The language in the committee’s fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act represents a continuation of disagreements between lawmakers and the sea service. The panel in recent years has clashed with the Navy in regard to balancing readiness, fleet size and the creation of next-generation technology.

Here are some of the issues House lawmakers take issue with.

Fleet size

As has been the case for years, the House Armed Services Committee is limiting how many Ticonderoga-class cruisers the Navy can retire. The service in its FY25 plan asked to retire four: USS Philippine Sea, USS Normandy, USS Shiloh and USS Lake Erie.

The committee’s version of the NDAA “would prohibit the retirement of the Guided Missile Cruisers USS Shiloh (CG 67) and USS Lake Erie (CG 70)”, as well as prevent the Navy from retiring or laying up more than two other cruisers.

The bill also calls for the Navy to buy a second Virginia-class submarine in FY25. This move sticks to the broader plan to buy two a year, but deviates from the Navy’s FY25 request for one per year, which reportedly took committee members by surprise.

More broadly, the committee takes issue with the Navy’s latest annual long-range shipbuilding plan, its budget request, and inconsistencies on near-term fleet size from one year’s plan to the next.

“This section would require the Navy to be consistent in the first 10-year planning window of the annual 30-year Shipbuilding Report to Congress,” the language reads.

If a plan would reduce the total number of ships in the fleet in that first 10 years compared to the previous year’s plan, the committee’s language would require the Navy to submit an additional assessment to describe how that reduction would support the National Security Strategy, what resources it would free up, how much money the shipbuilding industrial base would lose out on, how this would affect shipbuilders and lower-tier suppliers, and what the reductions would mean for the ship classes in question.

New ship programs

The committee and other congressional panels have expressed skepticism of new ship programs following challenges with the Littoral Combat Ship and Zumwalt-class destroyer programs as well as the first-in-class aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford.

The House Armed Services Committee aims to exert additional oversight in its bill. The language asks for assurances from the Navy that, before construction begins, each new block of a ship will have its detail design completed, the Navy will obtain all information from its vendors about system maturity, and specifications will be finalized.

Specific to the current and future destroyer programs, the NDAA states: “The committee remains concerned about the ability of the Navy’s destroyers to meet future threats, especially as missile technology continues to advance.”

Noting the DDG(X) program for a next-generation destroyer will leverage both the Arleigh Burke and Zumwalt classes of destroyers, and that the Navy expects to spend more than $100 billion between 2019 and 2048 designing and building this class, the NDAA asks for:

• The comptroller general of the United States to review how the service is developing its requirements and acquisition plan for DDG(X).
• The status of the Flight III Arleigh Burke destroyers in their development, construction and testing phases.
• The status of the Zumwalt class in its development, testing and modification phases for a new mission of surface strike, which includes being outfitted with hypersonic missiles.

The bill also calls for information on how the Navy will select the best propulsion system for the new ship. It notes two potential technologies — permanent magnet and high-temperature superconducting motors — and suggests the Navy develop both now to avoid a “late-stage failure in the selected motor technology [that] could significantly derail the lead ship’s schedule.”

On the Landing Ship Medium program for the planned amphibious ship, the bill would prevent the Navy from spending any money to buy these ships until the service secretary certifies the ship design is predominantly based on commercial specifications.

The Marine Corps wanted to begin buying these ships, previously called the light amphibious ship, in FY22. The program was delayed for budget reasons, but the Navy, Marine Corps and Office of the Secretary of Defense have spent the intervening years debating how to balance the desire to make these craft cheap and plentiful versus the desire to make them survivable during combat.

The Corps’ original vision was a commercial design that would blend in with local shipping and therefore create a level of safety for the Marines and sailors onboard, rather than having a military design that stands out from local boats but can take a hit and defend itself.

The NDAA language specifies the design should “not [be] based on more than 35 percent military specifications” and that the Navy secretary must detail to the committee “the differences in cost and construction schedules between a ship design based on military specifications and a design that uses commercial standards and elements.”

Weapons at sea

The committee took particular interest in the development of a rearm-at-sea capability, which Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro has called a top priority, though it has so far eluded the service.

In one section, the NDAA would require the secretary to submit a strategy for delivering this capability to the fleet within three years of the bill becoming law. The strategy would outline current and planned spending on technology development as well as the anticipated cost and schedule to create this “transportable rearming mechanism equipment to load missile canisters into MK 41 vertical launch system cells on Navy destroyers operating” at sea.

The committee also notes it is “concerned that the Navy’s progress in developing this capability has been too slow and that the Navy’s leadership focus and resource investment is not sufficient to meet the Navy’s stated goals in this area. While the Navy has conducted demonstrations of certain steps in the process, significant challenges remain to be addressed before the Navy could effectively leverage this capability in a contested environment.”

It calls for a comptroller assessment of the Navy’s current and future spending and technology development efforts, as well as alternative courses of action.

The bill also calls for the comptroller to assess the Navy’s plan to develop and field long-range fires. It asks the secretary to brief the committee on plans to develop a passive long-range targeting kill chain system of systems, and how it will use additive manufacturing — or 3D printing — at the ship and unit levels.

ABOARD THE SUBMARINE DELAWARE OFF FLORIDA’S COAST — The attack submarine Delaware silently pulled away from the pier at Port Everglades, past the pleasure craft and the cargo ships, and then sank beneath the waves.

The U.S. Navy’s Virginia-class submarine was showing off for VIPs on board, performing “angles and dangles” — diving sharply and listening for anything not safely stowed to go tumbling — piping simulated targets into its combat system, and taking simulated torpedo shots at the imaginary surface ships.

Though the April 4 demonstration is a far cry from the complex training Delaware’s crew will conduct later this year ahead of the boat’s deployment to U.S. European Command’s theater, leaders said any at-sea opportunity benefits the crew.

But the need for at-sea time butts up against a problematic reality for the Navy: It has 49 attack submarines, despite a formal requirement for 66.

The fleet size has remained stagnant for at least a decade, even as demand for these stealthy forces increased. Attack submarines would be pivotal in a conflict against China. They’re also in high demand within the European theater in order to counter Russia’s sophisticated submarine fleet. And they’ve even made history in the Middle East, with the Virginia-class sub John Warner becoming the first in its class to fire Tomahawk missiles in combat during a 2018 strike on Syrian chemical weapons facilities.

The situation will worsen before it improves, according to the Navy’s long-range shipbuilding and fleet inventory plan, which shows the force dipping to 47 later this decade before hovering in the mid-50s for many years. The fleet isn’t projected to hit 66 until 2054, well beyond the “decade of concern” — when military officials say the threat of conflict with China will peak.

Furthermore, the U.S. Navy intends to sell at least three, and as many as five, of these attack submarines to Australia as part of the trilateral AUKUS pact that also involves the U.K.

Still, Vice Adm. Rob Gaucher said that, perhaps counterintuitively, selling the submarines to Australia will help the strapped undersea fleet.

By delivering the boats to an ally who will operate them in coordination with American boats, “we get more submarines far forward. We get a port that gives us access” to the Indo-Pacific region, the commander of naval submarine forces said during a panel at the Sea-Air-Space conference in April.

“We get the opportunity to leverage an ally who can help us with manning and operating. We get surge capacity because now I have another area [where] I can do maintenance.”

Crewing and maintenance woes

Gaucher told Defense News the submarine fleet faces two vexing problems today and into the coming years: crewing and maintenance. But bringing Australia into the fold could help with both.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the submarine force stepped back from recruiting. More broadly, as the Navy’s overall crewing levels have been tight, the force opted to focus on operations at sea rather than recruiting ashore.

“We’ve put a focus back on that,” Gaucher said, though he declined to discuss the size of the submarine force and to quantify its shortfall. But already “we feel the impact of that recruiting shortfall.”

Offsetting that will be Australia’s growing nuclear-trained submarine force, as the nation builds a cadre of sailors and officers who will crew its Virginia-class submarines in the 2030s and its SSN-AUKUS boats in the 2040s.

The U.S. has already graduated the first Australian naval officers from nuclear power school. Gaucher said during the panel discussion that, by the end of this year, the Navy would graduate about 50 nuclear-trained operators and another 50 submarine combat operators. Those numbers are expected to grow in the coming years.

Gaucher told Defense News these sailors will train on American submarines for the rest of this decade, increasing the number of individuals qualified to stand watch on American boats, which in turn produces some flexibility in crewing.

Similarly, the submarine force is strapped for maintenance capacity. Getting boats out of maintenance on time is Gaucher’s top focus, but it’s an issue across the Navy and won’t be fully achieved until perhaps 2027 or 2028, service officials have said.

However, around 2027 the Navy will begin operating as many as four Virginia-class subs out of the HMAS Stirling submarine base in Western Australia, with local personnel conducting routine maintenance on the boats as they grow their repair capacity. That will reduce pressure on the maintenance system back at home, Gaucher said.

Bryan Clark, director of the Hudson Institute think tank’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, told Defense News that offloading four subs’ worth of routine maintenance to HMAS Stirling will ease the pressure on the Navy’s Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Washington state, allowing the workforce there to more quickly get other subs through refits and overhauls.

While there are typically concerns about sending surface ship repair work overseas, Clark said the Navy and its industry partners, General Dynamics’ Electric Boat and HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding, simply do not have enough capacity for all the needed submarine repairs.

A 50-sub force in a 66-sub world

A 2016 Navy force structure assessment called for 66 attack submarines. That requirement has remained steady since — and the fleet size has also remained steady around 50, despite a number of efforts meant to help grow it, including extending the lives of older Los Angeles-class attack subs and pouring billions of dollars into the submarine-building industry to increase output.

With 50 boats, “we’re able to realistically meet what we’ve traditionally met in our global force management,” Gaucher said. But “if you ask me if I want more submarines, of course. And there’s never going to be enough.”

Today, it takes everything going right — a submarine coming out of maintenance on time and not unexpectedly having to surge forward for an overseas mission — for a submarine crew to get the desired number of training days.

But, Gaucher said, “if you throw a perturbation into that … that’s where you have to make those trades.”

Currently, some submarines are on routine deployments for which they fully planned, trained and certified.

Other boats are considered “combat surge ready” and are eligible to scramble into theater if needed. These boats are trained and certified to a smaller number of core missions, but may not qualify for the full range of tasks a routine deployment could require.

A larger fleet would mean more boats on routine deployments and fewer scrambling to surge. It would mean satisfying more requests by combatant commanders and having more boats already forward in theater — rather than the surge boats at home taking perhaps a week to prepare for deployment before traveling.

It would also allow the boats at home to further develop tactics as well as train alongside surface, aviation and special operations forces, rather than potentially surging forward for an overseas mission.

“There’s just really countless things you can do if you have more,” Gaucher said. “But we can still get the core things done. … So we pick the best things for those submarines to do that best satisfy what the combatant commanders need us to do.”

Clark, however, said his team at Hudson is wrapping up a 2045 fleet design study for the Navy that will call for 54 attack submarines. The study will contend the service needs a larger fleet of attack submarines to address the most vexing operational problem: a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

But increased development of unmanned systems, including the Replicator initiative at the Pentagon and the Hellscape effort through U.S. Pacific Fleet, could help deter or stop an attack, as well as reduce the need for crewed attack submarines.

“If you’re aiming for [54] submarines in 2045, then you can get away with selling three to Australia, and the net benefit is positive because you’re bolstering the alliance,” Clark said. “Three submarines, now somebody else is paying for the maintenance, manning them, sustaining them, and the U.S. benefits from them being out there as part of the alliance force.”

‘Continuously ready’

The top officer on the attack sub Delaware, Cmdr. Rob Low, said having an in-demand asset as part of an insufficiently sized fleet weighs on him.

Speaking to Defense News during the April embark, Low said the deployment rotation is the same today as it was when he was a junior officer, but that submarines are more often called to surge. As a result, there’s now a greater need to be “a lot more focused on making sure we’re continuously ready.”

“We all know that there’s not a lot of backup if we have a problem. So we really pride ourselves on making sure we’re material-ready to be in mission at any moment,” he said. “And the second we have something that’s minor break on board, we immediately go into repair mode to make sure that the second we pull [into port in Groton, Connecticut], it’s not going to impact us in our ability to get deployed if we needed to at any moment.”

This hyperfocus on readiness extends to the crew. Low said crew members have been receptive to cross-training, even teaching the nuclear-trained operators to stand watch at the sonar or fire control console in the control room “so that if I end up having a shortage in one rate, I can move people around and continue to operate without any problems.”

Low said he has trained his junior sailors to the maximum qualification point allowed, with junior sailors sometimes standing watches that are normally reserved for chief petty officers. This allows the chiefs to focus on mentoring and developing junior sailors, even as the watch bills are still filled with fully qualified personnel.

Low also noted he empowered his senior enlisted sailors to have “ownership of material” and run the sub’s machinery with little oversight from officers. This frees up his officers to focus on tactics, which Low said is vital given the strategic competition the U.S. Navy is in with Russia and China.

In the immediate term, Low is focused on getting his boat ready for deployment: He and the crew will continue training at sea, come in for two remaining maintenance periods, go through full training and qualifications, and then head to European waters later this year.

But the operating environment and the risk of a surge deployment remain on his mind.

“We have to be ready,” he said. “Three weeks from now, we can be sent to someplace, and we have to be completely ready.”

This is the first story of a two-part series on how the U.S. submarine force is participating in the trilateral AUKUS alliance. Click here to read the second story.

Australia won’t take possession of its first nuclear-powered submarine until 2032, but Australia and the United States are already training the officers and sailors who will operate that Virginia-class attack boat and the civilians who will maintain it.

“We have eight and a half years to create an Australian [commanding officer] that normally takes 16″ years, said Dan Packer, the director of naval submarine forces for AUKUS.

Given the stakes — the U.S. selling a nuclear-powered boat to another country for the first time, and Australia making its first foray into using nuclear power — Packer said it’s important not to rush the officers’ training and development. It must move forward deliberately, with little down time between at-sea assignments, he noted.

Australia has eight officers in the inaugural training cohort that began in 2023. Three of those eight will be moved into an accelerated training pipeline, and one will eventually be the first Australian Virginia-class commanding officer — though the navies don’t yet want to decide who that will be, Packer said during an April 4 embark aboard the Virginia-class sub Delaware.

“They’re going to finish the pipeline this year. And then they’re going to go to their first boat for a two-year tour,” he said. Next, “we’re going to take them back to Groton, [Connecticut], to go back to department head school, and then they’re going to go right back to another boat. Normally, people do a sea/shore rotation,” but shore tours have been largely eliminated from the accelerated training pipeline.

These three officers will then do a two-year tour in Australia, attend the Australian and American command courses — and then, in 2032, one will be the commanding officer of the submarine that will sail from the U.S. to Australia, lower its American flag, raise an Australian flag and become the lead ship in a sovereign Australian nuclear-powered fleet.

“Right now, the Australian submarine force is about 800 people. We’re going to build it to 3,000,” Packer said. “We understand exactly how many people we need to ingest [into the American training pipeline]. This year, we’re going to ingest 17 officers, 37 nuclear enlisted and 50 non-nuclear enlisted. And we’re going to up that number every year.”

Packer said the impressive part of this training plan isn’t its quantity. It’s the fact that these sailors and officers will be fully integrated into American attack submarine crews until such time that Australia can stand up its own training pipeline at home.

At some point, he said, the U.S. Navy will have 440 Australians on 25 attack submarines, with each crew including two or three Australian officers, seven nuclear enlisted and nine non-nuclear enlisted sailors.

“This is something that has never happened before,” he said. “We are completely, 100% integrating them into our crew, from a complete and utter perspective. They will do everything that we do” while operating aboard the subs.

Short-term wins in a long-term effort

Training the uniformed personnel is just one piece of a flurry of industrial, legislative and acquisition activity that’s taken place since the AUKUS three-phase plan was laid out in March 2023.

Leaders cautioned patience during a recent panel discussion, saying that three countries with separate legislative and budgetary processes were all trying to work in parallel to lay the foundation for a successful trilateral submarine alliance.

“It’s very easy to get dragged down to the short term. But these are long-term goals,” U.K. Royal Navy Second Sea Lord Vice Adm. Martin Connell said.

He added that the upcoming AUKUS milestones can’t wait until all the money and authorities are in place; “we’ve got to move sensibly” and accomplish anything that can be done now, while the rest moves through legislative bodies and budgetary processes.

For example, in industry, “you can see components that are going to go into SSN-AUKUS” in the late 2030s, he said, referring to the attack submarine design both the U.K. and Australia will build.

Australian Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy added during the panel that his country already committed to spend AU$4.7 billion (U.S. $3.1 billion) to reduce the backlog at Rolls-Royce’s factory, which builds nuclear power plants.

“When people get frustrated, I say there are already parts being produced now for a submarine that won’t be in the water [until] 2042. And I think the budget and the wills of the governments are there; we’ve just got to, in a steady and methodical way, deliver on them,” he said.

There are several more items that were accomplished in the past year:

• In December, the U.S. and Australia finalized a Foreign Military Sales case to procure submarine training devices, including simulators, to support the 2027 establishment of Submarine Rotational Force-West in Australia’s HMAS Stirling base. According to an April joint statement, the first trainers were put on contract in April. The systems will support American sailors assigned to the rotational force and Australian sailors learning to operate the Virginia-class boats ahead of the 2032 sale.
• The U.S. Congress passed several vital measures in the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, including the AUKUS Submarine Transfer Authorization Act allowing the sale of boats to Australia. Australia, too, took some important legislative steps: The Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023 and Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2023 were introduced to the Australian Parliament in November but have not yet been passed.
• In March, the first group of 20 Australian industry personnel completed a three-month training placement at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Hawaii.
• In January, 37 Australian sailors reported to American submarine tender Emory S. Land in Guam to prepare for the ship’s deployment to HMAS Stirling — where this summer it will conduct a first maintenance availability on an American sub with a combined American and Australian maintenance team.
• Even though U.S. President Joe Biden gave the order to sell nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, there’s still been some heartburn about second-order effects, Packer said, including the need to give Australia the accompanying “cryptographic equipment or electronic warfare libraries or targeting data or even bathymetry.” Packer and his team have been working with other government agencies to pave the way to share these sensitive items and information with Australia, such that they can fully use the submarines they’ll buy and receive next decade.

Boxer left San Diego, California, for deployment on April 1. It was already behind schedule, as fellow ship Somerset left the city in January. Somerset was the lone member of the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group prepared to leave at the time. Boxer and Harpers Ferry stayed behind for maintenance before leaving in the spring.

But Boxer had to turn around on April 11, due to what was ultimately determined to be an issue with the ship’s starboard rudder and roller bearing system.

“USS Boxer will execute repairs to its starboard rudder at Naval Station San Diego. The waterborne repairs will be conducted at the pier and will likely not require a dry dock. Boxer may resume its deployment as soon as this summer,” Cmdr. Arlo Abrahamson, a spokesman for the commander of Naval Surface Forces, said in an April 30 statement.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told reporters following a speech at the Modern Day Marine conference this week that Boxer “just came out of a very complicated availability, and we are investigating the reason why the bearing failed on the rudder.”

The Navy is also still investigating if it can fully address the problem with an underwater repair team rather than having to wait for a dry dock in San Diego to become available. However, waiting for a dry dock would cause further delays to the ship’s redeployment to the Pacific, Del Toro said, adding that the Navy should know the final repair plan within the next few days and that teams are preparing for both outcomes.

Del Toro noted there can be material deficiencies in new ships, but the old fleet is much more likely to experience them.

“In the amphibious navy in particular, we have failed to basically purchase new amphibious ships at the pace that we should have for decades, and now we’re sort of paying the consequences of that,” he said.

He noted the Navy’s fiscal 2025 budget plan shows the service is preparing to buy San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks in FY25, FY27 and FY29, as well as the next America-class amphibious assault ship in FY27.

“I’m hopeful about the future, and we’ll continue to do the very best that we can to replace those old amphibious warships,” he said, noting that deployment roadblocks like Boxer’s would become less common when the average age of the amphibious fleet is younger.

Lawmakers for years have pushed the Navy to sign a multi-ship contract with HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding to lower the cost of buying these amphibious platforms. The Navy, despite several congressional measures giving it the contracting authority, has declined to take this step, citing uncertainty about how many, if any, amphibious vessels it wants to buy in the future.

With the debate over the future of San Antonio-class procurement now settled, Del Toro said the Navy hopes to have this multi-ship deal worked out in the coming weeks.

The Navy acquisition chief “is in close discussions with the shipyard, and obviously we’re trying to negotiate the best deal possible on behalf of the American taxpayer. So I feel confident that, hopefully over the next several weeks, we’ll be able to have a negotiated deal that we can announce,” Del Toro said.

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.

In a fiscal year when the defense budget is capped at 1% growth above the previous one, the Navy elected to ask for six ships in its FY25 budget, including one Virginia-class attack submarine. That submarine program is supposed to be on a cadence of two per year or greater to support the needs of both the U.S. and Australian navies. The latter is acquiring submarines as part of the trilateral AUKUS agreement also involving the U.S. and the U.K.

U.S. Navy leaders have argued that, in lieu of buying the second submarine, they are keeping the advanced procurement funds flowing and putting billions of dollars into the submarine-industrial base via funds meant to help increase vendors’ output.

But Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., whose district includes the shipbuilder General Dynamics Electric Boat, said during a Wednesday hearing before the House Armed Services Committee’s sea power panel: “I reject the ivory tower theory that SIB [submarine-industrial base] investment is a substitute for a consistent demand signal for orders and business. The two enterprises have to occur in tandem.”

Courtney, the subcommittee’s ranking member, said the funds are welcome but “don’t pay the bills” — rather, they help companies, among other things, adopt advanced manufacturing processes and tools, expand their facilities, and train workers, with the ultimate goal of more quickly churning out parts.

Courtney told reporters ahead of the hearing that these funds are targeted at certain vendors rather than spread evenly across the whole industrial base. Companies who are healthy and producing their components on time are not receiving these funds at all, meaning their only stream of money from the Navy comes from orders for new submarines.

“For them, they’re basically looking at a 50% cut” to their revenue, per the Navy’s spending proposal, the congressman said.

When Courtney asked Navy acquisition chief Nickolas Guertin about this during the hearing, the latter replied: “We’ll have to take a closer look at that and see what we can do to help that aspect of the industry as well.”

“That’s not a very encouraging answer,” the congressman responded.

More broadly, Courtney told reporters he rejected the two common rationales for why the Navy doesn’t need to buy the second submarine in FY25: first, that the procurement dollars can be compensated for with advanced procurement money and industrial base funds; and second, that there’s such a backlog of work that Electric Boat and its vendor base won’t miss the work.

He told reporters the Navy is on track to accept delivery of three Virginia submarines this calendar year, leaving the industrial base with a remaining backlog of work that’s not far off from what it had before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“To me, what I see is that our industrial base is recovering from COVID, that the numbers are going up, the retention is going up, and the output is going up,” Courtney said during the hearing. “This is not a stagnating industrial base. It is an industrial base which took a big hit during COVID, like all of shipbuilding, but it is not stagnating; it is recovering.”

Ahead of the hearing, Courtney circulated a memo to his fellow lawmakers, laying out the progress the submarine-industrial base has made since the pandemic hit and explaining why he believes their momentum should continue uninterrupted by allowing for continuous procurement at a rate of two per year.

He wrote that Electric Boat hired 5,300 new workers in 2023 and is on track to hire 5,200 more this year, even as co-builder Newport News Shipbuilding, owned by HII, hired 8,300 new workers across 2022 and 2023. Submarine construction rates are up from 1.2 a year to 1.4 a year (compared to the two submarines a year the yards should deliver if the Navy consistently buys two annually). And new facilities at the shipyards are popping up to help make shipbuilding even more efficient.

Courtney said arguments that the industrial base is struggling and therefore doesn’t need or can’t handle a second submarine in FY25 are “looking backwards, not forwards, in terms of what’s actually happening in the shipyard.”

Still, Courtney and his supporters on the subcommittee face an uphill battle in putting the second submarine back into the budget. The Fiscal Responsibility Act caps defense spending, meaning that any additions lawmakers propose will need to come at the expense of something else. Courtney told reporters he didn’t have a recommendation for what to cut to make room for the sub.

Lawmakers at the hearing also dinged the Navy for delaying advanced procurement for its next two aircraft carriers, and for not committing yet to a multiyear buy on San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks.

“I think we have the greatest shipbuilders and repairers and maintainers in the world. But we have to send them the right signal, all the time. We have to give them predictable schedules of both repair and building,” the subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Trent Kelly, R-Miss., said at the hearing.

“We can’t send mixed signals, and we can’t tell them to pause or put on the brakes or take a strategic pause. And we have to use multiyear buys, understanding that it’s always not financial benefits that we gain, but sometimes it’s the benefit in time, to produce more in a short time.”

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti said she and Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Eric Smith signed a letter to their three-star officers who oversee plans and operations, calling for a deep dive on ship readiness and requirements for the training and certification of ship groups and the Marines who embark on them.

Franchetti, who spoke to a group of reporters following remarks at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space conference here, acknowledged the amphibious assault ship Boxer deployed last week several months later than planned. To make up for its delay — caused by a maintenance challenge, as reported by Military.com — fellow Boxer Amphibious Ready Group ship Somerset deployed in January, taking on missions solo until its two fellow vessels and their embarked Marines could join it in the Pacific Ocean.

She said the Navy is also eyeing potential delays for the amphibious assault ship Wasp, which recently began basic at-sea operations following a lengthy maintenance availability.

“We’re trying to look ahead to make sure that we can, I want to say, nip this in the bud,” she explained. “Many of our amphibious ships are older. Also, they’re getting the [Joint Strike Fighter] modifications, so that’s taking time when they go in for their upgrades, and that’s taking a little bit longer than expected.”

The chief of naval operations called this study a “proactive approach” to help “get ahead of potential delays” in maintenance, and ensure ship crews and embarked Marines are properly trained and certified to respond to contingencies and deploy on time, even if maintenance runs long.

She said the group will report back next month with the “terms of reference” for the study, which will outline what to look at and how.

Franchetti emphasized she’s committed to the amphibious fleet, noting the recent fiscal 2025 budget request reflects that with money to buy new amphibious assault ships, amphibious transport docks and landing ships medium.

Amphibious ships have been a point of contention between the Navy and Marine Corps in recent years. Some of the oldest Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships have required an increasing amount of time and money for maintenance. And yet, in some cases, they have struggled to be ready enough to deploy.

The Navy has argued it should stop throwing money at these ships that aren’t combat-credible. The Marine Corps has argued that decommissioning the ships early would put it further from its required 31-ship amphibious fleet — a number Congress passed into law in 2022. The Corps says it needs a minimum of 31 ships to ensure Marines are sufficiently trained and can maintain a regular presence around the world.

The issue was exacerbated by a Pentagon-driven effort last year to pause buying amphibious transport docks and reconsider what, if any, design the Navy should buy in the future. That debate now appears to be over, with the Navy’s FY25 spending plan showing the continued purchase of amphibious transport docks as originally planned.

Navy leaders conducted a 45-day review of its shipbuilding portfolio, following news in January that a first-of-class guided-missile frigate was behind schedule due in part to a workforce shortage at Fincantieri’s Marinette Marine shipyard in Wisconsin.

Coupled with existing delays to the Virginia-class attack submarine construction line and worries those delays might spill over to the top-priority Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro that month ordered an “assessment of national and local causes of shipbuilding challenges, as well as recommended actions for achieving a healthier U.S. shipbuilding industrial base that provides combat capabilities that our warfighters need, on a schedule that is relevant.”

A snapshot of delays

The review’s leaders, Navy acquisition chief Nickolas Guertin and Naval Sea Systems Command head Vice Adm. James Downey, told reporters April 2 the review provided a snapshot of shipbuilding delays and challenges.

Based on current performance, the Navy projects the first Columbia-class SSBN will deliver 12 to 16 months later than its contractual delivery date of October 2027. The submarine is built by General Dynamics’ Electric Boat and HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding.

This is particularly worrisome because the vessel is expected to deploy shortly after its post-delivery testing and training. The Navy is obligated to have 10 SSBNs ready to deploy, lurking beneath the oceans while carrying nuclear missiles. The service is counting on the lead Columbia boat to deliver in 2027 so it can go on its maiden patrol in 2031. With any delays, the Navy will dip below the requirement.

Guertin said the Navy took significant steps prior to the pandemic to reduce risk on this program and accelerate the schedule where possible.

Supply issues

“COVID happened. Supply chain changed. Workforce greening happened,” he said, but previous risk-reduction steps kept the pandemic impacts “as minimal as possible.” The Columbia program, the Navy’s top acquisition priority, is the least delayed of the new programs assessed in the shipbuilding review, Guertin said.

The review shows the Navy’s Block IV Virginia submarines, which were bought from fiscal 2014 to 2018, are running 36 months behind schedule. The attack submarines rely on the same shipbuilders and suppliers as the Columbia program, but they’ve taken the brunt of delays to keep Columbia on track.

There are signs of improvement, though, with the Block V boats bought from FY19 to FY23 projected to be about 24 months behind schedule.

Downey said the Navy put additional work into the Block V design, and a performance improvement plan created for the Block IV boats would also lead to shorter construction timelines for Block V.

The Navy’s next nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which relies on many of the same overburdened suppliers as the submarine programs and is also built at Newport News Shipbuilding, is also delayed. The future Enterprise, CVN-80, is expected to deliver 18 to 26 months late.

Defense News reported in October the ship was running about a year behind schedule. That has worsened, with Downey saying some key suppliers are behind in their deliveries to Newport News. As a result, the Navy is delaying buying subsequent ships CVNs 82 and 83, pushing their procurement from FY28 to FY30.

Downey noted that the next carrier in line, the Doris Miller, CVN-81, has been shielded from delays thanks to a two-carrier contract that’s allowed Newport News Shipbuilding to place material orders much earlier.

The first Constellation frigate, built in Wisconsin by Fincantieri’s Marinette Marine shipyard, will deliver 36 months later than its contractual delivery date.

Downey said this is due to a couple factors: Marinette Marine has gone from managing just one program at the small yard to now juggling three: finishing up the littoral combat ship program, building the multi-mission surface combatant for the Saudi navy, and now designing the Constellation-class frigate. The yard has a higher workload, has to manage programs at different stages, and has had to ramp up hiring even as it’s seen greater attrition than some other yards.

Downey said the Navy has taken some steps to better manage this program, including asking government, Fincantieri and subcontractor designers to all move to a single office at the Wisconsin shipyard so they can get through the remaining design work together as efficiently as possible.

As for the more mature surface ship production lines — the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock and America-class amphibious assault ships at Ingalls Shipbuilding, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers at Ingalls and General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works and the John Lewis-class oiler at General Dynamics’ NASSCO — the Navy notes these ships are predicted to deliver later than what’s outlined in their contracts, but in line with revised program manager estimates.These ship programs were “rebaselined” as the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent labor and supply disruptions wreaked havoc on schedules, but Downey said they’ve kept to these new post-COVID schedules.

Workforce challenges

Guertin said there were two buckets of challenges the team found during this review: lead ship issues, including design maturity, first-in-class construction challenges, and the size and skillset of the design workforce; and ship class issues, including acquisition and contracting strategies, supply chain weaknesses, shortage of skilled tradesmen, and gaps in the government workforce.

Guertin said some things are the new normal: “the supply chain is different now,” he said, and the Navy needs to ensure it and its shipbuilders buy materials farther ahead of the start of construction. The “greening of the workforce” — or replacing a highly experienced workforce that’s retiring in high numbers with less experienced employees — has also “changed dramatically” the realities of ship design and waterfront tradecraft work.

Guertin said this review revealed that the entire workforce — the government, the shipbuilders and the entire supply chain — ought to be viewed and invested in as a national strategic asset. He said the review also highlighted that risk-sharing between the government and shipbuilders had faltered and that the balance of that risk should be reconsidered for future contracts.

Downey added a few lessons of his own as it relates to the Navy’s government workforce. He said the review highlighted the need for more scrutiny in the design process and suggested the Navy might bring in some extra eyes beyond just the program offices involved. The Navy has been less involved in ship design over the years and has therefore seen a decrease in the size and skill of its own design workforce, which should be addressed. And he said the Navy has significant oversight responsibilities today, with more than 80 ships on contract, and that the oversight work is straining the current workforce.

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.

This unfunded priorities list, which supplements the Navy’s $257.6 billion FY25 budget request, asks for 13 items, ranging from repairs to infrastructure in Guam to buying another KC-130J transport plane for the Navy Reserve to accelerating classified program development.

The No. 1 priority on the list is $403 million to invest in the submarine-industrial base — something the FY25 budget already does, with $3.9 billion included in the budget request released March11.

However, the FY25 request was written assuming Congress would pass both a FY24 defense spending bill and a $105 billion national security supplemental the White House requested in October. Neither of those two had been passed into law when the FY25 budget request was released, leaving Navy officials concerned.

This unfunded priorities list notes that, absent the supplemental and its $3.3 billion to bolster the submarine-industrial base, the Navy needs $403 million in specific additional spending so that it can fully implement its FY25 plans to grow vendor capacity, support workforce development efforts and more.

The list also includes $92.9 million to address how quickly it’s been shooting Standard Missile-2 weapons to knock down Houthi-launched missiles and drones in the Red Sea since October. The militant group is based in Yemen.

This money would procure SM-2 Block III and Block IIIA/B recertification materials to address a backlog of these older missiles that need to be recertified before they can be used in combat. The Navy asked for $157 million in FY24 and $134 million in FY25 for this weapons maintenance work, but the document notes it could need to accelerate this work “based on the duration and nature of conflict in the Red Sea and other areas of responsibility.”

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE NAVY’S FY25 UNFUNDED PRIORITIES LIST

The sea service also wants $50 million to buy four more Mk 48 heavyweight torpedoes, which the document calls a top service priority for long-range maritime fires. The Navy is already working to restart production lines in support of its Mk 48 inventory, and this money would increase spares and buy new fuel tanks and electronics sections to support the fleet inventory.

Service officials cited the weapons-industrial base as another one, in addition to the submarine-industrial base, that the Navy was trying to support and that needed stable funding from FY24 into FY25.

Elsewhere in the request, the Navy asks for $208 million for aviation readiness, including four F-35C engines to support deployed carrier air wings; Super Hornet Block III upgrades; and MQ-25 Stingray carrier-based tanker drone initial deployment activities.

For the surface force, the unfunded priorities list includes $200 million meant to reduce cannibalization of parts on destroyers and in critical surface warfare systems.

The Navy asks for $75.3 million for a subsea and seabed warfare payload for the Navy’s TETRA remotely operated vehicle, which completed its critical design review in November. The FY25 budget requests just $15 million for the effort, and the additional $75 million would accelerate payload development and integration work.

It also asks for $184 million to accelerate the development of a payload for the Orca Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle. It also seeks a combined $90 million to accelerate two classified programs, COPPERFIELD and GRANDSTAND.

It wants $105.5 million to accelerate the development of communications equipment for the strategic deterrence fleet.

And it includes $109.9 million to develop and procure a Long Endurance Electronic Decoy countermeasures system. Its funding was cut from $249 million in FY24 to just $83 million in FY25.

The Navy separately requests nearly $1.5 billion in military construction projects, including upgrades and repairs to hangar facilities in Guam, a dry dock and a water treatment plant in Hawaii, and an aviation training complex in Nevada.

The defense budget is capped in FY25, due to the Fiscal Responsibility Act. If lawmakers chose to add in any items from the unfunded priorities list, they would have to offset them with cuts elsewhere in the defense budget.