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i 

20–792 2017

[H.A.S.C. No. 114–124] 

NAVY FORCE STRUCTURE AND 

READINESS: PERSPECTIVES 

FROM THE FLEET 

JOINT HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND 

PROJECTION FORCES 

MEETING JOINTLY WITH

SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

MAY 26, 2016 
(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia, Chairman 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Vice Chair 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

PAUL COOK, California 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana 

RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana 

STEPHEN KNIGHT, California 

STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., Georgia 

SCOTT H. PETERS, California 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

GWEN GRAHAM, Florida 

SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts 

DAVID SIENICKI, Professional Staff Member 

PHIL MACNAUGHTON, Professional Staff Member 

KATHERINE REMBER, Clerk 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia, Chairman 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia 

ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York, Vice Chair 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York 

RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida 

BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois 

SCOTT H. PETERS, California 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

BETO O’ROURKE, Texas 

RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona 

MARGARET DEAN, Professional Staff Member 

VICKIE PLUNKETT, Professional Staff Member 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Courtney, Hon. Joe, a Representative from Connecticut, Ranking Member, 

Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces ........................................... 4 

Forbes, Hon. J. Randy, a Representative from Virginia, Chairman, Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces ........................................................ 1 

Peters, Hon. Scott H., a Representative from California, Subcommittee on 

Readiness .............................................................................................................. 5 

Wittman, Hon. Robert J., a Representative from Virginia, Chairman, Subcommittee on Readiness ...................................................................................... 3 

WITNESSES 

Davidson, ADM Phillip S., USN, Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command; 

CAPT Randy Stearns, USN, Commodore, Strike Fighter Wing, Atlantic; 

CAPT Scott Robertson, USN, Commander, USS Normandy (CG–60); CAPT 

Greg McRae, USN, Deputy Commander, Submarine Squadron 6; and CAPT 

Paul Odenthal, USN, Commodore, Naval Construction Group 2 .................... 7 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Courtney, Hon. Joe ........................................................................................... 46 

Davidson, ADM Phillip S., joint with CAPT Randy Stearns, CAPT Scott 

Robertson, CAPT Greg McRae, and CAPT Paul Odenthal ....................... 48 

Forbes, Hon. J. Randy ...................................................................................... 43 

Wittman, Hon. Robert J. .................................................................................. 45 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

Mr. Peters ......................................................................................................... 63 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.] 

(1) 

NAVY FORCE STRUCTURE AND READINESS: 

PERSPECTIVES FROM THE FLEET 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED

SERVICES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES, MEETING JOINTLY WITH THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS, Washington, DC, Thursday, May 

26, 2016. 

The subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in room 

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. J. Randy Forbes (chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. J. RANDY FORBES, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE 

ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES 

Mr. FORBES. Good morning and I want to welcome members of 

the Seapower and Projection Forces and Readiness Subcommittees 

to our hearing today. 

Before we begin, we just have two logistical matters that I would 

like to take care of. The first one is I would like to ask unanimous 

consent that nonsubcommittee members be allowed to participate 

in today’s hearing after all subcommittee members have had an opportunity to ask questions. 

Is there any objection? 

Without objection, nonsubcommittee members will be recognized 

at the appropriate time for 5 minutes. 

In addition to that, I would like to ask unanimous consent that 

Admiral Davidson be allowed to make an opening statement on behalf of the Navy and the respective Navy witnesses. 

Is there objection? 

Without objection, it so ordered. 

As I mentioned, we welcome everyone here today to this joint 

subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces and Readiness 

Subcommittees at our hearing today. 

I want to offer a special welcome to our full committee chairman, 

Mr. Thornberry. As everyone knows, Chairman Thornberry has 

been the leader of our ongoing efforts to mitigate our military readiness challenges and I want to thank him for his leadership and 

for being here today to hear about the United States Navy. 

This hearing follows a congressional delegation and listening session that members of our committee conducted on Monday aboard 

Naval Station Norfolk, the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower 

and the destroyer, the USS McFaul. 
2 

While in Norfolk we had a chance to meet with a number of 

Navy sailors, including the witnesses that are testifying before us 

today. 

Today we will have Captain Scott F. Robertson, the commanding 

officer of the USS Normandy. Captain, thank you for being here. 

We have Captain Randy Stearns, the commodore and Strike 

Fighter for Wing Atlantic. Captain, thank you for joining us. 

We have Captain Gregory McRae, the deputy commander of Submarine Squadron 6. And Captain, thank you for joining us. 

And Captain Paul Odenthal, commander of the Naval Construction Group 2. Captain, we thank you for joining us today. 

I am also particularly delighted to have Admiral Davidson, the 

commander of the U.S. Fleet Forces Command, who will make an 

opening statement this morning. 

We have a special guest with us here in the audience. That is 

Captain Robertson’s wife, Kelly. Last year Captain Robertson and 

his crew went away for a whopping 313 days, including their wedding anniversary and likely many other important family events. 

Today his duty once again called him away from home on his anniversary, and at least on this anniversary I want to get him out 

of the doghouse a little bit, and I want to thank Kelly for her service and her support for her husband and to recognize all the sacrifices she and our other Navy spouses and families make for our 

country. 

I am grateful to everyone for being here, but I want to thank the 

captains in particular for first giving us their perspectives in Norfolk and then coming up to Washington to share them with additional members. 

I think it is very important that we hear not just from senior 

Navy leaders, but from the operators and warfighters like yourselves, who are dealing with readiness challenges firsthand. 

When we met with our witnesses down in Norfolk, one of them 

characterized his current role and responsibility as the commander 

of a Navy unit as, quote: ‘‘managing scarcity.’’ 

Our sailors do not sign up to manage scarcity. They sign up to 

defend their families, their homes, their country. They sign up to 

defend our families, our home, and our country. 

Every day our sailors have a duty to defend America. It is time 

that we as Americans realize we have a duty to defend them. Hopefully, we take a major step in that this morning. 

I think that the term is a very good description of the challenges 

that our men and women in uniform and the civilians that support 

them are dealing with across the fleet and in the Navy sister services. 

While I firmly believe that the United States Navy is still the 

world’s best, I am concerned about shortfalls in force structure and 

readiness and the trend lines that we can see. 

Over the past year we have heard from the Chief of Naval Operations that we are returning to an era of great power competition 

in which our maritime superiority will be contested by other countries. 

We have heard about ship deployments growing from 51⁄2 to as 

many as 10 months in length. 
3 

We have heard about carrier gaps in Asia and the Middle East. 

We have heard that shortfalls in the number of amphibious ships 

are driving the Marines to consider deploying aboard foreign ships. 

And we have heard that only one in four of our strike fighters 

is fully mission capable and ready for combat. 

And finally, we have received data showing that next year 

around the world we will only be able to fulfill 56 percent of our 

commanders’ requests for carriers, 54 percent of the requests for 

amphibious groups, 42 percent of the requests for submarines, and 

39 percent of the requests for cruisers and destroyers. 

The conclusion that I think we should all be drawing from what 

we hear is that we are not currently providing our Navy with the 

resources it needs to do what we ask, at least not without burning 

out our ships and our planes and our sailors and undermining our 

long-term readiness. 

As members of these subcommittees know, the Navy will always 

answer the Nation’s call. It always has. 

If we require it, the Navy can and will run its ships and sailors 

ragged and send them into battle without all the weapons and 

training and maintenance they should have. 

But we do not want to do that. We want to take care of our men 

and women in uniform and maintain peace through strength with 

a Navy that is robust and ready to deter potential aggressors. We 

never ever want a fair fight. 

In our witnesses’ prepared statement, it says that we are recovering from our lowest readiness point in many years. As a Congress, we have the responsibility to provide and maintain a Navy, 

but I believe that the resources we have been allocating to that 

critical function of government have been woefully inadequate. 

Today I hope to hear from both senior Navy leaders and our operators and warfighters what that means for our Navy and for our 

national security so that our perspectives and insights can guide 

our decisions in days and years ahead. 

With that, I now turn things over to the gentleman from Virginia, the chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee, my good 

friend, Chairman Wittman, for any opening remarks that he might 

have. 

Rob. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Forbes can be found in the Appendix on page 43.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT J. WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

READINESS 

Mr. WITTMAN. Well thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your 

leadership. Chairman Thornberry, thank you. Ranking Member 

Courtney and Ranking Member Bordallo, we deeply appreciate all 

the efforts here. 

Gentlemen, thank you. Thanks so much for your leadership and 

your distinguished service to our Nation and all of the things that 

you do to make sure that our Navy and our Marine Corps have the 

things that they need when asked to go into harm’s way. 
4 

Every service branch we know today is suffering from readiness 

deficits and we know that those shortfalls in training and equipment have serious consequences for our warfighters. 

This hearing will give us the opportunity to hear from the men 

and women on the ground, in the air, and on the water who deal 

with the devastating effects of our readiness shortfalls on a daily 

basis. 

If Congress is to address the obstacles that successive cuts in defense spending have posed, we need a clear, unadulterated view of 

the challenges our forces are facing. 

The testimony that you will provide today will give us an invaluable view in that regard. 

We are looking into the challenges ahead and these are the ones 

we see as our fleets dwindle and as our sailors and their families 

suffer under the strain of less training and longer deployments. 

In March, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michelle Howard testified before the Readiness Subcommittee that the Navy is 

still paying down the readiness debt we accrued over the last decade. And to the Senate Armed Services Committee, she said that 

sequestration is the greatest threat to our future readiness. It has 

a ripple effect for us throughout the years. 

Today our subcommittees would like to hear from you, our Nation’s operational leaders, about maintenance, status of our equipment, the operational availability of our ships, aircraft and weapons systems and, perhaps the most importantly, the obstacles you 

face as you train our sailors to meet the challenges ahead. 

Gentlemen I thank you for your service. As a reminder of what 

we all are faced with, tomorrow at the United States Naval Academy, we will commission over 1,000 new naval officers, both as ensigns in the Navy and as second lieutenants in the Marine Corps. 

All of us have an obligation, not only for those officers but those 

that enlist in the Navy and Marine Corps to make sure that we 

never forget what it takes to provide for them the proper training, 

the proper equipment that they need to, as Chairman Forbes said, 

to have overwhelming superiority so they can fight to victory and 

come home safe. 

That is our unending obligation both here as elected leaders and 

for you as our military leaders. We all take that challenge seriously 

and I know, I know and am confident that we will face that challenge. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us, and Mr. 

Chairman, with that I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the Appendix on page 45.] 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Congressman Whitman. Now it is my 

privilege to recognize my partner on the Seapower and Projection 

Forces Subcommittee the ranking member, Mr. Joe Courtney. 

STATEMENT OF HON. JOE COURTNEY, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM CONNECTICUT, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE 

ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES 

Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Wittman, for 

holding today’s hearing on Navy force structure and readiness and 

for both of your leadership in terms of what has been a very strong 
5 

bipartisan effort both in Seapower and Readiness that became part 

of the House defense authorization bill. 

I have a written statement which I am going to enter for the 

record because we want to hear from the witnesses this morning. 

In quick summary—this year we have heard a refrain from combatant commanders, whether in the Pacific, whether it is Admiral 

Harris, General Breedlove, in the North Atlantic—again, really 

stressing the need for more Navy assets to be deployed. Admiral 

Harris with no prompting said he needs more ships and submarines, period. General Breedlove said it best, ‘‘We are playing 

zone defense in terms of what is happening with a resurgent Russian navy.’’ 

This year we came out with a very strong mark in terms of shipbuilding. Ten ships as the chairman noted, the largest boost since 

the Reagan era in terms of investment in shipbuilding, but as all 

the witnesses know, that is the long game. You don’t build a sub 

overnight or a carrier overnight or a destroyer. And in the meantime we have got to focus on what is really the focus of today’s 

hearing, which is that we have got to have the operational availability and that means looking at something that sometimes 

doesn’t get quite the banner headlines in the way that maybe shipbuilding does. And that is obviously, making sure that the readiness investments and systems are in place so that when Admiral 

Harris or General Breedlove is putting out a demand signal that 

the country can respond to it. 

Again, there is no better testimony than the folks that are here 

at the table this morning. Admiral Davidson it is good to see you 

again after our visit last year, earlier. Captain Stearns, thank you 

again for the CODEL [congressional delegation] that we organized. 

And again, Congress has some skin in this game as well. CRs [continuing resolutions] do not make this problem any easier and I 

hope we are going to hear from the witnesses about ways that we 

can help from the legislative branch in terms of making sure there 

is that horizon, so that, again, these critical needs are gonna be 

satisfied. 

Again, I want to thank both chairmen for organizing this important hearing today. Ask that my written statement be entered for 

the record and I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Courtney can be found in the Appendix on page 46.] 

Mr. FORBES. Without objection, all the written statements will be 

entered as part of the record, and with that we are privileged to 

recognize now the gentleman from California, Mr. Peters, who is 

standing in as the ranking member for the Readiness Subcommittee today. Scott, thank you. 

STATEMENT OF HON. SCOTT H. PETERS, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM CALIFORNIA, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS 

Mr. PETERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you, Chairman Wittman as well, and Mr. Courtney. I thank you all for making yourselves available again today. 

In July, 2010 these two same subcommittees convened to discuss 

Navy readiness and 2 years have passed since the USS Chosin, 

which is now homeported in San Diego undergoing modernization, 
6 

and the Stout had been deemed unfit for combat operation because 

of the readiness condition. 

In March 2009, the Readiness Subcommittee examined issues the 

Navy faced in sustaining its surface warships with their expected 

life and beyond. The Navy reported at that hearing that it had 

been taking material steps to address gaps in ship maintenance 

funding and to assess ship material conditions. 

So today, over 6 years later, we are continuing to discuss not 

only the readiness concerns of the Navy’s non-nuclear service ships, 

but also shortfalls in naval aviation, expeditionary forces, and 

other aspects of readiness. As members of the subcommittees heard 

on Monday in Norfolk, the Navy now faces readiness concerns with 

its submarine force as well. A lack of readiness resonates with our 

ability to keep Americans safe and confront new and dynamic 

threats across the globe. And as our Navy executes its pivot to the 

Pacific, while still carrying out operations against the Islamic 

State, there has never been a more crucial time to have a wellequipped, well-trained force. 

These readiness issues of course as Mr. Courtney said did not 

arise overnight. What the Navy is experiencing now, and what the 

subcommittees are attempting to fix in the 2017 defense bill, are 

the consequences of years of high operational tempo experienced by 

a smaller fleet—again, happy anniversary. I think it is an appropriate time to recognize high operational tempo—and fewer aircraft 

with experienced sailors and civilian employees to sustain them. 

The Navy is grappling with these past decisions that reduce waterfront maintenance organizations and shore infrastructure, process changes to force-wide ship maintenance practices and training 

processes, and the failed Optimum Manning Initiative in efforts to 

derive efficiencies instead of pursuing and insisting upon effectiveness. 

So the Navy began responding to declining material readiness 

conditions by increasing manning, improving training, providing 

enduring technical oversight of maintenance, and reestablishing 

clear lines of authority and accountability, but the efforts were rendered less effective as Mr. Courtney suggested by the sequestration 

in 2013. 

So when coupled with reductions in skilled personnel at aviation 

depots and fleet shipyards, severe challenges in obtaining spare 

parts for legacy systems, late receipt of funds due to the failure of 

Congress to reach a budget agreement, and high operational tempo 

required by the complex security environment, to put it lightly, it 

is not surprising we are dealing with what some call a readiness 

crisis. 

In an era of new and dynamic threats it is our responsibility to 

navigate these challenges and provide for a 21st century force that 

has the tools and capabilities to respond to security threats anywhere, anytime, and I welcome the opportunity today to hear from 

our witnesses about some of the challenges you are facing. And I 

encourage my colleagues to seriously consider the long-term financial commitments that accompany the readiness solutions that we 

are proposing in the fiscal year 2017 authorization bill, which will 

soon go to conference with the Senate. 
7 

Thank you again for being here gentlemen, and thank you Mr. 

Chairman. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you Congressman Peters and Admiral Davidson, you have got a lot on your shoulders. The whole Fleet Forces 

Command, a lot of men and women that are depending upon you, 

including the entire country. We appreciate so much all that you 

do and we appreciate being here today and we would love to turn 

the floor over to you now for any comments that you can offer to 

the committee. 

STATEMENT OF ADM PHILLIP S. DAVIDSON, USN, COMMANDER, U.S. FLEET FORCES COMMAND; CAPT RANDY STEARNS, 

USN, COMMODORE, STRIKE FIGHTER WING, ATLANTIC; CAPT 

SCOTT ROBERTSON, USN, COMMANDER, USS NORMANDY 

(CG–60); CAPT GREG McRAE, USN, DEPUTY COMMANDER, 

SUBMARINE SQUADRON 6; AND CAPT PAUL ODENTHAL, USN, 

COMMODORE, NAVAL CONSTRUCTION GROUP 2 

Admiral DAVIDSON. Thank you Chairman Forbes. Chairman 

Thornberry, Chairman Wittman, Ranking Member Courtney, 

Ranking Member Peters—— 

Mr. FORBES. Admiral, these mikes are a little funny. You might 

want to pull it up close so that everybody can hear. 

Admiral DAVIDSON [continuing]. And distinguished members of 

the Seapower and Projection Forces and Readiness Subcommittees, 

good morning, and thank you for your active interest in fleet readiness. I appreciate your comments very, very much. It is my distinct 

pleasure to introduce these witnesses today, these exceptional captains you see before you here to testify about our Navy. 

These are just a very few of the extraordinary men and women 

we call upon to lead our Navy at the tactical level, and I think you 

will be impressed. Most importantly, they are in the front lines of 

fleet readiness. As a fleet commander I am charged by the Chief 

of Naval Operations to make the fleet ready. That is to say, prepared. To do the mission the Congress has given us in law, ‘‘To be 

prepared for prompt and sustained combat incident to operations 

at sea.’’ 

In my book there can only be one standard for that. It has to be 

ready, prepared to fight and win. We know the American people expect nothing less, and frankly, we expect nothing less of ourselves. 

I won’t belabor adversary and threat details as testified to you by 

the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the CNO [Chief of Naval Operations], and numerous other experts. They have made clear the 

evolving international security environment, the nations and actors 

who would challenge the world order—Russia, China, North Korea, 

Iran, and terror groups like ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] 

and Al Qaeda. These countries and entities, in different forms, are 

developing and procuring advanced and/or asymmetric systems to 

hold allies and partners at risk, to deny us our sea control in the 

Navy, and to threaten our homeland and our interests. 

In that light, the business of making the fleet ready to fight and 

win is much more difficult than the bumper sticker allows. Key to 

it is the prompt and sustained standard we receive from the law. 

To truly understand whether the fleet is ready, it must be understood that the Navy has to be able to do three things. First, we 
8 

have to be able to rotate the fleet out on routine deployments 

around the globe. Second, we have to be able to surge the fleet in 

crisis. That means conflict, war. That means more ships, more 

squadrons, more submarines, and more groups forward in times of 

significant contingency or war, and then we have to be able to fix 

it and reset it after that. That means re-equip it and get it ready 

for the next possible contingency and at the same time continue to 

rotate it out on routine deployments. 

And third, we have to be able to maintain and modernize the 

fleet to ensure it is functional, viable, indeed credible, meaning 

ready to fight and win, until its expected end of service life. Sometimes that is decades in the future. 

These three components of our readiness are all intertwined, and 

yet all in tension with one another. If we keep too many of our capabilities forward on routine deployments, we may not have the 

numbers we need to surge in crisis or the time to maintain and 

modernize these capabilities necessary for future success and future generations of sailors. 

Conversely, if too many of our ships and aircraft are in maintenance and modernization then the combatant commanders do not 

have the credible combat power needed to deter and dissuade potential adversaries and competitors to assure our allies and partners or to protect our maritime security and the homeland. 

Too much of one thing typically results in too little of another. 

Nevertheless, we must do those three things to meet the prompt 

and sustained standard established by title 10. That said, if there 

are not enough resources to do all three at once, we will typically 

favor our readiness for deployment over the two priorities. I owe 

that to our sailors today, and I am doing precisely that this year, 

2016. 

Let me give you an example. 

Earlier this week many of you visited the aircraft carrier USS 

Dwight D. Eisenhower. It is 39 years old. In just a few days it will 

be on its way for its fifth routine deployment in the last 71⁄2 years. 

In just a few weeks, they will be flying strikes in combat against 

ISIS. 

It is the fleet’s job to ensure those sailors in Ike and her escorts 

go on deployment with everything they might possibly need: food, 

fuel, repair parts, ordnance, the aircraft, the medical support, and, 

most importantly, the training to succeed in their mission and return home safely, and that is the mandatory metric, to succeed on 

the mission. 

Our first priority is to make sure our deployed and deploying 

forces like Ike are fully ready, that they have everything they need 

to execute combat operations and succeed. We do a good job at this, 

but it is not without cost. 

For example, if I have to ensure that 10 like strike fighters are 

in a single squadron on that aircraft carrier and they need the 

same capability, I will tax units that are back here at home—those 

designed to be later in for surge or those in maintenance and modernization of aircraft to make sure that we have the requisite aircraft forward. If I need 10 forward, I do routinely operate 4 aircraft 

in squadrons in the rear. 
9 

If a ship forward with Ike strike group, for example,—as would 

any of the forward-deployed ships either homeported, overseas or 

deployed from CONUS [continental United States], if they need a 

part that is not immediately available in their stores or not immediately available in their supply system, I will tax a ship back in 

CONUS for that part, either out of their stores or, if I have to, I 

will take it directly out of a combat system to deliver to that ship 

forward. 

Ike strike group is ready to go, and I am committed to ensure 

that they are ready while they are forward. And all of it—the 

equipment, the ordnance, the sailors and their training to make 

them ready for deployment—that is investing in the ‘‘prompt’’ part 

of the mission that you have given us in law. 

The ‘‘sustained’’ part—sustainment means building deep preparedness. Our ships, squadrons, and other tactical units must be 

ready to be surged in time of conflict as I said or maintaining and 

modernizing for the threats of the future and to deliver on the exceptional return of investment in your Navy. 

Ideally, the fleet maintains reliability in its platforms and proficiency in its sailors by sustaining readiness in its forces fresh off 

deployment. Additionally, we would endeavor to build readiness for 

full-spectrum conflict, great power competitors, as the CNO cited 

earlier this year, by doing more intense training for longer 

throughout the life of any ship or squadron. 

After all, these are the forces we would use to surge in conflict 

and war. Maintenance and modernization is just as important. Ike 

provides relevant combat power today 39 years after her commissioning because we invested in maintenance and upgrades throughout the years including refueling the reactors, modernizing the 

combat systems aboard, and putting new aircraft in its air wing. 

My favorite metric: during Ike’s nuclear refueling overhaul more 

than a dozen years ago, we removed more than 5,000 tons of wire— 

5,000 tons of wire—and replaced it with fiber relevant to the capabilities needed in our combat systems for today and tomorrow. That 

investment in time and money is important. 

For me, in 2016, the fleet is challenged to provide that kind of 

sustained mission. We are $848 million short between Admiral 

Swift and the Pacific Fleet and myself of the operations and maintenance requirements. That is just 2 percent of the readiness requirement across the whole of Navy readiness and the fleet will 

have to make—take action to meet our financial responsibilities. 

The shortfall developed based on a handful of emerging challenges this calendar year—this fiscal year. Excuse me. First, we extended Truman strike group on deployment to support strike operations against ISIS. Second, we have observed increased costs with 

several aircraft: older F/A–18 A through D Hornets, both in the 

Navy and Marine Corps, and Marine Corps CH–53s and MV–22 

Ospreys. 

The cost to maintain these aircraft this year is higher than modeled and anticipated. These aircraft are simply older than we anticipated when we bought them. We have been using them longer. 

Also, we are working hard to improve the supply and availability 

of repair parts with Navy F/A–18E/F Super Hornets to improve 

their flight line readiness this year. 
10 

Third, ship maintenance growth and execution has exceeded the 

planned and budgeted costs over a year ago. As a result, the fleet 

will have to take some risk. That is to say, incur consequences, if 

they are not mitigated later, for the longer term. Across both the 

Atlantic and Pacific Fleets we will delay four surface ship availabilities and one submarine major maintenance availability from the 

fourth quarter of this fiscal year into next year. 

We will also reduce three smaller, less intensive maintenance periods for two amphibious ready groups and one carrier strike 

group. That is an additional dozen ships. We will reduce the flying 

hours associated with one of our carrier air wings that is not expected to deploy in the next 2 years as well. 

Delaying these maintenance periods and pressing them into the 

next fiscal year—fiscal year 2017—the budget currently under consideration is not optimal, but it affects the smaller number of ships. 

I will not embark on a path that partially accomplishes all availabilities across the entire fleet. That is a dangerous practice that 

rapidly builds maintenance and capability backlogs that are difficult to recover. 

Indeed, we are digging out from that sort of policy more than a 

decade ago. 

As you can see, readiness in the Navy is a very complex discussion. Some of the risks, the consequences, if not mitigated later, are 

borne out with reduced training and readiness levels for our surge 

forces. Some of our risk is carried in longer-term sustainment with 

maintenance delayed for our ships and our submarines. 

Accepting these risks means accepting less readiness across the 

whole of the Navy, less capacity to surge in crisis and wartime, and 

perhaps living with the reduced readiness on our ships and submarines that would keep them from reaching the end of their service lives. In either case, recovering from these situations will cost 

us more in time and money in the future. 

These are the fleet readiness challenges and our plans to execute 

today in fiscal year 2016. To provide the additional context from 

fleet operators, we have assembled before you a panel of our—four 

of our commanders: Captain Stearns, commanding officer of Strike 

Fighter Wing Atlantic. He leads all F/A–18 Hornet and Super Hornet training and readiness on the East Coast. 

Captain McRae, he is the deputy commodore of Submarine 

Squadron 6. He oversees the training and preparation of seven attack submarines and their crews. 

Captain Odenthal, commodore of Naval Construction Group 2. 

He heads up our Atlantic Seabees and underwater construction 

teams. 

And Captain Robertson is the commanding officer of USS Normandy, fresh off an around-the-world deployment last year—the 

Navy’s first with our Navy’s integrated fire control-counter air capability—an extraordinary capability; and his ship is in maintenance today. 

Like all of us, they are committed to ensuring the best possible 

readiness in the fleet for today and for our future. Thank you. 

Thank you, Chair. 
11 

[The joint prepared statement of Admiral Davidson, Captain 

Stearns, Captain Robertson, Captain McRae, and Captain Odenthal can be found in the Appendix on page 48.] 

Mr. FORBES. Admiral Davidson, we thank you again for your 

service. Thank you for your opening remarks and now the subcommittee can address our questions to each of our four witnesses 

that are here. And Captain Stearns, I would like to start with you. 

We all know that sometimes we talk in a lot of military-ese. We 

use terms and I remember one time coming home from dinner with 

the CNO my wife looked at me and she said, ‘‘Do you guys ever 

talk in English?’’ 

Well, we want to try and talk a little bit in English today and 

one of the things that you are the commander of a strike fighter 

wing. A lot of power under your control and what you are doing but 

I want to—oftentimes we realize that when you go places you are 

trying to train and prepare in good times so that you are able to 

fight in bad times if they occur. 

I am very concerned about the statistic that I am hearing that 

only one out of four of our aircraft are capable—fully mission capable and ready for combat. I know in the good times you can say 

we have got enough out there. You heard Admiral Davidson talk 

about surge. 

A lot of people listening to this at home don’t know what surge 

means but if you have to go into that fight, what does it mean to 

you when you only have one out of four of your backups ready for 

combat? 

Captain STEARNS. One of—that number fully mission capable 

and just to define the term here as we use it in the Hornet community is—means that jet has everything it needs to go to war. So 

that one-in-four number that you put out now, that is our—that is 

our deployed forces like Admiral Davidson said as well. So that is 

the—that one in four is currently deployed right now. That other 

three in four are the aircraft that are back in the maintenance 

phase or going through another FRP [Fleet Response Plan]. 

So what that means is if you wanted to surge more than what 

we have, and we talked about our four air wings that are out right 

now including one on the West Coast and we have one in work-ups 

now and then one ready to go, which was the Ike down there and 

the Truman—those are fully manned. But if you wanted to pull 

back it would take me over 6 to 12 months to get another air wing 

back here of that three in four aircraft backup ready to go. 

Mr. FORBES. So explain the impact of that and the risk that it 

has to you. If you are in a conflict—obviously if you are not in a 

conflict it is not going to matter that much—but if you are in a conflict based on our op plans, how important are those planes to you 

and how risky is it that you would have to wait 6 to 12 months 

to get them? 

Captain STEARNS. It is—at the bottom of the—there is no chance 

of getting those ready. The metric I had when I was a department 

head, just to put it into context, was about a 90-day surge. We 

could have the parts and aircraft to get an air wing out and a 

squadron up if we actually resourced them out in 90 to 120 days. 

It is going to take three times as long to get that out now. 
12 

So it means that there is nothing to pull from in the back. We 

have already pulled everything forward. There is nothing left in 

the—— 

Mr. FORBES. So if you are in a fight, you do not have anything 

to pull from in the back right now and it would be 6 to 12 months 

before you would have it ready to—— 

Captain STEARNS. As of today, we don’t have that surge capacity 

right now. 

Mr. FORBES. The other thing that I would like to talk about and 

Admiral Davidson mentioned taxing planes back here, taxing ships 

and another word for that is I think you sometimes use the term 

cannibalization of our aircraft, which is basically taking parts off 

of one aircraft to be able to use to fix the other ones to fight. 

Well we already have a situation where three out of four of our 

aircraft are not fully mission capable to back you up if you need 

it. Tell me about this term we use is ‘‘hangar queens’’ or cannibalization. Are you using a plane in the hangar now that you are taking parts off of to put on other parts to fly? 

Captain STEARNS. That is a regular occurrence and cannibalization, or taking parts off that, is our last resort. We work through 

the supply system and, as you know, our A through Ds are stuck 

in the depot because of unforeseen utilization. Our Super Hornets—we have had parts problems over the past 3 years, starting 

in 2012 with sequestration and there were other—some other factors that played into that as well. 

But we have never caught up and absolutely—so what that 

means to you is that that is the last resort. We are pulling that 

off an aircraft and I was the one talking about managing scarcity 

and that is exactly what I am talking about, managing scarcity. 

I have to decide what squadron—I have three squadrons right 

now that I had to call and tell, ‘‘Hey, be ready; you are the donors 

for the Truman extension.’’ That was not paid for. That was unforeseen. That is a tax back here on the system as well. 

Mr. FORBES. So, Captain, let me be clear, three out of four of 

your strike fighters not capable of—fully mission capable right 

now, takes 6 to 12 months to get them there. But in addition to 

that, what you have to do is, as the last resort, go in planes that 

you have, take parts off of those planes instead of coming from the 

depots or where you would have parts, so that you can keep the 

planes flying that you need to keep flying. Fair? 

Captain STEARNS. Fair. Fair assessment on that. 

Mr. FORBES. And you are having to do that now? 

Captain STEARNS. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FORBES. Captain McRae, one of the things that we are very 

concerned about, Mr. Courtney and I, looking at the number of attack submarines we have. We know we are going down from 52 to 

41 in 2029, and I am very concerned about some of the work that 

has to be done on some of our submarines. 

You told us a story, I believe, about the USS Albany that was 

so—and we call them availabilities, but basically it was so—needed 

so much work on it, broke so much that it—the crew never actually 

got to deploy. They stayed in the shipyard basically the whole time. 

Is that a reference to that? Or am I incorrect on that? 
13 

Captain MCRAE. Yes, sir. So what I was speaking of specifically 

was the maintenance overruns that we are experiencing in our 

shipyards and those overruns and depot-level maintenance that 

cause us, when the ship does not return to the fleet on time as expected, that causes us to lose what we call operational days for that 

submarine and it is that loss of operational days that has the direct 

impact on our ability to execute our mission and provide the readiness that we are required to provide. 

Mr. FORBES. So during that period of time, as I understand it, 

that submarine stayed in the shipyard its entire time for that crew. 

Is that fair? 

Captain MCRAE. Yes, sir. So they entered the shipyard. They 

originally were scheduled to enter the shipyard, this is USS Albany 

we are talking about, in October of 2013. Back at that time we 

were going through sequestration and budgetary concerns and 

there was a lot of instability in our funding levels moving forward, 

so the decision was made to push the start of the overhaul off 3 

months, and that we actually commenced that overhaul at Norfolk 

Naval Shipyard in January 2014. 

Originally the overhaul was scheduled to be 28.5 months and 

that estimate is based on previous execution by that shipyard doing 

similar platforms, so it is an estimated calculation as far as how 

long it should take based on execution—recent execution. Prior to 

that, Newport News had come out in about 28 months, which is 

why that was selected. 

Since entering the shipyard, due to resource challenges that the 

shipyard has experienced due to prioritization, due to the workforce 

challenges that I think you all have been briefed on, the schedule— 

and I am seeing this from the squadron perspective—the schedule 

continued to slide to the right, meaning they weren’t meeting their 

key events. 

And so about every 3 months or so we would get a new schedule 

that essentially continued to push timelines to the right throughout 

the last 21⁄2 years. So today, we are looking at a 43-month overhaul 

for a maintenance period that was supposed to last 28 months and 

the impact of that is significant in a lot of different ways, certainly 

the operational days that are lost. Those are days that we will 

never recover because the hull life on that submarine is finite and 

so we will never be able to recapture those days. 

But it also has an impact on the other submarines that we have 

and the other crews that we have and the mission that we have 

to meet every day to be able to provide that resource to the Nation. 

So that is what we are talking about in terms of the overruns—— 

Mr. FORBES. And Captain, what was the impact of that on the 

commanding officer of the Albany? 

Captain MCRAE. So one of the stories that I had relayed was— 

and I just talked to Wade just a couple days ago, actually. So one 

of the tertiary effects of overruns like this that people don’t often 

talk about are the impact to crew and their families. 

So we are responsible for maintaining crew readiness in terms of 

professional development, experience at sea, developing them as 

operators, as warfighters, as leaders, and we put a lot of focus, obviously, and emphasis on that. For a submariner to really get 
14 

trained and certified and qualified and be war-ready, he needs to 

be at sea and he needs to be operating at sea. 

Many—because of the delays on Albany, many of the sailors that 

have been reported—have reported in for their first sea tour on the 

Albany will start and end their sea tour in the shipyard. And what 

I had relayed was that sailors don’t join the submarine force to sit 

on a barge in a shipyard. They really want to be on a submarine 

at sea. And I have seen that throughout the last 24 years. 

And so—so the impact specifically for the commanding officer because he was in a similar situation. He began his tour thinking 

that he was going to carry the ship through the shipyard period, 

come out on the back end, execute all the required certifications, 

inspections, prove that his team was—was warfighting ready, execute sea trials, and then restore that submarine to full operational 

capability and he was excited to do that. 

But because of the delays now, he will actually be relieved and 

have his change of command with the ship still in the shipyard. Because of that, as a part of that, he has decided to submit his resignation and retire from the Navy rather than continue service. 

Mr. FORBES. So we lost the commanding officer of that submarine because basically the most water he saw was probably at 

the water fountains around where the ship was being fixed and— 

if it has an impact on him, would it be fair to conclude it is having 

an impact on the crew as well? 

Captain MCRAE. It absolutely is. And that was one of the things 

in talking to some of the officers and men that I confirmed, was 

that there are other effects. So for example, the executive officer 

that carried them through much of the shipyard period did not select for—for command at sea. 

The engineer that they previously had, he was by all measure a 

great performer but in—at the shipyard doesn’t really have that capacity to demonstrate his warfighting expertise. It is a challenging 

environment to rank against your peers and we are a very competitive force, also did not select for executive officer. 

So I am not saying that that is the only reason they didn’t select, 

but I can certainly tell you that inhibiting their ability to execute 

their warfighting mission at sea and become fully proficient and 

qualified, certified, and run those crews and do those missions certainly inhibits their professional development and their advancement in the service. 

Mr. FORBES. Captain Robertson, I want to ask you a personal 

question and we get to do that here, you know, fortunately. If Admiral Davidson asked you to do something, I know based on your 

professionalism, you are going to salute and say, yes, sir, and you 

are going to go do it. 

If you have to go do it, my suspicion is Kelly is going to be a supportive wife and say, you know, go do it and I am going to keep 

the home fires burning. You have missed a lot of anniversaries. We 

talked about some of them today. 

Even aside from you, tell me the impact on the men and women 

who serve under you when we stretch these deployments from 5 

months, as they were about 8 years ago, to 7, 8, 9, 10 months 

where some of them are going. 
15 

What is the real life impact to them, and just as Captain McRae 

talked about people at some point in time saying I have got 

enough, whether it is the officer of the submarine or whether it is 

the crew. 

What is the real life impact to those men and women, both that 

serve under you, but you have served with throughout these years 

when they are asked to give up another anniversary, another baseball game, another birthday? 

Captain ROBERTSON. Sure. Happy to answer that question. It is 

kind of complex strictly because, you know, when you talk about 

a junior sailor experiencing a deployment for the very first time, 

there is no expectation of what it—— 

Mr. FORBES. And include in that the impact to their family, too. 

Captain ROBERTSON. Absolutely. Absolutely. There is no doubt 

and actually Kelly and I were just talking about this very fact yesterday how we have seen as our deployments have gotten longer 

where they originally were 6 months and now just finishing a 91⁄2- month on deployment. 

We felt very fortunate we were mature enough to be able to absorb that and—but our junior sailors certainly, you know, wind up 

taking the brunt of that. It is a lot of missed birthdays and anniversaries and sporting events and recitals. 

So there is no doubt that there certainly is a personal, a real personal challenge with these long deployments and it certainly 

stresses the families. But I have to also add, though, that our sailors, when they know in advance what their deployment length is 

going to be, they can prepare for it and my—my crew knew in advance we were doing a long deployment. So we were really able to 

condition the families, make sure the infrastructure was there for 

them to best prepare them as much as we could for this extra long 

deployment. 

So—and as such, I was rewarded with good morale on my ship 

and a pretty good morale back home. But you can’t overstate, you 

know, you can’t make—forget the humanistic impact of everything 

that they do miss. 

Mr. FORBES. We were told when we actually had lunch on Monday with some of the individuals there that, you know, their families actually get ribbons that they start putting up and cutting as 

they are looking 60 days out and 30 days out and then when all 

of a sudden those deployments are changed, that it has an enormous impact on the children and the families. Is that your experience or—— 

Captain ROBERTSON. Absolutely. I do have—I do have experience 

with a short notice extension on deployment and when I was a 

commander in command we were scheduled for a 61⁄2 month deployment. And just prior to us departing, out-chopping or leaving 

the theater of operation to return home, we were extended for another 4 weeks. 

So—and that was a challenge from a morale perspective. Certainly it was easier for me to build morale on the ship, hey, our 

Navy needs us, our country needs us on mission. I certainly know 

that it was much bigger impact back home. Return parties, vacations planned, reunions, so that was—so a change in schedule is 

really hard on our families. 
16 

Mr. FORBES. Chairman Wittman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Chairman Forbes. I want to drill down 

a little bit more on Chairman Forbes’ question, Captain Stearns, 

about aircraft. 

We talked about the availability of those aircraft, but what I 

want to look is how we generate that availability and obviously 

there at Oceana you deal not only with the aircraft availability, but 

also with depots and we have gone from a backlog in the depots 

of about 11 aircraft now up to 200 aircraft. So that pipeline is a 

significant issue. 

Throughput hasn’t changed. I know that we have made a lot of 

plans to try to manage that, but if that capacity and throughput 

hasn’t changed, that still creates a situation that we are dealing 

with that we have E–2Ds that don’t have spare parts, so we are 

going through all of those machinations trying to figure out a way 

through this, you know, great recovery plans in place. 

But I think as you pointed out, you know, time is the limiting 

factor there. But time is not only a limiting factor, but—but the 

throughput, the capacity there in our depots. How do we—well first 

of all, how does that backlog in aircraft affect operational readiness? And you pointed to that a little bit. But I want to know 

how—how does it affect things in the long term and what do we 

have to do to be able to shorten that time period? 

You pointed out to it—to now it being three times as long as it 

would otherwise have been. How does it affect things today? Let’s 

say a scenario where we have to push the button and it is more 

than just those forces forward deployed and—and I want to understand a little bit more about that—you alluded to earlier—but then 

what do we need to do to make sure that we are able to generate 

the throughput to as quickly as we can recover this lost readiness 

in these—availability of these aircraft? 

Captain STEARNS. And—thanks for the question. So there are 

two reasons why the depots are—are backlogged now and that is 

wartime utilization and also the fact of the delay in our JSF [Joint 

Strike Fighter] that we had planned on having here as well. 

So that forced us into an extension of our A through Ds. So to 

put it into perspective, Navy has 35 F–18 squadrons, east, west 

coast, Japan. Five of those are of the older legacy aircraft, the A 

through Ds as well, and the other 30 are Super Hornets. 

So they are in the—they are backlogged. It is—the depots were 

never set up to do what we call high flight hour which means essentially we are extending them past the 6-hour—8,000-hour to 

10,000-hour life that they were ever expected to fly, just to meet 

the operational demand. 

So now they are forced into a 3-year lead time just to make the 

parts for these kits to get in there and it is all a capacity problem. 

The jets coming out the back side are a great product that our civilian workforce puts out. They can only do so much because they 

were never set up to do that. 

So that is the risk for that and right now I have four of my legacy—four of my five legacy squadrons in a FRP right now—in a 

cycle to be deployed or not and I have to make some of those older 

aircraft that are—probably don’t have enough hours on. We are not 

going to use them for deployment anymore into that squadron so 
17 

they don’t have the capability as they go through there. Our goal 

is to get them prior to advanced phase Air Wing Fallon. 

But that leads into the Super Hornet problem that we have 

transitioned about 10 squadrons of Super Hornets unexpectedly 

into our—to get out of legacy and also to meet the gap for the 

JSF—just to meet operational demand. So now we are taxing hours 

and utilization on our attrition aircraft. Those were meant for our 

attrition aircraft and Super Hornet. Now we are utilizing that. 

So when those start going into the depot in a year and a half for 

normal maintenance—6,000-hour maintenance, we got to get that 

legacy out of the depot right now. So it is a capacity problem that 

is right back there so we will have even less available surge force. 

It translates to less available surge force to send out the door 

and I am not so much worried about the A through D right now. 

We have got that. It is the Super Hornet coming that as Admiral 

Manazir testified I think in March we are chewing up about 40 

hours—or 40 aircraft worth of hours a month and if we are not either buying that much or putting that much through the depot, we 

are falling behind. 

Mr. WITTMAN. How does that affect the Fleet Replacement 

Squadron where you go to get aircraft and the flying hours that 

have to be accrued there to make sure our pilots have the sea time 

so that when they do their pre-deployment work-ups and they get 

to the point to go on deployment, that they have the full complement of flight hours to make sure? Because as you know experience there—if you are missing it on the front end you never can 

make it up on the back end. So kind of give me your perspective 

on that. 

Captain STEARNS. Exactly right. So our Fleet Replacement 

Squadron almost has the same priority as our deployed squadrons 

because if we lose a day of training we are never going to get that 

back so that is kind of what we call our seed corn—our investment 

in the naval aviation of the future. So we—if that stops, the train 

wreck happens behind it because the fleet doesn’t have pilots to get 

out there. 

So between the east and west coast we are behind on pilot production and WSO [weapons systems officer] production to the fleet. 

So some of the fleet squadrons in the maintenance phase are short 

because we got to get those guys out the door. 

So it absolutely pays the price but those squadrons are also the 

ones that will rob from the maintenance phase to make sure that 

they have what they need to keep the training going. But that is 

a very important part of the entire readiness train is producing 

new folks. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Thanks, Captain Stearns. Captain Robertson, I want to go back to you. I noticed in your bio that you 

had—you had served earlier in your career as a young lieutenant 

also on the USS Normandy. So I wanted to get your perspective. 

I think you are in a unique position to give your viewpoint on 

where you saw that cruiser early on—early in your career but also 

younger in the life of the USS Normandy—and operational availability, readiness elements, at that point as of today. Give us your 

perspective—kind of give us a historical perspective about what 
18 

you saw then, what you saw today, and the differences, good or 

bad, in what we need to look at going into the future. 

Captain ROBERTSON. Absolutely. Thank you for the question. It 

is really a night-and-day story. Returning to Normandy as a fully 

modernized cruiser including the Navy integrated fire control capability—just from a kinetic reach capability, it is really a night-andday story. 

The current modernized cruiser comes with not only impressive 

kinetic surface-to-air capability but also a huge increase in undersea warfare for hunting or searching for submarines or certainly 

for self-defense in a close-in fight with a gun weapons system. 

There is also a big difference I noticed in the hull strengthening 

that comes with modernization of these cruisers. When I was previously on Normandy out for storm evasion, we wound up actually 

with a number of superstructure cracks just to due to known 

flexing points in the superstructure. I just finished an around-theworld cruise with some very significant seas and we didn’t have 

any of those because of the modernization hull stiffening really reinforced those flex points. 

So it really, truly is a night-and-day difference and just one of 

the point of this is, we have taken a 26-year-old ship, and through 

modernization, it is currently the most powerful ship that you have 

in our Navy right now so—— 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Thank you, Captain Robertson and 

Kelly, thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. FORBES. As we warned you at the beginning, the bells are 

tolling and they are tolling for us to go vote. We—I do not want 

to interrupt Mr. Courtney’s questioning, so rather than have him 

start, if it is okay, Joe, we will go ahead and take a break and we 

are going to go vote and then we will be back and we will begin 

with Mr. Courtney at that time. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Okay. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. FORBES. When we left, we were getting ready to start with 

Congressman Courtney’s questions. And so we will recognize Mr. 

Courtney now for any questions he may have. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And again, just to go back over a couple of items that came up 

in the first round. 

Captain McRae, I wanted to just kind of drill down a little bit 

deeper on your point about the Albany delay and, you know, what 

that means in terms of the submarine fleet long term. 

Again, we spend a lot of time in the committee looking at the tile 

charts in terms of the size of the fleet throughout the 20s and 30s, 

and obviously we are going to have this bathtub that we are doing 

our best to try and mitigate with some of the shipbuilding, you 

know, provisions in the defense bill this year. 

But your point was is that, you know, having an extra 15 months 

in availability, it is not like, you know, having your car in the garage for 15 months with a, you know, tarp over it. But, you know, 

the year doesn’t matter so much in that context, you know, because 

it is the mileage that—you are saving on the mileage. 
19 

But with a submarine, you don’t really save on the mileage because of just the hull life, as you mentioned. I was wondering if you 

could just sort of explain that a little bit more. So again, the record 

is clear about the fact that this is just pure wasted time. 

Captain MCRAE. Yes, sir. So, as you said, you know, the hull 

lives of our submarines are carefully managed by the Submarine 

Force and the Naval Sea Systems Command. And we have varying 

intervals—op cycle, operational cycle intervals, and operating intervals that we manage to ensure that those lives—that they make it 

effectively to the end of life that is designed. And as we have with 

some of our submarines, that we are even capable of potentially extending those lives, depending on what we see in our certifications 

as they continue through their life cycle. 

Maintenance periods, major maintenance periods we use to reset 

those op intervals and op cycles. And again, it is just something— 

those come with—whether it be maintenance that is done on the 

submarines themselves, or if it is just inspections and certifications 

that occur to certify that the material is holding up as expected, 

we don’t find anything surprising such as cracks or improper welds 

or those types of things, and that the submarine is—is doing the 

things we need it to do and meeting its end of life. 

So we will reset those periodically. The major depot avails are 

obviously part of the lifecycle maintenance. And those come at specific times in order to reset those—those intervals. It is all very 

finely tuned, kind of like gears in the turbine, if you will. 

So, as the submarine maintenance period is delayed and that 

cycle gets off, we start impacting not only the life cycle for that particular submarine, but we also impact the life cycle of the other 

submarines around it. So for example, USS Boise is scheduled, because of her operating cycle and operating interval, to enter the 

shipyard this past October—because of delays to the Albany—she 

is lined up to go into the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. 

Because of delays on Albany, we have been extending Boise’s 

operational time in 3-month increments, just as we have been 

doing with Albany and trying to get her out of the shipyard and 

back to the fleet. As we do that, we run up against these op cycle 

and op interval limits to the point where now we are no longer capable of operating Boise at sea after this summer. 

So any delays after that in her start date will be days that Boise 

will sit tied up to the pier, not in depot maintenance availability 

as she should be, but frankly just waiting on the depot maintenance to begin. And so, it is almost double the lost days if you 

think of it in that perspective. 

We do everything we can locally to maximize the use of that 

time. We have been tasked to judiciously use all resources provided 

to us. And we take that charge very seriously. 

And so, for example, when Albany was delayed, we pulled in 

maintenance that we could get done outside of the overhaul package into that period before she went into overhaul so that that 

would just help with executing the timeline of the depot maintenance and hopefully get her out on time. We will do the same thing 

with Boise while she sits tied to the pier, waiting on the overhaul 

to start. 
20 

But clearly, it is a significant impact and it is not as simple as 

saying, you know, well, I have lost one submarine day because one 

submarine is extended in the dry dock and in the shipyard. It is 

actually much more than that. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Right. Thank you. 

And so, again, it is just—that 15-month delay is just, again, it 

is just lost time for, you know, a vessel that cost roughly about 

$800 million or $900 million to build back in the day, and they are 

now about $2 billion a pop these days. I mean, this is—I mean, this 

is a really big cost to the country and to the taxpayer. 

Captain MCRAE. Yes, sir. And the other thing that I would mention is the operational aspect of that. Clearly, it affects the operations of the Albany and the people, as we talked about before. But 

again, now, the duties and requirements leveraged on the submarine force for operational time, which is everything from forward 

deployments to local operations, to sub-on-sub certifications and 

training that we do to hone our warfighting skills. 

All of those things now have to be levied on the other submarines 

that are available. So it crunches their schedules such that then 

they lose out on what we call commanding officer’s discretionary 

time, the amount of time a commanding officer has to take his ship 

and his crew to sea and improve them and train them and get 

them up to the standards that he needs them to be. 

You know, we constantly execute, assess and improve. And the 

assessment part is important. But the improvement part, the time 

to go to sea and fix your ship, if you will, raise the standards on 

board, that is even more important. And when we crunch the 

schedules, many times that is what we see being compressed is 

that commanding officer’s discretionary time. 

So we as a force do everything we can to defend it. But I will 

tell you, we are not 100 percent successful and we many times 

can’t achieve the levels of commanding officer’s discretionary time 

that we would prefer. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Great. Thank you, Captain. And I was going to 

ask Captain Odenthal some questions, but I think my friend to the 

left here is going to take over that. So thank you again for being 

here today. I know your testimony is important to us. 

And with that, I will yield back. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Courtney. 

And now we recognize Congressman Peters for any questions he 

may have. 

Mr. PETERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And Mr. Courtney, they don’t always say I am to your left. 

[Laughter.] 

That is hard to do 

I want to, I did have a quick question for Captain Odenthal 

about the MILCON [military construction] budget. In your written 

testimony, there were some—some issues that you made about the 

decreases, and maybe you could tell us where you are feeling those 

decreases the most. And in particular, preparing for new ships like 

the LCS [littoral combat ship]—maybe you can give us a little 

thumbnail about how MILCON decreases are affecting you. 

Captain ODENTHAL. Thank you for your question. 
21 

I am really here representing the Naval Construction Force, and 

I don’t have—can’t really speak to the overall MILCON budget of 

the Navy and how that is affecting the LCS platform. 

Mr. PETERS. Well, maybe then within your purview, you could 

tell us kind of how the MILCON—— 

Mr. FORBES. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. PETERS. Yes, sure. 

Mr. FORBES. Maybe what we could do is have that submitted for 

the record, so you could get that answer, if that is okay—— 

Mr. PETERS. Sure. Okay. All right. 

Mr. FORBES. We will do that and see if you can get us an answer 

back on that for the record. Thanks. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 63.] 

Mr. PETERS. Right. And then I guess I would also reference the 

Career Intermission Program [CIP], the innovative program for retention. And maybe Captains Robertson and McRae might talk a 

little bit about what you are hearing. Maybe you touched on this 

before with the OPTEMPO [operations tempo] and all that, but 

what are some of the issues that you are having, what do you hear 

from your crew about the reason that they—maybe the number one 

reason that they don’t serve longer? 

Captain ROBERTSON. Well, thank you for your question. 

Speaking just from within my own lifelines, within the ship, you 

know, we are really starting to groom a very competitive force with 

the sailors that we do have. And so, we—we weigh performance 

very heavily. And so there is really an onus on the sailors and a 

desire to really perform. Because if you don’t perform, you are not 

even going to have the option to actually be able to stay in. 

We are looking for sailors that perform at a high level. That really goes to making sure we have a very talented and very capable 

force. 

So, the sailors that do want to get out, you know, I have actually 

done a number of these over the last couple of months, interviewing them. And none of them are getting out due to dissatisfaction with what they do. They love being in the Navy, but they have 

other aspirations outside the Navy, or for possible family reasons 

that they want to get out. 

But out of all the interviews, again, within my lifelines, I have 

done onboard my ship, no one is getting out because they are unhappy with what they do. 

Captain MCRAE. Yes, sir. 

From my perspective on the submarine force, I would say first 

and foremost, this is a difficult business that we do. We ask a lot 

of our sailors and of our officers and we ask a lot of our families. 

But everyone, most everyone, that I encounter understands that 

when they sign up. They recognize the challenge. Frankly, for 

many of them that is why they choose the service, so they can come 

in and essentially test themselves and provide everything they can 

in support of the Nation, to really see how they fall out when 

ranked against some very competitive people. 

So many of us are attracted to that challenge. But over the years 

it does take a toll as you know. And it does start to have an impact 

on both the individual and the family. In terms of biggest impact, 
22 

though, I would tell you, at the deck-plate level, my perspective is 

uncertainty and instability, whether it be in operational schedules, 

whether it be in budgets and continuing resolutions, whether it be 

in shifts in locations of depot availabilities, homeport changes, lastminute modifications, and frankly our permanent change of station 

orders process, where we used to be able to get sailors’ orders a 

minimum of 6 months prior to their transfer, and now we are routinely seeing that inside 3 months that they have for themselves 

and their families to prepare to move, many times cross-country— 

that has a significant impact and causes significant strain for the 

family and the sailor. 

In some cases it seems as if we write that off as a cost of doing 

business based on the current fiscal uncertainty and instability but 

I would argue that that shouldn’t be placed on the backs of our 

sailors and their families. So it is the uncertainty and instability 

I think that really has the biggest detrimental impact. 

Mr. PETERS. I think that is a consistent response we hear to the 

budget issues and the way we have handled the budget over the 

past few years, from across the spectrum of people dealing with the 

military and inside the military. 

I guess maybe—Captain Odenthal—just ask you, invite you to 

give, sir, your take on your readiness challenges in your particular 

field and also maybe comment specifically on the overall Seabee 

force. It has been cut by quite a bit. Maybe you can tell us what 

deployment locations are not being supported, the cuts, how they 

are affecting your ability to train effectively, retain critical skill 

sets. 

Captain ODENTHAL. Thank you very much. You mentioned our 

reduction in the force. So we have gone over coming out of 15 years 

of war, we have reduced the size of the Seabee force from what was 

21 Naval Mobile Construction Battalions, which is our main—our 

main unit of action is a Naval Mobile Construction Battalion, an 

NMCB. We had 21; we have reduced over the last 5 years down 

to 11. 

Of that, nine were Active Duty battalions. We are down to 6 on 

the Active side, and we went from 12 down to 5 on the Reserve side 

as well. So that is close to a 50 percent reduction of the force and 

what we have available in Seabee units. With that, today, the size 

of our force at 11 battalions is sized properly for our response to 

operational plans and we have that ability to support the plans required in major conflict. 

We also, with those units, support the combatant commanders 

[COCOMs] with forward forces as well. We have gone down to— 

right now we have deployed 2 battalions of Active Duty Seabees 

that are always forward deployed out of the force of 6 battalions 

as well as about 200 Reserve Seabees that we have mobilized at 

this point now, and that we use for OCO [overseas contingency operation] missions as well in the Central Command and Africa Command area as well. 

So with that we have gone from—our ability was we would maintain three Active Duty battalions forward deployed at any one time 

as well as, during the war effort, usually a full Reserve battalion 

forward for four; we are down to that 2.3 as we say now, 2.3 battalions we keep forward. 
23 

With that we still maintain those forces across the globe. We 

support those perhaps at the same sites that we did in the past but 

at reduced numbers, and when it comes to the requirements that 

we are asked for, for the COCOMs and the global force management, we are supporting about 80 percent of what is requested 

from the COCOMs—that additional piece goes back to the combatant commanders and they have the ability to look at other services 

as well for engineer resources. 

I can’t really speak to what the impact is of that unable to support the last 20 percent that the combatant commanders take. 

Mr. ROGERS. Okay. Thank you, thank you all of you for being 

here. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. FORBES. Since I mentioned at the outset that we have been 

privileged to have the chairman of the full committee with us 

throughout this hearing, and I would like to now recognize Chairman Thornberry for any comments or questions he may have. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you Mr. Chairman, and first I want to 

thank both subcommittees, not only for today’s hearing, but for 

taking the time and effort to go to Norfolk and ask questions, listen, and see for yourselves. 

It is significant 10 members were concerned enough to go do that 

this week. Having visited some military installations myself, asking these questions, I believe there is no substitute for that, so 

thank you for doing that and then bringing the witnesses here. And 

thank you all for making the time and effort so some of the rest 

of us could hear. 

I am struck by the secondary effects that you all have been describing. So you get a backlog of overhauling this ship, and then 

another ship runs out of time-life while you have got it tied up to 

the dock, and it is those secondary and tertiary effects that I think 

are not obvious unless you ask the questions, so that has been very 

helpful. 

Captain Stearns, I want to ask a couple things, because a lot of 

what I have done has been talking to pilots and mechanics and so 

forth, a lot of whom deal with the F–18s. Admiral Davidson said 

Eisenhower is about ready and it is ready to go. At the same time, 

you made the point that for those carriers that are not just about 

to go, they are not getting the training that they need. I have 

talked to Marine pilots who are getting less than half the number 

of training hours they were supposed to get. 

Some of us think about that like cramming for an exam. You can 

do it the night before. Sometimes you can get by, it is probably not 

the best way to study. But explain to us what that means for pilots. Can you catch up, in the last month or two before you deploy, 

for the training that you missed for the previous months? How does 

that work? 

Captain STEARNS. Thanks for the question. How that works—the 

Navy as you know works under kind of a tiered training system. 

So we like to kind of feed the hours and then ramp them all the 

way up to deployment. The Marines are at what is called a T–2 

level, at a constant level as well, so there are some differences. But 

I will speak to the Navy’s point, is absolutely—sir, if you are not 

feeding the hours and letting them fly the hours in the mainte-
24 

nance phase—I call it, is the difference between currency and proficiency. 

Currency we talk about 11 hours a month baseline just to be safe 

to fly the aircraft. Proficiency means you are getting the 14 hours 

a month in maintenance phase and all the way up to deployed 

phase which folks are getting. But if they are sitting in a lengthy 

maintenance phase—sometimes 1, 2, 3 years waiting for the carrier 

to come out—and they are getting reduced hours, that net effect 

over time absolutely plays into their experience level. 

Once they get into an increased OPTEMPO, for example the 

Bush coming out probably will be under a compressed cycle as 

well—it takes a little bit of learning curve and there is some risk 

involved in going from a slower OPTEMPO as it speeds up to a 

higher OPTEMPO as the pilots get put through the training regime. 

The commanding officers, the carrier air group commanders, the 

CSG [carrier strike group] admirals—they, all that is mitigated in 

what we call ORM, operational risk management, and if the skippers are told that they absolutely are not ready to go with their pilots, in a crawl, walk or run is what you are talking about—if they 

are not able to crawl first, and then walk first, and then run—they 

are not going to just come out of the gates running, so we assess 

that risk all the time as well. 

The CHAIRMAN. The other thing that has occurred to me as I ask 

these questions is I think of readiness too narrowly. I tend to think 

of it as operations and maintenance [O&M] accounts, you train, 

you repair the aircraft or the ships or whatever. But I have talked 

to mechanics who are working 7 days a week trying to keep old aircraft going, and I am convinced, and I am inviting your comment, 

see if you agree or disagree—that we can cut so many people in 

end strength or particularly in some specialties, that we can never 

get ready. 

I watch the numbers as the average experience of mechanics in 

the Marine Corps has been going like this. Because they are leaving. And yet we are asking them to do more complicated things to 

keep 1980s aircraft with lots of hours flying on them. So I guess 

my point is end strength, or the number of people at least, plays 

a role in readiness as does modernization. Because in some ways 

the only way we are going to fix some of these helicopters and airplanes is get new ones. We can only use duct tape and baling wire 

so long. And so I would invite—as you have looked at these problems, do you agree with me, or do you have other comments, that 

readiness is not just about putting more money into O&M accounts, it is about this bigger picture? 

Captain STEARNS. It is absolutely correct, and what concerns me 

is the maintenance phase units. We are down to people, the people 

here are experienced and they are doing it but we are at the point 

now where if I lose one experienced maintenance chief or one experienced first-class—they get sick or he has been down for some reason or leaving on deployment—I have no reach-back. So I have to 

reach back into not only parts and planes, I reach back into people. 

There is last-minute saves just to get the Ike out the door of people 

who are—whatever issue it is there is no depth with people. 
25 

The other part of that is maintenance phase—my squadrons, because the depots are backed up, or they send it out earlier than 

normal—these maintenance phase squadrons—it is all on the backs 

of the sailors to fix these jets that should already show up ready 

to go for them to train with. 

So we are seeing that with the backs, and also, we talked about 

cannibalization, moving parts around. Sailors are getting really 

good at that now. But that is not their main job, to show up at 

that, so they are forced into cannibalization, doing parts, they are 

getting good at it and all but again that is more time spent like 

my compatriot said, grabbing that part from another aircraft, 

bringing it across that side of the base, instead of just doing the 

phase maintenance for itself. 

So there is a backlog. And there is a cost for all that in maintenance phase if they spend a lot of time just building to get their 

three or four jets and they use them in that phase to train with. 

And I don’t know if that answers your question—— 

The CHAIRMAN. So thank you and—— 

Captain MCRAE. Mr. Chairman, I know you directed that question to Captain Stearns but I—— 

The CHAIRMAN. No, I would appreciate because—it is just because I have spent a lot of time talking to pilots and aircraft but 

obviously with submarines and ships I would like to know. 

Captain MCRAE. Yes, sir. I think your comments are spot on. I 

absolutely agree that readiness is much bigger than maintenance 

budgets and maintenance execution and modernization and those 

types of things. 

Maintenance also—I am sorry, the readiness also depends on 

personnel obviously and you talked about end strength and for the 

submarine force in particular I would tell you that our overall submarine force health is good. 

So our submarines are—manning our submarines is our priority 

and we man at about 100 to 103 percent fill, which means number 

of bodies on board. And we are at about 95, 96 percent fit which 

means that those bodies have the exact amount of training, the 

proper Navy enlisted classification codes to do the jobs that they 

are in, they’re at the right rate rank, those kind of things. 

So we—we are doing a pretty good at that but if you look at the 

submarine force billet structure over the last 15 years, what you 

will see is we have reduced our ultimate number of people in the 

submarine force by about 35 percent. Now we have done that with 

no change in our ability to deploy submarines and no change in the 

number of patrols—strategic deterrent patrols that we execute. 

And so when I was at Naval Submarine Support Center in Kings 

Bay, I used to tell all the new incoming submariners that I would 

argue that each of them is more important today than any submariner ever has been to submarine readiness because if I lose one 

of those members, as Captain Stearns said, I have less and less of 

an ability to provide a ready spare if you will if something happens 

to that individual. 

So in our effort to lean the force over the last 15 years, which 

we have done a very good job of that—much of that coming from 

shore and so we have leaned much of our shore staffs, which is not 

necessarily a bad thing. But in our effort to do that we have gotten 
26 

to the point where our bench depth—our ability to respond to what 

we call unplanned losses is severely limited. 

An unplanned loss is when a sailor that reports on board a submarine for permanent duty has to leave that submarine before his 

planned rotation date due to any number of reasons. The primary 

drivers in the submarine force are medical reasons because of our 

stringent medical requirements; that is about 39 percent of our unplanned losses. 

The second is mental health issues, ability to cope with the 

stressors that come with submarine life and duty in the submarine 

force. 

And the third leading cause is disciplinary but that is only about 

12 percent. So much smaller. 

So those three are about 82 or so percent of our total unplanned 

losses. Unplanned losses in the entire submarine force number over 

700 a year from our active, operational submarines. We lose about 

700 people per year force-wide and so we recognized many years 

ago that is a lot of people. 

And so we really started taking a vested interest in going after 

how can we improve that? Now, one of the things that we have 

done—I have heard Captain Odenthal talk about the mental health 

pilot program—embedded mental health. So Submarine Squadron 

6 we have generated an embedded mental health program over the 

past 2 years. 

The reason for that is because what we were seeing was many 

of our sailors that were having difficulties adjusting to submarine 

life whether it be them, their families, or anything else, would 

often not talk to anybody about their issues until they became so 

significant that it was too late to really help them. And at that 

point they had to become a loss to the force. 

We have a stress continuum. It goes from green to yellow to orange to red and many of those sailors were presenting, and for 

much of my career, sailors would present to the medical community 

after they were in the orange or red sector. So it was really too 

late. At that point you are in casualty control. 

By embedding the mental health pilot program at the waterfront, 

we have one mental health professional—a psychiatrist and we 

have two corpsmen—staff members with him. So it is a staff of 

three. 

But by doing that what we have been able to do is develop that 

trust with the command leadership, with the sailors themselves 

and with that office to understand the complexities associated with 

submarine life and to have those folks present what their issues 

much, much earlier. When they are trending toward yellow, possibly trending toward orange, but plenty of time left to do something about it and continue to keep a sailor at sea on a submarine. 

The program thus far, in 21⁄2 years, has been highly successful 

and we have taken our unplanned losses in the squadron—this is 

due to psychological reasons only. We had 26 in fiscal year 2012. 

In fiscal year 2015, we had five, so we have reduced that number 

about 80 percent simply by having that embedded mental health 

pilot. 

And so for us, as a force, that is something that we were pursuing establishing funding for in every submarine homeport again 
27 

to go after those unplanned losses that we can go after. But we are 

doing that and we are taking all this effort because we recognize 

we don’t have the bench depth that we have had 10, 15 years ago 

to respond. And in fact, as Captain Stearns said, we are in fact 

cannibalizing people just like we cannibalize parts to get the mission done. 

Captain ROBERTSON. And if I may again just give you a single 

unit perspective from my ship right now. So we have already 

talked about the cannibalization. Just to give you numbers, currently Normandy is in a maintenance phase right now, but I have 

13 parts that have been cannibalized from my ship to support the 

current strike group getting ready for deployment. 

And we don’t cannibalize parts that aren’t mission critical. These 

are all mission items that have very specific critical function on 

board these ships. So 13 of those parts have been taken from my 

ship over the last month and a half just to get the strike group 

ready to go. Just like Admiral Davidson says, we are going to do 

everything we can to make sure that strike group is going out. 

But even if I wasn’t in a maintenance phase, I could not possibly 

surge right now. I have had, for example, one of the parts I had 

to give up was a cable harness from my SPY [SPY–1] radar. Obviously a very critical function for an air defense ship, so without 

that capability right now, I am impacted significantly mission-wise. 

Cannibalizing people—even though my manning is—I have good 

fit and fill numbers on board my ship currently, I am still having 

to support the deployers right now. I have four sailors that are currently identified to go out with this deploying strike group right 

now to fit—or to fill some of those gaps right now. 

So we are cannibalizing parts and people so therefore our surge 

capability is certainly impacted. Last thing just real briefly as you 

had highlighted what truly is readiness and you are suggesting 

there is another perspective to it. There is certainly a readiness 

from a readiness to take on that high-end fight that we referenced. 

That training, that very specific training that we need, to make 

sure that we have the confidence and thus readiness to engage in 

that high-end fight is—it needs to be developed further. 

Mr. FORBES. You have all been very patient with us and we have 

to impose on your patience just a little bit longer. We have just a 

few more questions. Let me just be clear about one thing. Your 

duty is to defend our country, but our duty—the duty of the members sitting on this subcommittee and this full committee—is to defend you. 

The least we should be doing is getting you the resources that 

you need. The least we may be able to do is to describe to the 

American people what you need, and that, you have helped us with 

tremendously here today. 

And I want to try to just bring a little more clarification to that, 

and Captain McRae, you talked a little bit earlier today about the 

importance of a captain being able to take his ship out and then 

to do the improvements, I think were your words that you had— 

raising the standards. 

Would it be fair to call that the ‘‘edge’’? As he takes it from what 

you would say were the minimum things that you would check off 

to go and in that period of time that he is taking that ship out, that 
28 

is where he really develops that ‘‘edge’’ that he would have if we 

were in a fight? 

Captain MCRAE. Yes, sir, in my personal opinion I believe that 

you would call that the ‘‘edge.’ We have—so to be clear, we train 

every day in the submarine force and we are very serious about our 

training. And we have the perspective that our submarines have to 

be capable at all times, whether in a deployed status, a non-deployed status, in a maintenance availability—it does not matter. 

We are ready to execute, if called upon, given the amount of resources and the time to get ourselves there. But our commanding 

officers are tasked with making sure their ships are fully ready to 

provide the readiness required of them no matter what part of the 

cycle that they are in. 

So we maintain that constant focus on readiness and an example 

of that is when I was on the USS Pittsburgh back in 2002, 2003— 

I am sorry—2001. I apologize. After the attack of—on 9/11 we 

were—we had just started maintenance avail [availability], and 

without any direction or guidance, we immediately—another department head and I who I was also department head at the 

time—began putting that ship back together and getting ready to 

go to sea. 

Because we didn’t know what was coming, but we wanted to be 

ready for it. And I use that as my personal example, that example 

applies to all of our submarines and all of our submarine leadership. So we do pay attention to that every day. 

However, as you said, many times certifications and inspections 

provide the command a list and a host of corrective actions—things 

that they can do better, things that they can go and work on, 

things that they can improve on, and that time alone at sea—to be 

able to operate and really stress the ship is really working on how 

are they going to go after those identified deficiencies. 

How are they going to solve those problems that have been identified, whether internally, by their own assessment programs, or 

externally, by other riders that may have more experience and 

have seen better things and be able to point them in the right direction to steer their training and their performance. 

But when does all that really get put together so that it is usable 

and so that it makes an impact on the ship’s performance—it is 

during those times when they are alone at sea. And I have seen 

that several times during my tour at Squadron 6, where a submarine comes through the deployment preparation program, they 

continue to have many things that they need to go work on, and 

then if we give them some time at sea and guess what? They do 

a great job and they work on those things, and then when they go 

overseas and they get ridden by forward deployed commanders, all 

we hear are what a great job they are doing and how fantastic the 

crews are performing. So we have seen that time and time again 

with our deploying submarines. 

Mr. FORBES. Well, I had one of—captains of one of our subs who 

described it exactly like you did. He said that period of time is 

their—when they develop their ‘‘edge’’ and he said, obviously they 

can sail the sub out, they can do the things they need to do, but 

if they had to get in a high-end fight with a peer competitor, that 

is when they desperately need that ‘‘edge.’’ 
29 

And what he worried about was whether or not he was losing 

that time to create the edge. So I worry that some of our readiness 

may be losing that edge that we may need in a high-end fight and 

then the second thing I hear you telling me is just what Captain 

Stearns is saying. We worry about our bench too that you have to 

reach back to get. 

And then the other thing I would ask you about is this. You look 

at this every day. You see the needs and what our subs can do. We 

now worry because we are only able to meet 39 percent of our combatant commanders’ needs for attack subs around the globe. What 

does that mean in terms of the 61 percent we are not meeting? 

And I know you can’t talk about all of that, but what you can 

talk about here, what is the risk that puts on the table? 

Captain MCRAE. Yes, sir. 

So, clearly I am not a geographic combatant commander, but 

from my perspective, again, we deploy our submarines to be plugand-play. They can operate in any environment, they can accomplish all submarine force missions and all capabilities and provide 

those to the combatant commander when tasked, and they can do 

it on very short notice. 

And we have seen that happen since my time at the squadron 

repeatedly, where submarines will start with one mission and skill 

set in mind, and will be shifted—which is one of the reasons that 

we do robust training. It covers all possible missions, not just those 

we expect them to be tasked with. 

So, as you reduce the number of submarines available for the 

combatant commanders, as you said, and again, I am kind of 

speaking out of turn here because I am speaking for their perspective, but there are clearly things that are occurring in the world 

that we would not have coverage on. It can be a myriad of things. 

It can be the continued Chinese you know, build-up, and the continued deployment of their submarines further and further with 

farther and farther reaches to different parts of the world. 

It can be intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance missions 

to gain valuable intelligence to provide the Congress and the Nation, so that we can make decisions about the right courses of action moving forward. It can be interdiction operations, it can be 

monitoring operations. There are lots of things. 

And it could be just having the right number of missiles, if you 

will, shooters available for a particular mission area, a particular 

time in our Nation’s life. And so—so there are a number of unfunded requirements, if you will, that there is just no one there to 

cover. 

And at that point, you get down to prioritizing based on the most 

critical of what we assume are the most critical, recognizing that 

there will be a gap there on what we are able to maintain coverage 

on and awareness of—which would then make our efforts, well a 

little more inefficient. 

Mr. FORBES. Captain Stearns, you, I think, would agree that the 

ability of your pilots to fly gives them that ‘‘edge.’’ And when they 

don’t have that flying time, we lose that ‘‘edge.’’ You talked about 

the lack of a bench as well, I think, that you might have. 
30 

One of the things that has concerned me is the Navy has proposed to limit the Carrier Air Wing One for up to 4 months without 

any flying time at all. What would that mean? 

Captain STEARNS. That means you save maybe a quarter, $9 to $13 million for an air wing to fund that a quarter. So, by bringing 

down an air wing, we know after 3 months the cold—we call it cold 

iron. You shut it down, and it means that the maintenance troops 

aren’t training on those jets, it means the pilots are losing 3 to 4 

months of flight hours that, normally, we worry if those pilots are 

going to make the next deployment that feeds into that. 

But also, those pilots, they are going to train are future pilots 

that are building those hours. So, now I have got a gap there as 

a guy shows up to an instructor role who maybe doesn’t have as 

many hours. 

Mr. FORBES. So you are not only losing your ‘‘edge,’’ but you are 

kind of losing your ability to backfill, by additional—— 

Captain STEARNS. Never going to get those hours, never get it 

done. 

Mr. FORBES. Never get it back. 

Captain STEARNS. And then, so on the back side of that, losing 

an air wing for 4 months not flying, which we did back in 2009, 

2010, it is going to take me three times the amount and three 

times the cost to get them back up to speed. 

Mr. FORBES. What do your pilots think of that? 

Captain STEARNS. There are some rumblings of that coming 

down, and that will just drive morale straight down into the—down 

to the bottom, down there. 

Mr. FORBES. Captain Odenthal, we all know, but can you tell 

people who are listening to this perhaps at home what the Seabees 

do? And I think you did say that you were down to half that force. 

Tell us how this is impacting the deployments for our sailors that 

have experienced them, what that tempo has been like over the 

last few years for them. 

Captain ODENTHAL. Yes, sir. Thank you for that question. 

So, the Seabees, simply to put our mission, we are a construction 

unit military. ‘‘We build, we fight,’’ is our logo, and that is what 

we do. We are able to do high-end construction in any environment 

out there, defend it ourselves, and take care of ourselves. 

I would like to think of our mission, really is about these gentlemen to my right. My job is to build, maintain, repair, and defend 

as necessary those forward operating bases in a time of conflict, 

that allows, again, these gentlemen to my right, the Marine Corps, 

Navy Special Warfare, to operate forward, stay—keep their presence forward, and be able to replenish, rearm, and refuel close to 

the fight and get back into the fight. 

That is the heart of what we do as Seabees. 

As far as the OPSTEMPO with the reduction there, we look at 

the—certainly with the reduction in the number of units, we are 

very quickly into the Reserve when we talk about response to a 

conflict. Where I, again, bench depth is something that reflects well 

with me there. 

We much quicker get to requiring those Reserve units to operate 

forward and come to a fight, if we need them, as well. And there 

are concerns with the timeline we have for getting those units pre-
31 

pared, when we mobilize them as well, and our ability to move 

more of that training to their pre-mobilization timeframe to get 

them forward. 

So, certainly on a Reserve side, we worry about the training 

hours, the contact time we have with them, both on a funding level, 

but also from the fact that we realize when we—the more time I 

have with the Reserve that requires training takes away from that 

civilian employer piece, and it stresses out that individual as well. 

On the Active side and both the Reserve, our OPSTEMPO, coming off of a time of war, if you talk to an average E–6, a first class 

petty officer in one of my commands, most likely has done five or 

six combat or high-stress deployments to a austere environment, 

along with others. 

So, as we go forward, we certainly—we spoke about embedded 

mental health. We work resiliency issues quite hard, have invested 

in those things to help our sailors, our Seabees, be full-up round 

and be prepared for those next deployments. 

Mr. FORBES. Yes, thank you. And the last question I have for 

each of you is this. 

Last night, I was talking to a former Secretary of the Navy. And 

he told me that one of the things that he did when he would come 

on a ship or carriers, he would go get the chief, and he would say, 

‘‘You carry me around and show me what is going on.’’ 

Because he said—two things. He said, ‘‘The chief is going to hear 

everything and probably see everything,’’ you know, on that ship. 

If I could ask you this, if I went to any of the chiefs, if I went 

to someone who you could say, yeah, this guy hears all the stories 

from the guys, and he sees what is happening—what would be the 

thing they would tell us about readiness concerns that they would 

be saying, I want to tell this committee this. Or what is the story 

they would tell us about the impact this readiness is having on one 

of the men or women serving under them? 

Captain ROBERTSON. Thank you for the question. I have a high 

degree of confidence that any of the chiefs in my mess would— 

would say that their biggest concern right now is our ability to be 

able to get out of my current maintenance phase on time. 

The—the cascading impact of—and just for reference, Normandy 

is just at the end of our second month of a 7-month maintenance 

period right now. Their concern, as is mine, is that if we are extended in any way, due to possible lack of resources, or unable to 

get any new or growth work completed on time has a cascading impact that winds up compressing—which I am sure everyone is 

aware of and has heard of the compression of training cycles and 

what that cascading impact is. 

A late delivery from my maintenance period winds up with taking away—and all those training requirements I still need to do to 

get to my intermediate and advanced level training still need to 

occur, but they get compressed. 

And so, Congressman Thornberry had mentioned it—it is just 

like cramming for a test. And the chiefs were very much an integral part of this; if we take away their ability to influence and help 

train, and make sure maintenance is getting done on these ships, 

because we have compressed it all because of a late delivery of a 
32 

ship from its maintenance period, that is a significant problem to 

our readiness. 

Mr. FORBES. Captain McRae. 

Captain MCRAE. Yes, sir, Chairman. So, from a submarine perspective, I would tell you the chiefs in the Submarine Squadron 6 

on our units have all suffered the impact of these depot maintenance delays that we talked about. 

And they can all tell you the story of the Albany, they can tell 

you the impacts that are occurring on Boise, because they see and 

they feel that. 

The next thing I think they see and feel quite a bit are spare 

parts availability. And we didn’t talk about that a lot in terms of 

submarines, but that is something that we certainly wrestle with 

as well. Cannibalizations are relatively frequent in the submarine 

force. In the submarine force total, we do about 1.5 cannibalizations every single day to keep our submarines at sea. 

Mr. FORBES. Explain what that means. 

Captain MCRAE. So, basically, that is where we have a critical 

need, a part fails on a unit that is operational, either at sea already, or needs to get underway to accomplish a mission. 

And we look in the supply system, and the supply system either 

says there are no parts available at all, or if there is one, it is not 

going to be able to be here for a few months or so, well outside the 

timeline required. 

And so, in that case, then the only resort we are left to is to look 

for a boat that has a similar piece of equipment that is not as high 

on the priority scale for operations, and we pull that piece from 

that boat and install it on the boat that is about to conduct operations. 

That results in a subsequent back-fit on the previous boat that 

had been—that had lost that capability, and it also decrements 

that boat’s ability to go out and operate in that surge capacity that 

we talked about, and that surge tank, in responding to emergent 

threats as they come up or to tasking as it comes up, as the world 

situation changes. 

And so, it does, you know, hurt our longer-term readiness from 

that perspective. 

The other thing I would tell you is—is bench depth. I think they 

feel the impacts of the bench depth, and I think every submariner 

would tell you that certainly, when we lose someone, we are challenged. But quite frankly, many times, the manning and distribution system is even challenged to get the appropriate sailor, a chief 

petty officer for example, to relieve on board at the planned rotation date—which has been on the books for a couple of years, 

maybe 3 years. 

But they can’t—they don’t have an available chief to go and relieve the chief that is onboard, and everybody understands if you 

don’t have a relief, you don’t leave. 

So now, when I have been expecting to transfer in, let’s say, 

March of 2016, my transfer is held up indefinitely until they can 

find a suitable replacement, get him onboard, and we can conduct 

turnover. 

That is good for the command, but it is terrible for the family. 

And I think they would tell you, they could give you several exam-
33 

ples of that occurring on their ships and with people that they 

know. 

Mr. FORBES. Stearns. 

Captain STEARNS. My VFA [strike fighter squadron] chiefs, Hornet chiefs, are going to have to tell you, where are my parts? They 

are going to walk right in there—when am I getting my—is my aircraft going to come out of the depot on time? Because they are not 

coming out on time, just due to the capacity. Not that the product 

coming out is poor, but it is just that they are overloaded with capacity. 

They are going to ask about, when am I getting more chiefs, supervisory chiefs to help build these jets that I am now burdened 

with out here as well. And then also, when are you going to—comment of when are you going to quit taking jets from me, not only 

to feed the deployed forces, but we also feed our test and eval [evaluation] units, and our high-end fighting out in Air Wing Fallon. 

So, we are—we are donating jets out to them as well to train for 

that high-end fight. Right now, those guys don’t have jets, because 

everything gets pulled from them forward. So I have fleet jets right 

now supporting test and evaluation for future software changes upgrades, just to keep feeding that high-end fight. So they are going 

to ask for parts, people, when am I getting my jets out, and then 

quit taking my jets. 

Mr. FORBES. Captain Odenthal. 

Captain ODENTHAL. Yes, sir. So Seabee chiefs are normally shy. 

That would be a joke. But the—they would most likely, with my 

chiefs, our technical skills and proficiency is a concern as we come 

out of the war era. We have done a lot of contingency-type construction and we need to—we are working on a proficiency to make 

sure we have those high-end skills to do any construction. 

And so our constant need for more time to train to those missions 

and prepare for that construction mission certainly is one of their 

highest concerns as well as the maintenance and upkeep of our 

equipment. 

With the reduction in the size of the force, we actually are fairly 

well-equipped today with the equipment we have—reduced sizes. 

But we continue to use that in austere environments, keeping up 

with the maintenance of that equipment and thinking of the future 

3 to 5 years down the road what the replacement is, is a concern 

we have across the force and being able to maintain the equipment 

ready to go to war. 

Mr. FORBES. Mr. Wittman, any more questions? 

Mr. WITTMAN. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Captain Odenthal, I wanted to drill down a little bit. You had made some mention earlier and with the numbers within the Naval Construction 

Group 2 force, but overall, you spoke about 60 percent of your force 

now is in the Reserve element. 

But within that 60 percent, 30 percent of those are the skilled 

tradesmen and now being part of the Reserve unit, they take the 

skills that they learn in C School and now they practice those for 

a couple of weeks out of the year. 

And on a normal demand basis, that is probably okay. But let’s 

say we get into a situation, let’s say in PACOM [Pacific Command], 
34 

where we have to surge and we have to do a lot there in spinning 

up or to support whatever may be going on in that theater. 

The question then becomes is—where does the surge capacity 

come in and where does the ability for us to be able to function 

with that large a level of Reserve Component keep us where we 

need to be as far as capability and not—not necessarily from the 

immediate readiness element, but the ability to surge in the event 

of a conflict in areas like that. I would like to get your perspective 

on that. 

Captain ODENTHAL. Thank you for the question. So as you mentioned, our Reserve force now with Seabees, historically we think 

of most of our Reserve Seabees coming from the construction industry. 

Today we find ourselves in today’s environment that about 30 

percent of our Reserve force are actually in the construction industry. The others are in other career fields. Which means, from my 

side is, I have—rather than counting, assuming that experience 

level that comes from the civilian trades, I have to teach those 

skills to my Seabees that come in. 

We have developed what we call the Readiness Training Platform, where we have relocated those units to Gulfport, Mississippi, 

Port Hueneme, California, which is our two hubs for Seabees 

across the fleet. From—rather than having them go to their drill 

sites, local drill sites, for every drill period, they come to our sites 

where we have the equipment, the tools, the instructors to teach 

those skills and to work with them. 

That has been successful, but it is somewhat limited again because of the time and the contact time we have as well. 

What happens—and we talk about mobilization of those forces— 

anything that I can’t do in that regular pre-mobilization training 

period falls into the post-mobilization period 

So we add those classes, we factor in that timeline to prepare 

them to go, whether it’s that conflict or others, to make sure that 

we have that. We will not field those Seabees, one, if they are not 

prepared for combat, and two, if they are not proficient in their 

mission to be able to perform that. We won’t put them forward. But 

it does add—adds time to our post-mobilization training for those 

Reserves and able to get them out to the fleet as an effective member of the force. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Let me ask a couple questions about the budget. 

In light of sequestration, the budget cuts there, I know the Navy 

has transitioned to having contract work for naval facilities. So the 

question then becomes, again, what happens in a surge scenario, 

what happens with being able to generate consistent readiness. 

On top of that, too, now with OCO being a larger element of the 

budget and, again, trying to generate readiness within the OCO 

element, give me your perspective both previously and where we 

are with sequester and that has kind of—fanned out a little bit 

now, but it is coming back again. 

But also in how you generate readiness in that realm of contracting out a fair amount of work and then how does OCO, in 

those dollars, affect you in your needs going forward with what you 

have to generate within that current budget realm? 
35 

Captain ODENTHAL. Right. Thank you. So across any COCOM, 

currently 22 percent of this year’s budget is funded by OCO. We 

are heavily leveraged in OCO. Last year it was 47 percent. So moving in the right direction overall funding. 

With the forces I have deployed today, those 200 reservists I 

have, are all funded by OCO and that is how we get them forward 

and use them to meet those demands from the COCOMs. The, as 

far as construction, we, and work that is contracted, the forward 

piece, we take on those missions, we have got our units fully employed forward as well. In homeport our normal, our first choice, 

for training for construction is to pick up projects from the Navy, 

smaller projects that our units can employ, whether it is on the 

base in Gulfport, across the Southeast/East region, or even up to 

Norfolk where I put troops to build extensions to the galley, and 

those sort of things. 

So we try to leverage other people’s money, other pieces of the 

budget to—one, to, one, to support the maintenance backlog across 

the Navy, but then also to get that training as best we can for our 

Seabees. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield 

back. 

Mr. FORBES. Mr. Courtney now promised all of you at the beginning that at the end we would give you time if there is anything 

you need to clarify or anything you felt we needed to put on the 

record about our readiness now, this is the time to do that. 

And—Captain Odenthal, why don’t we start with you and work 

backwards because we have been doing it the opposite way and we 

just want to thank you all for being here and look forward to any 

wrap-up remarks you may have. 

Captain ODENTHAL. Thank you, sir. It is an honor to be here and 

I have nothing further for the record. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you. Captain Stearns. 

Captain STEARNS. Thanks for the opportunity to be here and talk 

about our readiness. The only thing I would have to finalize and 

add is after being a commanding officer and then the job I had 

after that was Aviation Training Readiness and now as the commodore job, we have gone kind of full spectrum of—cost-wise readiness, we were down to the bone of exactly what we needed. 

And then what I have noticed after sequestration in the CR, 

after being in the man, train, and equip business basically for the 

past 5 years, is that we are kind of now just looking to get to the 

finish line with—especially with our A through D F–18s. They were 

never going to fly here, so it is not about—it is not about cost-wise 

readiness, it is about getting to the finish line and the gap in the 

capability here as well. 

So it is just getting more expensive to maintain older airframes 

out there and then I would just say the platforms we have are 

extraordinary and what we have coming is extraordinary but we 

have, we are tasked now with maintaining that and extending that 

life in a—there is a cost to that that is just beyond cost-wise readiness. 

But I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the forum. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Captain. 

Captain Robertson. 
36 

Captain ROBERTSON. I also appreciate the opportunity. I shared 

a very short story with you with an exercise I executed right before 

I deployed last year in early 2015. I would like to put it on record 

here, the value it was to me as a commanding officer. 

In this particular exercise, all of the cruiser-destroyer units assigned to the Theodore Roosevelt Strike Group participated in an 

integrative, live-fire exercise. Within this exercise, we had eight 

high-speed target vessels that were attempting to penetrate the 

battle space around our strike group. 

We were able to employ layer defense using F–18s dropping live 

ordnance. And then, helicopters employing live ordnance. And then, 

finally getting into the—within the vital area and all the ships 

being able to employ their self-defense measures. Five-inch CIWS 

[close-in weapon system] and then also, small arms; was some of 

the best training that I had experienced. 

And very realistic. And one of the things it gave me as a soonto-deploy commander, absolute confidence that I was ready. That 

my team was ready. That my weapons systems were ready for that 

type of fight. We truly need to start to get to that level here when 

we are talking about anti-ship cruise missiles. 

We need to make sure that we have the infrastructure that can 

flex strike groups to give them. And we need to have the targets, 

we need to have the ordnance. We need to have the facilities to be 

able to train to this and exercise this. So we can truly make sure 

that we have the confidence in our weapon systems to go out and 

perform at that high end that we need to. So I just want to share 

as far as our readiness piece, we have got to make sure that we 

are ready for that high-end, anti-ship cruise missile capability. 

On the lethality, I know that my leadership team certainly has 

been working here within this body here to make sure that we are 

getting the right lethality out to the ships as fast as we can. The 

only other comment to that is ensuring that we have the sufficient 

volume of that lethality capability. No one is ever going to shoot 

just one at United States, at a strike group, okay. And if we are 

going to be ready for a high-end threat, we need to make sure we 

have sufficient bat to go out there with. 

And then the last thing that I would like to just address real 

quickly is, is just the predictability and stability of resources. To 

really optimize this, the Fleet Response Plan, we need the predictability and stability of consistent resources that we can plan to and 

really get the gains that are designed within the Optimized Fleet 

Response Plan. Thank you for the opportunity. 

Mr. FORBES. Captain McRae. 

Captain MCRAE. Sir, thank you, sir. As my colleagues stated, I 

really appreciate the opportunity to be here and discuss our challenges that we face every day from our readiness perspective with 

you all. We appreciate your interest and your concerns. 

From my perspective, the insufficient funding levels that we receive to meet all of our requirements, coupled with the budgetary 

uncertainty and instability that we have seen over the last several 

years, are having detrimental effects on our readiness. 

And we have discussed a lot of the specifics today. There are 

many more out there that we haven’t had an opportunity to discuss 

today. It is a very complex problem with a very complex impact 
37 

that permeates our forces. So, as I think Mr. Wittman captured 

earlier, it is a complex situation. And those secondary and tertiary 

effects and impacts are much more significant, I think, than many 

people realize. 

So, the opportunity to shed light on those, I think, is important. 

And moving forward, we would just appreciate the continued support of not only the committee, but also the Congress in meeting 

our needs so that we can meet your requirements. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. FORBES. We want to thank you for, again, your service to our 

country. Thank you for what you are getting ready to do and thank 

you for taking time to come up here and enlighten us. 

Admiral Davidson, thank you for being here and for your service. 

And if no one has any additional questions—Kelly, Zach, thank 

you for coming up and for being supportive of your families. 

And with that we are done. 

[Whereupon, at 12:28 p.m., the subcommittees were adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

MAY 26, 2016 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

MAY 26, 2016 

(43) 
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51 
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53 
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57 
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59 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING 

THE HEARING 

MAY 26, 2016 

(63) 

RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. PETERS 

Captain ODENTHAL. Navy’s Military Construction budget request for 2017, which 

is at its lowest level since 1999, is prioritized to support Combatant Commander requirements, enable new platforms/missions, upgrade utility infrastructure, and recapitalize Naval Shipyards. While we are able to fund projects vital to the initial 

operating capability of the Littoral Combat Ship and other new platforms and systems, fiscal constraints compel us to defer much-needed repairs and upgrades for 

the vast majority of our infrastructure, including waterfront structures, airfields, 

laboratories, administrative buildings, academic institutions, warehouses, ordnance 

storage and utilities systems. Long term underinvestment in these facilities will 

take an eventual toll on our ability to support deploying forces. [See page 21.] 

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