Navy goals on surge-ready ships and recruiting are 'ambitious' goals

The Navy’s chief of naval operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, laid out her top priorities for the fleet in a recently released document: The new ‘navigation plan’ is a compilation of ambitious goals the service should be able to achieve to achieve by 2027.

To achieve the strategic goal of being ready for the “possibility of war” with China in exactly two years, Franchetti wants the service to prioritize nearly a dozen goals, including removing sailors from waiting lists for housing, make autonomous systems operational and maintain operational availability. strengths. Each target is assigned to a responsible official.

Each goal, however, is a “long-term goal,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti told reporters, intended to spur a larger effort.

“Like all goals in the NAV plan, each one is an ambitious goal. Each of them has a unique, responsible person who answers to me. I’m responsible, but I also hold them accountable for achieving the goal,” Franchetti said at the Defense Writers Group event Wednesday.

One of the goals is to achieve a fleet that is 80% ready for deployment.

“Combat readiness is a crisis force generation term, and it’s really about identifying units that can be prepared through tailored training and certification to go out and be deployed to carry out a mission in outside of the (Optimized Fleet Response Plan). Normally we have a fairly rigorous process: train or maintain, train, certify and deploy. That’s not part of this process,” Franchetti said.

“Think back to 9/11. We know that all of a sudden we have to put the ships out there to do different missions, to go somewhere and do something. We want to be able to put a process in place in each of our communities, in the aviation and submarine services, so that they can certify a ship as ready to be deployed to combat and get it out within the required time frame. That’s what I think about in terms of combat readiness.

Franchetti’s vision for response-ready forces is a change from previous service chiefs’ approach, which focused primarily on reducing maintenance overruns to improve overall readiness.

Franchetti said that while the 80% figure is ambitious, it “will push people to have a harder time getting after that.”

“How do they achieve this 80% at the moment, how can we achieve this on all other types, models and series? How can we get that out of our ships and how can we get that out of our submarines? Franchetti said.

Franchetti also wants the service to fill jobs in the active and reserve components at 100% and for deployed units to be at 95% strength.

Additionally, according to the plan, the Navy will achieve a 100 percent recruiting rate and a 50 percent delayed entry program.

But the service has had several difficult years: in 2023, the Navy missed its goal of recruiting thousands of sailors. Although there were signs of improvement on the recruiting front this year, top leaders were initially bracing for a bleak outcome: They predicted the service would be short thousands of sailors in the fall.

“Having these ambitious goals, having these goals that we really need to achieve – that’s going to drive more effective performance and our ability to measure ourselves along the way, to make sure that we’re either on plan or off plan, ahead on the plan. plan and what we need to do to make sure we achieve those goals,” Franchetti said.