Improving Maintenance Timelines Key to On-Time Strike Group Deployments, CNO Says
SAN DIEGO – The top officer in the U.S. Navy has tasked officials with improving the service’s readiness generation plan to get ships out of modernization periods faster and to deploy on time.
The Navy’s Optimized Fleet Response Plan deployment scheme is a 36-month blueprint for carriers and surface ships that’s meant to generate fleet readiness for a seven-month deployment, but the cycle often ends up clocking in at 42 to 44 months due to maintenance and modernization availabilities that run too long, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said Wednesday.
Speaking at the WEST 2026 conference co-hosted by AFCEA and the U.S. Naval Institute, Caudle said delays during modernization periods are often the reason behind a lengthier OFRP cycle.
“So in those DDGs in particular, and it can be the carrier itself, but it’s in a modernization period, not just a normal maintenance period, because modernization availabilities are overrunning,” Caudle said. “That’s forcing us off plan there to deliver forces we need by our design of our training and force generation process.”
Caudle has called on the office of the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition (RDA), and Vice Adm. Seiko Okano, who is the principal military deputy ASN RD&A, to “try to tighten up how we do modernization” to tackle this problem.
Citing upgrades ranging from modifications for ships to accommodate the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Lightning II to virtualization for combat systems, Caudle said they all take too much time.
“There’s just way too much whole structure fabrication work that goes into these modernizations as well,” he said. “So that’s a problem.”
Caudle’s remarks come as the Navy begins to deploy carriers outside of the OFRP cycle to meet the readiness combatant commanders require. USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) deployed in November after less than a year since its previous deployment.
The Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyers have 40 different baselines for software, Caudle said.
“When you say the word CANEs, it means nothing,” he added, referring to the different versions of the Consolidated Afloat Ships Network Enterprise Services.
Speaking during a separate panel at WEST, Okano said software system upgrades should not happen during maintenance overhauls that require physical modifications to a ship’s hull.
“You should not be doing, in my opinion, network C4I, combat systems in those avails,” she told conference attendees. “There’s no reason. Leave those avails to hard [hull, mechanical and electrical]. You’re taking, replacing engines. And you keep it simple, and you’re ruthless about getting that ship out on time.”
Okano, who previously led Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, emphasized the need to separate hardware from software.
“Shame on you for cutting holes in the ship for updating your software. Shame on you,” she said to software program managers.
Okana emphasized the need for recurring software upgrades to happen at the pier and while ships are underway, not while in the shipyard.
“You shouldn’t be waiting for an avail in order to update software or target data,” she said.
U.S. Fleet Forces commander Adm. Karl Thomas recently suggested the OFRP is unable to meet the current geopolitical moment.
“When we think about the OFRP, it’s really kind of a binary – 1, 0,” he told the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium last month.
“You’ve either done [the composite unit training exercise] and you’re good to go or you’re not. And that isn’t really going to solve a lot of the challenges that we’re facing around the world,” Thomas added. “We need a better way to address the world’s challenges and deliver a repeatable and synchronized process.”
