CNO drops hints about forthcoming ‘Fighting Instructions’ strategy

The U.S. Navy is in its overhaul era: new warfighting strategy, new ways of doing business, new ships, and more ships ready to deploy. The chief of naval operations previewed his soon-to-be-unveiled “Fighting Instructions” on Wednesday, another initiative to follow 2025’s Golden Fleet announcement and Naval Sea Systems Command’s plan to get 80 percent of the fleet deployable by 2027.

Adm. Daryl Caudle plans to officially roll out “Fighting Instructions” in the near future, a defense official told Defense One.

“That document will be my strategy for naval operations going forward,” Caudle said during a speech at the Surface Navy Association symposium outside Washington, D.C. “It will explain how I view the Navy as the joint-force hedge for achieving our vital national interest.”

The “hedge strategy” within Fighting Instructions will balance Navy posture and investments against a range of potential threats.

“At its core, the Navy is already a collection of hedges,” Caudle said. “Navy special warfare is our hedge against low-intensity, irregular warfare. Our ballistic missile submarines and E-6B Mercuries are our hedge against nuclear and strategic attack. And when crisis erupts or conflict breaks out, the Navy is the joint-force hedge—the ultimate hedge, able to move fast, stay forward and deliver sovereign options from the sea.”

The Golden Fleet, anchored by the new Trump-class battleship, aims to deliver the largest Navy—by tonnage, if not by ship count—since World War II.

“The Golden Fleet will give our combatant commanders and our president what they need for the fight of the future,” Caudle said. “It will also give our sailors the warfighting tools they deserve for the fights they will have to wage.”

At the same time, the Navy is working to speed up its shipbuilding process while making its roughly 300 existing commissioned ships more available.

The service has 90 ships under contract to be built, Vice Adm. Jim Downey, NAVSEA’s commander, said Thursday at the SNA symposium, with 57 under construction, and 52 existing ships in maintenance availabilities. 

Keeping those maintenance periods from going over schedule is the cornerstone of NAVSEA’s plan to get 80 percent of ships deployable at any given time. In the strategy’s first year, according to the head of Navy Regional Maintenance Centers, the goal was to get 71 percent of ships undergoing maintenance in service-owned shipyards finished on schedule. 

“I got 41 percent, so we missed the mark,” Rear Adm. Dan Lannamann said. “We reset the mark for this year. I’m looking at north of 60 percent, and I’m on plan to make that.”

The key to bringing up those numbers has been doing more planning ahead on what will be fixed during maintenance periods, including more required repairs and replacements, rather than waiting to open up a ship until it gets to the yard, and then finding out it needs months more work than expected.

The service is also working to award contracts for maintenance periods much earlier, to give shipyards plenty of time to order parts and hire staff so that they are ready to go as soon as the ship pulls in.

“Just a couple of years ago, our standard for awarding a maintenance contract was…60 days before the start of a maintenance availability,” said Rear Adm. Andrew Biehn, NAVSEA’s director of surface ship maintenance. “We heard loud and clear from industry that 60 days was not enough time to plan and prepare for a successful maintenance period.”

His office is working on getting that standard to 180 days, he said, with last year’s average sitting at 134. As recently as last week, he added, they awarded a maintenance contract for the amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima 228 days ahead of time.

Speaking of big-deck amphibs, another piece of the Navy’s readiness overhaul has been extending service life for some ship classes, hoping to avoid a capability gap as new ships come online.

Last fall, the CNO approved a five-year extension for the amphibious assault ship Wasp, the Navy’s director of expeditionary warfare said on Tuesday. Next the service will study the feasibility of extending the service lives of the entire seven-ship Wasp class, Marine Brig. Gen. Lee Meyer said.

“Maintenance and modernization of our biggest warship fleet go hand in hand to ensure that the Navy-Marine Corps team continue to support the CNO’s hedge strategy,” Meyer said.

The service has also been able to extend service life for 17 ballistic missile destroyers, Biehn said, with shorter maintenance availabilities that extend the time between full on dry dock overhauls to every six years.

“Based on guidance from the CNO, [Surface Maintenance Engineering Planning Program] is reviewing the class maintenance plans for all surface ship classes, to help us replicate the success that we’ve had with DDGs across the entire fleet,” Biehn said.