Whether you have seen it on television, read about it in a newspaper or listened to it on the radio, there can be no doubt that over the last year Naval Aviation has not only been in the forefront of the Global War on Terror, but also has been thrust into the spotlight at home assisting our fellow Americans caught up in some of the worst natural disasters our nation has ever seen. We all can be truly proud of the men and women in Naval Aviation today. They have in the past and continue to perform far “above and beyond.”
Today, Naval Aviation is meeting our demanding worldwide commitments while maintaining exceptionally high levels of readiness and responsiveness.
A Team Effort
We have continued to meet the requirements presented by the Fleet Response Plan and the combatant commanders’ warfighting requirements for carrier presence in their theaters. Simultaneously, we are supporting the Unit Deployment Program (UDP), Expanded Maritime Intercept Operations (EMIO) and Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief operations such as tsunami relief, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and Pakistan earthquake relief.
Developing a force to where performance at this level is the expected norm has been a true team effort. But make no mistake about it. That readiness comes with a huge price tag, and the key to continuing to provide this level of readiness into the future is understanding and controlling costs — meeting today’s readiness requirements while ensuring that future readiness remains sound.
The business of Naval Aviation has fundamentally changed over the past 25 years. When I was a junior officer flying A-6s, I thought I had a lot to worry about — landing on the carrier, preparing for my next flight, wondering whether my letter got to my wife before her birthday.
Somewhere near the end of that list, and highly dependent on what job I held at the time, was how maintenance was done on my aircraft or how much it cost to fly.
Like today, our flight schedule was driven by operational priorities — missions, training, check flights and the occasional “good deal.” Good deals had a propensity to become available near the end of the fiscal quarter or year when the “use-it-or-lose-it” spirit floated over the squadron. Costs were measured in fuel dollars, and we at times sacrificed realistic training to get the most hours out of our fuel dollars.
Parts? Supply guys worried about that. We took out broken ones and put in ones that either were ready for issue or taken from another aircraft. This type of behavior had a predictable result. For decades the cost of aviation, including aircraft maintenance and supply costs, climbed steadily. Squadrons not actually on deployment or in work ups saw their aircraft availability steadily decline. The practice of having experienced pilots to accomplish the mission while not having enough available aircraft was taking us down the wrong path. We needed a better model.
Naval Aviation Enterprise
The first step to being a better steward means working to resolve the barriers to readiness — barriers that often crossed multiple commands. It was the need to remove those barriers that ultimately led to the formation of the Naval Aviation Enterprise (NAE). The first step to improve readiness was the empowerment of the type-wing commodores. The NAE board of directors now meets monthly to hear the type/model/series (TMS) lead commodores report on the health of their entire TMS, as well as any barriers they are encountering. It was this horizontal integration of leadership, combined with visibility to the top of the Enterprise, which has torn down long-standing “stovepipes,” that now allows resources to be better aligned to support the warfighter. This improvement in our alignment may well have a more profound impact on the long-term health of Naval Aviation than any aircraft or weapon system ever could.
This was not an easy or obvious transition. However, the realization that we either had to initiate change on our own or stand by while others made the calls for us led to NAVRIIP, the Naval Aviation Readiness Integrated Improvement Program. Under NAVRIIP, our first task was to clearly define readiness requirements in order to eliminate that use-it-or- lose-it behavior. Now we fly what is needed to meet a squadron’s readiness and training requirements or a combatant commanders’ operational requirements, and no more!
Critical to the success of NAVRIIP is AirSpeed, which is a process-improvement effort focusing on those concepts critical to material readiness — aircraft maintenance, supply and logistics. In our efforts to grow Enterprise-wide, we are also beginning the journey into acquisition in an attempt to deliver more programs on time and on cost.
NAVRIIP is not about reducing readiness expectations to save money. Instead, it is about better understanding our business, clearly articulating our readiness requirements, understanding the resource implications (cost) to develop that readiness, and developing a rigorous set of metrics with which to measure “the product of the plan.” Simply stated, we need to define the readiness, understand its cost, and find ways to produce that same readiness more efficiently. Readiness remains the ultimate goal.
Our language is changing to reflect better metrics. Rather than measuring full-mission and partial-mission-capable aircraft, we now measure our ability to generate aircraft ready for tasking (RFT) — the right aircraft in the right configuration, in the right place at the right time. Of the approximately 1,000 aircraft we track in NAVRIIP, we expect about 800 to be on the flight line and 600 to be RFT in any single month. By rigorously examining the RFT gap monthly, we can conduct analysis studies to better focus a cooperative effort between Naval Air Systems Command (NavAir) and the fleet to find material and non-material solutions for these gaps while monitoring fleetwide trends. Our understanding of what causes the gaps continues to grow, and the metrics we’ve obtained over the past 12 months have helped arm us with the necessary knowledge to better focus an integrated approach across the NAE to achieve a total Naval Aviation solution.
To easily find a NAVRIIP success story, one need look no farther than our execution of last year’s flying hour program. The FY ’05 plan was to fly approximately 469,000 hours at a forecast cost of approximately $2.0 billion. By year’s end, we actually flew 465,000 hours, executing to greater than 99 percent of plan (remember the “and no more” part?). It should have cost us approximately $1.98 billion to fly those 465,000 hours. However, because of the combined efforts of the fleet and NavAir, the cost was only $1.88 billion, generating a cost avoidance of $104 million or approximately six percent of the total program. This allowed us to use those resources to fund other critical NAE requirements, which otherwise would have generated lower readiness levels or incurred a fleet bill. This is the model on which we want to build and improve.
The Secret to Success
I’m sure some of you are wondering how we were able to accomplish this cost avoidance, and it’s important that we give the credit where it is due. It was our TMS teams, their disciplined approach to the “right readiness” and, maybe even more importantly, it was our maintainers. Critical in this was their ability to reduce consumption and costs while decreasing turn-around time and increasing reliability at the operational, intermediate and depot levels through implementation of improved maintenance initiatives and reliability improvements. In fact, our projections show that even though flight hours for the Navy and Marine Corps are up four percent over last year, the demand for repaired parts is down by approximately 12 percent.
We have made changes in how we evaluate readiness and measure our costs using metrics to help us understand the cost of doing Naval Aviation’s business. We also are questioning assumptions in order to identify barriers and remove them. It’s about process improvement, improving efficiency and effectiveness. And for the first time we have commanding officers, chief petty officers and those who work for them understanding the true costs of their business.
Where are we going next? Our ultimate goal, and what the nation expects of us, is effectiveness. We are fully invested in the business of warfighting, and our readiness levels are high. Combatant commanders are pleased with the readiness and training levels of the units arriving in their areas of responsibility, but we can’t stop there. The continued superior performance of our carriers and squadrons tells me that we have the readiness piece almost right.
But cost is still the major barrier affecting the resources that go into RFT. We must work to reduce our readiness degraders and high-cost drivers so we can remain a force that is ready when we are needed. Have no doubt that we will continue this journey to ensure that our future warfighters can afford the tools they need to maintain their professional excellence.
Naval Aviation’s heritage is one of victory, forged under demanding conditions in treacherous operating environments throughout the world. The Naval Aviation force of tomorrow, equipped with the best technology, aircraft and systems, will continue that legacy for years to come.
Naval Aviation is the right force … at the right readiness … at the right cost … today and in the future. And I do see a bright future.