Senator Jim Webb on the Future of Navy Ship Repair & the Need for Improved Defense Acquisition Process
On Wednesday, March 11, Senator Webb met with approximately 70 industry members of the Shipbuilders Council of America and regional ship repair associations during their annual two-day Ship Repair Industry Conference. His remarks focused on the importance of building and maintaining appropriately sized naval forces to meet the strategic requirements of our maritime nation.
He cited two elements, in particular, that must be addressed properly to ensure the United States gets the most out of its investments to protect historic U.S. maritime interests—a properly funded ship maintenance plan for near-term readiness and improvements to the defense acquisition process and Navy shipbuilding.
Regarding ship maintenance, he described how the Navy has in recent years been funding its annual ship-maintenance plan through the “emergency” supplemental defense appropriations. “I don’t think that’s the way that you should be doing business,” he said.
Noting that his staff had engaged the Navy on this issue, he said the service’s current shortfall in fiscal year 2009 ship maintenance is $417 million. “This could affect regularly scheduled maintenance availabilities in the Hampton Roads/Norfolk area and other locations,” he said. “Ship maintenance is not something you should fund in an emergency supplemental. That’s not the way to run your budget—it should be in the core budget, and it should be protected.”
The scope and possible impacts associated with the Navy’s current funding shortfall for the remainder of this fiscal year will not be known until the final increment of the FY-09 defense supplemental is forwarded to Congress. The Navy also is said to be reviewing its other operations and maintenance accounts for opportunities to reduce the shortfall.
Senator Webb also discussed the need for an improved defense acquisition process. “The two things that I see historically about developing good systems are, first of all, to have very disciplined, talented people as program managers. It’s a perennial challenge,” he said, noting on the one hand that officers become program managers who, in many cases, have not had business experience.
On the other hand, many business people coming into government do not have experience in the Department of Defense or with its complicated defense acquisition process. By way of the best example, Webb cited former Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Al Gray and the role he played earlier in his career in the design and development of the Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) for the Marine Corps. “The idea was to introduce maneuver forces into the infantry regiment that could change their positions on an open plain. Al Gray knew what he wanted, stayed with it, ran the program through the Congress, and it was hardly a year before the program was producing LAVs. That to me is a real key.”
The second factor Webb cited as important to the development of a well-designed weapons system is a platform with the potential for progressive technological upgrades over the course of its service life—citing the examples of the C-130 aircraft and the Polaris nuclear-powered submarine—as opposed to designing new platforms repeatedly. “With the Polaris submarine,” he said, “the Navy took the frame and, over time, upgraded the technology and kept the frame until its lifecycle ran out. Then they moved into new submarine technology.”
Seantor Webb’s full remarks to the National Ship Repair Industry Conference 2009 follow:
“There are two nuts and bolts elements to making sure we get the most out of our money with respect to protecting our maritime interests. One of them is that the Navy is going to have to start being a lot smarter about how it builds its platforms and how it addresses issue like ship maintenance. My staff picked up on this issue of the way the Navy’s been funding its regular maintenance programs through supplementals and we’ve been working with that. I don’t think that’s the way that you should be doing business.
“We have a $415 million ship maintenance package that we were informed not long ago would not be met unless it was addressed in a supplemental. This package affected as many as nine regularly scheduled ship maintenance visits in the Hampton Roads/Norfolk area. We started asking questions. It’s part and parcel of a lot of things I have seen coming out of the Pentagon since I have been back in the government. That [ship maintenance] is not something you should fund in an emergency supplemental. That’s not the way to do really run your budget and yourports. That should be in the core of a budget and it should be protected. These are items that go hand in glove, as all of you know, with how you keep your Navy going.
“The second issue is how we address ship-building programs, acquisition programs, and how we develop weapons systems. We had a hearing about a week ago on the Armed Services Committee where we were talking about the need for more streamlined acquisition and weapons development programs. For me, I’ve been in the Senate a little more than two years but I’ve been doing this one way or another since I was probably about 18. I was sitting there listening and it occurred to me just how many cycles we have been through in terms of this issue.
“We have a situation where on the one hand, this is the challenge and it’s the perennial challenge. On the one hand we have. Then we have business people coming into the government who really do not understand the nature of the animal, when we talk about how weapons systems are developed inside the complicated formula of government itself.
“During the hearing, it was mentioned in the panel that we created the first defense acquisition executive in 1986 to try to solve this problem. I remarked afterwards that I was actually in the Pentagon on Casper Weinberger’s staff as Assistant Secretary of Defense when that position was created. We got a very talented individual to fill that position and he was, quite frankly, thoroughly bewildered for about a year. He was used to normal business practices where you get a product, you get it on a line, and away you go. As all of you know, when you’re developing a weapons system or a platform here in government, it goes along with the old saying that ‘a camel is a horse created by a committee.’ Different hands stir the pot; you have to know how to maneuver these programs first through the Pentagon process from your service to the inter-service environment, then over through the hill with people with their constituency groups and their own interests, and then get product out there that will actually do the job. A lot of times you end up with something you didn’t plan for, and a lot of times that’s negative.
“I was just sitting at the hearing, thinking “Alright, let’s start with the M-16.” I don’t know if you remember when they were developing the M-16 back in the 1960s they originally decided this was going to be a derivation of the AR-15 which they had experimented with in jungle warfare and then there were people who said “oh wait a minute what if you have to use they M-16 over in a desert environment, what if you have to hit someone at 800meters, what if you have to do this or that. So by the time the M-16 got through the system, they had a rifle that was firing a much more potent bullet than it was designed for. It carboned up the chambers when they actually sent it over to Vietnam. There were people dying over there because the chambers were so carboned up from the way that they had defined this thing that their weapons were jammed. They eventually fixed the problem.
“I can remember the Bradley fighting vehicle; it was the same thing. It was supposed to be moving troops from one spot to another, getting some mobility, and then it got tied up in the House, I believe it was Congressman Dickinson at the time who was a former Army soldier and a very fine Veteran who was concerned there wasn’t enough armor on it.
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“The best example I can give you ont hat is Al Gray, who later on became Commandant of the Marine Corps, when he was a Brigadier General, he ran the development center. He had an idea for the LAV.
“The other is getting platforms that you can add your technology on, rather than constantly changing the platform itself. Good examples of that: the C130. the C130’s been around a long time, they can upgrade the technology on it. Another good example: Polaris submarines. They took the frame and over the decade could upgrade the technology and keep the frame until the lifecycle ran out of the frame and they moved into new submarine technology.”