Pentagon watchdog raises concerns over Navy warship readiness

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2020/02/04/pentagon-watchdog-raises-concerns-over-navy-warship-readiness/

Pentagon watchdog raises concerns over Navy warship readiness

Geoff Ziezulewicz

12 hours ago

Navy leaders up and down the chain of command identified “training deficiencies” during the maintenance and deployment cycles for multiple guided-missile destroyers “but did not address the identified deficiencies,” according to a Pentagon watchdog report on fleet readiness released Tuesday.

While the Defense Department Inspector General report is the latest to raise concerns about readiness in the surface fleet, Navy leaders say most of the shortcomings identified in the audit have been rectified.

IG’s assessment looked at the multi-phase, 36-month, optimized fleet response plan, or OFRP, and other records for a dozen destroyers from 2013 to 2018.
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The audit took place from February 2018 to November 2019 and scrutinized four destroyers forward-deployed to Rota, Spain — Carney, Donald Cook, Porter and Ross — plus James E. Williams, Mahan, Stout and Oscar Austin in Norfolk; the San Diego-based Howard and Pinckney; Chafee in Hawaii and Kidd in Everett, Washington.

While detailed findings for each ship are redacted in the public version of the report, it states that for nine of the 12 destroyers “commanding officers reported training deficiencies, such as the inability to be certified or maintain proficiency in mission areas such as Electronic Warfare or Undersea Warfare.”

The report notes that “Navy fleet commanders, type commanders and unit commanding officers identified training deficiencies during the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers’ OFRP cycles but did not address the identified deficiencies.”

When it came to deployment certifications for the dozen destroyers, five out of 12 “had training deficiencies such as training that was either incomplete, or not completed under established conditions or standards,” IG found.

Four of the 12 surveyed ships also “did not complete repetitive training exercises, which are required to maintain proficiency in mission areas,” the report states.

Examples of those shortcomings were redacted in the report released to the public, but IG indicated the deficiencies persisted because the Navy did not always complete its training requirements in accordance with the Surface Force Readiness Manual, the sea service’s blueprint for how ships should go through the OFRP.
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