ASNE FLEET MAINTENANCE AND MODERNIZATION SYMPOSIUM KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Adm. Daryl Caudle

Virginia Beach, Va.

Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command

17 September 2024

• Remarks as prepared
• Good morning, everyone! Thank you so much, Dave, for the kind introduction and for inviting me to speak today. I am proud to be a Life Member of the American Society for Naval Engineers and I have got to say it is great to be in a room full of like-minded people who are all focused on one common goal - designing, repairing, innovating, updating, and ultimately enabling how we fight the ships of the world's greatest Navy.
• Today, more than ever, there is an emergent need for industry and the Navy to collaborate and partner to improve fleet maintenance and readiness so we can sustain forces forward during a high-end fight - because that is the commitment of everyone right here in this room - to deliver the foundation and infrastructure that our Navy, and most importantly, our Sailors, need so they can fight and win our nation's wars with decisive overmatch!
• That's why I'm thrilled to be speaking at this year's Fleet Maintenance and Modernization Symposium.
• This assembly of world class experts gathered here today includes shipbuilders, engineers, program managers, business leaders, industry partners, Sailors, and operators.
• Over the course of the last century, our nation's industrial might was crucial to defeating the Axis powers in World War II and deterring the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
• No small part of that was fueled by our nation's unmatched capacity for designing, developing, and constructing advanced capabilities, underwritten by our commitment to technical engineering excellence.
• Right now, in our Nation's fleet, we are facing numerous challenges that need innovative, precise, affordable, and executable technical solutions.
• These results are needed not only in the long term, but right now! Meaning solutions that can be rolled out in a year or less!
• This is where we, as Naval Engineers, can innovate and trailblaze new ways forward, identify alternate technical solutions, design truly remarkable new technologies, and propose better risk informed operational policies for implementation in both the near-term and longer timelines, to improve our Fleet's ability to answer our Nation's call.
• Over the next few days at this symposium, I encourage you to share your experiences and learn from each other, swarming together to attack the challenging issues we face with respect to maintenance and modernization!
• In today's complex and uncertain environment, collaboration and free exchange, amongst a cadre of individuals who value both engineering excellence and technical problem solving, has never been more important toward the goal of finding and fielding solutions right here, right now!

************** Why it Matters **************

• First, for those of you who are unsure of exactly what I do at U.S. Fleet Forces Command, I am charged by the Chief of Naval Operations with organizing, training, and equipping a force of over 125,000 Sailors and Civilians with hundreds of ships, submarines, and aircraft and support facilities across the U.S. Atlantic Fleet that can ultimately prevail in a high-end conflict while meeting the objectives of our Combatant Commanders.
• We operate on two pillars, first - the Fleet made up of warfighters, platforms, and payloads. The Fleet goes forward to defend our interests around the world, protect our nation from attack - and if needed - fight and win on terms favorable to the United States.
• Second, the Foundry - which is the sum of the industrial base, repair teams, maintenance depots, and shore facilities required to support the Fleet's operations.
• My sincere zeal and focus in improving our Foundry are why I love the opportunity to speak with you to empower the goals of this symposium.
• You see, the Fleet and the Foundry are forever entwined. The Fleet draws its strength and power from the Foundry.
• Without the Foundry's commitment to engineering excellence, superb system design, and expert technical resolution to complex problems, our Fleet would be sailing with inadequate, under-performing ships with obsolete onboard systems.
• The Foundry is where blood, sweat and tears are poured into the steel, cables, and electronic systems that are currently supporting our ships on and under the Mediterranean, the Red and South China Seas.
• If you have followed some of my history with the Defense Industrial Base, you're probably aware that I'm known for being a tough customer, demanding on time and on cost production performance despite challenges faced with labor shortages, quality issues, and supply chain distribution constraints. Why, may you ask? Because the stakes have never been higher. Our Sailors deserve every tool, part, and redundancy - we cannot leave readiness on the pier - we cannot squander our precious operational time due to continued delays.
• You all know the challenges we face: our inability to complete maintenance availabilities with modernization efforts on time and on cost, stemming in part from a lack of resources or replacement parts with long lead times or hard to acquire or build materials, as well as expected design quality not meeting predicted reliability projections.
• Many of these issues imply constraints on our design or maintenance systems and force us to identify alternative solutions to meet our nation's needs.
• As Naval Engineers, we are known for relying on a foundation of engineering excellence to find innovative solutions to complex technical problems.
• I challenge this room full of ASNE members to approach these problems with rigorous, energetic, and creative problem-solving ideas for which Naval Engineers are renowned, starting today through the open forum of collaboration provided at this symposium.
• We must identify our deficiencies with a clear eye and 'embrace the red' together.
• We must be transparent with each other, exposing our challenges to enable collaboration, and become united as world class solution providers - never victims of the hard problems we face.
• We take this on willingly so that our Navy remains the world's premier fighting force, one that can operate far forward to preserve the peace, respond in crisis and win decisively in war.
• Last year, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Hicks said in our nation's first ever National Defense Industrial Strategy:
  • "The current and future strategic environment requires immediate, comprehensive, and decisive action in strengthening and modernizing our defense industrial base ecosystem to ensure the security of the United States, our allies and partners…"
• The security of the United States - make no mistake about it - our security is being challenged and we face formidable threats on the horizon.

************ Unclassified Threat Brief ************

• If you had a good grade school geography teacher, you'll recall that ~70% of the Earth is covered in water.
• And ~80% of the world's population lives within 100 miles of our world's global commons, with nearly every megacity included. Looking at it another way, 147 of approximate 200 nations on this Earth border an ocean or sea. And the world's population is gravitating toward the littorals. This trend is increasing with time, causing overcrowding and scarcity, leading to increasing risk of human conflict in the littorals. All of which is shaped at and from the sea.
• Next, more than 90% of all international trade - almost everything we buy and sell - travels by sea.
• In non-COVID years and only to rise, 735 million containers were shipped worldwide. Continued growth in things like e-commerce and other globalization drivers are expected to cause the volume of this traffic on the seas to continue to grow at breathtaking levels.
• Finally, the seabed plays host to a large network of undersea fiber-optic cables, through which over 99% of global internet traffic passes. It fuels the modern economy. These cables are vulnerable in many ways, with real-world economic and security implications.
• And so, 70, 80, 90 and 99; all of this adds up to mean that the seas are growing ever-more congested, more contested, and more vital.
• The sea has once again emerged as a primary focal point for peer competition, where the international commons are threatened and attacked with kinetic and non-kinetic fires that are growing in range, complexity and precision.
• We live in an increasingly complex global security environment, characterized by overt challenges to the free and open international order and the re-emergence of long-term, strategic competition between nations. Our adversaries seek to supplant the United States as the global partner of choice.
• Russia, a capable power, remains an 'acute threat.' Just look at their activities over the last ten years or so to see their hostile intent.
• In addition to the two and a half years of the grueling invasion of Ukraine, we saw them conduct cyber-attacks in the Baltics in 2008, attack South Ossetia and Georgia in 2008, annex Crimea in 2014, conduct a poisoning attack in the U.K., while still posing a constant threat in the space, cyber, and undersea domains.
• Militarily, and particularly within the undersea domain, they've undergone a significant rearmament program over the last decade, fielding some very exquisite technology, including capabilities like SEVERODVINSK class submarine, they now have at least one active hull on each coast equipped with the KALIBR family of weapons systems, which brings long range land attack and surface cruise missiles to the table.
• The PRC, on the other hand, is a rapidly rising power and our 'pacing threat' from short-term to long-term competition. They are laser-focused on reestablishing the international rules-based order in which China sets the conditions.
• They also have the military and economic strength to potentially challenge us for a significant number of years. We need to be all in if we are to compete, deter, and win.
• In the last decade, they've launched over 100 warships, including some highly capable platforms, like their YUAN class Submarines, LUYANG class Destroyers and RENHAI class Cruisers, and continuously working on their own organically built Aircraft Carriers.
• They also threaten us because of their pursuit of capabilities designed to contest our access in times of crisis, such as Anti-Access, Area-Denial long range capabilities. And many don't realize that they are aggressively pursuing the weaponization of space and undersea domains to deny our ability to see, sense, understand, and make decisions at the speed of relevancy.
• Perhaps even more concerning, the new 'no-limits relationship' between the two powers, Russia and China, should be concerning to us all.
• Recently, a Russian and Chinese maritime Task Force of several surface and subsurface platforms conducted the largest combined patrol to date within the INDO-PACOM and NORTHCOM areas of responsibility.
• Just last July, Russian and Chinese aircraft flew a joint military air patrol composed of H-6 and T-U-95 bombers, which then entered Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone.
• So, their joint exercises have unquestionably increased, their joint operations have increased, and to be frank their rhetoric has increased. That is concerning.
• And, of course, I cannot leave out countries like North Korea and Iran.
• North Korea continues to launch an unprecedented number of missiles to perfect the capability of holding South Korea, Japan, the continental United States, and our Allies at risk of nuclear attack.
• Iran has unlawfully seized multiple civilian-owned ships with legal cargo in attempt to own the Strait of Hormuz and coerce the international economy. Further, they continue to fund and green-light their proxies to wreak havoc on free shipping in the Red Sea and other areas of the 5^th Fleet area of responsibility.
• The Houthis in Yemen or Hamas in Gaza will always keep us engaged as they continue to probe and attack our forces as they seek to destabilize the region or disrupt civilian merchants carrying our international commerce through the maritime commons and vital waterways.
• In the face of these challenges, the Navy, your Sailors on ships, submarines, and carriers like IKE with their embarked Air Wing - CARNEY - THOMAS HUDNER - GRAVELY - MASON - COLE - LABOON - FLORIDA - have answered the call by shooting down dozens of one-way UAVs, rockets, cruise and ballistic missiles, or wiping launch-sites off the chessboard with strike packages.

****Importance of Engineering****

• Right now, our Sailors and service members are standing the watch around the world and around the clock from the seabed to space, in cyberspace, and in the information environment, to deter aggression, promote our nation's prosperity and security, and provide options to our nation's decision-makers.
• Our Fleet does this with the power and might of the Foundry behind them, providing them the capabilities and technologies for high-end modern combat, synchronized to mass the most lethal effects at our timing and tempo.
• Now I'll ask you, in the face of geopolitical landscape shifts and adversarial navies modernizing around us at a staggering pace… What are we, the United States Navy, the Defense Industrial Base and Naval Engineers doing to compete and sustain our advantages?
• How are we applying our technical foundation to explore innovative engineering solutions?
• How do we answer the call to be ready with our Navy today and solve the challenges we face with respect to our maintenance and modernization delays?
• Do we find ourselves knowingly or unknowingly placing our head in the sand and allowing ourselves to be victimized by known and definable challenges?
• Or can we rise above that type of behavior by employing precision, ingenuity, and relentless effort to provide solutions to the complex issues facing us?
• The time is now. As Secretary Rumsfeld once said, "You go to war with the military you have." And I am sure we cannot afford a "ramp up period" like prior to World War II to wake up 'the Sleeping Giant.' And it will surely take time for us to get to the gold standard of production we enjoyed by our Industrial Base by 1943 until the war's end.
• Said another way, consider that today is December 6th, 1941 - are we ready for what December 7th brings?
• My focus at US Fleet Forces is to illuminate, highlight, and expose what won't be ready for Day 1 for a near peer conflict.
• While we like to look for long term solutions that take years to implement or roll out, there are steps we can take to address many issues we're facing right now!
• These near-term problems need to be aggressively attacked with innovative solutions with a tight turning radius, complementing our efforts to address long-term problems.
• So, I ask you to think about what we can do now, today, to accelerate change to deliver the most lethal, combat-credible forces, on time, on target, and ready to defeat any adversity?
• This requires pursuing new technology and designing technical solutions to integrate onto existing shipboard systems.
• We must collectively share our ship repair strategies, informed by actionable data and deck plate experience, to eliminate the cost and time of rework.
• We must identify durable and proven technologies to modernize our existing ship designs and onboard systems.
• We must work across our respective disciplines and with other stakeholders to build sound engineering principles across all phases and lifecycles of our ships.
• We must also train others, those who will follow in our footsteps, preparing them for the next problem set they will face in advancing the realm of naval engineering and complex ship design.
• We cannot sit back and design our problems away with a new capability that takes 15 years to implement.
• We need an all-out effort: attacking problems on multiple time scales, revamping our policy risk assumptions, unapologetically demanding better performance in order to set the standard of expectations for our Defense Industrial Base to identify and implement solutions in the near-, mid-, and far-term, solving these problems concurrently with better prioritization across the Joint Force portfolios.

***Fleet Maintenance Initiatives - GMRP/Surge***

• Our Navy's cutting-edge ships, submarines, and aircraft are the amalgamation of the incredible, eye-watering ingenuity of everyone here. Hundreds of thousands of tons of steel forged to carry our Sailors, equipment, weapons systems and lethal ordnance across the sea to preserve the peace, respond in crisis and win decisively in war.
• Now consider what the hundreds of aircraft, amphibious craft, small boats, ports, infrastructure, shore facilities, and logistics depots are required to sustain them.
• Further consider that at any given time, the Navy has about three hundred ships, with about a hundred ships that are underway, a hundred ships that are in deep maintenance, and then another hundred at a variable level of readiness with some time and effort required before they can be sent forward.
• This last hundred ships, in varying levels of readiness, form the trade space for the CNO to put more players on the field in the near term. However, it is also this last hundred ships that are often plagued with modernization delays, sub-optimized training milestones, and rigid peacetime certification policies that keep me from generating and utilizing them more effectively as combat surge units.
• To address this challenge, at U.S. Fleet Forces, we are developing the Global Maritime Response Plan, to prepare the Fleet for Battle Stations - to ensure the Navy is on a warfighting footing capable of transitioning quickly across all lines of effort to man "General Quarters" - so that we can generate the combat-ready forces required to execute our Response Plans and provide our Operational Commanders the most capable and ready players on the field.
• Simply put, it's a way to shift, generate, and control how the Navy shifts gears - from peacetime to wartime.
• But, for the Global Maritime Response Plan to reach its full potential of generating, surging, and re-generating forces, our maintenance and modernization teams will have to think about how to scale both operations and output to quickly respond to increased demands.
• This challenge is not just limited to scaling the output of our repair facilities. We also need to be thinking of how we will scale the adjudication process of complex technical questions more quickly within acceptable levels of risk.
• To illustrate the analytical rigor to adjudicate sound engineering decisions in a compressed timeline, consider the USS YORKTOWN in World War II.
• Two weeks after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the aircraft carrier YORKTOWN returned to Pearl Harbor.
• YORKTOWN needed to drydock to repair damage sustained from attacking Japanese aircraft, including that from a five-hundred-pound bomb delivered straight through the flight deck, exploding four decks below.
• These repairs were expected to take three months.
• However, during YORKTOWN's transit back to Pearl Harbor, Admiral Nimitz' intelligence team deciphered Japanese naval messages, indicating that the Japanese were planning a major operation that he knew needed YORKTOWN during the upcoming fight at Midway.
• He told the repair teams at Pearl Harbor that instead of the planned three months, they only had three *days* to drydock YORKTOWN and turn around a combat-ready aircraft carrier, which we all know, they completed successfully.
• Now even with repair teams working around the clock, it is simply not possible to fit three months of repairs into three days. So how did these Naval Engineers get the YORKTOWN out on time?
• Hint: It was not some magical difference in the quality or proficiency of the shipyard workers.
• The answer is how they prioritized and scaled their technical adjudication process. It took a tremendous amount of technical precision to analyze the most critical repairs, triage the minor damage, and then design and execute a repair plan that would get the ship back into fighting condition on time.
• Now you might hear this story and say to yourself, "Yeah sure Admiral, in wartime, we could do this too in that we would take much more risks and our risk decision processes would be different in war."
• I challenge that statement. If you don't plan that out now, thinking through how you'll adjudicate and prioritize those engineering decisions, the result will likely remain unacceptable. The technical community will transfer risk to the operational commanders without a clear understanding of the total cost ownership approach to overall risk to mission and risk to force.
• Waiting to figure out this complicated process until we are in high-end combat will result in less warships available to take the fight to the enemy - especially given the time frames of modern warfare.
• Now is the time to think and design how you will respond to increased maintenance demand signals, not after the missiles and bullets start flying.

*Fleet Maintenance Initiatives - New Processes*

• Real world events have required us to think differently about how we conduct our business, leading us to murder board, red team, and challenge many of our own current practices.
• These days, we not only need to think about stateside maintenance and repair, but also in-theater resupply and reloading also. When was the last time a ship expended its weapons load and needed to reload in-theater? I'll tell you…it's happening today!
• In the on-going combat operations in the Red Sea, we have been able to avoid damage to our ships, but we must be prepared to conduct comprehensive, underway limiting repairs in-theater also. This will require us to rethink about better waterborne repair processes and supporting technologies.
• Currently, as part of our Global Maritime Response Plan, we've initiated a program called Ship Wartime Repairs and Maintenance or (SWaRM). As part of this program, we are looking to exercise some targeted in-theater repairs in strategic overseas locations. This proposal supports improved coordination with our international partners in the Indo-Pacific and European Command areas.
• We are also looking across industries like shipping and cruise lines for ideas and best practices to improve maintenance and modernization by the professionals that are financially motivated for their business survival.
• We are finding ways to streamline our work preparation and execution processes, modernizing the way decisions are made at the work site.
• We are looking at the potential benefits of shorter duration, more frequent availabilities of reduced scope, in an effort to reduce the non-linearity of work package size to availability duration in order to get ships back to sea for more enhanced training and certification events.
• We are also looking at our contract structure… what has worked, and what isn't working now, so that we can establish long term relationships enabling better contracting strategies and ensure our maintenance partners have time and awareness mechanisms to get to know the ship material condition, maintenance team, and crew better.

***** Finding Technical Solutions *****

• We must work together to change the status quo by innovating engineering solutions with a Get Real, Get Better growth mindset. Our Navy's partnership with the Naval Engineers in this room has never been more important.
• There are some real design challenges we are facing that need solutions. Some of these issues have solutions that need to be fielded not decades from now, but months from now!
• In modern, high-end naval warfare, speed is king and speed is a game changer. Faster ships extend our reach, shortening the space between critical locations at sea, and increase the number of warfighting options. It provides the ability to quickly concentrate power when required, and rapidly distribute that power for survivability. Today's modern warfare with peer competitors will always rely on "stick and move" schemes of maneuver.
• I challenge you to not only consider the engineering behind making new ships faster, but what solutions can you find to bring more speed to our current fleet as it exists now? We need every knot on the table.
• It will be you, the engineers that will be meticulously researching new materials, revamping hull coatings, or outfitting new components onto our existing warships, in addition to planning out new hull designs and high-power density propulsion trains for our future fleet.
• Similarly, the ability to remain undetected for long periods increases enemy uncertainty and allows our warships to maneuver effectively in contested battle spaces.
• The key enablers behind this stealth are technical engineering solutions. Between improved mechanical design and material selection to reduce acoustic vulnerabilities as well as exploiting the properties of the electromagnetic spectrum through high-end systems and hull forms, you, the engineers in this room, will be the ones who extend our warships further in the race for stealth.
• What are you doing - now - to ensure that our current fleet maintains their stealth advantage, and how can we ensure that dominance is carried into future platforms?
• Earlier, I discussed the impact of part reliability and maintenance planning. Our Reliability Control Boards analyze the expected lifetime of each part and often, too often, the actual lifetime doesn't match the expected, with parts failing much earlier than predicted.
• Turns out, this issue affects the entire operating schedule of our fleet, by planning repair periods around the expected failure timeline of these components and building our spare part inventory around these predicted failure dates. This is also expensive, increases disruptive cannibalizations, and in hostile areas of the world, is just dangerous.
• While I would love for the engineers in this room to find a way to increase the longevity of our equipment, components, and parts - I'd be happy just to have a more accurate understanding right now of their expected lifetime!
• One part failing too soon can create rippling effects on the readiness of other ships in the fleet.
• Our maintenance availabilities, our contracts for replacement inventory, our accepted risk for the lead time associated with specialty parts, all of this hinges on an accurate predicted lifetime until failure as well as supply part health and inventory.
• But when some of these parts fail well before their expected lifetime, we end up betting the farm on inaccurate data, which throws our entire spare inventory plan and maintenance planning schedule out the window.
• The solution lies in a more rigorous, technical process to accurately investigate the reliability metric and operational availability of our replacement parts.
• It will take the minds of Naval Engineers to solve this problem, determining accurate, precise information, presented on real time dashboards in order to enable our Maintenance Operation Centers to ensure a replacement part is pre-staged where, and most importantly when, it's required, while providing accurate, predicative data to build long term repair schedules, accurate part consumption and COSAL maintenance for improve at sea self-sufficiency.
• The future we see tomorrow does not look like today. The capability to field, sustain, and repair by rapidly advancing technology is crucial to our success, and requires a devoted dedication to excellence in engineering.

***** Closing *****

• As I bring my remarks to a close, I cannot overemphasize the impact and need for exquisite engineering capabilities across our modern Navy.
• From overhauling ship design to getting ships out of maintenance on time to surging them to sea for combat, our engineers will be the ones to design the path forward.
• From multiplying the effectiveness of our weaponry to controlling the decision space with improved stealth, our engineers will be the ones to lead the cutting edge of new capabilities.
• From modernizing aging ships and bringing them back from the ashes with timely, relevant upgrades, our engineers will be the ones who move mountains with demanding, scientific, and deliberate approaches to managing risk.
• We must face these challenges together: attacking these obstacles, innovating new solutions, solving complex problems with laser precision, and redefining what overmatch for our warships on the high seas looks like
• We understand too, that it is not enough for us to solve these problems. We must also train the next generation of engineers to fight future challenges, arming them with the hunger for excellence and dedication to superior technical design.
• To ensure that it forever remains known around the world - just as the Naval Engineers are known for their relentless addiction to dissecting and fixing problems - that your Naval Services own the maritime environment from the seabed to space - hands down, no exception.
• I look forward to rolling up our sleeves and diving head-first into these engineering challenges - together. I look forward to you questions.
• Thank you.

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