Moderator: 

Admiral Jim Kilby, USN, 

Acting Chief of Naval Operations, 

United States Navy 

 

Speakers: 

Vice Admiral Carl Chebi, USN, Commander, Naval Air Systems Command, United States Navy 

Vice Admiral Daniel Cheever, USN, Commander, Naval Air Forces/Commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, United States Navy 

Vice Admiral James Downey, USN, Commander, Naval Sea Systems Command, United States Navy 

Vice Admiral Rob Gaucher, USN, Commander, Naval Submarine Forces; Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet; Commander, Allied Submarine Command, United States Navy 

Vice Admiral Brendan McLane, USN, Commander, Naval Surface Forces Commander, Naval Surface Force, Pacific Fleet, United States Navy 

ADMIRAL JIM KILBY:  Hey, well, good morning.  And thanks for being here today and joining us for this panel.  Our Navy, your Navy, is focused on increasing lethality and readiness by 2027. A ready Navy provides deterrence.  A ready Navy is ready for action if called.  We are driving on seven targets to achieve a ready Navy.  And the first target, as we discussed already, is ready platforms.  And it is the genesis of the term “combat surge ready,” and the goal that we’re going to talk about today. As the former deputy commander of Fleet Forces Command, I am all about more ships, more aircraft, and more submarines ready for employment.  At Fleet Forces – and I see my battle buddy there in the audience, Doug Verissimo – anytime we have to surge ships, we owe answers.  Which ships?  Where are the munitions coming from?  How is the manning?   

Eighty percent combat surge ready is a measurable goal to align expectations and standards and [provide] answers to these questions across the Navy.  Eighty percent is an ambitious goal, but ambition is necessary to force change.  Timid goals allow us to claim success without a deep understanding of the system.  If I say my goal is to improve a few percentage points, I can probably tweak the system around the edges and get there.  But if I say my goal is to get from 63 percent to 80 percent, I have to really understand the system.  I have to understand where the bottlenecks are, where the opportunity lies.  And in order to achieve this magnitude of change, I will likely have to put the rudder over hard.   

We are increasing the combat surge readiness of our platforms by reducing maintenance delays, challenging approaches to manning, training, and modernization, and sustainment.  We’ve had success with this methodology.  It began in 2018 by improving the operational availability of our tactical aircraft.  We were stuck at 250 up-jets for over a decade, even as the inventory climbed from the 300s to the 500s.  By thinking, acting, and operating differently, we decreased maintenance element turnaround time by 59 percent.  We reduced operational maintenance hours by 30 percent.  An inspection that used to take 14 days was reduced to three days.  Our supply community was measuring success and number of parts shipped.  Real success is more ready aircraft.   

We all need to understand the goal.  We need to understand our role in achieving it.  And we must understand the standard and how our actual performance measures against it.  We achieved our goal of 341 aircraft a year after we started and have sustained that for six years.  I am proud of that achievement.  We have scaled our efforts across all aviation platforms and are pushing forward in the surface and submarine communities.  CSR is a level of capability for air, surface and submarine platforms to execute combat missions.  It is distinct from global force management, which provides forces in response to the combatant commander demand balanced with available supply.  It’s not a substitute for the optimized fleet response plan.  It is in addition to it. 

Combat surge ready certified units meet a minimum condition requirement for material condition training, manning, and munitions.  The type of commanders seated with me today are designated as a single accountable officer to ensure their respective forces achieve 80 percent CSR.  I chair a regular forum with all of them called Perform to Plan, designed to get after these goals.  Their accountability, along with reforms, has resulted in fleet-wide cultural shift to aggressively prioritizing readiness.  We have the TYCOMs and the SYSCOMs here, so I’d like to take an enterprise approach for how we are discussing getting after these goals.  Air Boss and Vice Admiral Chebi, please walk us through the aviation journey in achieving the 80 percent combat surge ready goal, including lessons that we have scaled across all type, model, series.  We’ll start with the Air Boss first and then we’ll go to Admiral Chebi.  Air Boss. 

VICE ADMIRAL DANIEL CHEEVER:  Thanks, Admiral.  It’s great to be here at Sea-Air-Space.  Thanks to everybody who set this up and who’s participating.  The combat surge ready journey started in about 2018 when Secretary Mattis challenged everybody to get 80 percent mission capable rates.  That’s when we set the target for 341.  Prior to that point, our self-talk was that we could take 250-ish aircraft and make them into 341 aircraft quickly.  The truth is, it took well over a year to get there, and now to sustain it, it takes an all-hands effort all the time, with the Naval Aviation Enterprise, OPNAV, SECNAV staff, the whole – the whole team.   

It’s pretty exciting.  We’ve scaled it to 22 type model series.  And probably one of the best things that’s happened during this journey is we truly partner with industry to share our truth, to have some real, pointed discussions, and have them in every discussion we have on the iterative process that we have.  So we don’t have a lot of government-only meetings anymore.  We have a lot of industry-informed meetings.  And we hold each other accountable.  And they’re helping us pull a lot of things left and recover as fast as possible when there’s issues that pop up.  And it’s an exciting journey.  And the combat surge ready is really so that if we go to war we have everything we need to go to war right away, and it doesn’t impact training or production of anything else that’s going on.  And that’s where we are.   

We’ve teamed with Chebs who will tell you more about the NAVAIR piece of this.  But he’s been the stalwart of our journey to perform to plan, the naval sustainment system aviation, and to really get better across the board, across all of our platforms.  Sort of the forcing function.  And now we’re sustaining everything that he’s done and the acting chief of naval operations has done to get us here.  And it is pretty exciting.  With that said, there’s more to it, but I think that covers it.  I will say that we’re teaming with Jim Downey for our aircraft carriers, to get our aircraft carriers done with maintenance on time and quickly out there so we have them.  With that said, in 2024 when we deployed seven of the 11 aircraft carriers, one that went twice in 2024, so we’re seeing the fruits of this labor and we’re seeing a ready force.  And with that said, I’ll pass it down to Chebs.   

VICE ADMIRAL CARL CHEBI:  Thank you, Air Boss.  Good to see many folks, even though I can’t see you with these lights right now.  A couple years ago, if you heard me talk, my mom asked me, what does NAVAIR do?  And it’s a great question.  And I answered back to her, we are in the business of naval aviation.  And our business is delivering the war fighting capability that the fleet needs at a cost it can afford.  To run that business, we need to know our numbers.  And I’ll walk you – walk you through our journey on how we’re running a better business today across all five of our North Stars. 

We have a North Star for availability.  VCNO and Air Boss kind of mentioned that we started with F-18s, we figured out how to improve the outcomes, and then we’ve taken that playbook and scaled it across all our other TMSes.  We’ve taken that same playbook and applied it to affordability.  How do we more effectively apply the resources that we have so we can achieve the outcomes that the fleet needs from us.  We run a better business.  And we can walk you through that.   

Capability is the next one applying this playbook too as well.  How to deliver the war fighting capability that we have on contract with industry on timing and performance requirements?  This has been a challenge so far.  We continue to work with industry.  That partnership with industry, setting those North Stars, baselining our current performance, putting a plan together with metrics and holding ourselves accountable outcomes, it works.  I’ve seen it work too many times, over time and time again.   

We’re also applying those same practices to safety.  If you look at our safety record from an aviation perspective, I wouldn’t call it – we’re not getting worse, but we’ve just been stagnant.  So how do we apply the best practices that we have, the learn through NSS P2P that we apply to F-18 readiness to safety.  The same tense, the same core principles there.  Set a North Star baselined with current performance with the data, understand the leverage points, put a plan in place with metrics, and then hold ourselves accountable to outcomes.  The last one is training.  We’re developing and fielding tremendous capability out to the fleet.  How do we ensure the air crew can achieve and maintain an efficiency level to fight at the high end – the high-end fight here?  So we got a great path forward for that one as well.   

Keys to success, from my perspective?  Leadership must be involved.  What we’re talking about up, this is we understand these details.  We have got to understand.  This is not something that we delegate.  I think we get the same thing from industry here.  This is a team sport.  This is not something that the government can do alone.  We need military, our CSS contractors, and our industry partners all along for this ride, on the field focused on that outcome, so we can deliver the war fighting capability the fleet needs when they need it.  Focus on data versus stories.   

And then one of the things that we struggle with as an enterprise is having hard discussions.  It’s good to have hard discussions so you can understand the root cause of our current performance and we can improve from there.  With that, I look forward to having them.  And I look forward to your questions. 

ADM. KILBY:  Hey, Chebs, thank you.  Thank you, Undra.   

We’re going to go to surface ships now.  So we’ll ask Admiral McLane, the SWOBOSS, to start, and be followed by Jim Downey.  But he and I also worked in our last lives – when I was deputy Fleet Forces commander, we had a standing meeting at 1300 every Tuesday where we talked about his ships.  So I watched Brendan grasp what’s happening to his ships and understanding perhaps potential for different approaches, different ways to attack the problem.  And partnering with Jim Downey to do that.  So, Brendan, if you could start and talk a little bit about what you learned, and then, Jim, what you learned on your side, that would be great.   

VICE ADMIRAL BRENDAN MCLANE: Yes, sir.  I would say, to start off, I owe a great deal to the naval aviation enterprise, because when I started I looked at what are you doing to get this.  And the idea of the Readiness Operations Center was one that I looked at, and thought we could do this too.  Now, that we would have to do it a different way.  The complexity is different.  So we launched this and we had a parallel approach.  My predecessor at SURFPAC, Admiral Kitchener, we did this in parallel.   

So we stood up these Readiness Operation Centers to focus and concentrate on CASREP burndown.  And after doing this now for three years – and we’re still at it.  You know, Nimitz just left, and we worked hard at getting her out the door.  But I realized when we really started unpacking what we were learning based on data was we’re getting better at something that we’re already pretty good at.  I mean, just because we split the rock was not the first time we really concentrate on CASREP burndown to get a strike group out the door.  The real – the true improvement is getting maintenance availabilities finished on time.  And you’ll remember our Tuesday meetings to go over that.  And what you just said, Chebs, really resonates with me, was focus on data not stories.  Because when an avail starts going off track, it’s usually a story that you get. 

Partnering with Admiral Downey, focusing on the two big pillars on how we can improve planning and execution of our maintenance availabilities.  The first thing that we did was try to simplify the problem.  Maintenance availabilities are incredibly complex.  The larger the ship, the more complex it is.  Our project managers are faced with multiple references for planning milestones.  Working together, NAVSEA was able to condense those down to one reference down from five late last year.  Was a big accomplishment.  The other thing, when it comes to planning, is at a six month [inaudible] before the avail starts Admiral Downey and I sit down and we look at each avail.  We stack hands on it.  Lots of goodness comes out of probing questions getting asked about where the planning is.  We’re now tracking our port engineering and project managers’ experience and expertise, who are assigned to the avail.  So you can kind of see the complexity of the avail.  Getting the education and experience right on both sides.   

And then finally, the last part, on simplifying the problem when it comes to planning, is in our Task Group Greyhound experience we learned 100-day avails, those finish on time 100 percent.  So a shorter avail is simpler, just by design.  So we’re going to combine that with reducing the periodicity – or, increasing the periodicity of our docking from nine years to six years.  Again, another simplification.  If you’re doing it more frequently you’re going to get more maintenance done, and the packages themselves will be shorter, and we have a greater chance of finishing on time, which is the key performance indicator.   

And then on the execution side, the investment that we made standing up our service groups.  We learned that as much as we try to manage at the TYCOM level, getting down to the deck plates from the TYCOM and getting hands-on for each avail is impossible.  But standing up Naval Surface Groups where we have an organization that is just focused on maintenance and training, only those two things, we have a much greater chance of finishing those avails on time, because this organization is hands on.  They’ll be able to – and they’ve been in rundown for a year – learn from mistakes and apply them to the next.  And to have the right personnel to do that, you know, time and again when we would hear the stories of why the avail went sideways, I kept thinking, I wish I had an engineering WTI, weapons tactics instructors.  The investment that we made with them over a decade ago is paying off in the Red Sea right now.   

So we started that last year – late last year, advanced engineering instructors – think engineering WTIs.  First class graduated in December.  These are going to be experts in fields of maintenance planning, gas turbines, diesels, and things like that, that are going to help us execute on time.  And then the last part is partnering with industry, which we hear too.  We can’t do it by ourselves.  I meet with industry on a weekly basis to talk about which avails are not going well.  And the path that my predecessor, Admiral Kitchener, started with our North Star 75 mission capable ships, has segued very well into our 80 percent combat surge ready goal.  All the things that we’ve learned over the last two years we’ve been able to apply now and really focus in our performance to plan efforts. 

The last part, getting to 80 percent combat surge ready, gigantic goal.  But the foundation of that is our ships have to also be at maximum redundancy.  We’ve learned that from fighting in the Red Sea now for the last 18 months.  We have 31 combat critical systems.  We also think of them as 31 suite systems.  But those have to be operating.  And the spare parts for those systems have to be in the storeroom of that ship. 

ADM. KILBY:  Brendan, thanks.  A lot to pull on here in this panel.  A lot of lessons we’ve shared, your guidance to your COs about what they must do vice what they could do was critical, I think, because you were trying to narrow that possible variance you would get from performance.  And you wanted to get them kicked off on the right step.   

Jim, what would you say from the NAVSEA perspective? 

VICE ADMIRAL JAMES DOWNEY:  Thanks, Vice, and good morning, everybody.  Quite the standing room in the back.  Just like church or school, there’s a whole bunch of seats up front.  (Laughter.)  Similar to how Admiral Chebi described NAVAIR, I’ll do a little bit on NAVSEA, and get into what are we doing on surface ships.  So we’ve restructured NAVSEA over the last year into five lines of effort.  Line of effort one is force generation,  new capabilities.  So I’ll share with you there, while we all have a lot of challenges and performance improvement plans, the team delivered 12 new warships last year – twice the average of the prior five years.  So really significant effort there.  A lot of that was achieved via having clean trials – very, very few overall trial cards and very few [inaudible] cards.   

But we have 92 ships under contract and 56 in construction.  And I bring that up because we need more ships in the mix to hit the combat surge ready numbers overall.  We saw significant improvement in surface maintenance last year, and still have a ways to go; as well as thousands of tech assists and fly-away teams out to the Red Sea and other areas.  As Brendan hinted, we’ve really been very focused on the planning milestones and following our process.  Sometimes the teams get a bit overwhelmed.  Sometimes schedules change.  But if we follow those processes, start planning three years ahead, start getting material two years ahead, lock the package, one year ahead, and do the executability assessments, we have a much greater chance of ships going on time. 

We need to get the contracts awarded.  We’ve been at close to, or within, or a little bit beyond A minus 120.  We need to move some of that back even further to the left, especially for our amphibs.  We continue to see good progress in deck plate approval of change orders, and not having that tied up at the contracting officer-level in our private yards.  A real key issue here, though, especially on the amphib side, is to get our opening inspections done to a high degree before the availability even starts.  We have the amphibious assault ship America (LHA-6) coming back for an avail later this year.  And as the SWOBOSS and I reviewed it in the fall, it was an approach of this is a really large work package.  So one approach would be de-scope the package, and go with what you can achieve.  But the end result of that is you’re going to have unplanned work that you’re going to experience during the avail.  Overall, 191 open-ended specs.  And the team is on track to get those done ahead of her coming back to CONUS for her availability.  So really a pretty significant effort there.   

The other one mentioned is Task Group Greyhound, a program for getting our destroyers down in the 100-day category.  Nine of the last 10 ships have gone on time, or early.  And as we look between 100 days and 150 days, you can get the vast majority of the modernizations done out towards that 150 days as well.  And then studying best practices in the other commercial environments.  How did they change their class maintenance plans as the ships age?  So that gets us to potential adjustments in our DDG class of moving docking availabilities from nine years to six years, and overall shorter periods there.  A key, as we move out of readiness generation into data, is we have done thousands of these evolutions.  And we need to get into more predictive data to show us what the trends are going to be.  And we greatly welcome any support there. 

The last two items, and I’ll get back to some of the specifics, is our people, and our line of effort for it.  We’re a large organization, hired over 7,000 people last year.  All people we wanted to hire, want to retain.  So we’re very, very focused on that, as well as incentives to contracting officers to get more work done in shorter time, as well as incentives out to our project suites and the training that is required to keep the business going and improve.  And the last area I’ll hit on is our infrastructure.  We have – the team has completed 40 of the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP) projects and right now has over $6 billion of work going on.  That’s also included wellness centers at our shipyards, improved Wi-Fi for the workforce, and some more mobile computing out there in that environment.  So with that, sir, I’ll turn it back. 

ADM. KILBY:  Thank you.  Thanks, Jim.  Don’t get too comfortable.  We’re going to go to submarine maintenance now.  It has a huge focus for me.  When I can pry myself – when I can be in charge of my own schedule, I like to spend 1300 every Thursday with Jim Downey and Rob Gaucher as we talk about that problem.  The majority – the vast majority, of our submarine maintenance is done in our public shipyards.  So Rob Gaucher, the SUBFOR commander – I like to call him the underlord – (laughter) – he will commence to talk about this very difficult problem.  And then we’ll toss it to Jim Downey.  And then we’ll go to a few questions, and then open it up.  So, Rob. 

VICE ADMIRAL ROB GAUCHER:  Thanks, Vice Chief.   

In the Submarine Force, as I look at combat surge ready, there’s really two pieces to it.  Part one is I have to get the submarines out of the shipyard and delivered to me so I can operate them in the fleet, put them into the fleet response training plan.  And then I have to make them ready for combat.  I have to get them properly manned, trained, and equipped to go do their mission.  So right now, the challenge is the vice chief grading me against both.  Jim and I are joined at the hip to get after what is really my pacing problem, which is getting the submarines out of the shipyard.  And the capacity in our public shipyards right now is 10 fast attack submarines.  We have 17 fast attack submarines in the public shipyard.  So crushing that delta down to 10 is really what’s going to let me drive my combat surge ready to 80 percent.  That’s the big problem we’re working on.  All the things Jim just discussed in surface are common to submarines.  So we have to get to the places we can’t normally see and find out if there’s more problems than we expected, which is the growth work piece, very early. So that’s critical.   

We need to minimize the work packet size.  I have a piece of that.  I have to really minimize the good ideas, really, after about two years.  And when I get two years out from start, we’re at “slap the table” on the packet size.  We may give a little bit beyond that, but at that point we have to stop the good ideas.  I have to give him a stable plan.  So even if something breaks – and things will break in the two years I’m operating that submarine because I run it really hard – I have to be smart and say, does it absolutely, positively need to be done in a CNO availability?  Or could I accept a little bit of risk, get it out and fix it in a fleet availability, where it’s a little bit easier to get some maintenance done because some of the controls we have to put in place.  Recognizing, I have to get it done safely at the same time.   

Then the other piece I own relative to that is making sure as we go into a shipyard availability, the crew and ship are ready.  I have to do all the testing, and I have to make sure it’s not the crew holding things up.  That’s my TYCOM piece contributing to making sure when I turn it over to Jim he can get it in and get it out on plan. 

Once I get them, the other part of combat surge ready is to get them properly, manned, trained, and equipped to operate.  We look at what we call the PESTO pillars.  The P is the people.  I make sure I can man three sections of watch on every submarine so if they are called to go respond to INDOPACOM, or EUCOM, or CENTCOM, anywhere in the world, that I have enough to stand the watch and operate for months at a time.   

The next thing is equipment. We’re actually doing pretty well in our intermediate maintenance availabilities, once I get them to the pier and the waterfront I am able to turn them around on time.  But the key there is a much smaller scale of maintenance and a much shorter duration.  I think Jim will quickly tell you, the shorter we can make availabilities, the more likely we are to deliver on time.  We have done pretty well there.  We’re able to repair those ships and get them back out.  The S pillar is supplies.  I have to ensure the right number of parts and food get onboard to sustain them so they can go out and operate, again, for months at a time.   

Next is Training which we tie to our TYCOM readiness evaluations. We basically put our ships, our submarines, out for a mini war, to make sure wherever I send them in the world we’ve tested them, and they’re following all of our tactics so they can survive in combat.  And it’s a pretty sporty evaluation.  Oftentimes we’ll go down to one of our torpedo ranges and we’ll actually shoot exercise torpedoes.  And we also use our high-fidelity trainers in port so we can actually dial the stress up quite a bit, things we can’t do at sea because of safety but we can really run through the paces and test in a high-contact environment. That’s the training piece.   

And then finally, ordnance.  I have to make sure I have enough torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles onboard each of our submarines.  I have a little bit of a good news story on torpedoes.  We’ve been really driving to perform to plan and get real, get better, in our torpedo inventories.  And we’ve driven our inventory up over the last six months.  I actually raised the number in the Atlantic fleet by two torpedoes across all ships, really thanks to industry there for working with us on getting our torpedo inventories up.  I expect in the next six months to raise it again another two torpedoes, driving us closer to readiness for the call if Admiral Paparo tells us he needs us.  So we manage those PESTO pillars as the second part, once they turn over ships to me to be able to get to that 80 percent combat surge ready.  Thank you.  Back to you. 

ADM. KILBY:  Thanks, Rob, thanks.  Jim.   

VICE ADM. DOWNEY:  Thanks, Sir.  Just hitting on a couple of Rob’s themes and a couple additional items.  I’ll go to planning and execution again.  In planning, we saw – and we’ve been on this journey for several years now, with performance to plan – we saw several years ago that a significant amount of our material was being ordered after the start of availability.  It wasn’t a minor amount.  It’s double digits.  It was closer to 50 percent.  But it was a self-fulfilling prophecy here.  It was we’re overrunning on labor, so spending the money on that in the execution year and not buying the material.   

With a lot of help from Congress and the submarine PEOs, we were able to get a – and the sponsors – a significant reset in some of that material in the $1.5 to $2 billion category.  So we’re making sure we have the material going forward.  And that’s the major material.  In addition to that, over the last year the team has been pouring through the related drawings and sees, of course, there’s contingent material needed as well.  So we’ve gone to the point now, recently, in the last three to four months, of codifying that.  We’re just buying the contingent material.  We’re not going to wait to see the work stop and buy those extra bolts, or whatever it may be.  Just buy it now, and manage it across the inventory.  So two very logical issues, but with all the work going on, as Rob talks about, 17 submarines in play, sometimes you kind of get right into those very specifics and do the elementary change.   

Another big challenge we have here, that almost will never change, is a significant operation cycle, where it’s much harder to access the condition of the submarine, of course, ahead of the avail.  But we are doing all of those assessments that we can possibly get to, working with the crews, working with the type of commander.  In execution, some of it’s similar to the surface force work.  Some of – a little bit of difference.  We get into some significant test interruptions.  And what we have seen – one area of improvement is the team would walk the test line, review the procedure, start executing.  And if they have a problem, they would order material.  We think we’re on top of that.  The other issue is they’d call the subject matter expert (SME) from somewhere around the world when they needed them, instead of just having them positioned – him or her position for that test evolution.  So we have some improvements there.   

Duration of avails is significant in execution.  These are notionally closer to two years than one year.  And when an avail goes longer than a year, regardless of the ship type, it’s four times more likely to overrun.  This is one we still have a lot of work to do on, trying to understand ways to break up some of this?  We’ve had some great work with the Office of Naval Reactors and SUBFOR on doing some repairs in the water versus in a dock.  But some more efforts to work on there.  Another change, just as you may have heard in the other discussion, the MOC.  We have shifted NAVSEA’s emergency op center to an operations center so we can see the material condition of Navy ships off of common data sources now, and share that across the CNO’s data effort, and manage those avails just as if it’s a forward-deployed ship with casualty reports (CASREPs).  So significant opportunity there.   

Now, after working on this for a couple years, I think we’ve made some significant progress this year.  PEO Aircraft Carriers has had regional support contracts in place, in addition to the naval shipyards, for a long time.  In Norfolk – in mid-Atlantic and southwest, and in fact northwest, we hadn’t been doing that in the submarine area to help with balance to work and address surge with a contract support vehicle.  So that RFP has gone out.  And that effort is being solicited this year.  Those are some of the big ones we’re working on.   

ADM. KILBY:  OK.  Quick couple questions to get folks warmed up, and then we’ll switch to you.  But you alluded to this, Chebs and Undra, a little bit about the maturity of the system, trying to stretch beyond 80 percent mission capable.  Now it’s six CVNs, six air wings.  And then, Chebs, you alluded to some specific areas, like safety, affordability, capability, that were beyond the scope of the original journey.  So can you just kind of update the team on where you are with industry, the conversation with industry, and what the next steps are to move forward.  And I’ll let you two kind of self-organize on how you want to answer that question. 

VICE ADM. CHEBI:  Sir, thanks for that question.  Yeah, look, we developed – we had F-18 readiness recovery.  I’ll be blunt.  Naval aviation was not a willing partner.  We had to be told to do it.  And then we had to be – we were told to have a very aggressive target as well.  And those two things forced us to think differently about the problem.  You could not just optimize the process we had.  We had to change some foundational things.  But we developed that playbook.  And that playbook works.  I have just seen it work too many times across availability.  So we’ve scaled this to all our other TMSes.  We still struggle with our joint programs, which is interesting because we don’t own all the levers of the joint programs.  So we do see – still see challenges with our joint programs. 

From an affordability perspective, that same playbook works.  You know, if you set the North Star target, you baseline your current performance, you understand your data, you put the plan together and hold yourself – you have metrics so you can hold ourselves accountable to outcomes, it works.  And we can apply it to safety and to training as well.  The key finding for me is – and it’s much more comfortable to talk about activity than it is about – to talk about outcomes.  Outcomes brings accountability.  And when you have accountability and you’re not going to meet your outcomes, it’s a very difficult discussion to have.  That’s why I mentioned earlier it’s OK for us to have those hard discussions, even with industry.   

Many of you have been in meeting from industry with me.  We have those tough discussions.  And they’re wonderful, because at that point we understand what the root cause of our current performance is, we understand what our gap is.  We can define on the gap closure plan, who owns it, what metrics, and we can hold each other accountable towards that.  So, again, the playbook works.  It’s just getting the culture inculcated across the enterprise for us to make this how we operate each and every single day.  It’s a journey that we’re still on. 

Air Boss. 

VICE ADM. CHEEVER:  Yeah.  And I think, you know, to me, it’s the four Ts, right?  You speak the truth.  You gain the trust of each other to say those truths and to be direct about it without pulling punches.  You have the transparency required to get after these issues.  And then you have the teamwork that actually does it together.  To me, those things are the most powerful and critical thing.  The ownership piece of it cannot be overstated.  That is absolutely critical.  Got to have an order and an outcome, right?  And you get the team together and you say, you know, my role is basically the demanding customer.  So for Jim and I, hey, demanding that the shipyards produce in the timeline that they’re supposed to produce for that availability.  And that’s what we’re going after.  And it’s great.   

And I’m called the supported commander for a reason, and while it’s a little uncomfortable every once in a while to be an echelon three commander and being the supported commander by echelon one and two, what I found in this journey of problem solving is that they absolutely jump on board quickly and say, wait, that is ours.  And what we do is know the system, know what – how to do it.  And then we fix it ourselves, within our resources and constraints.  And if we can’t, and absolutely can’t, and know our business, then we elevate it.  And that’s when the leadership takes action, because they’ve seen that we’ve done all the homework.  They’ve seen that we’ve run up something that we can’t change ourselves.   

I will tell you that’s very few and far between, things that we can’t fix between the system’s resources, our resources, and our ability within policy, and change, and thinking, acting, and operating differently to get to solutions.  And with industry, who’ve been very willing to partner and expedite and help us in all kinds of their supplier chains and pulling levers, it’s pretty – it’s pretty intense and awesome.   

I the last thing I’ll say is because of this problem-solving journey that Admiral Kilby has started us on, and then we’re all on, once you see it and do it in one thing, you can’t unsee it and you can’t not do it in other things.  So across the PESTO pillars that Rob talked about we’re doing a similar perform to plan each of those, to make sure we understand the ordnance, where it goes, and how you get there.  The training, live, virtual, constructive.  Net-enabled weapons encryption.  The personnel.  When does enlisted manning get healthy, and all those kind of things.  So there’s a lot to this.  And I’m pretty excited about the journey, especially being the support commander and the demanding customer of this.  Thanks, sir. 

ADM. KILBY:  Hey, Undra, thanks.  Just to highlight that point, you know, your predecessor, twice removed, Kenny Whitesell, told us one, I think, February, right before he retired, that he took his eye off the ball around the holiday season.  And he watched readiness plummet to like 60 percent because he wasn’t driving the machine.  And so this can never go on automatic.  You can never take your eye off the ball.  You have to look at it every day.  Daily, visual management of your process is important.  So I’ve watched the team do that.  And I get a report every Thursday afternoon from the aviation enterprise which tells me where we are on type, model series.  But I’ll tell you, one of the vexing problems that they’re going to need help on is joint programs, because that falls beyond their control, beyond the Navy control.  So you know, Kilby, strap on your belt and walk down to the third deck and start talking to OUSD A&S about how we can get our arms around that problem to achieve a different outcome.   

Let me just go to the surface fleet really quick, because amphib maintenance has been vexing us, me.  And we had significant trouble with the Boxer ARG and the Wasp ARG last year.  And I know Jim and you, SWOBOSS, have been focused on that.  Can you give us a little insight to what’s happened, you know, in the last year, and what you’re doing about it?  I’ll start with you, SWOBOSS. 

VICE ADM. MCLANE:  Yes, sir.  So we – to the point I made earlier, to try to simplify the problem and give people more time for planning.  Admiral Downey alluded to it.  With these complex avails for a big deck amphib, the lead maintenance activity is going to need some more time for that.  A-minus-120 is not going to cut it.  So what we’re going to pilot this year is a signature of available – that’s what we’re calling them – on the East Coast and West Coast, where we launch a package of A-minus-500, and award an A-minus-360.  That will give them a lot more time to plan. 

The other big point that we’ve learned is on the execution side, we had a big problem with QA.  And this is to the point, again, we heard a lot of stories about how each avail goes wrong, but one of the common denominators is when it comes to – when we got around to the QA part, we found that the work didn’t pass and we needed to redo it.  And that sometimes took months.  Investing in the original equipment manufacturer and getting them to sign up for high pressure steam systems, for some of the diesel work that we need, rather than leaving it to the lead maintenance activity to contract out to the lowest bidder, who’s going to be the subcontractor – but putting that in, investing in the original equipment manufacturer will drive down the QA problems.   

Admiral Downey alluded to this as well, getting our long lead time material ordered way in advance so that we have got a spare knuckle boom crane or a Caley davit on the shelf, so we’re ready to have a rotatable pool of these one-off systems that we have on our LPDs.  And then just really stocking up on diesel overall kits.  Then the final part, one of the things that we learned last year, is the complexity of ordering material.  Submarines, again, with carriers, they have somebody on the maintenance team that’s just dedicated to ordering the material.  For big deck amphibs, we need to do the same thing.   

And then the final part, Admiral Downey talked about this too with the America avail, getting to the left on opening inspection.  That requires a lot of fleet partnership to invest time that the big deck was supposed to be doing something else.  But getting them to realize we really need to do this if you want America back out on time in ’26.  We’re going to need to invest the time now to look at what we have.   

ADM. KILBY:  Hey, Brendan, thanks.  Jim, anything to add? 

VICE ADM. DOWNEY:  Yeah, thanks, Sir.  On provisioning, what we’ve found – an example is Boxer life – of the ship components that aren’t – not a new ship.  Steering bearings fail.  And as the SWOBOSS was saying, we didn’t keep that Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) going.  But we did keep the shipyard going, the new construction yard.  So with a closer partnering between in-service and new construction, we’re able to divert some assets.  We’re able to get folks working both rudder systems in the water, non-stop, 24/7, by some minor enabling of equipment for the team.   

I mentioned the open-ended specs.  So how are you able to take a forward-deployed ship that is ready for sea requirements and inspect 190 tanks ahead of the avail?  You’ve got to pump them down.  You got to gas-free them, right?  Not really.  With some of the equipment we’ve worked on with NRL, we don’t have to put people in the tanks to do some of this.  So we’re using some more new technology there.   

We also saw in the amphib assessment project superintendents turning over quite a bit.  And each one might be their first one.  Really, really hard position to lead from.  So we’ve looked at their qualifications as well as partnering with what we’re doing on the nuclear vessels, on incentives.  And then on the signature avails, what we’re really talking there is move an award out closer to a year than 120 days.  And how do we use the multi-year appropriation, like we have in the other procurement Navy (OPN) pilot to get after this work much earlier than we have done?  Those are some of the big things we’re working on. 

ADM. KILBY:  All right.  Thanks, Jim.  Hey, last question for Rob and Jim is, my view of watching this for a year, we could see ourselves having trouble to understand what was happening in the system at the normal Thursday afternoon meeting in our Perform To Plans.  Huge group of people, maybe 70, that are looking at that.  All the shipyard COs and their staffs as we try to work our way through that problem.  So we came up with a construct a little bit as a result of one of those meetings where we said, let’s just – let’s get a smaller group of people at the leadership level – me, you, and there was probably 12 people in the room – where we said, what are some big moves that we, only we, can effect on the system to try to get a different outcome.   

And so, Rob, if you and Jim could just opine on that.  Not long, because we want to turn over to the team.  But to me, that was – that was a little bit of a deviation or in addition to our normal battle rhythm, because we just found that that space is really challenging us.  And we needed to kind of elevate above.  What’s your view on that?  And we still have little ways to go here to kind of land this thing, but can you talk about that a little bit?   

VICE ADM. GAUCHER:  Yes, sir.  First of all, thanks for the question, Vice Chief. 

There’s a number of these big moves – just to give you a sense, we’re looking at the broad spectrum.  We’re looking at, how do we hire faster?  Jim already mentioned, how do we incentivize?  How do we outsource more of the work from the shipyards to balance out the capacity problem?  We’re looking at command and control.  We’re looking at how we take an operation center approach to things.  And we’re looking at material among other things.  But I’ll tie it together for you.   

We execute the P2P process, or Perform to Plan, where we look at what drivers are working or not working, and where can we look to make improvements. One area we found is not going well is work stoppage.  It makes a lot of sense, right?  If you’re stopping the work, you’re not getting it done, so you’re not going to finish.  Not rocket science there.  We identified this as an area not going very well.  We asked, why is that?  We figured out there’s two big reasons why a job stops.  Jim talked about one already.  Parts, we get to a point and we’re stuck because we don’t have all the parts we need.  The big move there, go figure out how to buy contingent material for all the jobs we might need accomplish.   

Around the turn of the century we got very efficient and went to just-in-time inventory management.  Learning some lessons from inventory, it hasn’t really worked well for us in the unplanned work area.  We’re now taking a just-in-case mentality to this area, so when we open up the tank or the valve and find out there’s something we didn’t predict, we already have the part ready.  That’s a big driver for us. We’re asking in this small group, how do we close the gap to make sure we don’t just talk about it, we actually demonstrate it?  We picked three availabilities to drive to 100 percent of the contingent material.  Whether we hit 100 percent or not, to be seen.  But we’re going to get darn close.   

The second reason a job stops is because of technical resolution.  I get stuck, I’m not sure what to do next, and it wasn’t something I expected.  Now I have to have an engineer look at it.  There’s a lot of reasons we need those same engineers, in particular, structural engineers. And structural engineers don’t come from colleges.  We take electrical and mechanical, maybe naval architects, and then we train them over one or two years at a shipyard to be a structural engineer.  So a hard problem to get after.  We’ve taken that problem on, to go increase our total number of structural engineers to resolve these problems faster.   

If you look at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, who’s doing really well, they have 25 engineers on a project. Therefore, when a worker runs into a problem they’re not filling out forms and waiting for it to get resolved, they’re just picking a phone up and saying, hey, I’m stuck. What do I do?  It turns out a large portion of the time, the engineer can just tell them what to do and they’re right back to work. We’re trying to drive those numbers down and I think it’s safe to say, over about the last eight months I think we’ve cut the total number of jobs in stop work in half, and we cut the average duration down by about five or six days. We’re seeing the progress.   

What we haven’t seen yet is the availabilities start to crush down and come out on plan.  But we think if we keep this press on, that will be the ultimate result we’re going to see.  It’s just working its way through.  And Jim has a comment on that.   

VICE ADM. DOWNEY:  Yeah.  Thanks, Rob.  I’ll hit three others – lines of effort of the yards, command and control of the yards, and the teaming on the avails.  Some of – the Puget and Norfolk are enormous.  You know, they range from 10,000-15,000 folks.  Norfolk has 16 lines of effort.  When you reflect on ships, you got L.A., Virginia, Ohio, and Nimitz, Ford.  There’s 11 more lines of effort than that at that shipyard.  We’ve been successful in moving two, whether they run the base, or whether they run a foundry up in Philadelphia.  But there’s significant focus there on who should be overseeing what work. 

And then the C2 of the yards.  How do we focus the leadership correctly on driving those various lines of effort, whether it be submarine, or carrier?  Nuclear of course, stays in a very controlled structure.  But in some cases, you’ll have I level work, intermediate level maintenance work, come in and disrupt the D level work, the depot level.  So we’re focused on how do we – how do we affect that and make sure we have the dedicated, accountable workforce to turn the subs around at the D level and separate out some folks at high level.   

And the last one on it is on carriers, Carrier Team One has been pretty successful over the years.  It’s industry and government.  It is not the Naval Shipyard.  And they take the lessons learned in the avails of certain alterations and certain maintenance packages, and they share it across the team.  That’s one item.  The other one is its – and the team stays the same through planning and execution on the Navy side.  We stood down Sub Team One a couple years ago for other reasons.  And we’ve rechartered that now.  So that is – that is reforming. 

And we’re looking at – the avails are different, right?  Ironically, what is our shortest average avails?  Our largest – our largest vessels – six months and 16 months for carriers, right?  That’s something to ponder out there.  When you have a two-year avail, it’s a little harder.  And you have planning two years before that.  It’s a little harder to keep that team together for sub after sub after sub.  So we’re working through that.  But focusing the lines of effort on the depot and I level, who and how are we running the yard, and how are we getting the lessons learned applied, those are the more enduring items we’re working on.   

ADM. KILBY:  OK.  I’m going to turn it over to the team.  Just to give you the stats of where we are though, we’re at 67 percent combat surge ready for submarines today.  We’re at 68 percent combat surge ready for surface ships today.  We’re at 70 percent combat surge ready for CVNs and air wings.  So we need to get a little bit uncomfortable here to have a process change to result in a different outcome.  And that’s the benefit of a stretch goal.  In addition to that, it provides more platforms for our fleet commanders to do what they needed to do – to do what they need to do when charged.  So with that, I’ll open it up to the floor for questions.  And I think we’re going to get some from the left-hand side of the room, over here.  Over. 

OPERATOR:  Our first question this morning:  As you look forward to the mid-2030s, what tradeoffs do you see coming that may become more challenging due to the current focus on maintaining 80 percent combat surge ready status? 

ADM. KILBY:  I don’t know that I see a challenge.  I think we’re going to do our business better.  Let me break to the systems command commanders to see if they have a different view.  I think we have flex in the system that we’ve allowed ourselves to grow accustomed to.  I think running a tighter business will be better for us in the long run.  But there may be some things I haven’t seen.  I will make a comment, OPNAV – if Roy Kitchener’s in the room, you know, he started ringing this bell years ago and we’re just now reacting to that bell and getting the funding where it needs to be to buy those spares to maintain them.  So to me, that’s a more efficient system running.  But how about you, Jim and Chebs?  Do you have a view of that, that’s different?   

VICE ADM. DOWNEY:  Yeah.  Not different.  Some other attributes, though.  Hiring.  OK, as we look at new construction and in-service, our projections are on pipefitting, metal works, et cetera, electricians.  We have to hire almost 200,000 people over the next eight to 10 years.  Big, big challenge.  We can have a wages discussion there and a retention discussion, but that’s one of our biggest – we have not – the attrition rates have not subsided, right?  In some – in many cases they’re more than double what they were before COVID.  So through 2019 more so, 10 percent.  Some of our big yards, 20 percent-plus.  I’m referencing mainly the private yards.  So that area is critical.  To affect that, we, in the ’80s, four to five times minimum wage for these jobs.  And today, about 1.5 times minimum wage.  So we need to work together on how we can positively affect that, while business flourishes.   

The second – the next one is lead time.  We have seen about half of the material of the long lead Rob was mentioning takes about half as long.  So two years is about three years, while we had been doing some minimum sustaining buys.  Congress has helped us with that, with three years of advanced procurement, but there’s still a lot of work to do there.  And the maritime industrial base is working on that.  And those – all those areas affect in-service and new construction.  New construction, I think you can – you can read the various reports and you see where we are.  Some areas have stabilized to program predicted schedules, not the contract predicted schedules.  And some of those are running two to three years late.  We’ve got to drive that down significantly as we get into the 2030s to have the right number of ships in the mix to hit the combat surge ready numbers. 

ADM. KILBY:  Are you good, Chebs?   

VICE ADM. CHEBI:  Yes, sir.  The only thing I would add is I don’t think it’s a trade-off.  I would call it more of a balance.  You know, if I look at the cost structure of all of our programs, around 5 to 10 percent from the development, around 15 to 20 (percent) for the production, and for the rest of it 60-70-80 percent is in sustainment.  So how do you sustain your current force while developing and fielding the next generation of force?  And there must be a balance.  The best example I can give you right now, something we’re dealing with.  We have an aging E-6 fleet.  And we have an E-130 on contract.  So how do I make sure we deliver E-130 on time, while we sustain the E-6 platform?  I don’t think it’s a trade-off.  It’s a balance.  We must do both.  Really need help from industry here, especially on the capability delivery of that new platform there.  And that can expand to many different platforms, but that’s a good example.   

ADM. KILBY:  And just another shameless bragging on the aviation enterprise, you know this drive for affordability.  You talk about behavior.  And I’ve watched a lot of human behavior in the Pentagon.  The behavior is to hold up with what you’ve got, and not to expose yourself because someone might take your money.  I hate to be that brutal about it, but that’s it.  And the aviation enterprise has figured out a way to change the culture with the agreement that they’ll keep their savings and be able to reinvest them.  And that was largely started by Admiral Lescher, who happens to be an aviator.   

And so when I came into the vice chief’s office, Chebs made this pitch to me.  And he said, I would like to film you committing to returning the savings to us.  Now I’m not sure what that says about me.  (Laughter.)  But I did it.  And he’s managed to save a ton of money over time and reinvest it, where he’s reduced the fear that you’re going to take my money and apply it to someone else.  And they get to reapply it to things that they think are important and know that they’re important to do.  And that’s happening.  So to me, I’m trying to replicate that across 20 other communities to follow that suit.  So thank you for that, Chebs.   

Next question. 

OPERATOR:  How will the Navy continue to conduct much-needed maintenance, while ensuring 80 percent combat surge readiness? 

ADM. KILBY:  Well, let’s go back to the premise here.  It’s a – it is a great question.  But if I can get my avails done on time, if I can load those ships, if I can get them manned with those sailors, that ship is just available earlier to do other things – whether it be respond to out of area deployers, or be used in a surge capacity.  You know, when V8 and I did this, we had the reaction to the Ukraine invasion.  And we were told to come up with six ships.  So we looked for the next six ships.  And we looked to see if we had ammo and could we get them out there.  I remember when we sent those ships across we looked at each other, like, where’s the next six ships?  And we were having trouble identifying them. 

So the idea that you formalized this and understand that condition and pull it to the left, vice waiting for it to all culminate at advanced training, or COMPTUEX is what we’re talking about.  So it doesn’t mean we’re going to change OFRP.  We’re not.  We’re going to still do COMPTUEX, because that is the premier, unequaled in this world, force generation process to create a naval force to deploy.  We’re just going to identify those ships earlier for use if needed.  We may not have to use them, but they’ll still be available and ready to go.  That’s the benefit of it.  So I think it requires that discipline to get those ships done on time.  And I commend the surface community because they doubled their on-time completion from 2023 to 2024.  And we want to continue to pressurize that. 

Do you have an addition to that, Brendan? 

VICE ADM. MCLANE:  You really covered it pretty well, Admiral Kilby.  But what I would – no, the other – the other things that I would add is it’s – to get to 80 percent combat surge readiness, it’s the counterintuitive, we’re going to actually have to do more maintenance.  But we’re going to have to do it in a more predictable way, shorter time spans, shorter avails, more frequently.  So it is going to be an investment.  It is going to be more expensive.  But with an average age of the fleet that is increasing, it’s wise to do that. 

ADM. KILBY:  Well, we may have to say no.  And I hate to say this because the fleet commanders won’t want to hear that, and they’ll probably castigate me after this.  But we’ve found over time that in order to maintain your SPY radar you have to have year maintenance.  That hasn’t always been our behavior, especially initially when we introduced AEGIS to the fleet.  And when we kept the radar of them, we didn’t want to take it down, because something bad might happen.  You must maintain your radar if it is to perform when you need it to perform.  You have to do effective transfer of power.  You have to do isolation.  You have to understand the conditions of that system.  Those are all the tenets we’re talking about here.   

The next question. 

VICE ADM. DOWNEY:  If you don’t mind, sir, just to – 

ADM. KILBY:  Come on in. 

VICE ADM. DOWNEY:  All right.  A couple more items: additive manufacturing and additional parts, and sources for parts is, really, really important.  The Maritime Industrial Base (MIB) is working on that.  We are working an acquisition strategy update to put in place this year to acquire services for special systems that have a diminishing subject matter experts – 

ADM. KILBY:  Steam 

VICE ADM. DOWNEY:  Steam, diesels, cranes, davits.  And we’re working on a significant effort to reduce our specifications.  My chief engineer is going through his 5,300 specifications.  He’s about 75 percent through those.  And we see wherever we can, and it’s applicable, we’re shifting to a commercial version of those.  Some of the things the GAO has referenced as well in the past.   

ADM. KILBY:  Thanks, Jim.  All right.  Next question. 

OPERATOR:  Ladies and gentlemen, this will be the last question for this morning’s panel. 

You’ve emphasized the importance of investing in your people to ensure fleet readiness.  Can you share more about the specific types of investments the Navy is making to prepare Sailors, both mentally and physically, for the challenges ahead?   

ADM. KILBY:  Well, I’ve got an idea here, but I don’t want to stunt growth.  Any questions from any enterprise where there’s specific repair work?  Brendan. 

VICE ADM. MCLANE:  Well, one of the things that we’ve learned when it comes to training is that, you know, the best training that we do on ships is in teams – damage control, combat systems.  Those are all team sports for us.  And we were taking full advantage of that as we are going through the basic and advanced space getting ready for deployment.  Our habit had been, in order to get the crew topped off with peak manning would be to add the people right before the deployment.  And then we realized, well, we do need to get them through the COMPTUEX, so we backed it up for that.   

But to get the MyNavyHR system, as great as they are, to make that shift was considerable.  What we learned is to get full advantage of the basic phase, we need peak personnel at the beginning of the basic phase.  So we had to get the MyNavyHR system to pull even further left.  We’re going to be able to do that for the first time with our next West Coast strike group.  There are going to be peak personnel at the beginning of basic phase to take full advantage of all the team training that we’re going through it.   

ADM. KILBY:  Yeah.  Thanks, Brendan.  Anyone else?  Undra, and then we’ll go to you, Rob. 

VICE ADM. CHEEVER:  Yeah.  I look at the sailors today.  And they think and operate quickly.  They learn fast.  We need to change our training so that they learn fast, and it’s world-class training across the board.  I’ve seen what’s happening in industry with VR goggles and things like that, that can really speed up learning and how you do maintenance.  And then it gets all the way to conversion, control, cannibalization, the rest of how we do maintenance.  And they’re excited when they’re getting delivered world-class training.  And that’s what we’re going after, is world-class training.  Because that’s what motivates sailors.  And I think the indirect benefit of that is you will retain a ton more sailors when they’re motivated and being trained to the highest degree, and now they are truly experts and expert warriors at their maintenance mission.   

ADM. KILBY:  Thanks, Undra.  Rob, please. 

VICE ADM. GAUCHER:  Along the same theme Undra’s talking about, the quality of our trainers in the last three decades has really gone up significantly.  One of the things we realized is we hadn’t really changed our qualification process onboard as a result of the trainer improvement. We started an initiative about a year and a half ago called the Day-One Ready Sailor.  And the challenge to our schoolhouses was to deliver a sailor in certain skill sets ready to step aboard, do one under-instruction watch and one interview, and then start standing watch.  So we get them part of the team, contributing, pretty much on day one.   

We’ve started the plan out with two watchstations: basic sonar operators and electronic plots operators. Very basic and simplistic watches.  But we’re now going to double that this year.  And we’re adding as we get feedback from the fleet, so we’re instantly getting those sailors ready.  And they’re really delivering.  It’s been great feedback from the fleet, helps our watch bill, and contributes to our combat surge readiness.  That’s been a big deal for us.   

Now, the part I worry about is these extended availabilities. Particularly those we thought we were going to get out on one date and then extend a few months at a time, so it kind of hamstrings us. How do we really commit to our sailors who aren’t at sea to make sure they’re getting at-sea experience?  As our deployed submarines come back, the last slide they show me during their brief is how many other submarine’s sailors they took to sea and got qualified. That’s something, as a force, we’re committed to keep going.  The vice chief challenged us with ensuring every first-term sailor has the opportunity to go to sea.  We’re really working hard to make sure we meet those marks and we get at-sea experience for each one of our sailors.   

ADM. KILBY:  OK, one addition is I’m committed to working with the type commanders and the systems command commanders on our sea-shore rotation.  Because I’m not sure we’ve got that exactly right.  People can gain expertise at shore, which then can be applied to the sea.  So I want to go back and look and make sure we didn’t short-sheet ourselves there in an effort to address a manning problem.  And we may have had a second tier or third tier effect on that.  So that’s an area of growth work that we need to do to make sure we’re building really world-class journeymen and masters.  So thank you for that.   

And thank you for the ability to address you today on what we’re undertaking.  We’ve unveiled this publicly now, so I’m sure you will hold us accountable, as you should.  We will hold ourselves accountable.  But I’m committed to getting more ready platforms available for our fleet commanders.  Thank you.  (Applause.)