Opening Statements

Today, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness, made the following remarks, as prepared for delivery, ahead of a hearing titled "Ship and Submarine Maintenance: Cost and Schedule Challenges."

"Thank you, Chairman Garamendi. We had the opportunity to meet with Secretary Geurts and Admiral Moore last week to discuss this important issue and I look forward to a productive hearing today. What strikes me most about the challenges with ship and submarine maintenance is that it took several years to get us to this point, and it will likely take decades to get us where we need to go.

"From my perspective, the scheduling aspect of ship and submarine maintenance is the key driver to whether the Navy succeeds or fails. Failure to strike the balance between today's operational requirements and sustainment will diminish strategic depth within the fleet, undermine investment in private shipyards, and cause industry to sub-optimize its workforce of skilled artisans available to do this work. Candidly, I see it as a national level issue when the Navy cancels an availability and it should only be done in the direst circumstances.

"The Navy is not on this journey alone—it already utilizes 21 certified private drydocks for maintenance availabilities. Our private partners want more Navy contracts, but past contracting and scheduling practices prevented them from seeing a steady stream of work. This caused them not to make the necessary capital investments to modernize their facilities and resulted in them sub-optimizing their workforces. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about how the Navy plans to structure maintenance contracts going forward so that we provide the requisite level of certainty to our industry partners.

"Our witnesses updated the Chairman and me last week regarding their efforts to expand the number of private shipyards available to compete for work through their efforts to reduce the administrative burden for certifying a yard for Navy work. This is a positive step that I believe will foster additional competition, expand capacity, and has the potential to benefit both the government and the private sector.

"The state of the Navy's four public shipyards in Portsmouth, Norfolk, Puget Sound and Pearl Harbor is so serious that Congress directed the Navy to develop a Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan in 2018. These shipyards do most of the Navy's nuclear maintenance and GAO has categorized most of them as being in poor condition. The 20-year, $21 billion investment plan would overhaul the antiquated facilities, recapitalize equipment, and optimize the work flow to reduce wasted time and effort. While I am satisfied with the personnel investments being made in our public sector, this investment plan will fail if it is not supported by an adequate facility recapitalization plan. Candidly gentlemen, my view is that the Fiscal Year 2020 budget request did not demonstrate a serious commitment to the plan. We expect to begin seeing a significant commitment to the investment plan in the budget request each year and we want to see it funded across the FYDP— $1-2 billion per year is probably about right.

"From my perspective, we also need to send enough of the submarine availability work to private shipyards so that they can build the capacity to do that work efficiently. This would seem to be a way to avoid future issues like those we experienced with the USS Boise, which lost its dive certification in 2016 and has yet to begin depot-level maintenance. The Navy is now sending some its attack submarine work to General Dynamics Electric Boat and to Huntington Ingalls Industries. I am encouraged by this development, particularly given that we will likely need some industry capacity while we re-capitalize the public yards. As with everything associated with this problem set though, the key is predictability.

"Finally, we must do a better job of forecasting the work that will be performed for each maintenance availability. My understanding is that approximately 40% of the work to be performed during each availability is unknown. The Navy and their industry partners will never meet schedule and cost objectives with that level of fidelity, particularly with the additional supply chain challenges this creates. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses regarding their efforts to better leverage data and testing to reduce uncertainty before the availabilities even begin.

"Our two witnesses are fully engaged to address the myriad of problems facing this "system of systems" as Secretary Geurts likes to call it, and I appreciate the continued service and experience that you both provide to the nation.

"Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back."