It's game time! No more helmets and goggles.
Passageways are free of cables, hoses and other temporary obstructions. The Planned Incremental Availability, or PIA, is a fond memory and USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) and her crew will take to the high seas with an unprecedented level of readiness.

Since completing RIMPAC in July 2014, Ronald Reagan's time and energy has been spent preparing for what's on the horizon - the epic three-hull swap and subsequent voyages to Japan for Ronald Reagan and around the Horn of South America for those taking temporary ownership of USS George Washington (CVN 73).

The ship's most significant accomplishment over the past eight months was working together with numerous organizations to completely overhaul many major components of our ship and completing the mission. This accomplishment marks the first time since 2008, that an aircraft carrier stationed in the continental U.S. has completed a PIA on time.

Today, Reagan is one of our country's most up-to-date tools for projecting power and presence around the globe, and is ready for her forward-deployment to the U.S. 7th Fleet area of responsibility.

"It took about a half a billion dollars to modernize this carrier to help make it last a full 50 years," said Capt. Chris Bolt, Reagan's commanding officer. "It was commissioned in 2003, so it's got to last until 2053. It's going to take a lot of work, that's a lot of "oil changes" for a big ship."

Along with the new CANES (Consolidated Afloat Network Enterprise System) network, other upgrades to combat systems will change the way we defend our ship. New weapons systems like the optically guided MK-38 MOD 2 machine gun provide improved close-in ship security. We've added new radars with tighter bandwidth and more fidelity than any other shipboard system.

For an aircraft carrier to be the centerpiece of the Forward-Deployed Naval Forces (FDNF), it must meet the highest self-defense and security standards.

Cmdr. Donald Hocutt, Reagan's combat systems officer, provides insight into how the Navy views Reagan's role going forward.

"It's understood that a forward-deployed carrier is going to defend against the unpredictable threats in that region for an extended period of time," Hocutt said. "You're not going to send a ship over there that isn't the tip of the spear. You've got to make sure that it's upgraded to the latest available equipment."

A mission this expensive and complex required an impressive amount of coordination and communication, which is where Ray Gibson worked his magic.

As Project Superintendent of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility (PSNS & IMF), Gibson was responsible for all of the work aboard Reagan. Every member of the crew, from the commanding officer to the most junior fireman, became teammates with nearly 3,000 private and public sector contractors and production workers, as they joined forces to meet a common goal - successfully complete Reagan's maintenance availability on time.

Gibson set a strategic production vision and drove the Reagan PIA team to meet challenging milestones and goals. This work ethic is evocative of the plaque President Reagan kept on his desk in the oval office, "It Can Be Done." was adopted as a battle cry of sorts - as Team Reagan strived to meet goals and milestones, quickly moving onto the next job, and ensuring things were done safely and correctly.

"I think it's been a resounding success," Gibson said. "We had one of the largest work packages the Navy has ever had during a PIA, and we still had a buffered margin (time to work with) as we approached completion."

Gibson noted that carrier availabilities in the last seven to eight years have not had a good track record of completing on time. The USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) was in dry dock for a 16-month availability before the Navy announced its decision to move Reagan's homeport to Japan - an announcement that he had been anticipating for some time.

He had been communicating with Stennis project managers to discuss their procedures and processes. Armed with feedback and lessons learned, Gibson was able to lay out milestones to help keep Reagan's availability manageable. Gibson credits this approach with his ability to mitigate risk during the planning period.

"We built a plan that supported issues that may come up, based on experience," he said. "Normally a PIA is a six-month availability, but this one was eight because of CANES. The Air Boss (Commander, Naval Air Forces) and other key stakeholders concurred to extend the availability, which is a big deal because that means other ships had to change their deployment schedules."

CANES, the Navy's newest Local Area Network (LAN) system, integrates all of the ship's IT systems. Reagan is the third carrier to have it installed, and the Navy plans to eventually outfit every ship in the fleet with it.

"CANES is set up to give us much better security," said Capt. Bolt. "The older systems were good when they were designed about 20 years ago, but this is the wave of the future. Everything is hosted on one mainframe that provides very good security that we call information assurance."

Most Sailors don't realize how much of Reagan's operations will function cohesively and securely through CANES. Our internal email server, Microsoft Outlook, is just one of 144 software applications running through the network.

Totaling 44,000 man-hours and affecting 895 spaces, the CANES installation also brought in 1,800 new workstations, laptops, and printers throughout the ship.
Reagan's progress during recent months has gained significant attention from Navy leadership, all the way up to the Chief of Naval Operations, due to her crucially important future role as the Navy's only permanently forward-deployed aircraft carrier.

According to Gibson, a yard period's critical path or primary objective for mission success, usually revolves around engineering or is propulsion-related, simply because a ship has to be able to move to be effective. This PIA was unusual because the combat systems and weapons departments found themselves in the driver's seat with their roles in numerous upgrades, in addition to CANES.

As the head of combat systems department, Hocutt is staying with Reagan on her voyage to Japan and shares a similarly positive outlook on the synergy between the ship and affiliated organizations to respond to whatever challenges arose.

"If we go in one day and have a road block, we have a team that we can depend on," said Hocutt. "This team was able to respond and be moving forward by the next day. We had the right people in the right places at the right time."

Hocutt was impressed with the "one team one fight" approach and how everybody tried to find a way to "yes" when asked for help or assistance.

"We found ways to do things instead of finding ways we can't," he said. "A lot of organizations have the tendency to say things are too hard and we didn't do that. Every time we had a challenge, we hit it head-on and come through it together."

Lt. Cmdr. John Lalli, the ship's maintenance officer and assistant PIA coordinator, describes the mission as chaotic, but in a good way.

"With the tri-hull swap, we're dealing with manning challenges like critical NECs and who's going to stay with the ship that knows the ship," he said.

Lalli's oversight was critical as he led teams of Sailors who tackled separate rehab objectives around the ship, working outside their rate and comfort zone.

"We ended up taking about 25% of all the departments to support the ship's force teams that were in charge of things like habitability, decks, berthing change-outs, and painting the mast, along with all the departmental work we had to do," he said.

During PIA, these teams did an extraordinary amount of work, fixing or refurbishing 48 watertight doors, 50 decks, 21 heads and 17 berthing compartments. Overall their work totaled more than 22,000 man-days, saving the Navy about $10 million.

Lalli feels that such a large commitment is indicative of how a Sailor's wellbeing is taken into consideration.

"There was obviously a substantial effort made to ensure that our people are taken care of," he said. "Having that quality of life in racks, heads and other habitability type of issues was obviously a priority."

As the captain has mentioned to the crew during weekly all-hands calls, teamwork and the importance of expressing concerns immediately was crucial in PIA success.

"The aggressive nature and full support of the mission made sure we were ready," said Lalli. "We had very effective communications from the get-go; we got the right people in the fold and went with it."

With a proud sense of accomplishment, the crew can look toward the challenges that lie between sea trials and the hull-swap.

Bolt takes all things into account when it comes to gauging the capability of the ship and her crew. From the ship's many moving parts to the actions of her Sailors, he says he looks for a certain amount of self-assurance when preparing for what's to come.

"It's really about confidence and body language," he said. "They're all smart Sailors and everyone knows their job. They could take a written test and pass, but doing the actual job is often harder."

He believes that there should be an incremental growth of expectations in order to safely knock the proverbial rust off and approaches the coming months with a "crawl, walk, run" mentality.

"We make sure we can do it at slow speeds, before we can do it at medium speeds, before we can do it all out at head flank," he said. "It's been eight or nine months since we've done many of these evolutions, so we're going to take it slow and steady and make sure everything works."

"Between now and then, we have quite a bit of underway time," said Master Chief Fire Controlman Theron Gard. "There will be challenges, but the sooner we can get the equipment operational and the teams trained, the better. That's why training is one of the commanding officer's top three priorities. We need to build proficiency."

Lalli echoes the master chief's sentiment, adding that managing the details is now the major focus.

"Turning off the lights is always easy, it's turning them back on that is always the difficult part because things will break or not work as planned," he said. "Some of the little things that people would think as inconsequential can get mirrored with two or three other minor things and eventually get in the way of testing a major component. That's what we're getting to now - the little things."

While the combined Sailor, shipyard worker and contractor team pulled Reagan through PIA on time, it's our uniformed Sailors who will take this ship and her future to the next level.

"Consider all the capabilities of this ship," said Lalli. "We'll be working with partner nations and have a lot of visibility when we make the transition to Japan. We're going to make our country proud."

When the lines get tossed off the pier and the horn blares for all of San Diego to hear as we depart for Japan, one thing will be for sure; Ronald Reagan is ready to roll.

For more news from USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), visit www.navy.mil/.