Stop treating shipyards like the ‘corner garage': former Navy acquisitions chief
Shorter, more frequent, better-planned availabilities are needed to reach the Navy's 80%-deployability goal, Guertin said.
Meghann Myers | February 19, 2025
The Navy has been treating the private shipyards like their “corner garage,” the service’s recently departed acquisitions boss said Wednesday, instead of making investments that will keep maintenance periods predictable and as short as possible.
Historically, the service plots out each availability one at a time, sometimes pulling a ship into the yard without a clear idea of what work must be done and without always having enough parts and skilled technicians on hand to complete it on time.
“We don't plan out availabilities for multiple years at a time. We pat ourselves in the back if we put out a contract 120 days in advance,” Nikolas Guertin, now a senior research fellow at the Virginia Tech National Security Institute, said during a Hudson Institute event. “If you were a private ship-repair company, it's very hard to attract private capital to invest in your shipyard capability, because you're not really sure what work you're going to have two, three years down the road.”
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/02/warship-repairs-navy/403113/?oref=d1-homepage-river
