Navy Growing Increasingly Frustrated Over Late Weapons, Ship Deliveries

ARLINGTON, Va. — Exasperation is growing over the U.S Navy’s inability to get missiles and weapons delivered fast enough to keep its own magazines full, let alone offer more assistance to Ukraine or other partners in need, several leaders said at this week’s annual Surface Navy Association conference.

“I’m not as forgiving of the defense industrial base,” Adm. Daryl Caudle was the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command. He stated Jan. “I am not forgiving the fact that they’re not delivering the ordnance we need, I’m just not.”

“All this stuff about COVID this, parts, supply chain this, I just don’t really care,” He continued. “I need [Standard Missile]-6s delivered on time. I need more [torpedoes] delivered on time.”

Caudle is responsible for the readiness-generation of all vessels, submarines, and aircraft on the Atlantic side. He stated that the service was working internally to improve its readiness. This week, he announced the following: The surface fleet should have at least 75 ships capable of carrying out missions. at all times to send on missions with little notice — but this progress is being hampered by backlogs in industry.

The Navy purchases two submarines each year, while the industry delivers only 1.2 per year.

“In five years, instead of delivering 10 fast attack submarines, I got six. Where’s the other four? My force is already four submarines short,” Caudle stated. The problem is worsened by ships being out of service late at both Navy public yards or private industry yards. The Navy should have 10 subs in deep maintenance. However, 19 of the 50 are either in service or in process of being repaired.

“Imagine if I was on time, my submarine force would be nine ships larger. That is a significant number,” He said.

Caudle observed that if 75 Navy-capable ships were ready for mission, “their magazines wouldn’t all be full.”

He stated that the Navy is aware of which missiles will have the greatest impact in a fight and that the Navy would like to see defense contractors prioritizing these top programs even if it means cutting back on other production lines.

“We are spending large amounts of money with these companies. … When they don’t deliver, that impacts the national security that we provide this country,” The four-star star said. “If there’s areas that we need to do better … where they can go build more stable workforces, go buy more early materials, go get more certainty and buy down their risk because we’re more committed to larger buys of ordnance or ships or whatever it is, we’ve got to have those conversations.”

Adm. Mike Gilday is Chief of Naval Operations told Defense News on Jan. 10 at the conference he prioritized readiness — including ordnance — in the fiscal 2023 spending request and would do so again in the FY24 plan expected out this spring.

“The message that I’m trying to send there is, not only am I trying to fill magazines with weapons, but I’m trying to put U.S. production lines at their maximum level right now and to try and maintain that set of headlights in subsequent budgets, so that we continue to produce those weapons. That’s one thing we’ve seen in Ukraine, that the expenditure of those high-end weapons in conflict could be higher than we estimated,” Gilday said.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro also spoke out, telling reporters Jan. 11, that the Navy and Pentagon offer a mix of carrots to weapon-builders.

He said that Kathleen Hicks, Deputy Defense Secretary, and her office want to encourage companies to build weapons for the U.S., but also to be useful in Ukraine in increasing their maximum production rates.

“They had a set production rate before Ukraine occurred; now the U.S. government is asking them to increase their production rates,” He said. “There’s a desire on the part of those companies to do that in a responsible fashion.”

Del Toro also stated that the supply chain problems and pandemic are not acceptable excuses for mission delivery times.

“If they’re having a problem set on their side, I don’t want to just hear about it at the final hour,” He said. “I want to hear about it as these problems develop, and if we’re the cause of some of these problems, then fine, let’s talk about them and let’s try to fix them early on so we can deliver that on time.”

Del Toro said the solution can’t simply be “us throwing money at industry.”

“The money that we do make available for workforce development has to be carefully laid out,” He continued. “We pay attention to how the money is actually being spent to ensure that it’s being spent effectively, efficiently, there are metrics and data that actually support, hopefully, the results that get returned on that investment.”