Transcripts For CSPAN3 Forum Focuses On U.S. Navy Maintenance Challenges 20170615

Moore. We are going to get started. Good morning. I am a senior fellow here. And i am delighted to kick off this mornings mari security dialogue. The dialogue represents a company hosted series. Seeks to highlight both current thinking and future challenges facing the navy, the marine corps and the cost gourt. And we look forward to welcoming you all back for additional events throughout the year. We would like to thank in a special way Lockheed Martin and huntingt huntington ingols industry. We would like to make a brief safety announcement. Should there be anything as a convener, we have exits in the back and stairs down the front and both myself and anthony bell in the back should be directors. So just look for one of us. And for our formal introduction, i am going to turn things over to vice admiral peter dally and we are happy to have him here. Welcome, i am pete daly. We are proud to bring you this series continuation now in our third year. We give special recognition to our sponsors. For making this event possible. Now i will introduce our speaker for today. 1981 graduate of the academy also holds degrees from George Washington skpu after serving mostly focused on refueling, complex, overhalls of Aircraft Carriers. Major command included Major Program managers for aircraft care rers and Program Officer for peo subs. I point out that there is over 75,000 uniformed and civilian employees of navsea which is entirely responsible for contracting and super vision of all navy and ship and sub ship building and responsible for the maintenance and be the shipments that go on those ships directly. So we welcome admiral tom moore who controls onequarter of the navys budget. [ applause ] i am always reminded of that. That is not necessarily a good thing. So good morning, and thank you for the invite this morning. Before i get started, so last night was a big night for the navy. One, my band, played live down at the water front. And what was the other thing that went on last night. Oh, yeah, we delivered the ford to the navy. So kooif a big night for us from my perspective. Having worked on it for most of the past ten years. And the survey and the navy accepted delivery of the ford last night. So you heard it here first. So thanks for the opportunity to come talk this morning. The theme that was given was the maintenance challenge and how to reset the fleet. And so what i would like to do is talk about this in the context of talking about where the cno is headed with the size and fleet and talk about what we are doing to grow the size of fleet and more importantly talk about how the maintenance side of that equation fits in. It is not, as we were talking beforehand, it is not either. You got to do both. And so sometimes we tend to forget about that. Having been a ship holder for the last 15 years. And also spent years on ship readiness. I am well aware that you have to do both, maintain what you got and continue to build forward. If you havent read the cnote, it is a good read. It is short. Lips do not get tired when they read it. And the cnos white pair is important. He makes three key points. And these are applicable whether you are talking new construction or the maintenance side of the house. Three key points is time matters. And that applies to across the board. To getting ships and submarines out and designing and getting them out quicker. The pace is exponential. If you look at the world today and the threats that we are facing, the learning that is going on in our near competitors, russia and china, and the pace is growing. We have to keep up with that pace. Kind of like we went into the half of a football up to 203 and we said we will get there when we get there. And we kind of strolled out midway through the Third Quarter only to find out that the squco was 28to 34. It is a key interest to us here on the navy side of the house. So a lot of discussion going on today about what is it, what is the navy that we need. And not necessarily what is the navy we need in the 2040s, but what is the navy we need in the 2020s. And we in figuring out, what is the navy we need probably in the mid 20s and go make some decisions based on kind of that navy that we need in the 2020s. Theres been a number of recent studies, some done by the navy, some done by indepen department groups, about what is it the navy you need, what should it look like . And they all have kind of varying mixes of ships and stuff. But at the end, they all came to the same conclusion is that we need a bigger navy than we have today, they are all around the 340 to 350 ships. Clearly, the size of the fleet does matter and the capability of that fleet is also going to matter importantly, as well. So, you know, how do we get there from here . So, one of the things, when we talk about the size of the fleet and i know ill get questions about, hey, the 18 budget didnt add ships, what happened . Well were never going to be able to turn that around overnight. I think what youre going to see, and ill get into it a little bit more in later in my remarks, you know, the 18 budgets holds what we have on the new Construction Side but makes a significant raise on the readiness side of the house. Thats what youre seeing in the 18 budget. Now, a lot of we spent a lot of time talking about, what is the strategy, the future navy white paper, the design for maintaining maritime superiority all goes to what the navys strategy is Going Forward. And its easy to say, having been in washington, d. C. Since 1999, i tell my people, im on my 18th palm, which is kind of hard to imagine, and if i had a collar every time someone said, you know, we need to build the Strategy First and then the strategy will drive the budget. In the world we live in, that sounds great, but the reality of it is, you dont want a budget completely driving your strategy, but you cant ignore the fact that we live in a fiscally constrained environment. So, you know, what we would like to say about the navy budget is that it is a resourceinformed strategy. Thats the reality of where we are today. So, were going to increase the build of the ships that we have today. We think the Industrial Base can probably build over the next seven years based on the capacity they have probably 29 more ships than weapon had in the original 3010ship plan. We have to figure out where the need and the curve is with the industry to get them to go work on this stuff. And we have to figure out how to innovate and what are we going to work on the new Construction Side of the house. Were going to continue to build in ddgs. Were going to continue to build the amphibs that we have today. Theres an ongoing discussion on the lcs and the fridgate. We owe some answers to the Congress Later on in that. As we head out, further out, you heard me talk about this before, the future service combatant, thats going to be critically important, as well. Kind of a new buzz word insi insiinside navsea, inside the pentagon is swap. Space weight and power. And if you heard me talk about, before, as we go build the future navy, while i cant tell you exactly what its going to look like, one of the things that really important for us as we build these platforms is to make sure the platforms have enough space, weight and power so you can modernize and adapt to future threats. We are kind of in an age of electric ships. You probably heard me say before. Ford class carriers are prime examples of kind of building in space, weight and power into the platform so you can adapt and go forward. An interestingly, the ddg51 class, which is around today and serving well, as we have gone and theyre going to build threea, were going to provide a little bit more space and a little bit more power in that Going Forward, and those ships are kind of unique in their ability to stay around. It was interesting, you know, my First Department head was on ddg17, uss cunningham. We used to get rid of ships back then at the 25year point. And we probably got rid of them at the 25year point, we didnt do maintenance on them. Anybody that served on a ddg knows they were tough to moin tan. The reality is, we didnt spend any money on that side. People thought, hey, we ought to get rid of these things, because theyre rust buckets. The reality of it is that we really got rid of a lot of those ships because they had become obsolete. And so, fast forward to today, with looking at open architecture, spy radar and vertical launch and now you have a platform that can stay around a lot longer. So, now we have to kind of shift the thought process. Now we have a combat system thats not obsolete. Now, back over to the maintenance side of the house, now, if you want to get more service life out of the hull, you have to do the maintenance on it. And, you know, admiral daly and i, when i first became a flag officer in 2008, he was fleet forces command, we reached this kind of epiphany where we had not spent any money doing maintenance on our Service Ships for about ten years and we woke up one morning and found out, oh, my goodness, were failing all these in serves and we cant get the ships to their expected service life. In hindsight, it doesnt take a Rocket Scientist to find out, if you dont make mainvestments on the maintenance side of the house, you cant get there. The reality is, we were consuming the service life of the ships that was built into them and eventually it caught up to us. If we spent the better part of the last probably eight to nine years digging ourselves out of that hole, particularly as it relates to the surface ships. So, one of the key components, i think, of getting out to the size of the fleet that we need is going to be looking at, you know, taking the ddgs we have today and actually extending the service life of these ships. Most of them are in the 30 to 35year range. So, were taking a pretty close look at what would it take to get them out another five, or ten years . For a steel hull, if you do the maintenance, you can get the service life out much longer. And with todays open architecture and vertical launch, i think theres great opportunity for us to make the investment. Relatively small investment, to keep ships around longer than we have today. And people will say to me, well, weve never really gone a surface ship past 30 to 40 years, and i say, we routinely take Aircraft Carriers to 50 years. The reason we do that is because we consistently do all the maintenance that you have to do on an Aircraft Carrier. We know how to do this. And i think what youre going to see is, were going to take a very serious look of taking the service life of the existing fleet and extending it out five to ten years. If you do that, and youve seen probably some of the Structure Assessments that gets us to 355 ships around 2045, if you keep ships at their Current Service life and build new, we can probably accelerate that to get to 355 in 10 to 15 years with a relatively small investment over a 30year period. Were going to take a close look at that. One of the things that i have, you know, consistently pointed out as we go look at the new designs, the future service combatant is, we should not design a ship with a service life of planned service life of 25 to 30 years. Doesnt make any sense. We ought to plan service lives of 40plus years for all of our ships and then built in the swap context, so you can adapt them Going Forward. And i think thats going to be part of our strategy Going Forward. So, the last part i think i wanted to talk about is, i wanted to talk about the maintenance side of the house, and kind of resetting the fleet. If you heard the vice chief back in february, he talked about the fact that if i have the first dollar i get, new dollar i get needs to go to readiness. And the good news is that the fye 18 budget has an unprecedented amount of money for readiness. 9. 7 billion in the maintenance accounts, to do maintenance on our ships. And thats good. We need that. Although, as i tell the folks at navsea all the time, we have the resources we asked for, okay, now its over to us to deliver. Its important to understand, when you talk about maintenance, that its not just resources. Im careful, quick to point out that its just not about money. And not just about adding more people. That cant be the only part of the solution here. Clearly, the 9. 7 billion that we get is going to help us. We need to grow the size of the Naval Shipyards. 33, 850 people today, going to grow that to 36,100. Thats where we need to be to consistently deliver the Nuclear Powered ships and submarines on time. Today, were not doing a good job of that. Only about a third of them deliver on time. Weve had a better year on the carrier side of the house. 12 of the 17 submarines are behind. So, we have to kind of turn that around. And so, people will help. Certainly, the capacity piece of that is important, but its not the only piece of it Going Forward. Navseas Number One Mission priority is the ontime delivery of ships and submarines. And the reason is the number one priority is because of the 275 ships i have today, about a third of them at any time are under navseas control, either in a maintenance available or some pure side availability. To the extent that we dont get them out on time, it causes a great stress on the force. You may remember, there was an article back in january, february, i cant remember the exact month, where a reporter said that the u. S. Navy for the first time did not have an Aircraft Carrier at sea, the First Time Since world war i, we didnt have an Aircraft Carrier at sea. Thats a startling statement when you think about it. Part of that is because we were down to ten carriers, but the other part is because the george h. W. Bush, in maintenance in norfolk, supposed to eight eight months, took 13 months. So, it wasnt lost on me when i came into the job a year ago that navseas ability to get these ships out on time is critically important to resetting the fleet and getting the fleet to the size of the fleet we need. So, back to my original comment. One, we need more people. Clearly. But it cant be only about the people. There are a couple of other things we have to do here. So, one, i have to have the capacity to do the work. That gets to the people side of the house. Then i have to figure out new ways to train the work force. The kids today coming in, they learn differently than we learned. And the typical timeline to get a trained worker at a Naval Shipyard, when you get them in the door and you can get them doing something useful in the yard is five years. We want to have somebody turn a wrench and do something useful in our ships in two to three years versus five. Were going to have to think differently about how we train the young men and women coming in today. Because they learn differently than we do. The other thing is, were going to have to make an investment in the shipyards, on the private side, and the public side, in order to get the work done more productively. Many of our shipyards, some of them are several hundred years old. A lot of them were designed to build ships. In the early part of the 20th century and theyre really not set up to handle maintenance the way it should be. We typically, in terms of Capital Improvements in the yard, we make investments in equipment and replace equipment on the order, every 20 to 25 years, the Industry Standard is about 10 to 15 years, less than that. I have buildings that are over 100 years old that i cant get work done. So, we have to make a concerted effort to look at, how do we set our yards up . And weve got to be willing to make investments in our Naval Shipyards in order to get the work done more productively Going Forward. Finally, youve heard kevin mccoy talk about this many years ago. We have to take the entire Industrial Base into account here. We do have capacity other places when we dont have capacity to do the work in our yards and this one Shipyard Concept that we talked about probably ten years ago is something we have to look at again. We are getting significant help from eb and hi, newport news on submarine work, were going to need that Going Forward. We have a lot of challenges ahead of us, but the good news is, from the maintenance side of the house, im very encouraged where were headed. Weve got the resources that we need. Weve got a Firm Strategy Going Forward. Well start delivering ships and submarines on time. Take a very serious look at how we extend the expected service life of the ships that we have. And i think when you combine those two things together, and add that into the build strategy that were going to have, that weve got a viable path Going Forward to bet to 355 and may be able to get there sooner than we would otherwise get there by just building new. So, with that, i will conclude my remarks and well have a seat here and ill be happy to take any questions that you might have. Well, thank you for those remarks, and for the audience and for our guest speaker, well start with a few questions up here and then open it up, well get a discussion going and have plenty of interaction. You know, you mentioned, admiral, that theres this tension between, you know, readyness today and build for the future, and its you can go back, all those 18 palms, whatever you said you worked on, and that was probably there on the first one and its probably there today. But one thing that sticks out is that the gap may be widened, more than before. The fleets have been running at a very high tempo. You did mention the fleet response plan. But that made more of the fleet more available yeah. For tasking. And you alluded to the report, didnt mention it by name, but have we have we caught up enough . I mean, back in 20082009, corruptions were put in place, but it strikes me that both from a maintenance standpoint and from a need for modernization, things are pretty tightly wrapped and its a pretty tough its pretty tough to catch up. How caught up are we, are you satisfied and maybe you dont agree with the premise, but i think its a particularly challenging scenario. Well, i think we have made major gains to catch up. I dont think weve completely dug ourselves out of the hole. And we have some members of the in serve board over here. They would tell you that the this is a graded event. Graded event. Okay. This is just an okay pass for land. So, theres a couple of aviators out there that got that. So, i think weve closed the gap. But its i think were almost there, but its one of those things that, as we saw before, if you dont once you get there, if you dont then consistently maintain the funding that you can rapidly lose the edge that you had. And i think thats a particularly important, when you talk about the ofrp, because, you know, ofrp was built and they put maintenance at the front for a reason. It was in recognition that you got to get the mant neintenance. Were off doing that. But i think the other thing about ofrp, and were having these discussions, ofrp was designed, really, to provide more force. Right. So, youll hear admiral davidson talked about it. Reset the force, provide, you know, Power Forward in a rotational manner, but it is meant to provide surge capacity. And i think we havent yet tapped into the surge piece of it, and were likely to see more use of, for instance, you know, an Aircraft Carrier, when shes in a 36month cycle, if shes got a sixmonth maintenance availability and then she works up for eight to ten months, you know, shes got a significant period of time. So, you send her on a sevenmonth deployment, you come back, we would like to continue to use her again. I think, you know, were going to go look at, you know, weve made the investment in the maintenance and were going to get the use out of the platforms. But as you use the platforms, you consume the service life out of them and that circles back to the importance of, to your point at the beginning is, okay, were going to use ofrp the way its meant to be used, and make the forces available, then weve got to makes it even more important to go do the maintenance. Theres a direct correlation between how much you use them and how much maintenance you have to do. One of the interesting things we found is, in the post9 11 era, even though the total number of steaming days of the fleet didnt change dramatically, 40 more deployed days than we had before and its kind of like running your car to church or running your car across the country. We were running the car across the country a lot more. We had to do more maintenance. Yes. So, you mentioned thank you for that the shipyards and the need to recapitalize that inf infrastructure. You can go up to maine and see buildings that are over 100 years old. So, if thats important, is there money budgeted for the recap you mentioned that you got maintenance money. Are you allowed to apply that to efficiencies and upgrades to the facilities and the capacity you have . Yeah, i have limited authority to take the omen money to do that. One of the things that ive been working at, had some very serious discussions and frankly, defense committees have been very open about having a discussion about providing more flexibility on with some controls on the use of that money, to make some of the investments we need. On the same side, you know, the milcon side of the house, the milcon budget is always relative to the other parts of the budget, relatively small. We need to compete for those dollars, as well. We are laying out a longterm investment strategy. They asked me specifically what is the plan . This gets back to my original comment, which is, you know, just throwing more money and more people at the problem by itself is not going to make us more productive. It will help. But theres a number of other elements to the productivity piece, and one of those is making the necessary vin einves, but providing shops and stuff, if you go, you know, and get your work done, that flows the material and flows the work into the ship better than we do today. So, while we dont make the investments we need to make today, thats pretty clear, i mean, we make we meet the 6 threshold thats mandated by congress, but thats kind of a hold what you got and were going to have to take a serious look at what it takes to go invest in these shipyards, particularly if were going to grow the size of the fleet. The shipyards can handle the 275 ships, but if youre talking dry docks, shops and throughput to handle 355ship navy, you have a completely different issue. Right. I agree. Just to get back to capacity issue, youve got a lot of folks out here who are working in industry. Youve already, in your remarks, highlighted the fact that the 18, as far as the next proposed budget, it came down on focusing on near term readiness. Makes sense, to a degree, but there was a lot of people, frankly, who were expecting a little bit more. Its the same number of ships in the ship count for 18 as there were in the previous administrations budget. Are there things that you are looking at and are there things that industry should be looking at, as you lay in for the ramp up to 355, which, you know, so, 18s kind of a readiness year, but what should they be looking at . Think Going Forward, i think we in the assessment, we laid out where we want to head. I would tell industry, you know, the key is, we want to keep our production lines going. We want to, you know, with the new frigate or future service combatant, we need to look at ways to streamline the acquisition process. The new buzz word is setbase design is the way to kind of take options and get your, you know, get through the early stages 0 of what the design of the ships are going to look like. I think industry is partnering very well with us on that particular area. But its going to be a combination of continuing to ild be, you know, ddb51s and the productions that we have and figuring out how we can build quicker for the next set of ships that are going to come down the pipe. And some of those are, were continuing on building forward class carriers, you know, as the cnos stated in his white paper, we would like to get to 12. That would change build senters from five to four. Thats one of the things were looking to do. On the surface side of the house, you know, weve got a number of ongoing efforts that will, i think were going to yield dividends here Going Forward. Were going to have to continue to make the case on the budget side of the house for the resources necessary to get that done and, you know, thats obviously challenging in the environment that were in today. And i think well i think youll see with the 19 budget and beyond that were laying out a compelling case for the size of the fleet that we need and what its going to cost Going Forward. You mentioned, you know, capacity, also in terms of people. And you also mentioned maybe, you know, dusting off kevin mccoys, you know, one Shipyard Concept. Are we seeing strain in competing for the same people . A couple observations is that what we found with the sequester, the fiscal cliff and some of the wild swings in avails was that we were turning on and you a avails and then when you went back and you tried to find that person with that skill set, they either werent there or you had to pay more. And then, last i saw, and youd have to latest, that you were still a little short on the government side of hiring the shipyard workers. You had a goal through 16 of having about 2,000 more than you currently have onboard. Are we eating ourselves on this, and is there a better way to do this . Well, there is some tension early on, in the near term, you know, we do compete for resources with other industries and so when we do have these downturns, we tend to lose the work force. Shortterm. But to your question, you know, can we get the work force necessary to go build the ships that we need and do the maintenance, the answer to that is yes. Weve had that in the past. When i started working at Newport News Shipbuilding in the 90s, newport news had 27,500 workers. Norfolk Naval Shipyard was in the 30,000s at her peak. So, weve got to provide, you know, we have to provide, you know, package of things that would interest young people to come work at the Naval Shipyard today and industry would do the same. And yeah, we do compete for some of those people, so, in the shortterm, some of them, you know, we grab people that they would like to have and vice versa. But if theres a stable, predictable plan out there and we know were going to grow the size of the force, when i talk to the leaders of industry, theyre not worried that they can grow their work force and frankly, im not worried that we are going to have a problem growing the size of the Naval Shipyards, as well. I think weve got a good plan out there and well be able to press on with that Going Forward. Last question before we open it up to the audience. Youve mentioned that you the good news is is that we got a big bumpup in onm, operations and maintenance money to do maintenance near term. Whats the next big thing that you think, past that, that you would like to see more investment, what, from a proper yortization point, where do you need the most help . If admiral moran got his 19 billion, 19. 8 billion, whats the whats the next dollar go to . Yeah, so, i think, you know, in my lane, on the maintenance side of the house, the next dollar goes into investing in the shipyards. Making the investments necessary to go make the work force more productive. Theres an expectation, a correct xpectation, were going to give you all this money, we want you to deliver things ontime. But once you get the work force and joyouve got the work force that you need, we expect you to get better. One of the challenges we face today, weve added a significant amount of people in Naval Shipyards in the last six to seven years. I have a pretty young work force. Half the people in the Naval Shipyards today have been there less than five years. Thats, as we add another 2,000 people over the next two years, that trend is going to, you know, thats not going to change significantly. So, weve got to recognize we have a young work force and we have to go train them so they can become more productive and we have to provide them more facilities to be more producti e productive. Im going to give you the people, im going to give you the dollars, but at the end of the day, i need some of those dollars to build ships and planes and weapons, as well. Once you get that work force trained and its there, you know, i expect you to be able to figure out how to do a 250,000 m mandate. So, i think thats the challenge that we face Going Forward. And so, my next dollar would go into investments in the physical plan of the Naval Shipyards to make them more productive so we can ultimately, you know, start tipping that budget over a little bit and let those resources go somewhere else. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, lets open it up. Well have a few folks here, we can just call on you. Sidney, you get the first question. I ask you to identify yourselves and ask a question. Identifying myself for everyone that is already not sick of me. Sydney freiedberg, breaking defense. You said some interesting things about how if we extend the service lives of our current ships, we can get to 355 a lot faster. Theres a big return on investment for that. Id love you to walk through some of the details and the numbers on that, you know, how much life are you thinking of getting out of what ships . I mean, is it can every the one get another five years or is it much more nuanced across classes . And, you know, what are sort of your best case, middle case, worst Case Scenarios for how much time you can bring that 355 goal closer to the present . Yeah, so, the answer to the questions, yeah, i think it applies to all the ships that have vertical launch. Were not going to go back to some of the earlier burks, but i think where this study has looked at, basically, i think from ddg from53 and 54. It will apply to all the cgs with the exception of yorktown and gates. How much service life can you get out of them, you can cert n certainly get at least five more years. I think weve taken a look at it. Im convinced on the navsea side of the house, extremely low risk. Frankly, we kind of looked at it from the i think you can at least get it out to its next dry docking, which in many years is more than five years beyond. With relatively low risk and relatively low cost. The key is, do the maintenance that you need to do and then have some baseline modernization capability that you would like to have. So, you know, on the combat systems side of the house, today, thats baseline nine. We kind of have an idea what that looks like on the c4 side of the house. I dont i think its a relatively low risk proposition. As i said, running the numbers, i think you could probably shave 10 to 15 years off of the what it would take to get to 355, if you are willing to consider the entire fleet in that set. Obviously, thats not im not the decisionmaker on that, but from the technical side of the house, navsea doesnt see anything technically that would prohibit us from extending the service life of the ships. Again, do the maintenance and do the modernizations so they are combat relevant Going Forward and we know how to do that. So, i i dont think this is something that were leaning that far forward on technically. I will say, on the aluminum hull side of the house, we dont have as much Knowledge Based on aluminum hulls and how they react over time. Weve seen some of the challenges with just the aluminum Super Structures on the cruisers. So, im not willing to lean forward yet on how far we could get the aluminum hum ships, which are, have a 25year service rife, but clearly on the steel hulled side of the ship, theres no technical issue going longer. The nuclear side of the house is the ssns have a whole series of separate issues. I think we have, you know, we probably sharpened our pencils and the ssns are where they need to be today. What im looking at is on the surface ship side of the house. The submarine force is, i think, pretty well understood how long we can take those out based on, you know, propulsion plan issues and issues associated with the hull from diving and safely operating and submerged. Can i just jump in here and to hit one for a minute on cyber. You know, we think of other commands as having the lead on cyber, but in fact, for the force for being and force that you are building, navsea has a huge challenge here. Could you talk a little bit about the special efforts required in that arena to become cyber compliant and secure . Thats a great question. I probably should have mentioned that in some of my remarks. And i would say, as part of this effort to extend the service life of the existing ships, when i talk about modernization, cyber is a key piece of that. So, a lot of people, when they hear cyber, they think spay war. Navsea, im responsible for all of the combat systems from a cyber perspective. And so, weve got to stay out in front of that. I have got three main Mission Priorities within navsea. Ontime delivery of ships and submarines, culture of affordabilitied and number three is cyber, for a very good reason. The recent thick that everybody read about in the paper, the ransomware stuff, that gets our attention pretty quickly. Its real. The reality of it is, that our ships and submarines today, theres not a system on that ship that doesnt have, you know, is not heavily invested in software and computers. And even i just came from riding the trials on gerald r. Ford, magnificent ship, shes got a machinery control systems that allows you to take 1,000 people off that ship that operates and the ship remotely and not having that sound and security watches some of the things that we did in our earlier days and thats great stuff, but all that stuff that has computers associated with it. So, the cyber piece is not just, dont hack into my email, or get into my credit card. Its it goes a lot further than that on the ships today. So, we, navsea side of the house, we have a very big focus on, how do we go manage this Going Forward . Have you had to set up any new Staff Organization or bring on new folks to deal with that . Yeah, we have. We have a chief Information Officer now. We have grown the size of my work force there on believe it or not, a lot of the cyber folks are in the engineering director rat directorate. We have a Cyber Council working very closely on standards. So, we were as we, you know, grow navsea, and were we would have to grow navsea if we grow the size of the force, were looking pretty close at the cyber piece of that. Thats a key point. More questions. Megan, you had your hand up earlier . Go ahead. No, right here. Hey, sir. Since sydney did me the favor of asking me first question, ill ask you about the public shipyards. You mentioned getting the same maintenance done with the man hours. Would that come with upgrading the yard infrastructure or rethinking how you approach the processes, innovate the procedures . Yeah, i think its a combination of all of those things. One, if you have ever been you know, i use ingles as kind of an example, after hurricane katrina, had the opportunity to rebuild and obviously katrina was a terrible blow too the gulf coast down there, but when they had the opportunity to rebuild the facilities and rethink the way they laid things out, the way ingles is performing today, the new construction, they are knocking it out of the park. Anybody that does Industrial Engineering would tell you that how your shops are set up and how you flow material can go a long way forward towards makinge productive. The second piece of it is the workers coming in today, training them and providing them with Training Facilities to get them up to speed quicker and providing them with the tools to be more productive. You know, one of the things we tend to be a pretty conservative organization on how we use technology. And theres great opportunity out there, i think, to use technology including, you know, cell phones, et cetera, theres Security Issues with them that would allow us to be more productive at the deck plate. Todays kids learn a lot different. Theyre not used to throwing a drawing on the table. They are well versed on taking an app on a phone and looking at a drawing or taking a picture of something on the ship and then pushing a button and having the material delivered to them and so theres theres a lot of opportunity here for us to get more productive that goes well beyond just adding people to the shipyards. Will the government work rules that we have today allow you to take full advantage of that . Is that another thing to put on the pile with yeah, its another thing to put on the pile. Again, were fairly conservative about our use of new technology, but, you know, we we get there eventually. And if you go look at the force today, we do things that we wouldnt when i started back in 1981, that i never would have managed we would have allowed ourselves to do. I think its a recognition that you have to embrace the technology. It does come with some risk. But if you dont recognize that this is the way people learn, this is the way we move information, i think were missing a great opportunity to get better quicker. Yes. Right here in the front. On the end there . Hi. You mentioned the longterm plan for the public shipyards. Could you please be, like, more specific about what youre assessing in terms of investments and people and when do you anticipate the study to wrap up . Is that study congressionally mandated or is that something that the navy is doing on its own . Its not congressionally mandated. We did a study if 2013 that Congress Asked us to plan, and were sticking with that plan today. This is something that ive asked for. We approached the nay have shipyard, kind of got off and did this on their own a couple years ago, where they hired an industrial engineer to go look at the layout and how, you know, work flows and they mapped out where people had to walk to between the shops and, so, they were able to go put that on the plate and they showed that to me when i came in last year, i was very interested in that. Weve made an investment to go out and do the same thing at the other three shipyards to go get somebody that is a formal industrial engineer, look at the yards and go map out where all the shops exist today, where do people have to walk to to get the work done and then where, if you were to optimize that, you know, what would you do . So, combination of that and then Capital Improvements on the facilities themselves in terms of weflding machines, et cetera. And the last piece of that is the dry docks. We go to virginia payload module, to block five, you know, the submarines wont fit in a lot of the existing dry docks. And forward class carriers, for example, use 13. 8 kva power on the pier, so, and have a different cooling requirement. So, weve got to upgrade the docks for those, as well. So, we have a longterm plan. Investment plan that weve, you know, ive shown to the cno, that includes both the dry docks and then the facilities necessary to get there. Its not cheap. Were talking youre talking, you know, on the dry dock side of the house, probably over the next 30 years, you know, an investment of on the order of 3 to 4 billion necessary to make the dry docks compatiblcompatib. Those are musthaves, if you want to have virginia payload module and you want forward class carriers, you have to upgrade the dry docks. The second piece of that is the one where im competing with everybody else for the dollars, which is to make the investments necessary in the shipyards. So, yes, that plan, we have the basic outlines of it. I owe cno an office back in the fall and well finish up with full details probably february, is what ive told him, of is today 2017, in february of next ye year, i think ill have a bow on this thing wrapped up and lay out where i think we have to go from a navsea perspective. Im having this conversation with the defense committees. They want to help in this particular area. Ill move it over here. Sir . Hi there. Im mike stone from reuters. Hey, mike. Thanks for coming in. You talked a little bit about frigate and delivery and keeping costs down. I wanted to understand how much time navsea would need with a foreign designed frigate, in terms of survivability, systems and breaking that down, and how that, if you can answer that, then, how that would compare to domestic design . I dont know that it would take you know, i dont kn know i dont think it matters where the design comes from, in terms of whoever develops the design, in terms of how long it would take us to evaluate it. I you know, i think the thought is here on Going Forward with the future frigate that it will be a competitive environment that will include a look across a Broad Spectrum and we could consider a foreign design as part of that competition. We havent obviously gotten to that point yet, but if we got to the point where we were considering those designs, it wont take navsea any longer unless i have to translate it from german or dutch or something, to do the analysis in terms of the survivability, so, i dont think theres any time difference between where the design comes from. Okay. This gentleman right here, on the end. Pass your mike. Thank you. Rick burchess. Admiral, the cclass is halfway through its midlife. Is the ford designed to have a mid life, and would there be a gap . Yeah, ford will have the ford class is designed for mid life for fueling, as well. Weve gone on submarine side of the house to life of ship cores, and, you know, we look at what it would take to get to, you know, a life of ship 50year core for a ford class and i think we concluded that while technologically feasible, it didnt make sense financially. You have to bring it in to a midlife overall and the refuming is only 10 and its not the critical pass. I think we concluded from a cost standpoint, it just concluded to keep the refueling in there. So, we will refuel. The forward class, let me do the math in my head. Ford delivers yesterday, hell be around 50 years, so, her first rcoh would be in 2040, add 23 years to that, so, lets see bush was the last in its class and she will be around until 2057, so, her midlife refueling, never do math in public, my staff tells me, will be in 2030, so, yeah, there will be a little bit of a gap in the refueling program between when we refuel the last of the nimits glass and when we do ford. The gap is going to be, we delivered bush in 2008 09, and delivering ford in 2017. There will be an eightyear gap between the refuelings. Well have to address that. There will be a lot of inactivations going around at the same time, so, i suspect that will counter balance the if you are a new produce shipbuilding in the 2040, 2050 time frame, that would counter balance some of the loss of the work of not having a consistent rcoh program. Okay. Over here, on the right . Good morning. A lot of what you spoke about this morning, sounds like a huge data problem, in a lot of ways. Particularly when it comes to what i see, two data sets. The one data set being stuff coming off of equipment, whether it be, say rolls royce turbine. We have a huge amount of data that comes off of turbines that fly threw the sky, all around the world. Provide just a really insightful way to do Predictive Maintenance on the aviation side. Now, thats commercial application. Within the navy, theres a lot of other data that can come off the ship that is the custodian is the u. S. Navy and you may have information coming off of equipment that is owned, by, say, the oem. If you are trying to bring this information together and gain insights from it, how do you how do you see handling that . I mean, we talk about cyber, but how do we handle who owns the data, proptects it, and who interprets it in a way that enables you to gain efficiencies . So, one, im a big believer that the navy should own the data going toward, and youre right. We absolutely have a lot of data coming off of our ships today. Dont we dont frankly make great use of it. You talked about rolls royce engines. Weve been the Navy Leadership has been up to General Electric to see what theyre doing in what they call digital twins, making decisions. I think thats a direction that we are absolutely needing to head in. So, i have, you know, on surface ships today, i have a system called icas. Weve had the ability to collect data for years. Frankly, we dont do a lot with the data to help us make decisions. As we go to some of the systems we have today, like the ford class machinery and control system, we have the ability to collect vibration data, temperature and stuff, and we absolutely have to go take a step forward and become more mature in the use of that data. The cno is absolutely driving us to go figure out, how do you make use of the big data to make better decisions Going Forward . And its across a whole host of different applications in my life, on the maintenance side of the house. How do you use data to make better decisions about when you do maintenance and what type of maintenance do you do . The commercial industry is light years ahead of us in that particular area, and weve got to get better at it. But to the data portion of it, you know, the navy needs to own the data. So that we can make some, you know, integrated decisions about what were going to do. Okay. Right up here up front. Well get you a mike. Thank you, admiral. John harper with National Defense magazine. As you grow the size of the fleet and extend service lives, you know, how much do you anticipate that onm cost will increase as you get towards that 355ship number and are you concerned that those additional onm costs will eat into the amount of money available for procurement and new builds . Well, clearly, like a car, and our experience with, say, enterprise or nimits is now 42 years old, they do take a little bit more maintenance towards the end of their life. So, but if youre going to get to 355 ships, youre going to have you got to recognize up front youre going to have a higher onm cost. If youre going to go into this, thinking you can grow the side of the fleet by 80 ships and that your costs are not going to go up, youve got a problem. So, i think we recognize that the costs are going to go up. They are a little bit higher towards the last, later part of stages of life of the ship, but theyre not astronomically higher. But part of the way that you can keep those costs under control is to make a consistent investment and do the maintenance throughout the life of the ship. What we have found on the nimits class, if you do the maintenance, you dont get any major anomalies. When you dont, then you have problems. So, you know, the classic example for us was theodore roosevelt, cvn71, you know, as we transitioned many years ago from a maintenance structure that we used to have into what we call today the incremental mate innocence plan, most of the carriers got a complex overhaul to kind of reset them. And tr missed out on that. And so when she got into her mid life refueling, if you were to look at how many she should have had, she had significantly fewer man days of work done on her in her first 23 years of life than the first four in three did, coming in. So, we had a very challenging refueling overhaul, not surprising. And so, i think youve got to, yes, it will cost you a little bit more towards the end of life, and we have to factor that into our plans, but the key is consistent application of the Maintenance Plan and make the investments ne s necessary on a regular basis. If you do that, you wont have the major problems in the last five to ten years of the ships life. Thats kind of our experience. In terms of impeeding procurement . You have to do the procurement. If you think we can get to 355 without adding in those accounts, thats not going to happen. We have to factor that into the equati equation. We have to talk honestly about the budget. But if you want to get to 355, you got to do both. You got to build and you got to maintain. If you skip on one of them, which has kind of been or history, to stop on the maintenance, then you run yourselves into trouble. So, if were committed to 355 ships, weve got to be willing to go to make the investments on the maintenance side, as well. Im not concerned it would eat into the procurement side. We have to do that eyes wide open. I do think that one of the things back on the new Construction Side of the house that we dont pay enough attention to is be willing to spend more money up front so that the total on the ship costs of the ship over the last of its life comes down. And i think we dont tend to make those investments, the way the budget works is, that budget matters and maybe the next budget year. But its pretty hard for people to make investments today that are going to save you money 10, 15, 20 years down the road. And i think weve got to take a more total Ownership Cost perspective as we get into the next round of ships and be willing to make that investment. The ford class, we you know, for all the talk about how much the first ship costs, we did make an investment in that ship that would, you know, save 4 billion per ship over 50 years compared to a nimits class carrier. Thats significant savings. And while people may not be interested in that 4 billion savings today, when theyre struggling to balance the bajt and build ships, i guarantee you, if you are a pleat commander 15, 20 years from now and you have several ford class carriers out there and the maintenance costs for that ships are significantly less, youre going to be happy that whoever was building the ford back in 2008 was smart enough to make the investments up front to reduce manpower and to improve the maintenance reliability of the ship. Okay. On the end, right there, with the you mentioned briefly that this modernization of the shipyards had to happen on the private side as well as the public. You went into great detail on what youre doing in your four yards. But short of hoping for another hurricane, what do you do to make sure that the private side invests as much money in that as you guys are . Yeah, well, so, obviously, were not going to root for another hurricane. So, i think, well, if you go look at the Ship Builders today, i think im satisfied the Ship Builders are making the investments that they need to make. You can go look at, you know, look at Newport News Shipbuilding today, for instance, some of the things theyre doing to build facilities that will allow more work to be done inside, they have a thing at newport news called the unit outfitting hall, which is a significant investment, which allows them to get more work for columbia. The challenge has always been on my side of the house is, you know, the private sector is incentivized to make those investments because it makes them more profitable Going Forward. And so, were willing to, and we have been, in contract on the new Construction Side, have been willing to partner with them and share some of the costs if theyre willing to make some of those investments, in a cap ex environment. Im satisfied that the yards today that are out there competing for work are making the investments necessary to keep those yards competitive. And thats one of the great things about competition. If the competition incentivizes them to make the investments in the yard. I dont have the same business model. Thats the challenge on my side of the house. Im not out to make a profit. So, whats the incentive for me to make investments in the yard if i need something i need that same type of thinking. To me, the investment is, i get more productive and therefore, i spend less dollars back to the gentlemans question up front, less maintenance dollars in the future, so that theres more money available for procurement. Okay. Question here in the center . Ed a mir ran shaadmiral shannon . Good morning, sir. You made a point earlier about a resource constrained budget. If you could explain a little bit more about that, taking into consideration your service on the staff of n4, the role you played then on getting the maintenance dollars increased for after you left n4, and what are you seeing today among the resource sponsors . Does n4 play into that role . How does that impact you and your budget . Well, were clearly, you know, we clearly always have more requirements than we have dollars, i dont think thats new today. It may be tighter, the gap may be bigger, but weve always kind of faced that challenge. You know, the Organization Today places more of the role of managing the dollars with the n9 organization. N4 still plays a prominent role. I think the process is more transparent and more open than ive seen it in the past. And so, you know, you need to the im going to get quoted on this, but, you know, the staff doesnt operate, sometimes in an enterprise fashion, in other words and it was designed that way. You know, you had them and they are focused on surface ships builtin advocacy. Theyre the advocates for that. So, they tend to advocate for that, and so, you know, i think what were trying to get after is, you know, an enterprise look that says, hey, where should the next dollar go to make the most impact for the navy . And i think the n9 organization in concert with n8, from what ive seen today in my 18 years in d. C. , its as good as its ever been. We are having that open discussion in kind of a Corporate Board manner, if you would, to decide, wheres the money going to go . What are the specific trades, you know, what happens if you put the dollar here, what happens what dont we do . And were more looking, instead of winners and losers, its really more of a, you know, getting back to the cnos constant question of, whats the navy we need . I think we are trying to work pretty hard to optimize the resources we have to get to the navy we need. So, im satisfied that the processes that we have today, and were always kind of tweaking it and fine tuning it to make it better, is pretty good and pretty robust. And, you know, the Navy Leadership we have over on that side is doing a terrific job of, i think, managing that, and i think everybody gets a voice in the process, as a result, i think we have a better outcome. We just have a few seconds left, and i see general gregson in the front row, so, i have to ask this question. You know, there was some concern that especially the amphibs had not received the love and attention they need. We talked about the surface navy, but within the surface na navy, got got those assets which are very large, very complex and important. Could you talk a little bit about recovering their readiness and are you satisfied and the cross talk between the navy and the marines on that . Well, ive got a marine on my staff who manages amphibious ships for me. The c21 staff, which does maintenance, talking to the marine corps all the time, n95 is a very strong advocate for the amphibious warfare branch. And it may have been in the past the tendency to place it on the nuclear side of the house, today, i think we have robust class Maintenance Plans across the board and, you know, we understand the service life requirements of the amphibious ships. Starting with lpd17, theyre being well maintained today. Were sending, about ready to finish up a maintenance available down in norfolk, shes going to be an fdnf ship. Ive been on a lot of the amphibious ships, as well. I dont see any indication that theyre, you know, theyre the last person in line for the maintenance dollars. Right. You just mentioned wasp. She had to sit out for five to seven years because she had an obsolete system. So, thats an example of recovery. Wasp, she just came back from a deployment at the end of 2016 and we immediately threw her into an viability to get her ready to be an fdnf ship. The crew and the contractor have done extremely well and we are close to getting her out of there and shell get over to japan and do great things over there. Well, thank you. Were going to have to cut it here, but we want to thank admiral moore for giving his remarks today and giving us the time he gave us for questions. Hes a very busy man with a lot on his plate. Like to also mention one more time our thanks for the generosity of our sponsors, Lockheed Martin and Huntington Ingles industry, without whom we couldnt bring you this Maritime Security dialogue. From csis and the nayville institute, we thank you, we thank our audience and our speaker again today. Thank you. Lets give him a hand. [ indiscernible conversations ]. As we look at that well look at a design to help us get quicker to a point where we say this is what we want. In fact if we get an address here if anybody wants we could send out some more detailed information. If you google it well give you a pretty good answer. All right. Thank you. You have a next question, do you have one . Not right now . Okay. Could i ask you something a little specific put mentioned industry helping out with some of the attack submarine availabilities. I know boise is set to go to a private yard, i was wondering if you could say which dwlard was going to and why it had to do 19 instead of 18. I cant tell you what yard because its going to be competitively bid so we will see where that goes. 19 was where the capacity existed is really what it was. It didnt have the capacity ship yard so i had to get money in 18 to start planning it and then the execution will be in 19. So it really was more about where the capacity existed within the industry more than anything else. Do you have any other attack submarines that are doing their full availabilities right now or is it industry coming into the public yards to help out . So weve got mom pal beyond a reasonable doubts up at electric boat right now. Columbus is coming in, boise will go to one of those two yards. We always Going Forward we want to keep this on the table as an option. You know, i want to prevent another boise. So as we grow the size of the workforce and we look at all the submarine work we have on the plate, im trying to get out in front of this far enough in advance so i can tell the sea commanders i dont have the capacity in the naval ship yard and we can talk industry earlier than weve typically done so we avoid what happened in boise. Theres probably several cases where were looking in the future where we may have to good to industry earlier than weve done today. Okay. I wanted to ask you about the rcu, which in the budget documents it said that there it was pushed to the right. Ten months. By ten months. Why is that . Is like the George Washington bog to take longer . Why is it gw is not going to take any longer. Gw is going to start a year later because it got in the we looked at whether we wanted to just inactivate her or what you all well aware of the discussions we went through in congress on that. So shes going to start here in august. So there was a couple things. One, the fleet needed her a little bit longer and, two, when g. W. Moved to the right a year, it did create a significant overlap between the end of the George Washingtons availability and the start of the sten niss availability. We looked closely at that the overlap and if you get too much of an overlap, you know, they would have been doing g. W. , stan nis and they would have been building 79 and 80. That looked like a workload peek that w peak that would cause some problem lemsz. The fleet twoond move wanted to move it, it fit years in advance. Which i think we need to get to. Lets go look at the work we have, lets look at the fleets needs, the fleets needs come first. But if we can meet the fleets needs and theres a better way to level the work and both the naval ship yards and the private sector, we ought do that. Youll get the work done on time and cheaper if they can apply the resources in an optimum way. You mentioned moving away from the one ship yard concept when it comes to new builds. Did you have any particular classes of ships in mind for that . Im not sure. Moving away from the building, i thought i maybe i misinterpreted what you said. Hes talking about the oneship yard concept. That was on the maintenance side of the house where we use the resources from the entire like were doing today. In fact, we use new perdues when we do carrier availabilities. In terms of new construction, competition is always going to be what were striving to get. The only place we dont have comp physician is for our aircraft air iers because theyre the only person that can actually build them. So were looking to maintain competition wherever we can. Thanks for that. Sure. Are you looking to you mentioned service combatants, extend service lives of them. You dont have the snoj base on how that performs over a long period of time and so, you know, what happens over 25 years that aluminum is, you know, doesnt quite have the tins sill strength and youll have that more flexibility in the hull. Weve seen this with some of the cracking in the structure. So theres issue with as you operate the ship just from a stress standpoint and then theres the whole acceptstive issue. So weve got to look pretty carefully at well proceed a little bit more cautiously on extended service on the new ship than Going Forward. And the ships five years probably out of these, what were you seeing out of maintenance. I told them you could easily get five years out of everything thats got a steel hull and you could probably get more. Last question. Going, going. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Good to see you. I can give you my kard. Absolutely. [ indiscernible conversations ]. Tonight on cspan 3 a Senate Hearing on the navy budget fold by a hearing on combating violent extremist ideology, and later a discussion about u. S. Foreign policy and relations with china. The Trump Administration has proposed a 2018 navy budget of 171 billion, including 20 billion for ship building. The acting navy secretary, the chief of naval operations, and the marine corpse com men dant testified at a Armed Services committee hearing. This is two hour