial mobilization. The Department of Defense must think deeply about what it might require over the duration of a conflict, from its initial troop basis to replacing hardware and materiel lost to attrition. These requirements should look past current budgetary constraints to consider potential national objectives, strategy, and limitations in a conflict requiring mobilization. The misestimations of interwar plans, such as outdated munition consumption rates, show the enduring challenge of gauging the demands of future war. Requirements must remain flexible enough to account for uncertainties surrounding a war’s specific aims, geography, and methods.
Still, some assessment of requirements remains a prerequisite to industrial mobilization planning and the implementation of effective industrial preparedness measures. Developing such requirements remains entirely within the purview of the Department of Defense. Interwar planners mistakenly assumed that production would rapidly adjust to strategic plans. Today’s Pentagon planners must not repeat this mistake and should begin assessing the military’s needs for a protracted war in order to drive industrial planning.
Lesson Two: Allies Must Be Factored into Mobilization Plans
In developing requirements, the Department should consider the potential needs and contributions of U.S. allies and partners. Throughout World War II, assessing and coordinating allied requirements was a consistent challenge and encouraged Roosevelt to establish civilian mobilization agencies such as the Office of Production Management. The president’s August 1941 request for total production requirements was driven by the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the addition of yet another nation to the list of allies supported via the Lend Lease program. Despite the reliance of U.S. forces on allied equipment during World War I, interwar mobilization plans did not adequately factor in allies. As a result, President Roosevelt’s drive to supply Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and other partners around the world threatened to seriously disrupt the military’s own procurement and mobilization plans.
Today, America’s multitude of allies and partners are often toutedas one of the nation’s competitive advantages vis-à-vis China. Accordingly, contemporary mobilization plans must consider the materiel these nations might request, as well as their capacity to support industrial expansion. As recent events in Ukraine and Israel have shown, many partners in a U.S. coalition will draw on U.S. production of munitions and platforms. Policymakers are already facing the same dilemma Roosevelt faced in 1941: balancing the support of allies engaged in active conflict with U.S. military readiness. Contemporary mobilization plans must coordinate and deconflict U.S. and allied demands in order to provide the defense industrial base the combined demand signal necessary to expand production capacity.
In today’s globalized economy, U.S. allies may also play a larger role in defense supply chains. World War II mobilization officials were forced to balance limited domestic sources of critical materials with the transportation requirements and transit time inherent in foreign sources—a tradeoff that often led them to expand domestic capacity or establish domestic substitutes, such as synthetic rubber. Similarly, today’s military-industrial plans must fully consider the benefits and risks of relying on allies and partners in defense supply chains. An industrial coalition of the United States and its close allies in Europe and Asia is a formidable opponent to China’s massive industrial base, but military planners must understand how relying on foreign sources might impact production timelines and create vulnerable supply lines throughout the world. Effectively leveraging allied industrial capacity also calls for a rebuilding of the U.S. Merchant Marine to ensure the United States maintains the ability to keep manufacturing inputs flowing from its overseas allies and partners.
Lesson Three: Mobilization Plans Cannot Ignore Threats to the U.S. Homeland
Partly completed Heinkel He-162 fighter jets sit on the assembly line in the underground Junkers factory at Tarthun, Germany, in early April 1945. The huge underground galleries, in a former salt mine, were discovered by the 1st U.S. Army during their advance on Magdeburg. (German Federal Archives photo)
Today’s potential adversaries possess numerous capabilities to disrupt or destroy U.S. defense production and critical infrastructure, from kinetic strikes to sabotage and cyberattacks. Indeed, Russia is already utilizing unconventional warfare to disrupt Western defense production in support of Ukraine. The destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and recent cutting of undersea cables foreshadow the sorts of asymmetric infrastructure attacks that could be employed to impede war production before or during a conflict.
Defending the industrial base will require numerous lines of effort across multiple domains. Within industry, additional force protection measures may be necessary to prevent physical sabotage alongside cyber and network defenses. Domestic air and missile defenses, such as those proposed in the Department’s Golden Dome project, may be necessary around critical industrial and logistical nodes. Of course, planners must consider how these requirements will draw on limited resources and low-density assets. All in all, the vulnerability of the U.S. defense industrial base calls for a renewed focus on homeland defense, the U.S. Northern Command, and various civil defense organizations. The Pentagon must work with its industrial partners to reduce vulnerabilities, disperse critical functions, and harden weak points in defense production facilities.
Lesson Four: Mobilization May Influence the Design of Military Hardware and U.S. Military Force Structure
Protracted war and industrial mobilization will shape the design of individual weapons in the American arsenal and have implications for the U.S. military’s broader force structure. Industrial and material limitations often forced the military to accept modified weapon designs during World War II’s mobilization. Many weapons developed in arsenals during the interwar period were complex and failed to leverage the latest mass production techniques of the period. The demands of mobilization pushed industrialists to modify designs to simplify production, increase efficiency, and maximize output. Military officials were often skeptical of these changes despite their centrality to achieving output objectives.
Likewise, today’s exquisite weapons may need to be modified to increase their manufacturability, and the military should consider reevaluating minimum performance requirements to assess the potential for material substitutions and process modernizations in weapon manufacturing. If today’s suite of military hardware proves unsuitable for scaled production, then entirely new classes of weapons must be designed with mobilization and producibility considered alongside other performance requirements.
These changes and the evolving demands of protracted war also have two significant implications for U.S. military force structure. First, the standing military must be capable of fighting until industry is mobilized to replace losses and support the campaigns required for victory. Planners should consider how attrition and materiel shortages will affect strategic requirements and concepts of operation. The force must be capable of adapting to unforeseen circumstances, new missions, and the losses that are typical in great power conflict.
Second, industrial planning must foster a production base flexible enough to design and produce new weapons in addition to existing systems. World War II saw the adoption of novel technologies and fleets of new aircraft, naval vessels, and ground vehicles. Industrialists could not settle for mass producing existing, proven designs, but instead had to produce systems under constant modification in response to battlefield feedback and evolving missions and requirements.
Lesson Five: Mobilization is a Competitive Activity
Finally, World War II shows how mobilizing a nation’s military-industrial complex for war is inherently a competitive endeavor in which both belligerents attempt to bring their national resources to bear and provide their forces with the firepower necessary to outmatch their opponent and accomplish military and political objectives. The arsenal of democracy was paired with political and military campaigns to degrade the production capacity and supply lines of the Axis powers, from diplomatic efforts to secure foreign sources of raw materials to strategic bombing against German aircraft production facilities.
Any future conflict requiring industrial mobilization could be accompanied by similar campaigns and efforts. The Department of Defense should consider how it might disrupt enemy supply chains, transportation networks, and military-industrial facilities via non-kinetic and kinetic means. Military planners should assess the value of industrial and economic targets and the forces and weapons optimal for attacking these targets, which may be different than those optimized for destroying military forces. In any case, imposing costs and impeding adversary war production should be a vital part of any military-industrial strategy for protracted great power war.
Applying the Lessons of World War II
As the U.S. military prepares to deter and, if necessary, fight a war with China, industrial mobilization planning and industrial preparedness take on a renewed significance not seen since at least the end of the Cold War. Chinese concepts such as military-civil fusion show how seriously America’s adversaries consider mobilization and the importance of industrial capacity in future warfare. In the nuclear age, mobilization planning and a healthy defense industrial base should be viewed as not only important for prevailing in great power war, but also as key elements in deterring such an outcome. The dangers of failing to prepare the U.S. industrial base for protracted war are grave, from leaving U.S. forces with empty magazines to pushing decision makers to abandon treaty commitments or over rely on nuclear threats.
Developing industrial mobilization plans and implementing long-term measures to strengthen the industrial base risk being discounted by military officials as overwhelming or unachievable tasks due to their scale, complexity, and the need to coordinate across government agencies and the private sector. But the Pentagon must start somewhere, and the interwar period and World War II hold valuable lessons as planners address this challenge. Many aspects of mobilization planning and aligning strategic ends with industrial means remain unchanged, and the U.S. military should look to this era for both instruction and inspiration. If interwar mobilization plans prove anything, it is that no plans will ever be perfect. But as Dwight Eisenhower, himself a key author of the 1930 industrial mobilization plan, noted: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”
Tyler Hacker is a fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), where his work focuses on long-range strike, the defense industrial base, and operational concepts for great power conflict.
Featured Image: The factory floor of a F-35 production facility in Fort Worth, Texas. (Lockheed Martin photo)
By Capt. John Cordle, USN (ret.) and Capt. Holman Agard, USN
There are times when “the way things are” are no longer acceptable. Radical change, with incremental and careful execution, is urgently needed within the US Navy’s Surface Ship Repair Maintenance enterprise to rectify the shortcomings of two decades of well-intentioned initiatives that rendered a majority of Surface ships neglected and ill-equipped for combat.
The problem is not wholly maintenance related – the contributing issues came about as an aggregate result of the Navy’s increased operational tempo since the start of the Global War on Terror, changes in Surface Force manning models, and disputes with Congress over the decommissioning of certain classes of ships, among other things. Recent operations in the Red Sea today are eerily reminiscent of the world in 2002 when we stretched the Navy thin to answer the nation’s call – and paid a price for decades. A recent GAO report highlighted the impact of manning shortages to ship crew’s ability to perform corrective maintenance; over 75 percent of Executive Officers stated that it was “difficult or very difficult” to complete required corrective maintenance. To address the lack of sustained success, and avoid the missteps of the past, the Surface Force and NAVSEA should employ a multi-tiered approach primarily centered on retaking control of shipboard maintenance to get us fair in the channel again.
2002-2010: MSMO and Management Failure
The story begins with the war in the Middle East in 2003. For the first time in decades, the Navy’s answer to the nation’s call to action, pushed the fleet forward, and kept it there, using its Tomahawks and Marines to enable an immensely successful land campaign. It was not by coincidence that the president chose an aircraft carrier as a platform to announce “Mission Accomplished.” The cost of that prolonged surge, however, was the deferral of a mountain of maintenance that had been scheduled for the ships and then canceled. The Navy needed to invent a way to get those ships back in service quickly and efficiently. Working with industry, the Navy developed a plan that would leverage the strengths of certain shipyards for certain types of maintenance and provide stability for the workforce by bundling multiple ships of the same class together with the idea that this would result in money savings and efficiencies in the process. This plan, called MSMO (Multi-Ship-Multi-Option) plan was implemented in the early 2000’s.
As envisioned, this plan was a good idea, however naval officers know very little about the business world. There was an implicit assumption in the execution of the MSMO plan that the Navy would save money by encouraging the industry to voluntarily decrease their bottom line. Read that again. It was never going to happen, and it didn’t happen. As a contractor following my retirement, I learned that ship repair business is just that – a business. Right or wrong, income is predicated on the Navy spending money to fix ships – any significant efficiencies in that process result in less money spent, and thus less profit. Less profit makes stockholders unhappy and drives businesses out of business.
At the same time, the Navy decided to save manpower dollars for other programs such as the Optimal Manning and Top Six Rolldown initiatives, which reduced shipboard manning and mandated the dissolution of the Ships Intermediate Maintenance Activities (SIMAs), which had been around since the early 1980s. In fact, the GAO reports that the backlog of incomplete maintenance exceeded any savings from manpower cuts that were instituted as part of Optimal Manning and other reductions in shipboard manning.
The SIMA dissolution was especially problematic since SIMAs were primarily designed to be focused on two things: leveraging Sailors on shore duty to conduct relatively minor and mid-level repairs using the expertise gained at sea and training shipboard Sailors in their technical rating. The elimination of SIMAs had a second impact: it meant all work had to go to contractors at a much higher price. While it may be true that the cost of SIMA was higher than the projected cost of giving the work to private industry – SIMA was cheaper only if you did not consider the actual cost of SIMA, e.g. salaries, facilities, etc., the Sailor cost was already spent, and the training and experience of working on equipment in-rate on shore duty is difficult to put a price tag on.
An additional phenomenon I observed was that the cadre of government planners who performed availability and maintenance planning and preparations were released and hired by contractors as this process moved to industry under the Multi Ship Multi Option (MSMO) strategy. This did not change the net number of personnel in this area, but it made the cost and scope of those with this skill set a bit more difficult to track and quantify, and may have added a cost to the process as well. In parallel, the Navy drastically reduced the footprint of an organization called Supervisor of Shipbuilding, who was basically the “overseer” designed to hold the ship builders and ship maintainers honest and uphold standards.
Around this timeframe (roughly 2007-2010), another dynamic came and went: Ship Class Squadrons, or CLASSRONs. Modeled after the Naval Aviation Enterprise, these groups were formed around each ship class and were given control of maintenance funding, acquisition processes, and current readiness. Led by sequential major commanders with experience in a specific ship class, they consolidated processes, lessons learned, assessments, and maintenance under one individual – wearing a command pin. They also tracked Class Advisories and major modifications across a focused subset of ships. As a cruiser commanding officer, I (Cordle) was overwhelmingly satisfied with the support received by the class advocate. In my specific case, the Cruiser CLASSRON Commander had held my job before, and therefore understood it.
The CLASSRON Commander had the time and bandwidth to deal with roughly 20 ships compared with the current model where one Engineering Duty Officer Captain has to process all of the maintenance information associated with over 100 ships on each coast. The CLASSRON initiative was not given enough “bake time” and would have likely produced significant dividends if left in place. This occurred in 2012 with the justification that it created a parallel C2 process and muddied the waters with respect to funding.
In an effort to improve oversight, Commander Navy Regional Maintenance Center, (CNRMC), was established in 2010 to standardize and oversee the Regional Maintenance Centers, whose processes were perceived to have drifted over the years. The goal was to place a flag officer on the waterfront with the supporting staff to police the maintenance process. While initially successful, the center of gravity of that organization has shifted to Washington and away from the waterfront. And in another manning decision, the Navy combined two flag positions, one for ship maintenance and one for modernization, placing arguably the two most complex functions in the Navy enterprise on the shoulders of one junior Flag officer. From this author’s experience, this task is too great for one individual, no matter how Herculean his or her efforts could be – they will always be pulled in two directions – one toward, and one away from the waterfront.
2011-2014: The Trends Worsen
In the early 2010s, the VADM Balisle report and subsequent GAO findings were released, indicating a dangerous trend of neglect within the Surface Force. As a result, the Navy looked to reverse course in Sailor maintenance, manpower/manning models, and Officer training – albeit this was a slow change. As an outcrop of these reports and the associated action items, the Navy implemented the Surface Engineering Maintenance Planning Project, SURFMEPP, designed to focus on life cycle maintenance, act as the “conscience of the Navy” to get ships to expected service life, which has been extended several times from 35 to 45 years over the same period.
With 2013 entered sequestration, government shutdowns, and funding shortfalls across the enterprise. During my time (Cordle) on active duty, I sat at the front table of Naval Surface Forces Atlantic time and again and signed documents that cut significant lifecycle maintenance from Surface ship availabilities because the money was not available.
To be sure, the confluence of these factors did make the MSMO more efficient, more flexible, and able to maximize the work completed, but it did not save money. The other unfortunate side effect was that a lack of rigor and uniformed oversight on the Navy side allowed companies to take advantage of the situation thereby increasing profits, although they arguably used much of the extra income to reinvest and try to grow, train, and pay their workforce in a standard capitalist model (that we laud in most other applications) – but with the Navy as their only paying customer. In the end, industry conducted themselves like any capitalist business that has to make money to stay viable. It is worth noting as background perhaps, but even before sequestration the lack of stability in the funding lines created considerable volatility in the repair community even under MSMO – the long-standing practice of underfunding surface ship maintenance and then using mid-year plus ups to close the gap to meet requirements generates its own uncertainty every fiscal year, as I experienced in my short tenure as a Type Commander Maintenance Officer in 2011 (Cordle).
Thus, the MSMO financing vehicle coupled with the elimination of SIMAs, which was initially hailed as a process designed to get the most work done (albeit at a premium price), fell victim to economics, in that the expected savings never materialized. As a result, in the decade that was the 2005 to 2015, the Surface Navy gave away its ability to fix itself and took out title loans on its ships in the form of a maintenance backlog to the tune of billions of dollars. Add to this the compounding “interest” of fewer Sailors with less training conducting shipboard self-evaluation, and you get the expected result: a rather large volume of unaddressed maintenance discrepancies aboard ships.
2015-2020:Replacing MSMO with MACMO
About halfway through this journey, in the 2010s after one or two complete change outs of the key leaders who brought MSMO to the table, a new narrative developed: civilian contractors are making too much money and keeping the ships longer to increase their bottom line. Unfortunately, rather than conduct a holistic self-analysis of the system, the Navy abruptly scrapped the MSMO concept in favor of a firm-fixed price, restrictive process that allowed a relatively small set of contractors to bid on large availabilities individually and called it another name bathed in obfuscation: the Multi Award Contract Multi Option, or MACMO, process.
Designed to cure the ills of the MSMO process by driving competition and accountability into the system, this was another good idea, but as Admiral (ret) Jesse Wilson once said, “whenever you create a new process you create new problems”. Since this was a fairly classic “top down” initiative, there was not much of an appetite for pushback or critique and not much time to shift the processes to support it. Several established and complex processes were taken on by the government, including the purchasing of long lead time materials and the complex and detailed planning process, without a robust experience base or training program in place to support it. The learning curve for this change was a steep one, and the Navy paid a price in planning and material delays during the transition to this new process.
A 2017 GAO report captured the precise cost of these manning decisions, in terms of unexecuted maintenance, in billions of dollars and millions of man-days.1 The graphs are eye-popping and relevant even today.
Manpower Savings were more than offset by increased maintenance costs (Source: GAO)
Now came some interesting system dynamics that while predicted, created a new set of issues when juxtaposed against the changes previously mentioned. First, the Arleigh Burke-class Destroyers (DDGs) and the Harpers Ferry-class Landing Ship, Dock ships (LSDs) entered their midlife periods, forcing maintenance availabilities to extend beyond the previous 3 to 5-month durations into durations of 12-18 months. This length change required more planning, more parts, and a larger, better trained workforce in industry, all of which were sub-optimized by the transition to MACMO.
Secondly, the Navy also revived the Coast Wide Bid process that surprised many when it actually happened to USS RAMAGE and again to USS SHOUP a few years later. Navy Manpower and manning management processes in both the active duty and civilian side are not aligned to support such endeavors.
Thirdly, Congress and the Navy treated the Cruisers and LSDs as chips in a game of poker, alternately placing them on decommissioning lists, cutting their funding to near zero, laying them up, and then trying to bring them back after a bluff has been called. This resulted in huge sunk costs, delays in critical repairs, not to mention the impact on manning and morale of crews that were “strung along” for years in a decommissioning mindset. Like trying to restore the old Ford truck that one would find in their grandfather’s pasture, this effort has grown in cost and magnitude far beyond original estimates, sucking money away from other endeavors. Delays in designing a replacement for these capital ships, which are pretty awesome warfighters, have resulted in their being kept around, with the quandary that no capital ship is as capable, nor as expensive to maintain, as our aged cruisers.
2020-Present: The Consequences
A 2020 GAO report found that “since shifting to the Multiple Award Contract-Multi Order (MACMO) contracting approach for ship maintenance work in 2015, the Navy has increased competition opportunities, gained flexibility to ensure quality of work, and limited cost growth, but schedule delays persist. During this period, 21 of 41 ship maintenance periods, called availabilities, for major repair work cost less than initially estimated, and average cost growth across the 41 availabilities was 5 percent. Schedule outcomes were less positive, and Navy regional maintenance centers varied in their performance.2 This is shown in the graph below:
Schedule delays under MAC-MO Contracting (Source: GAO)
Admiral Galinis, who later commanded NAVSEA as a 3-star, when asked at a 2015 Fleet Maintenance Seminar what changes the MACMO would bring around, he said “two things we will lose are flexibility and teamwork.” In retrospect, he was correct. Unfortunately, they were lost at a time when they were much needed. Another ingredient added to this complex system of setbacks was the ramp up of operational employment based on growing threats in the Pacific and in the Arabian Gulf. This resulted in policies of maintenance deferral and reduced certification requirements, all well documented in the Comprehensive Review of 2017.
Righting the Ship
In a 2019 article, David Larter described Navy Maintenance as a “dumpster fire.” While we do not fully agree with this dark assessment, it is definitely in need of a good overhaul.3 Surface Navy leaders have taken some action to help put us in a good place, including:
1. Surface Type Commanders have established a Post-Major Command Surface Warfare O-6 billet to oversee all aspects of the maintenance domain. This brings experience, oversight, and seniority to the process and is starting to pay dividends.
2. Establishment of Surface Readiness Groups – this initiative (which is not new) theoretically restores the positive attributes found in CLASSRONs. Under the Surface Readiness Group model, all ships in the Maintenance Phase are aligned under one Commodore per homeport, allowing a singular focus on maintenance and freeing up the deployed Commodores to focus on warfighting.
These are great steps to remedy the problems. Imagine if a Ford F-150 production line had to deal with a change to baseline of about 30 percent – this would be a flawed business model. Yet, this is what we ask the maintenance community to deal with every time a ship enters a yard period. To address this dilemma, the Surface Force needs to improve its scope of work planning for upcoming surface availabilities. Additionally, there should be more margin built into the schedule and price of each availability. Availabilities should start with a measure of float built in, and the Surface Force should resist the urge to plan against this float. Further, the Surface Force should acknowledge that there will be increases to scope and new work, instead of ignoring it or pretending it will not manifest. By leveraging options, frontloads, class maintenance plans, and flexible contracting, it must be possible to fund and plan for both long-term maintenance and current repairs. Things on a ship break all the time, and the process needs to be proactive vice reactive.
Additionally, the Navy should consider the following measures:
1. Treat this like the crisis that it is. Assemble a team of the most experienced people and challenge them to come up with a plan but force them to take off their functional “armor” (acquisition, modernization, maintenance, contracting, etc.) to collaborate on a new plan that is innovative, integrated, and responsible. This team should be challenged to openly discuss the best and worst parts of each model from MSMO to MACMO, Firm Fixed Price and Cost-Plus contracts. The narrative that “the utterance of the word MSMO will result in career suicide” is not helpful here.
2. Restore SIMA as a separate command. SIMAs are currently resident within Code 900 at the Regional Maintenance Centers. This construct sub optimizes SIMA’s visibility, employment, and effectiveness. Command is command; and putting a Shore Command Pin on the Commander of Ship Intermediate Maintenance would open additional command opportunities to the Engineering Duty Officer community – and consequently be good for the ships and Sailors.
3. Empower the local shipyard. Currently a Shipyard Commander has relatively no tools or levers to punish or incentivize a lead maintenance activity during a Shipyard availability. For instance, if an LMA neglects to conduct a repair within a prescribed timeline, or the work is not completed to the level of quality that it should, the shipyard has to spend exorbitant amounts of time, resources, and money to present an iron-clad case to fiscally punish the LMA. In many cases, it is more cost effective to not pursue punishment. Conversely, the Shipyard Commander has little to no way of rewarding a LMA who does a job well (on time and/or under budget). Consideration should be given to allowing the Shipyard Commander, with delegation to pertinent Project Managers, to fiscally reward or withhold a relatively small percentage of money at their level. The shipyard represents the “tactical ground commander” and observes many violations in Shipboard maintenance, and has very little ability to affect immediate change.
4. Fix the planning phase of major availabilities. On average, the amount of work during a major availability changes by roughly 30 percent after it begins. This corresponds to a range of 2,000 and 20,000 Requests for Contract Changes (RCCs) depending on the length of the maintenance period. One solution is a “Business Model Cost and Schedule” approach that was published in the Naval Engineer’s Journal in 2021.4
5. Revive the good parts of the MSMO strategy to include focusing certain repair yards on certain classes of ships and providing bundled ship contracts over a period of years to allow consistency, gain some efficiencies, and train a workforce for the nation’s future. This approach does not have to be unitary in its contracting strategy but could include a more flexible pricing process described in #1 above. The contracting officers will have issues with this, but we cannot continue to build the maintenance process around the contracting process instead of around the Fleet. Many in the commercial industry have shared that a predictable and dependable income stream are critical to allowing industry to train the workforce and invest in infrastructure.
6. Leverage the goodness of processes like the Continuous Intermediate Availability (CIA) model conducted in Rota, Spain, which is similar to the old 13-week availabilities, where TYCOM-level maintenance is accomplished in short, focused maintenance periods. This could be folded into the OFRP, perhaps at the beginning of the Sustainment Phase right after deployment, and the ship return to service for a while before starting maintenance. To be sure, this initiative will have to be balanced against the need of the Operational Commander.
7. Split the Flag Officer billets for maintenance and modernization. There isn’t a single root cause for many of the current issues, nor is the problem with any particular individual. However, the move to put too many decisions on a single individual’s plate was a singularly bad move and needs to be fixed quickly.
8. Move the commander of CNRMC to Norfolk, and place a deputy in San Diego. The vision of CNRMC that was put in place by USFF in 2010 was to place a Flag Officer on the waterfront overseeing ship’s maintenance. That fundamental tenet has been lost but could be regained relatively simply. The new modernization Flag Officer can satiate the appetite in Washington for information, while their maintenance counterpart can get “boots on the ground” and start extracting ships from the yards with a crowbar instead of a 300-mile towing hawser. Of note, a similar move was just implemented with the creation of a Flag Officer billet to supervise the nuclear shipyards in Norfolk, Virginia.
9. Replicate the Supervisor of Shipbuilding model from the nuclear side at the regional maintenance centers. Empower them to provide oversight, accountability, and rigor to the ship repair process. Put teeth back into the process. Rewrite the NAVSEA Standard Item 009-060 to require contractors to provide a detailed, integrated plan that can be graphed, tracked and used to hold them to account. If there is one thing I hear over and over from Commanding Officers in the yards, it is “who is holding anyone accountable?” You can figure out the answer. No one.
10. Bring back a deployable ship repair capability to replace the Yellowstone Class Destroyer Tenders by installing a full machine repair capability (including Additive Manufacturing) into one Expeditionary Sea Base (ESB) class ship in each theater. These multi-purpose platforms have lots of space and could probably support a modular solution as well. Manning could be surged from the Regional Maintenance Centers in time of need.
This is not an argument to completely revert to the old way of doing things. This article is formulated from not just our own experiences, but multiple peers who (at least to some extent) feel the same way. One shared, “Firm Fixed Price is a great model for the commercial industry or Maritime Sealift Command, for basic maintenance on ships that are not all that complex; it is exactly the wrong model for complex warships that require expertise, flexibility, and integration – like Navy ships.”
There were many sins (including some in which at least one of us was complicit), all well intentioned, and many unavoidable over the years. But by scrapping programs that used to work, and failing to look for another solution, we will all simply admire the problem as more and more of the Fleet is tied to the pier when it is needed most. Instead, the Surface Warfare Community needs to take control of its own destiny, help the Engineering Duty Officer community do its core job, assume responsibility for the maintenance of its ships, increase command opportunity, and inject rigor, decisiveness, and accountability into a system where these words have gone out of style.
One key component of any strategy is to “take a fix.” The 2022 GAO report on maintenance backlog provides a stunning insight into the lack of accuracy and estimating the value of deferred maintenance. The amount provided to the GAO was literally off by a factor of 10 ($1.8 billion vs $180 million).5 This gap was then addressed by accelerating decommissioning of multiple ships which collectively represented about 80% of the gap. Unfortunately this approach addresses the immediate problem without addressing the root cause; its effect will be temporary and cannot be repeated. As today’s Carrier Strike Groups and Amphibious Readiness Groups engage in global combat operations unparalleled in modern history, with even less ships than we had during Operation Iraqi Freedom, the same forces at work in 2002 are starting to become evident, with deployments stretching to an average of over 220 days and no end in sight. Unless something changes, we are likely to find ourselves in the same position 10 years from now.
Captain John Cordle, USN, retired from the Navy in 2013 after 30 years of service. He commanded the USS Oscar Austin (DDG-79) and USS San Jacinto (CG-56), earning a Bronze Star in 2003 and the U.S. Navy League’s Captain John Paul Jones Award for Inspirational Leadership in 2010. He is a Plankowner on CVN 75 and CVN 77, where he served as Reactor Officer. He received the SNA Literary Award in 2014 and 2019, as well as the 2019 ASNE Solberg Award and U. S. Naval Institute Author of the Year Award for his contributions to fatigue management in the United States Navy. In addition to serving as Chief of Staff for Commander, Naval Surface Force Atlantic (SURFLANT), he also served as a Program Manager for Maintenance University at Hunnington Ingalls Industries and as a GS 14 Human Factors Engineer at SURFLANT, where he was recognized with the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award. Now retired, he is focused on leveraging his life experience to help develop future leaders.
Captain Holman Agard, USN, has a combined 27 years of service between the Enlisted and Officer ranks. He currently is serving as the Commanding Officer of USS SHOUP (DDG 86) and the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Commander for the GEORGE WASHINGTON Carrier Strike Group (CSG-5) based in Yokosuka, Japan. Previously, he served in OPNAV N96 as the Destroyers Branch Head and Ships Deputy. He also was the Executive Officer and Commanding Officer in USS HOPPER (DDG 70). He has experienced extensive maintenance availabilities in all six ships he has been stationed on.
References
1. Actions Needed to Ensure Proper Size and Composition of Ship Crews, GAO, May 2017
2. Navy Ship Maintenance: Evaluating Pilot Program Outcomes Could Inform Decisions to Address Persistent Schedule Challenges, GAO 20-370, May 2020
3. Larter, David, Navy Maintenance is a Dumpster Fire, The Drift, April 2019
4. Cordle and South, Standardized Surface Ship CNO Availability Progress Metrics for Surface Ships, Naval Engineer’s Journal, September 2021
5. Navy Ship Maintenance: Evaluating Pilot Program Outcomes Could Inform Decisions to Address Persistent Schedule Challenges, GAO 20-370, May 2020
Featured Image: The U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage in a floating dry dock at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Va., on May 25, 2012.
