In unveiling the name, Carlos Del Toro called back to his late 2022 announcement that the America-class amphibious assault ship LHA-9 would be named the USS Fallujah, after the Marines who fought in the first and second battles of Fallujah and more broadly who served in Iraq.

Naming a ship for Helmand province will recognize “the bravery and sacrifice of our Marines and our sailors who fought for almost 20 years in the mountains of Afghanistan,” Del Toro said in his remarks at the Modern Day Marine conference in Washington.

Trish Smith, the wife of Marine Commandant Gen. Eric Smith, will serve as the ship’s sponsor. She will see the ship through all its construction-related milestones and support the ship and its crew once it joins the fleet and begins operating around the world.

The Navy awarded HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding a $130 million contract in November 2023 to begin buying long-lead materials for the ship.

Smith gave an emotional accounting of the meaning of the ship’s name on Thursday, following the secretary’s announcement.

He called the region — which was the focus of Marines’ operations that at its height involved a full Marine expeditionary force forward, and more than 19,000 Marines and sailors — “the heart of the opium trade, a Taliban stronghold, and a terrain as rugged and formidable as any on earth.”

“And yet, it was there that our Marines and sailors and allies and partners showed what it means to be at the tip of the spear,” Smith said. “It was there that another generation of warriors added to the storied history of our Marine Corps.”

Smith spoke of Medal of Honor recipient Cpl. Kyle Carpenter, who used his body to shield others from a grenade explosion in Marjah, Afghanistan, on Nov. 21, 2010.

He spoke of Sgt. Christopher Farias, who refused treatment for his wounds when his patrol base was ambushed in 2010 in Kajaki, Afghanistan. With fragmentation from a 73 mm recoilless rifle in his neck and shoulder, Farias climbed to a rooftop to coordinate his Marines’ fire and maneuver to repel the assault, in “true Marine fashion,” Smith said.

And the commandant spoke of Lance Cpl. Donald Hogan, who was patrolling a road on Aug. 26, 2009, when he spotted an insurgent preparing to detonate a roadside bomb. He protected a nearby Marine from the blast and remained in the blast zone to warn fellow Marines. Hogan died in the explosion, but he saved the rest of his squad.

“Three hundred and sixty-six Marines would lose their lives to hostile action in Afghanistan during the years of the Helmand campaign, and almost 5,000 more were wounded,” Smith said.

But beyond fights on the battlefield, the commandant said they trained Afghan counterparts, supported local governance and helped develop infrastructure.

“As we reflect on these years of hard-fought victories and painful losses, it is crucial to remember why we fought,” Smith said. “Our mission was to deny a safe haven to terrorists who would harm the United States, and support the Afghan people in their quest for peace and stability. It was about what they might one day become.”

Smith did not directly address the fall of Kabul in 2021 or the emotional reaction by many Marines who had served there and families of those who died there.

But the commandant told the audience, “The legacy of our Marines in Helmand is not defined merely by the ground that was gained or lost, but by the spirit they embodied and the lives they touched. They fought with honor, they served with compassion, they led by example, and they made a difference in this world.”

To the families of the fallen, Smith said, “Through the naming of LHA-10 as the USS Helmand Province, your sacrifices will never be forgotten and their legacy will endure through the generation of Marines that follow.”

Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz said in a video posted to Instagram on Thursday, “This name not only honors the battles won and the successes of our units in the Helmand province, but it also honors the names of those who left blood, sweat, tears and even their lives on the battlefield. The stories of what Marines did in combat are epic and more often today are not shared enough.”

The legacy of the fighting in Helmand, Afghanistan, is personal for Ruiz, the senior enlisted Marine.

On Oct. 28, 2009, he was the first sergeant for Lima Company within 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, in the province, he said in the video.

That day, he was the vehicle commander of a shock trauma platoon. While he was on his way to recover Marines who had been wounded by improvised explosive device attacks, the vehicle that was supposed to clear his way to the landing zone also was hit.

A Marine kicked open the hatch of the vehicle and pointed at Ruiz with his minesweeper. Undaunted by whatever injuries he may have sustained in the recent blast, the Marine told Ruiz to follow him to the landing zone, and he cleared the way.

There were 11 casualties from the explosions that day, ranging from routine injuries to deaths, the sergeant major said.

“It’s a story for me that I’ll never forget,” Ruiz said, adding, “Thousands of you have your own stories to tell.”

Marine veteran Cole Lyle, who served in Helmand province as a diesel mechanic and wrecker operator and volunteered at Camp Bastion’s trauma hospital, said in a statement to Marine Corps Times on Thursday, “Today’s announcement gives those Marines and partners that served in Helmand an ironclad symbol of our victories; a permanent memorial honoring our collective losses; and a commemoration of the individual experiences and unbreakable personal bonds we forged in fire.”

“I’ll be proud to point at the U.S.S. Helmand one day and tell my son about the Corps’ role in Afghanistan and some of my personal heroes who served there,” he added.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday with comment from Lyle.

It’s coming from the rows of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets — and, increasingly, F-35C Joint Strike Fighters — on the flight line, going through routine maintenance before hitting the skies.

It’s also coming from the runway, as jets speed by with chest-rattling force as they return from practicing flight formations over the surrounding farmland.

It’s a reassuring sound to Navy leaders — a sign the squadrons’ maintainers and the depot artisans at Fleet Readiness Center West are turning jets around so pilots can get back in the air for training and deployment preparations.

But as the service’s F-35C fleet expands here in Lemoore, both the Navy and a government oversight group worry the Joint Strike Fighters aren’t available for missions often enough. And to make matters worse for the fleet, it’s costing more than expected to sustain the aircraft.

The Joint Strike Fighter program stands in contrast to most other military aircraft programs: Lockheed Martin plays an outsized role in jet readiness, with the company responsible for maintenance planning and management, distribution of repair parts and supplies, engineering, maintenance training, and more. The government’s F-35 Joint Program Office, or JPO, oversees the global fleet of F-35 jets and manages the facilities and people that support maintenance.

This leaves the services with little control over ensuring their own readiness. But the Joint Strike Fighter Wing in Lemoore, which oversees all Navy F-35Cs, is taking extra steps to directly improve readiness by drawing lessons from the service’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.

In 2018, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ordered the military branches to hit an 80% mission-capable rate for all fighters in fiscal 2019. With Super Hornet mission-capable rates barely above 50% for much of 2008 through 2018, the Navy kicked off a data-driven effort to analyze its processes, facilities, supply practices and more, dubbed Naval Sustainment System-Aviation. By the end of FY19, the service surpassed 80% and has sustained that readiness since.

Now, the Joint Strike Fighter Wing is working with its F-18 counterparts to adopt proven practices on operation-level maintenance to boost readiness and lower costs. As part of this effort, the Navy is particularly bolstering its data collection and communication efforts.

Those efforts are yielding results: The Navy’s F-35C community has higher readiness rates and fewer aircraft awaiting supply parts than the rest of the global F-35 fleet’s average, a service leader told Defense News.

That improvement on readiness and cost matters, given the threat of a high-end fight in the Pacific and mushrooming procurement costs.

“From a budget standpoint, it is simple economics: The more it costs to buy and maintain aircraft, the fewer we can procure in a tight fiscal environment and the more onerous it will be to repair them,” Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., the vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told Defense News.

“We also cannot go to war, especially against an adversary with advanced [anti-access/area-denial] capabilities, without our most advanced fifth-generation aircraft,” he added.

Slow repair times, lower aircraft readiness

In a September report, the Government Accountability Office detailed the failures in Joint Strike Fighter maintenance and availability of spare parts.

The watchdog’s report noted that in March 2023, 55% of planes were considered mission capable, meaning they were able to fly and conduct at least some warfighting missions. It attributed this low readiness to maintenance challenges at the squadron and depot levels.

The report detailed the unique maintenance setup: Other programs like the Navy’s Super Hornets are repaired through operational-level maintenance by squadrons, intermediate-level work by the Navy’s fleet readiness centers located at the jet bases, and depot-level work at select fleet readiness centers.

But the F-35 program does not include any intermediate-level maintenance; instead squadrons must undertake more work on the flight line with help from contractors, while farming out more work to industry at depot locations and at the original builder’s facilities.

In the case of the Super Hornet, the Navy controls all three levels of maintenance and signs its own contracts for support and parts. In contrast, the F-35 program gives significant responsibility to manufacturer Lockheed Martin and to the Joint Program Office, leaving the services with little ability to change or improve the supply system and contractor-led maintenance.

At the operational level, the GAO report noted, squadrons lack some technical data and training experience needed to efficiently conduct maintenance — a challenge that will only grow if the JPO decides to shift more work from industry to the services by adding intermediate-level maintenance to the plan.

At the depots, it noted the JPO is now 12 years behind schedule in standing up some of its repair capabilities, or “workloads.” As of last spring, 44 of 68 workloads were activated.

“Delays in standing up the F-35 program’s depot repair capacity has had several effects, including slow repair times, a growing backlog of components needing repair, and lower aircraft readiness,” the report found.

GAO projects the total fleet’s mission-capable rate could have been at 65% instead of 55% last spring if not for the lack of depot repair capacity.

The lack of depot capacity is also increasing the cost.

With the depots now facing a backlog of 10,000 components to repair, “the F-35 Joint Program Office has purchased new parts instead of repairing the parts it already has in inventory. According to [Department of Defense] officials, this is a practice that program officials do not believe is a sustainable solution.”

Those officials said the approach keeps the aircraft flying, but it results in “higher sustainment costs because buying new parts generally costs more than repairing existing parts.”

Hard-earned lessons from the F-18

In remote Lemoore — where fighter jet squadrons are based a six-hour drive from the admirals in San Diego and a six-hour flight from the JPO in Arlington, Virginia — the captains are in charge.

Joint Strike Fighter Wing Commodore Capt. Barrett Smith and Strike Fighter Wing Pacific Commodore Capt. Michael Stokes are part of a “council of captains” that work together to manage aircraft readiness, facilities, personnel and families at Lemoore.

Smith and Stokes leveraged this close collaboration to boost the Joint Strike Fighter Wing’s primary contribution to F-35C readiness: operational-level maintenance performed by each squadron.

Stokes said the Navy in 2018 brought in the Boston Consulting Group to make recommendations as part of the effort to get F-18s to an 80% mission-capable rate.

He said one of the most consequential results was the creation of the Maintenance Operations Center, which monitors aircraft status daily. The center uses that data to prioritize distribution of parts, provide technical assistance, and identify potential broader changes to boost readiness or reduce cost.

Smith said the F-35C joined the center in October 2022 as part of its own effort to boost the readiness of its planes.

This data can point to problems in real time — for example, a supply issue that’s holding up several planes in a single squadron that has a major exercise coming up — and can also reveal trends over time that might make a squadron reconsider its workflow or whether maintainers need additional training, Smith said.

Stokes said one seemingly simple change recommended by the Boston Consulting Group was to put a whiteboard by each aircraft undergoing maintenance in the squadron hangar or down the road at Fleet Readiness Center West. Each whiteboard would note “the lead person and all of the outstanding items so you can see it in front of that aircraft,” he said.

The two say these practices are yielding results.

On a Feb. 15 visit by Defense News, the Navy had 347 mission-capable Super Hornets, well above the Navy’s requirement to maintain a monthly average of 333.

(The Navy previously had a goal of 341 and then 360 mission-capable Super Hornets, to reflect Mattis’ 80% goal. The inventory of Super Hornets is smaller today, as some squadrons have transitioned to the F-35C. Stokes said the 333-plane goal still equates to an approximately 80% mission-capable rate.)

On the Joint Strike Fighter side, the F-35 JPO wants to see 64% of its planes mission capable, 21% non-mission capable due to waiting on supply parts, and 15% non-mission capable due to waiting on maintainers to do a job. Those numbers will eventually shift to have more planes ready and fewer planes waiting on parts and maintenance work.

Smith’s fleet of Navy F-35Cs is already beating those goals. He told Defense News his wing already surpassed the 64% mission-capable goal. In addition, it’s had a non-mission-capable maintenance rate — the only rate the wing can truly affect on its own — below 15% from January 2023 through March 2024.

‘Ebbs and flows’

Even as Smith and his Joint Strike Fighter Wing do what they can from Lemoore to boost readiness, some things are out of their hands.

Smith is stymied by the same parts challenges outlined in the GAO report.

“Parts availability ebbs and flows,” he said. However, the JPO has a Lightning Sustainment Center with a Navy representative on staff, who Smith can call when there’s a delay in getting a needed part flown to Lemoore.

To increase communication, Smith said that Lightning Sustainment Center representative also sits in on Maintenance Operations Center meetings. He noted cross-community meetings were a big part of the 2018 Naval Sustainment System-Aviation reforms.

Warren Scovell, the director of fleet readiness at the F-35 Joint Program Office, said the organization is closely tracking feedback regarding which parts cause the biggest headaches for the fleet.

The JPO had a top 10 list of readiness degraders, which was later expanded to 20 and then 40. Over the last year, Scovell said, the office eliminated 13 of the top 20 degraders — in many cases, replacing parts with more reliable ones that won’t break as often and therefore won’t be such a drag on the supply system.

Though some parts have remained thornier than others — Defense News reported last year canopies and the electro-optical distributed aperture system were two tough ones that affected all three models of the F-35 jet — Scovell said the fleet can get down to the goal of 21% non-mission capable supply by the end of this year, and then reduce that even further. That rate shows how many planes are down while awaiting supply parts.

Asked if that would drive down cost, he replied: “Absolutely yes.”

“The No. 1 focus is always to keep parts on wing longer. So whenever you can do that, you will absolutely drive down cost,” he added.

Similarly, Smith and the head of Fleet Readiness Center West, Capt. Joseph Hidalgo, agree they’d like the center to perform intermediate maintenance on F-35s instead of outsourcing that to industry. However, that’s up to the JPO.

In the meantime, Smith is trying to apply Naval Sustainment System-Aviation principles to monitoring depot performance data, if only to demonstrate to the JPO what the Navy is experiencing at industry-led depot availabilities and how it affects F-35C readiness.

Scovell said the JPO is working on a new sustainment strategy that would move more work away from industry and to the services. He said that effort is ongoing and declined to provide a timeline for its release, but noted it would allow fleet readiness centers to play a bigger role in F-35 sustainment, including uniformed personnel conducting more maintenance and the services buying their own spare parts.

In a statement, Lockheed Martin said it stands “ready to partner with the government as plans are created for the future of F-35 sustainment.” The company noted it is working with the government to “accelerate depot activations to increase repair capacity” and said that since 2015, the firm has lowered its portion of the F-35′s cost per flight hour by 50%.

Keeping costs low

The naval aviation budget is tight this year and expected to remain that way.

In fiscal 2025, the Navy asked for 13 F-35C jets, down from a recent 19-per-year rate to reflect congressionally imposed spending caps. That number is expected to grow as high as 24 jets a year later this decade — but that comes as aviation procurement needs will balloon by 34%, ship procurement 35%, and weapons procurement 71% in the coming years, according to Navy FY25 budget materials.

It’s unclear if the Navy will be able to secure that kind of funding to grow its fleet. And even if it does, it then has to pay to sustain the new platforms.

“The entire naval aviation enterprise is acutely aware of the burgeoning costs required to sustain air operations and remains focused on increasing lethality and readiness through process improvement and driving efficiency at all levels of the organization,” according to a Navy budget document.

When F-35C sustainment overruns its estimates, the Navy has to reconsider the whole portfolio.

“There is not a single bill-payer for higher-than-expected F-35C maintenance costs. The Navy evaluates cost increases through the lens of the larger Navy priorities and balances the budget in accordance with strategic guidance; this can result in reductions in other areas of the budget,” a Navy spokesperson told Defense News.

The spokesperson noted the cost per tail to operate the F-35C has decreased as the aircraft inventory grows, and that both the JPO and naval squadrons are finding ways to improve performance and lower cost.

Stokes and Smith said they are seeking to minimize mishaps: engines sucking up debris that damages them from the inside, crew damaging planes while towing them, canopies being scraped during operations and more. When they can avoid these mishaps, they pay less to repair the damage.

Hidalgo and Smith are closely monitoring F-35C corrosion and looking to take early intervention steps, after corrosion proved to be a costly challenge with the Super Hornets and the legacy Hornets before them.

Scovell said the JPO is about 90% complete in writing a structural repair manual to send to squadrons so they can do more of their own maintenance on the flight line. He said the squadrons doing this work themselves would be faster and cheaper than waiting on contractor maintenance.

Wittman, who also chairs the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, said the Navy and Air Force are now turning to unmanned wingmen — also known as collaborative combat aircraft — to achieve “affordable capacity” in tight budgets.

He said the U.S. military cannot afford — monetarily or operationally — to lose out on F-35 readiness.

“The combined force in the Indo-Pacific will rely on F-35s in a near-peer fight: South Korea, Japan and Australia all operate the aircraft,” he noted. “Losing that capability from readiness delays, or not achieving the required aircraft capacity due to cost overruns, will inevitably hamper our ability to respond to threats and aggression in the region.”

Wittman also said he hopes the services learn from the F-35′s cost and readiness challenges when pursuing future programs.

“Contractor-led sustainment of the aircraft will eventually phase out in the coming years as it transitions to service-led governance,” he said. “Although contractor-led sustainment was the primary acquisition strategy initially, we are watching setbacks of that original acquisition sustainment strategy play out in real time.”

Correction: A previous version of this story erroneously described the meaning of the bar graphs. Their respective captions have been updated.

The Corps would like an additional $230 million for restoring and modernizing the living facilities where Marines have had to put up with mold, vermin, broken furniture and appliances, and other deficiencies.

The money would come on top of the $274 million for barracks restoration in the service’s official budget request — a sum that already was a $65 million increase from the fiscal year 2024 budget request. The Corps plans to spend that money on renovating 13 barracks, where 3,517 Marines live, according to congressional testimony Wednesday by Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz.

The Marine Corps’ wish list, known as an unfunded priorities list, totals nearly $2.4 billion. The service’s formal budget request includes $53.7 billion for personnel, weapons, operations, infrastructure and more.

The congressionally mandated unfunded priorities lists are a way for the branches to signal how they would spend any additional money that came their way — and nudge lawmakers for those extra funds.

But the defense budget topline is capped, based on Fiscal Responsibility Act spending limits put in place for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, so additional money for one service’s priority would have to come from somewhere else in the Defense Department’s budget.

On the Corps’ fiscal year 2024 wish list in spring 2023, the No. 1 item wasn’t even a Marine asset: It was an amphibious warship, which falls under the Navy’s budget.

Then-Commandant Gen. David Berger insisted the ship was necessary to maintain a congressionally mandated fleet size of at least 31 amphibious ships, which the Marines use to deploy overseas and conduct deterrence and crisis response missions.

Ultimately, Congress added a billion dollars to the fiscal year 2024 defense authorization bill to incrementally fund that amphibious ship, LPD-33. Congress has not yet passed an appropriations bill, though, to actually provide that money. The Navy has asked for remaining money needed to finish building LPD-33 in its fiscal year 25 budget request.

Throughout the past year, Marine leaders repeatedly have said fixing the barracks is a top priority. The state of the barracks could hamper the Corps’ plan to retain experienced Marines who have the training and talent necessary for fighting future wars, leaders have acknowledged.

The Marine Corps has rolled out a Barracks 2030 plan, which involves installing civilian barracks managers, consolidating Marines in the higher-quality barracks, improving the maintenance process, replacing outdated furniture and considering partnering with the private sector.

To restore the barracks, though, the service needs much more money.

The Marine Corps estimates its backlog of deferred maintenance in its facilities totals more than $15.8 billion, according to Department of the Navy budget request documents. Commandant Gen. Eric Smith said in October 2023 it would take about a decade for the service to fix its barracks.

On March 11, the day the military services unveiled proposed budgets, Marine spokesman Maj. Kevin Stephensen told Marine Corps Times that the formal budget request’s $274 million for barracks restoration came “in this time of hard choices and budget constraints.”

The Corps is now assessing how its barracks are being used, Stephensen said. Barracks occupancy averages between 55% and 63%, according to the spokesman.

“Simply put, we have too many facilities and need to ensure we are making smart investments,” Stephensen said.

Items No. 2 and No. 3 on the fiscal year 25 wish list also pertain to quality of life on bases. The list includes $119 million for base operating support and $293 million for other kinds of facilities modernization.

What else is on the Marines’ wish list?

The Marine Corps requests $1.25 billion for modernization efforts related to the Force Design initiative, ranging from developing new communications tools to accelerating vehicle procurement to buying more bombs.

The list includes $6 million to develop the autonomous low-profile vessel, something the Marines began experimenting with in 2023 and successfully used in February’s Army-led Project Convergence exercise in California.

These drug-runner-inspired boats would fill an important resupply gap for the highly mobile Marine littoral regiments that will hop around the Pacific theater. They’ll carry with them the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System to provide a sea-denial capability for the larger joint force — and the autonomous low-profile vessels solve the problem of how to resupply these units with more missiles.

The vessel could deploy from a landing ship medium or connector and swim undetected to the shore while carrying two naval strike missiles inside.

Two big-ticket items are $340 million for the amphibious combat vehicle 30 mm cannon variant and $250 million for two CH-53K heavy-lift helicopters.

The list includes $95 million for four sets of Marine Corps F-35C engine spares and power modules, $90 million for an improved variant of the long-range anti-ship missile, and $90 million for the Osprey drive system safety and health information kits to monitor performance of the MV-22B Osprey.

Also on the list are items to upgrade new systems important to Force Design, including $10 million to modernize some equipment related to the Medium Range Intercept Capability and nearly $16 million for equipment upgrades on the Common Aviation Command and Control System, or CAC2S.

The Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy will immediately start refreshing troops’ training and changing maintenance procedures as prerequisites for resuming normal operations, leaders from each of the services told reporters Wednesday.

But they acknowledged it will be months before the tiltrotor aircraft are fully back to flying real-world missions.

The Ospreys will receive no equipment modifications before they return to the air.

Marine Corps Col. Brian Taylor, the V-22 joint program manager, told reporters his office and the services “have high confidence that we understand what component failed and how it failed.” It’s still unclear why the part in question did not perform as intended.

Taylor and other service officials declined to say which component’s failure caused an Air Force Special Operations Command Osprey to crash into the sea during a training mission Nov. 29, killing all eight airmen aboard. They also declined to answer whether the aircraft would be restricted from flying under certain conditions or in certain areas due to the risk of a repeat problem.

The accident is still under investigation. The Air Force has shared its findings with the joint program office — which manages V-22 acquisition and maintenance for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps — and the other services to better understand the material failure that led to the crash.

Because the wreckage of the Osprey sat under the Pacific Ocean for about a month before being recovered, the drive system is corroded such that engineers may never understand why the unnamed component failed, Taylor said. But investigators created a “fault tree” to map out potential causes, which are addressed in the services’ mitigation plan.

The main change will increase the frequency of an inspection that is already done on the aircraft — like upping the number of oil changes on a car, Taylor said. He said the change gives the component a greater “perimeter of safety” during operations.

Though Taylor repeatedly declined to offer information about the component, he said it is not the input quill assembly that attaches the Osprey’s engine to its proprotor gear box — the component that began wearing out early and caused a series of clutch malfunctions for Marine Corps and Air Force pilots in 2022. A portion of the Air Force and Marine Corps fleets were grounded in 2023 as those services studied how to mitigate the risk of so-called “hard clutch engagements” and when to replace worn-out parts.

NBC reported Feb. 19 the November crash may have involved “chipping,” where tiny pieces of metal wear off during use and can damage the engine. Taylor did not specify whether chipping played a role in the crash, but characterized it as a normal phenomenon for a mechanical system and said the V-22 has a sophisticated monitoring system that looks for small metal bits and alerts the pilot if any are detected.

Taylor made clear the November crash was unrelated to other previous V-22 mishaps.

“This is the first time that we’ve seen this particular component fail in this way, and so this is unprecedented” in the 750,000 flight hours amassed over the life of the V-22 program, he said.

Due to that long track record, Taylor said: “We are confident in the system.”

The ‘Gundam 22′ crash

The Nov. 29 accident was the deadliest Air Force mishap since 2018, and the fourth fatal Osprey crash in a two-year span. Twenty U.S. troops have died in Osprey incidents since March 2022.

The downed crew of “Gundam 22″ included Osprey pilots Maj. Jeff Hoernemann, Maj. Luke Unrath and Capt. Terry Brayman; medical personnel Maj. Eric Spendlove and Tech. Sgt. Zach Lavoy; flight engineers Staff Sgt. Jake Turnage and Senior Airman Kody Johnson; and airborne linguist Staff Sgt. Jake Galliher.

Six were stationed at Japan’s Yokota Air Base; two worked at Kadena Air Base. All were assigned to the Air Force’s 353rd Special Operations Wing.

The weeks-long, multinational search effort successfully recovered the bodies of all but Spendlove.

The U.S. military now flies hundreds of V-22s, largely operated by the Marines. The tiltrotor aircraft is known for its towering nacelles that allow it to launch and land like a helicopter, and speed forward like a fixed-wing plane. Troops use the unique aircraft to slip in and out of areas without established runways, where fixed-wing planes may not be able to land with troops and supplies.

The Marine Corps owns nearly 350 Ospreys; the Air Force and Navy operate smaller fleets at around 50 and 30 aircraft, respectively.

Beyond the safety and accident investigation boards studying the most recent crash, Air Force Special Operations Command is also conducting a deep-dive into its CV-22 Osprey program to determine whether it provides adequate training, resources and other factors to ensure airmen’s safety.

The Government Accountability Office and House Committee on Oversight and Accountability have also launched their own probes into the V-22. On Wednesday, Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the House oversight committee, said it had not yet received information from the military as it looks into the aircraft’s safety and performance.

“Serious concerns remain, such as accountability measures put in place to prevent crashes, a general lack of transparency, how maintenance and operational upkeep is prioritized, and how DOD assesses risks,” Comer said in a statement. “We will continue to rigorously investigate the DOD’s Osprey program to attain answers to our questions on behalf of American taxpayers and protect U.S. service members defending our nation.”

Marines prepare

As the biggest user of the V-22 platform by far, the Marine Corps has been most affected by the monthslong grounding. It relies on the Osprey to move people, supplies and weapons, and operates from ship decks and from ground bases.

Brig. Gen. Richard Joyce, the assistant deputy commandant for aviation, told reporters the Marine Corps has focused on keeping up troops’ proficiency on the Osprey since the grounding began in early December so the service could resume flights as quickly as possible.

“Our simulator utilization has been maximized to keep proficiency as much as possible in the virtual environment,” he said.

The service has gone as far as sending MV-22 pilots in Djibouti thousands of miles away to use simulators in Japan, and shipping MV-22 pilots who are deployed to the Middle East with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit back home to North Carolina for simulator training.

Now that the program office has cleared the aircraft to fly, the Corps’ most experienced pilots and aircrew will begin maintenance-check flights to get the Ospreys up in the air, then retrain on “core and basic skills,” Joyce said. Once those top personnel have brushed up on the fundamentals, they’ll pair with junior pilots and crew for additional basic training.

Joyce said it would take about a month for a squadron to get everyone back up to speed basic skills.

However, it will take more time for the personnel to retrain on more advanced skills and mission-specific tasks for combat assaults, transport flights and other missions.

The general said it would take until late spring or early summer to get back to pre-grounding readiness levels.

V-22 squadrons will go through more consumable parts, like filters, as they take on additional inspections and maintenance, he said. Those parts and training support will first go to deployed units, followed by squadrons with upcoming deployments, squadrons participating in key exercises or service-level training events, and eventually to test-and-evaluation units and those farthest from a future deployment.

The amphibious assault ship Boxer and the 15th MEU are set to deploy from California this spring, and Joyce said it’s not clear yet if they’ll be ready to bring the V-22 along. It’s one of the most pressing decisions related to resuming V-22 flight operations, he said.

Air Force’s ongoing studies

Airmen have done the work required to keep the Air Force’s Osprey fleet healthy during the three-month standdown, but “there’s only so much they can do with aircraft that are not flying,” Air Force Special Operations Command boss Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind told reporters Wednesday.

He described a 12-week road map to getting the Ospreys back in the air that adds new maintenance requirements and allows experienced airmen to lead the way. The service will deviate from that plan as needed if work isn’t progressing on schedule.

Returning the aircraft to service begins with ground and simulator training that will include new safety controls and briefings, a review of aircraft maintenance records and refining squadron-level training plans to implement the new safety protocols, Bauernfeind said.

The Air Force did not elaborate on what new safety protocols will be introduced. AFSOC held an all-hands for Osprey crews Feb. 22-23 at Hurlburt Field, Florida, to explain the new safety protocols.

“We received very positive feedback that it was very beneficial to the crews,” Bauernfeind said.

The second phase will focus on returning air crews and maintainers to basic proficiency, initially targeted at senior aviators, instructors, evaluators and weapons officers. Simulator training has helped keep skills sharp during the standdown.

The phased approach gives the service time to absorb findings from the service’s initial safety investigation, an internal report meant to root out the cause of a mishap and prevent future occurrences. Bauernfeind received and accepted the findings of the safety board March 1.

He expects it will take the service more than three months to reach the level of proficiency it had on the Osprey before the Nov. 29 crash.

Bauernfeind said he’s confident in the service’s ability to safely resume Osprey operations before wrapping up two ongoing investigations. The Air Force has kept the families of the downed crew informed about the process, but has not told them the results of the recently completed safety investigation board.

“I have confidence that we know enough now to return to fly,” he said.

Navy’s path to at-sea missions

The Navy will take a similarly cautious approach to resuming its flights, putting only its most experienced personnel in the air first for basic flights in daytime-only conditions, Commander of Naval Air Forces Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever told reporters.

Those top personnel will then pair with junior sailors and eventually resume night operations and other, more complex training. The Navy will lastly resume training new pilots and aircrew at the fleet replacement squadrons.

But Cheever warned that returning to flight wasn’t the same as returning to mission: It may be several more months until the Navy sees its CMV-22Bs flying operational missions to haul cargo and people to aircraft carriers at sea.

Cheever said the Navy would avoid long, over-ocean flights until all personnel had built up sufficient proficiency. But when asked about any restrictions on the aircraft regarding duration of over-water flights, he deferred to NAVAIR. Taylor, from the V-22 program office under NAVAIR, declined to say whether there were or were not any operational limitations for the planes under the new return-to-flight plan.

Cheever highlighted the Navy’s flexibility and said all carriers at sea had fared well during the V-22 grounding. The Navy relied on its C-2A Greyhound, which is set to sundown in 2026 as it’s replaced by the CMV-22B, to resupply carriers at sea, including the Theodore Roosevelt deployed in the Indo-Pacific today.

He said the Navy also relied more heavily on its replenishment ship fleet and looked to load more goods onto carriers when they were in port.

But he noted the importance of getting the CMV-22 back to its mission, saying it can conduct medical evacuations and haul large F-35C engine components — unlike its aging predecessor.

Rear Adm. Brad Andros, the commander of NECC, told Defense News he’s been tasked with drawing up ideas for the “NECC of the future,” in line with a broader Navy Force Design 2045 effort.

Using the Maritime Expeditionary Security Forces as an example, he said over the last two decades they evolved from a riverine force into one that now conducts escort missions and port security operations.

“They’ve got to develop into creating a bastion for the ships and submarines” on patrol or even in combat overseas. The 2000 attack on Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Cole highlighted the importance of scanning the waters for asymmetric threats — in that case, a bomb-laden small boat — but current events show this maritime security force will have to keep an eye out for unmanned boats as well as unmanned drones in the air and unmanned craft under the water, too.

If the Maritime Expeditionary Security Forces will have to become counter-unmanned experts to conduct their mission, “while I’m at it, why don’t I just be able to do the offensive side of it as well?”

Andros said this led to a larger conversation about NECC’s role, partially inspired by current events.

“Taking what we’re seeing in the Black Sea, taking what we’re seeing in the Red Sea: how do we become that dilemma-creator?” he said.

Ukrainian forces have been able to alter what activities Russian ships can conduct in the Black Sea based on their shore-based drone operations. Similarly, the Houthi forces ashore in Yemen have severely restricted shipping in the Red Sea due to their shore-based attacks.

In both cases, the forces didn’t need to be at sea on expensive ships; they have been effective controlling a confined body of water from land.

Andros said the Marine Corps is pursuing its own version of this with the Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept. He said NECC wants to find a way for its force to be additive to what the Marines are doing.

If done right, though, he said NECC could free up a capital ship from having to protect a confined body of water, assuming the U.S. had the right agreements in place to put NECC forces on the ground.

Andros acknowledged this is a departure from NECC’s traditional work, but it may be necessary to have offensive capabilities in order to adequately create a safe haven for U.S. ships and subs overseas.

Navy Expeditionary Combat Command today is “built on protect: law enforcement and patrolling,” the admiral said.

To go after these offensive capabilities, he said the command would have to look into what technical skills the sailors would need for this work, ensure the right ratings and structures are in place to man these units, and realign resources to equip these sailors with offensive drones and other systems.

“It’s not a wholesale change, but it’s enough of a tweak that it’s got to be very deliberate, and it’s going to probably be a good five- to seven-year process to get after it,” Andros said.

Equipment reset

As part of the modernization effort, Andros is looking at NECC’s mismatched gear and considering resetting the inventory.

The force has done a lot of acquisition outside the formal capability development process so it could move fast, he said. It typically bought things that were commercial-off-the-shelf, not expensive, and in small quantities.

As a result, there’s not always commonality throughout the whole NECC force, creating a particular challenge for the sailors tasked with maintaining them.

Asked what he wanted from industry as NECC considers this equipment reset, Andros said the two most important things are that capabilities are packaged into small form factors, and that unit-level sailors can repair themselves.

Andros anticipates increasingly operating in locations without a mature logistics infrastructure, which makes the ability for the sailors to fix their own gear pivotal. He noted that configuration management — ensuring all the radios are common, all the drones are common, and so on — is important for maintainability and one of the reasons NECC is considering this gear reset.

Rearming ships at sea

NECC already has the ability to reload missiles into ships’ vertical launching system cells from ashore or from a barge at the pier, through its Navy Expeditionary Logistics Support Group.

But the idea of being able to reload VLS cells at sea has taken on a new importance in the last year, after Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro highlighted it as a key gap the Navy needed to fill to prepare for a potential war in the Pacific.

So expeditionary reload teams from NECC have been called in as subject matter experts during testing, including an August 2023 demonstration involving destroyer Porter and Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ship William McLean.

This took place during the Large Scale Exercise 2023 event, which Andros said was important.

“At the tactical level — the humans doing it, taking an object, swinging it over and putting it in — we’re good,” he said, even if the specific systems being tested as part of Del Toro’s effort are new.

But who would command and control this evolution — who would call for the rearm-at-sea to take place, who would be in charge of safety, who would actually operate the cranes and more — still hasn’t been decided. Incorporating this evolution into a major fleet exercise allowed fleet leaders to start working through some of those questions, he said.

As for whether his NECC sailors would ultimately be the ones to embark on Military Sealift Command ships and conduct the rearming themselves, or if MSC would train its crews to operate the cranes, Andros said, “either way is fine by me, just as long as whoever does it is certified to operate the equipment.”

The U.S. military may run out of personnel funds before the end of the year, be forced to scale back operations and see ongoing modernization efforts harmed if Congress fails to pass a defense spending bill by the end of next week, service leaders warned Tuesday.

The undersecretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force said they’d have billions of dollars in “misaligned” funds — money that exists but not in the right budget lines to support their current spending needs — if they’re stuck with a full-year continuing resolution that keeps fiscal 2023 spending levels through the rest of 2024.

They agree that they’d have to prioritize current operations first, then people and then acquisition and modernization in a CR.

“You see sailors and Marines across the globe today, performing important missions: the Red Sea is an excellent example of how current operations take precedence,” Navy Under Secretary Erik Raven told reporters at the Pentagon.

Without sufficient funds, he said, “we have to make tough choices. But between the ability to fight tonight and be ready for all the threats, versus preparing for the future and modernizing our forces — it is a tough decision, but we have to lay our chips somewhere, and that’s on the ability to perform our missions today.”

Raven said the Navy’s ability to make that prioritization, though, would require Congress to grant the services some “unprecedented flexibilities” in the form of massive reprogrammings, or moving money from one line item into another.

The Navy, for example, would have $26 billion in the wrong places, and would need Congress to approve $13 billion in formal reprogrammings — more than twice the money Congress approves for the entire Defense Department in a typical year, he said.

But the reprogramming frenzy would be vital to mitigate the risk the services would take in their modernization efforts and industry would face if contracts are delayed or nixed altogether.

The Army is facing a similar misalignment in funds, to the tune of $6 billion.

“These are production rate increases, new starts — both in programs for acquisition as well as military construction projects that we cannot start,” Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo said.

The Air Force’s misalignment in funds equates to over $13 billion and “impacts are particularly challenging in the Space Force, who has seen their budgets rising over the last couple of years,” Air Force Under Secretary Jones said.

‘Burning hotter’

Further complicating funding this fiscal year is the fact that Congress has yet to pass a sweeping supplemental request, which the Pentagon hoped would supply weapons to Ukraine and Israel in support of ongoing wars for both countries and would also fund the Southwest border mission. The lack of supplemental funding compounds the impact of a long-term CR, Camarillo said.

The Army is spending $500 million out of its base budget for operations costs in the European theater, another $100 million in the U.S. Central Command area of operations and another $500 million for the operations along the U.S. Southwest border.

“At one point in time, there was a thought that all of this could be funded through a supplemental, and it is now currently, today, in FY24, being funded 100% out of the Army’s base budget,” Camarillo said.

“We are just burning hotter than we normally would across all of our appropriations accounts,” he said. “[U.S. Army Europe and Africa] in Germany has explained that … they will run out of money this summer in the absence of extraordinary relief, aka a reprogramming.”

This will be a problem across the board, he added, to include running out of funds in the Army’s military personnel account.

Industry impacts

The services planned to ramp up munitions spending in FY24, to bolster their own stockpiles as a hedge against a future fight and to replenish allies’ and partners’ stocks.

A year-long CR puts that industry ramp-up in peril.

Camarillo said he was “particularly concerned” the CR would not allow the services to “send that strong signal to give industry the incentive to be able to facilitize, invest in a workforce and be able to do those extra shifts that we know that we need in order to restore our munitions.”

Camarillo said the Army intended to kick off a multiyear procurement effort for the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (PAC-3 MSE) interceptors in FY24. Under a full-year CR, it would be $1.2 billion short to reach the production rates needed to achieve the economic order quantities and savings associated with the multiyear procurement deal.

Lockheed Martin has invested significantly in the PAC-3 MSE line to grow production from 550 missiles per year to 650. The Army requested in its FY24 budget $775 million to ramp up that production. The company intends to grow production beyond 650 in the following year, as demand increases due to the war in Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East.

Camarillo added the Army could not begin to field its Mid Range Capability missile to the first unit, which is important to its Pacific deterrence, due to new programs not being allowed to start under continuing resolutions. Nor could it increase production levels for the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, Javelin missile, and 155mm munitions.

“I will just say that we have always said our goal was to get on 155 artillery 100,000 per month rounds by the end of calendar year ‘25. We cannot get there unless we get both the appropriation and we get the supplemental,” Camarillo said.

“It’s very challenging, because we’re asking industry to lean as far forward as they possibly can and to make investments both in additional personnel, unique tooling and machining that’s required to ramp up production capacity,” Camarillo said.

And the Army planned to buy 225 Coyote counter-unmanned aerial system interceptors – a spending need that hits home, he said, due to the recent deaths of three soldiers in Jordan who were killed by a drone strike from Iran-backed militants — but those, too, could not be purchased in a year-long CR.

For the Navy, Raven said the sea service wanted to double its Standard Missile 6 spending — something particularly timely, as Navy ships are expending the older SM-2 missiles almost daily in the Red Sea, shooting down Houthi missiles and drones — but that cannot happen under the full-year CR.

After the Navy just last week awarded a maintenance contract to HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding to overhaul the attack submarine Boise – which has languished at the pier since 2015 and has been unable to undergo repairs at either a public or private repair yard – Raven said a full-year CR would render the Navy unable to actually fund and execute that contract this year due to a $600 million shortfall in the submarine maintenance funds.

It would also see a $800 million shortfall in amphibious ship spending that could put at risk America-class amphibious assault ship construction, a $2 billion shortfall in submarine construction spending that would threaten the Virginia-class attack sub program, and more.

For the Air Force, Kristyn Jones, who is performing the duties of the under secretary of the Air Force, said the service has five contractors onboard for its collaborative combat aircraft effort, but that wouldn’t be able to move forward.

The full-year CR would also hamper production increases on the Joint Strike Missile and the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter, both of which the Air Force says it needs for a high-end fight, as well as spending on the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile for facilitization to support future production increases.

“We hear over and over: the industry wants that solid demand signal so they know how to invest, they can support the facilitization — and by having this uncertainty, it really has negative impacts across the defense industrial base,” Jones said.

The milestone — something the Defense Department and the other armed services still have not achieved — comes after almost two decades of trying to prepare the Corps’ records and several failed audits along the way.

During this two-year audit, the Marine Corps had independent third-party auditors from Ernst and Young vet the value of all its assets listed on financial statements. The Corps also had to prove that every single item existed and was where the service said it was.

Gregory Koval, the assistant deputy commandant for resources, told reporters the audit team made more than 70 site visits in the U.S. and around the world. In these visits, they checked more than 7,800 real property assets such as land and buildings; 5,900 pieces of military equipment; 1.9 million pieces of non-ammunition supplies, such as spare parts; and 24 million items of ammunition, some of which are stored at Army and Navy facilities.

If a vehicle wasn’t where it was listed as being because it was out conducting operations, or a piece of ammunition wasn’t there because it had already been shot in a recent exercise, the Corps had to show documentation or photos of that, too, in order to explain discrepancies.

Koval said the final financial report states the Marine Corps passed its audit but still has some areas where it can improve.

Lt. Gen. James Adams, the deputy commandant for programs and resources, said one area of focus is automating processes. Today, there are disparate systems where data must be manually moved from one system to another, introducing the opportunity for error. The service is moving toward integrated, automated systems that would avoid human error in sharing information between human resources and financial data systems, for example.

Adams said that passing the audit now will make all future ones more manageable. This last audit asked a third party to validate the existence and the value of every single thing the Marines own, which required significant historical research, he explained.

Subsequent audits, on the other hand, will be able to assume the past information is correct and therefore only cover “from this point forward,” instead asking Marines to prove information related to that fiscal year’s financial transactions.

Adams said the Corps got close to completing past audits in a single fiscal year, but because of the immense historical research, they couldn’t get the audit completed and over the finish line in a single year. For the fiscal year 2023 audit, the service requested an extension, which could prove to be a model for the other services.

“It was a goal of the commandant of the Marine Corps to pass the audit because he wants to show the credibility of the Marine Corps back to the Congress and the taxpayer,” Ed Gardiner, the assistant deputy commandant for programs and resources, told reporters.

In addition to having more time, this audit also used the military’s new general ledger software, Defense Agencies Initiative, in which auditors had confidence, according to Gardiner.

Gardiner explained the services were, by law, supposed to start financial audits in the 1990s, but the Marine Corps didn’t begin producing statements in preparation for an audit until 2006. The first audit in 2010 showed plenty of room for improvement, he said. In late 2013, the Marines announced they had passed a limited-scope audit for fiscal year 2012 — but in March 2015, a number of financial and oversight leaders reported the results were unreliable and the clean pass would be rescinded.

In 2017, the Marine Corps began conducting full financial statement audits.

The 2023 full financial statement audit was conducted to the highest standards, Gardiner said, with the Ernst and Young team not only being audited themselves by a peer-review team but also by the Pentagon’s inspector general team.

“We’ve been all the way to the end of the process, and we have lessons learned that we can share with the rest of the department,” he said, adding the Marine Corps hopes these lessons “can be an accelerant for the rest of the department.”

Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord made similar remarks in November 2023, when the Pentagon failed its sixth audit since 2018.

Noting the Marines’ extension, McCord said that “we are very focused on it as a test case for the department and the larger services.”

“Whatever results of that may be when we get the auditor’s final opinion, I want to commend the USMC and, in particular, (Marine Corps Commandant Gen.) Eric Smith for their leadership and effort,” McCord added.

Carlos Del Toro said Thursday the Maritime Economic Deterrence Executive Council is needed because other countries have taken steps that threaten the Navy’s technology development and supply chain.

He described “exploiting supply chain vulnerabilities, adversarial capital investments in companies developing technologies that are critical to our fleet and our force” and ongoing “intellectual property theft” as “concerted actions designed to weaken our competitive advantages, not only at sea but on the world’s economic stage.”

The new council is co-chaired by Vice Adm. Francis Morley, the top uniformed advisor to the Navy’s acquisition community, and Chris Diaz, the secretary’s chief of staff, Del Toro said at an Aspen Strategy Group event in New York.

The council includes representation from the research and development community, supply chain and critical infrastructure experts, and intelligence and law enforcement organizations within the Department of the Navy.

Del Toro said this group, using authorities already granted to the department, “will focus on mitigating adversarial foreign investment risks, innovation and technology protection, supply chain integrity initiatives, and the coordination and protection of research efforts across both the government as well as the private sector.”

Morley, speaking at the same event, said the group had an initial meeting to discuss the challenges ahead. He said the meeting made clear each community has been taking its own steps to protect intellectual property, research and supply chains, but that they could accomplish more working in tandem.

Del Toro said the council’s establishment follows other Biden administration efforts to shore up “seams” between the military, the traditional defense industrial base and the innovation sector.

He cited the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act as an early step to ensure American independence in critical technology and manufacturing sectors.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy this month released a 2024 list of critical and emerging technologies with national security importance, including artificial intelligence, hypersonics and quantum information.

And, he added, the Department of Defense last month released its first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy outlining how to modernize the defense sector.

Without them, according to Mark Cancian, who ran a 2022 wargame for the Center for Strategic and International Studies that examined this exact scenario, China couldn’t invade the neighboring island.

But to sink these amphibs, forces would have to destroy a protective ring of combatants with air defense and anti-submarine capabilities, as well as decoy ships and merchant vessels moving invasion forces and their gear.

U.S. submarines would “rapidly fire everything they have” at the multitude of targets, Cancian said, ”using up torpedoes at a much, much higher rate than the U.S. has expected to do in the past.”

Navy jets, too, would join in — but they’d run out of Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles within days, forcing the aircraft to get ever closer to Chinese ships and planes so shorter-range missiles can reach their targets.

It’s this nightmare scenario that’s driving the Navy to increase its stockpile of key munitions: the LRASM, the MK 48 heavyweight torpedo, the Standard Missile weapons and the Maritime Strike Tomahawk, among others.

Indeed, the service has dramatically increased its weapons spending in the last two years. After slowly ticking up from $3 billion to $4 billion over seven years, Navy weapons spending jumped more than 70% from fiscal 2022 to fiscal 2024, when the service requested $6.9 billion.

But output on production lines remains hampered by supply chain challenges, leaving the Navy with too few of the longest-range and most lethal weapons it would want in a fight.

Large defense contractors say they’ve done their part in recent years to expand their production facilities, hire and train workers, and modernize their processes. But until key suppliers can deliver critical components faster, including rocket motors and electronics, the overall munitions production rate can’t increase.

The Navy included $380 million in its FY24 budget plans to address some of these supply chain bottlenecks, and it kicked off four multiyear procurement contracts to provide stable funding. But industry executives say it will simply take time for troubled suppliers to speed up production.

Certain electronics, for instance, are slowing torpedo production, according to Steve Rigdon, SAIC’s vice president for undersea weapons.

“That is the critical path for a lot of our production,” he told Defense News. “Even if we fixed everything else right now, until we get [the vendor] to increase [its] production, which is something that we’re actively doing right now, we couldn’t increase production.”

Maxing out production

The Navy stopped building torpedoes after the Cold War. Service officials, facing tighter post-war budgets, decided they had a sufficient inventory for a fleet without a real threat.

Missile programs continued, as the Navy upgraded to newer and more capable systems over time — but missile procurement plans often faced outsized cuts during tight budget years, including in the mid-2010s.

Later in the decade, however, when the Defense Department recognized China as a top adversary that would drive the armed services’ planning and spending, the Navy restarted torpedo production.

Increased missile orders followed. For example, the Navy in FY20 projected it would buy 48 LRASMs each year for the foreseeable future. The FY24 budget, in contrast, calls for buying 91, with an increase up to 149 a year by FY28.

But industry struggled to respond.

Vendors on the heavyweight torpedo program needed three years to rework the 1990s-era torpedo design, which was riddled with parts that were no longer available, before they could start production. Missiles manufacturers found they needed faster processes and more testing capacity to keep up with demand.

Frustration among Navy officials grew. Despite increased spending, the service didn’t have more weapons to hang on fighter jet wings and load into ship launchers.

“All this stuff about COVID this, parts, supply chain this — I just don’t really care,” U.S. Fleet Forces Command chief Adm. Daryl Caudle told a crowd of Navy and industry representatives at the Surface Navy Association conference a year ago. “I need [Standard Missile]-6s delivered on time. I need more [torpedoes] delivered on time.”

There have been improvements: Torpedo vendors have moved from redesign into production. Lockheed Martin opened a new missile production facility in June 2022 with a fully robotic paint line and other automated processes to accelerate missile production and increase its output for the Navy and the Air Force. RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies) expanded its internal test capacity, with new facilities near its Tucson, Arizona, production line and at the Redstone Arsenal test facility in Alabama.

But challenges remain. Navy officials and industry executives say they’re addressing specific bottlenecks in the supply chain, in some cases pursuing a second vendor or spending more government funds to modernize production facilities.

Rear Adm. Fred Pyle, the director of surface warfare on the chief of naval operations’ staff, said the Navy bought many of these weapons at a minimum sustaining rate for years but is now committed to maxing out production lines this year and into the future, which means addressing weak points in the supply chain.

“As we look at the global threat — what we see from China, what we see from Russia, and then the actions being taken in Ukraine — we saw the need to make sure that we get our munition stocks [and] inventories increased,” Pyle told Defense News in a Dec. 7 interview at the Pentagon.

Notably, the Navy pursued multiyear procurement contracts for four different weapons programs in its FY24 budget request: the Standard Missile, the Naval Strike Missile, the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile and the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile.

It also sought $380 million in FY24 to shore up the weapons supply chain, a move previously undertaken to bolster the submarine-industrial base and more recently the surface combatant-industrial base, but not for munitions builders.

Even as the Navy awaits a final FY24 spending bill, Pyle said it’s using existing funds to identify and address problem areas in the supply chain.

“We’re not there yet. But I can tell you the communication lines are open … and I think we’re all marching in the same direction to get to those” higher production levels, Pyle said, adding that he believes the Navy is aware of every remaining bottleneck and is actively resolving them, even if it will take more time to see results.

“We believe we’re procuring the right capability, and now we need to procure it in numbers,” he said.

‘The bottleneck is rocket motors’

The biggest barriers to ramping up production on many of the munitions programs are rocket motors and electronics.

The rocket motor challenge isn’t unique to any one program, Navy officials and industry executives agree.

Rear Adm. Seiko Okano, the program executive officer for integrated warfare systems, said in a Dec. 15 interview that her office is taking a multifaceted approach to helping prime contractors expand capacity, including through improving tooling, shoring up their suppliers and finding second sources of material.

But ultimately “the bottleneck is rocket motors” because so few companies are qualified to build them for the United States, Okano explained. To help, the Navy issued a handful of other transaction agreement contracts to small companies who will learn to build the Mk 72 booster and the Mk 104 dual-thrust rocket motor so prime contractors have more qualified vendors to work with, she added.

In the meantime, the Navy in January announced a public-private partnership at Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Division. The Navy and L3Harris Technologies’ Aerojet Rocketdyne, a key supplier on RTX’s many Navy munitions programs, will collaborate at the Maryland naval base to build solid-rocket motors.

Kim Ernzen, the president of naval power at RTX’s Raytheon division, told Defense News that the firm is being asked to substantially increase its output on certain missile programs, which isn’t possible unless the company can do business with more rocket motor vendors beyond Aerojet Rocketdyne.

On the Standard Missile-6 program, Raytheon’s current contract calls for about 100 missiles a year. Over the course of the next two multiyear contracts, that rate will increase to 150 and eventually 200 a year, Ernzen said.

Navy budget documents call for the purchase of Standard Missile variants to increase from its yearslong annual procurement rate of 125 missiles to 200 by FY26 and then 300 in FY28.

The Navy previously awarded $200 million to specifically increase SM-6 production, and Ernzen said Raytheon used that money to expand its own production and test facilities as well as help some of its suppliers. The rocket motor supply base is the remaining piece needed to make 200 SM-6s annually.

For the Maritime Strike Tomahawk, the Navy wants to double production rates by 2027, Ernzen said.

On the AIM-9X program — which is also in high demand globally as both an air-to-air missile and a surface-to-air weapon that can be used in the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System air defense platform fielded with Ukrainian forces — Raytheon is being asked to grow its production by more than 1,000 missiles a year by 2027, up to 2,500.

‘Easier and faster and cheaper’

Navy leaders expected restarting torpedo production after more than two decades to be a challenge.

Still, “we underestimated the complexity of going back into production,” Rear Adm. Todd Weeks, the program executive officer for undersea warfare systems, said in a Dec. 11 interview.

The Navy farmed out pieces of the design to industry: The guidance and control section, or the front of the torpedo, went to Lockheed Martin. The afterbody/tail cone, or the propulsion system, and the fuel tank went to SAIC. Both were asked to take the 1990s design, spend three years working through the technical data package to identify parts that needed a new manufacturer or required a redesign, and then start building.

Some design issues are now resolved, but Weeks said production hasn’t reached the required pace.

“We are concerned,” he added, pointing to ongoing obsolescence issues as well as supply chain challenges.

He noted his office is working with Program Executive Office Strategic Submarines’ submarine-industrial base team, which has received billions of dollars in recent years to shore up the submarine supply chain.

Weeks is using the submarine-industrial base team’s supplier assessment tools to identify which vendors are driving torpedo production delays. He is then asking the sector to fund torpedo suppliers if they happen to also do work as submarine vendors.

So far, one torpedo supplier has received submarine-industrial base funds to modernize its processes, said SAIC’s Rigdon. The tail cone’s regulator requires a circuit card that was made using 1980s-era soldering techniques, he told Defense News. That regulator had a 110-week lead time.

Rigdon said funding for the submarine-industrial base helps the supplier redesign the tail cone’s regulator using modern electronics that “drastically” cuts down delivery time.

Weeks said torpedo production should get easier with time. Even as Lockheed Martin and SAIC continue to grapple with finding suppliers for a 30-year-old design, the Navy is working on a pair of upgrade programs:

• Mod 8 will overhaul the front section with new sensors and a modern computing architecture. This change should go into production in FY25.
• Mod 9 will overhaul the back section, replacing the propulsion system with an entirely new system for a much greater range. This should go into production in FY28.

“Design for manufacturability is a key part of what we need to be thinking about: How do we make it simpler to build, which will facilitate us to be able to produce them easier and faster and cheaper?” Weeks said.

The need for more

The Navy is already increasing its annual weapons orders, and could increase them more — especially if industry proves it can keep up.

Experts say the need for a larger stockpile is very real.

“Before, coming out of the Cold War, the expectation [was] that wars would be short and regional, so you didn’t need a large magazine because … the major conflict period would not last very long,” said Cancian, a senior adviser at the CSIS think tank’s International Security Program.

Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has proved that may not be the case.

“We’ve now come to recognize the next war might be great power war, and it could be long,” Cancian said. “Those use up a lot of munitions.”

During the Cold War, submarines were meant to hunt and destroy Soviet submarines. In the think tank’s China-Taiwan wargame, the subs were shooting their torpedoes at amphibious ships, destroyers and more.

“If you’re in the Taiwan Strait with 200 Chinese vessels there, you’re going to use everything,” Cancian said.

Bryan Clark, director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute think tank, said the Navy has about 1,300 MK 48 torpedoes and counting as production continues. The submarine fleet would quickly go through hundreds in a fight against China, he noted.

Clark said Chinese ships have sophisticated air defense systems — meaning it would take multiple anti-ship missiles to sink a given Chinese vessel — and the U.S. Navy would rapidly go through its best anti-ship missiles in the opening days of a fight.

Cancian said the Navy and the Air Force have about 150 LRASMs today but would need between 2,000 and 3,000 for a healthy stockpile, according to his research.

Acknowledging the high expenditure rate of munitions in the Russia-Ukraine war, Weeks said “those same trends are going to play out in the undersea — there’s no doubt in my mind — and I think we’re coming to grips with that.”

“If we’ve learned anything from stopping production for 20 years, we realized that we don’t want to ever do that again,” Weeks added. “So we will stay in production.”

This comes as the Navy experiences firsthand in the Middle East what it requires to sustain a fighting force at sea.

The Navy has pushed additional destroyers into the Red Sea and Eastern Mediterranean regions as well as extended ships’ deployments to keep a heightened presence there. The moves come as Houthi militants in Yemen continue to fire missiles and send drones at naval and merchant ships, military forces ashore, and Israeli targets.

Adm. Daryl Caudle, who would be responsible for the East Coast fleet’s contribution to a conflict, said the Navy generally prepares its ships, planes and submarines for routine deployments through its Optimized Fleet Response Plan — a cycle of training, deployment and maintenance.

But “what can we do if I need to transition to warfighting footing more quickly? What is it I can deliver the forward commanders?” he said at this month’s Surface Navy Association conference.

He and his Fleet Forces staff are studying these questions and more to create a so-called Global Maritime Response Plan. This wouldn’t replace the regular drumbeat of forces generated by the Optimized Fleet Response Plan, but would supplement it if the naval force had to fight. The admiral said he hopes to have the plan drafted by the end of this year.

In the event of a major conflict, Caudle explained, the Navy would consider what maintenance requirements it could skip to deploy ships, what training can move quicker, what nontraditional ports could perform repairs, and what personnel could be reassigned to combat-focused positions.

For example, force-generation commands could send some staff to operational commands to stand on the watch floor, plan missions and more. The reserve component could cease nonessential tasks and move personnel to jobs supporting the conflict, Caudle said.

But much of the effort is focused on ships: How can the Navy increase the number of vessels and crew members that would be ready to deploy at a moment’s notice, and how can the service quickly repair ships damaged in battle in order to get them back into the fight?

Ship readiness

For every submarine not already deployed or in depot maintenance, Caudle said there’s a system that records the certifications of each crew, the boat’s material readiness, the ordnance onboard and more. This dashboard allows operational commanders to understand availability and barriers, and to reroute spare parts or reprioritize maintenance work if needed.

The surface navy is in the early stages of developing a similar plan for its combatants and amphibious ships.

Rear Adm. Dianna Wolfson, the fleet maintenance officer at Fleet Forces Command, said at the conference that she tested out these systems in last summer’s Large Scale Exercise. She attended the massive live, virtual and constructive drill to provide a dose of realism for fleet commanders: They had to consider the status of every ship under their command and make risk-based decisions about how to employ them based on their readiness.

She said an ongoing fleet maintenance optimization effort would give commanders better data for making decisions. This initiative would create a central repository for ship readiness data — updated constantly as sailors and shipyards work on the ships — and a digital twin of each vessel.

If regional tensions escalate, she said, the system would show which ships are prepared to deploy in real time, and which could be made ready if certain actions were taken.

Keeping up in combat

The other side of the equation involves keeping ships in the fight once they’ve arrived, as well as getting them back quickly if there’s a need for maintenance or repairs.

The fight in the Middle East today hasn’t led to any battle damage; the Houthis have shot missiles at naval ships, but the weapons have all missed, or defensive missiles have interception the threats. Still, the conflict has dragged on long enough that destroyers have had to rotate in and out to allow for crew members to rest and ships to undergo maintenance.

Rear Adm. William Greene, who is in charge of surface ship maintenance, said the Navy surged technicians and parts to its Forward Deployed Regional Maintenance Center — which covers work in Naples, Italy; Rota, Spain; and Manama, Bahrain — after Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The service expected it would see increased operations in the area and began pre-positioning resources to tend to those ships.

Greene said the service did the same thing after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

This helps ensure ships in the Middle East don’t have to go far for routine maintenance or to reload their weapons stocks.

But Greene said the Navy also has an eye on preparing for battle damage. The service in recent years incorporated battle damage into major exercises, putting decommissioned ships out to sea and detonating explosives onboard so sailors can practice towing ships back to port and running battle damage assessment and repairs.

Still, the Navy needs to involve industry in these drills, Greene said. In an overseas war, the Navy would tow ships into a foreign port. And while those yards may be capable of repairing the hull and its electrical and mechanical systems, they may not have expertise in the combat systems.

Greene said the service is considering how defense contractors could contribute to repairs affecting the warfighting systems they built.

Vice Adm. James Downey, the head of Naval Sea Systems Command, said the service is drafting a proposal for a future budget year to practice these scenarios at real shipyards in allied countries. This initiative would allow for up to six U.S.-based ships to undergo maintenance overseas — perhaps three in the Pacific and three in Europe — during repair periods of up to 90 days.

While 90 days is much shorter than a typical yard period at home, it would allow foreign repair facilities to learn how to do business with the Navy, understand American ship designs and systems, and lay the groundwork for potential emergency repairs.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro has previously discussed conducting a Military Sealift Command ship repair period in India, with hopes of continuing the effort with repairs in Singapore and the Philippines.