According to Greenert, the prolonged maintenance of the units deployed to support the operations in progress, would be to trigger a cascading effect on the entire fleet that needs implementations and restructuring. Maintenance required to guarantee the expected life cycle of the units, but which cannot be carried out as scheduled. The result is that Navy ships may not even be able to respond to future threats.
The problem has long been known.
Less than half of the warships entered last year in private and public shipyards for repairs and upgrades have returned to the sea, while the budget set by the Navy has already been breached.
The aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, despite having been under maintenance for more than a year (it had problems with shafts, rudders and distillation units), will not be able to return to service for next autumn, as originally planned. This means that the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman, (20 years younger than Eisenhower), will have to postpone its scheduled maintenance by at least 6 months.
The causes are mainly two.
The first is purely logistic. For years the Navy has postponed maintenance and upgrades to keep fleets deployed in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The second is economic. The cuts to the defense, in fact, have determined a block in the recruitment in the public yards of the Navy. Just to give an example: the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, in Portsmouth, was also forced to limit overtime for civil servants: this led to a deficit in the workforce.
The Navy's public shipyards work mainly on nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. Due to labor shortages, the Eisenhower will remain in Norfolk for several months longer than expected. Delays also in the production of submarines. At least eight boats have delays ranging from two to nine months.
At the beginning of the year, the Fleet Forces Command announced a plan to optimize the fleet (Optimized Fleet Response Plan cycle), based on an operating cycle of 36 months instead of 32.
The new 36 month cycle begins with a maintenance period followed by a three-month basic training phase and an additional three months of advanced training. 30 pre-holiday days for the crew in view of the deployment abroad (Pre-Overseas Movement Phase), therefore an operational mission of eight months. The rest of the time is known as the sustaining phase lasting 14 months: the ship remains ready to intervene in case of emergency.
Plan, however, totally subordinated to factors that not even the most powerful Navy in the world can control. If, in fact, in addition to the current crisis theaters, others should be added (and considering the continuous cuts to the Defense), the US Navy would find itself deploying units without replacement or without preventive maintenance (something that happens in the 40% of boats at sea). The aircraft carriers will adopt the new 36 plan months within the next four years according to the following forecast: Bush and Carl Vinson starting next year. Truman, Theodore Roosevelt and Gerald R. Ford in the 2016. The Lincoln and the John C. Stennis in the 2017. Finally the Nimitz, within the 2018.
At the 29 October, the US Navy deployed naval units in the 108 world amounting to 36% of the entire fleet. Other 53 ships, equal to 18% of the fleet are used in internal operations, training or with the Third Fleet. Four battle groups on mission with aircraft carriers Nimitz (Pacific Ocean), Carl Vinson (Fifth Fleet), Theodore Roosevelt (Atlantic Ocean) and George HW Bush with the Sixth Fleet. Four amphibious assault groups on a mission to support the Bataan units in the Atlantic Ocean, Bonhomme Richard with the Seventh Fleet, Iwo Jima in the Atlantic and Makin Island with the Fifth Fleet.
Franco Iacch
