GAO Report Finds Navy Planning for Sustaining The Fleet Is Lacking
By: Ben Werner
March 25, 2020 7:30 PM
Sailors watch as the portside anchor of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) is lowered into a dry dock for maintenance on March 15, 2019. US Navy Photo
For three years in a row, the Navy has requested $40 billion annually to build, operate and sustain its ships, but the service has put insufficient thought into how early decisions could reduce those sustainment costs in the future, according to a Government Accountability Office new report.
Each year the Navy spends billions of dollars on shipbuilding, but the acquisition phase only accounts for about 30 percent of a ship program’s total life-cycle cost, according to the GAO’s Navy Shipbuilding: Increasing Focus on Sustainment Early in the Acquisition Process Could Save Billions.
Approximately 80 percent of a ship program’s long-term sustainment costs are determined by decisions made early in the acquisition process, according to the report’s analysis of shipbuilding programs during the past ten years.
https://news.usni.org/2020/03/25/gao-report-finds-navy-planning-for-sustaining-the-fleet-is-lacking?mc_cid=38e20f74d0&mc_eid=ba816b4660
