Navy SUPSHIP and Waivers

Congress has recently been exercising their mandated oversight responsibilities over the military.  This is all for the good and I commend them, as a group, while noting that they should be much more vigorous, rigorous, and punitive in their actions.  Still, it’s an improvement. 

 

Congress requested that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) review the Navy’s Supervisors of Shipbuilding, Conversion and Repair (SUPSHIP) organization which functions under NAVSEA (which I have previously stated should be eliminated as a completely worthless organization).  To that end, GAO has released a report examining the role of SUPSHIP.  As the report notes, SUPSHIP

 

… serve as the Navy’s on-site technical, contractual, and business authority for the construction of Navy vessels at major private shipyards.[1]

 

These are the people who should be ensuring that ships are built properly and to specification.  The reality, however, is that ships are routinely delivered significantly incomplete, non-functional, and, in some cases, damaged.  Clearly, SUPSHIP is failing and failing badly.  For example, GAO

 

… found in 2018 that the lead ships for six Navy programs experienced delays in providing the ships to the fleet, ranging from 6 months to 6 years, and cost growth as high as 154 percent.[1]

 

As the report states,

 

Collectively, these results have raised questions about the Navy’s ability to effectively oversee shipbuilder performance throughout the construction of new ships.[1]

 

GAO was commissioned to find out why.

 

Think about the concept embodied in SUPSHIP. 

 

While prime contractors are responsible for controlling the quality of their work, the Navy relies on the SUPSHIPs, as the government’s primary on-site representatives, to perform quality assurance oversight during ship construction at private shipyards.[1]

 

These are supposed experts in ship construction and they are emplaced in the shipyards that the Navy contracts with.  They see the ships being built on a daily basis.  There should be no surprises, no quality issues, no incomplete ships, and no construction failures  …  and yet there are.  In fact, failure is the norm.  How can that be?  Well, peruse the following quotes from the report that point at various SUPSHIP issues. 

 

Note, in the following quotes, ‘we’ refers to GAO.

 

… we found in 2013 that, while the number of significant deficiencies generally had dropped, the Navy continued to accept the delivery of ships with open deficiencies that lingered after ship delivery.

 

We recommended in 2013, among other things, that the Navy clarify in its policy when contractor-responsible deficiencies should be fully corrected during the acquisition process for shipbuilding programs and ensure the policy is followed. In response, DOD indicated that it would monitor whether additional guidance was necessary but took no further action to implement our recommendation. [emphasis added]

 

In July 2017, we found that problems with quality, completeness, and reliability persisted when ships were turned over to the Navy’s fleet.  Although a certain number of deficiencies can be expected for something as complex as a Navy ship, we found that the Navy’s routine acceptance of ships with significant unresolved deficiencies and reliability problems consumed limited resources, diminished ship performance, and added to sailors’ workloads.

 

… we recommended that the Secretary of the Navy revise the service’s ship delivery policy to clarify what types of Supervisors of Shipbuilding deficiencies need to be corrected and what mission capability must be achieved at acceptance of ship delivery from the shipbuilder and when the ship is provided to the fleet. DOD did not agree with this 2017 recommendation and has yet to take action to implement it. [emphasis added]

 

We found that the Navy infrequently uses specific quality incentives in contracts, and that, when used, they have minimal effect on the SUPSHIPs’ quality assurance activities …

 

… SUPSHIPs traditionally perform limited or no on-site quality assurance of the ship systems and components developed and produced away from the shipyards.

 

… for key complex systems that must be integrated into the ships, the SUPSHIPs’ lack of involvement prior to the [Government Furnished Equipment’s] arrival at the shipyard reduces opportunities to leverage their expertise to address known problems.

 

We found that the Navy largely limits the SUPSHIPs’ involvement in key decision-making activities for shipbuilding programs prior to contract awards.

 

 

 

Waivers

 

As regular readers know, ComNavOps is death on waivers, believing they are unjustified, regardless of circumstances, during peacetime.  Indeed, the report repeatedly addresses the use of waivers as a detriment to successful ship construction and delivery as evidenced by the following quotes.

 

Prior to the [Ford] acceptance trials, the CNO also approved a waiver for the advanced arresting gear that excluded the system from inspection during the trials.

 

We found that five of 12 case study ships used deficiency waivers approved by the CNO—50 waivers in total—to proceed with acceptance trials.  Additionally, the Navy’s subsequent acceptance of ship deliveries for five of the ships was supported by 59 waivers for starred card deficiencies identified by INSURV during the trials.

 

… we found that the Navy has received standing waivers for some deficiencies with Virginia class submarines that will never meet Navy specifications or cannot be completed prior to acceptance trials due to time restrictions.

 

… waiving incomplete or deficient equipment through trials and delivery reduces the SUPSHIPs’ ability to hold the shipbuilder accountable for timely correction of deficiencies by allowing shipbuilders to deliver ships that have yet to meet requirements.

 

The Navy’s use of waivers and the corresponding limits to the SUPSHIPs’ shareable knowledge of the condition of waived systems also have the potential to mask construction problems with longer-term quality and performance consequences.

 

 

 

 

Here’s a table showing a couple examples of the use of waivers in Acceptance Trials and Delivery (table adapted from report [1]).

 

	Acceptance Trial Waivers	Delivery Waivers
CVN-78	15	36
DDG-1001	29	18

 

 

Waivers are tossed around like confetti.  Is it any wonder that ships are delivered incomplete, non-functional, and damaged?  All waivers must be personally approved by the CNO.  That makes this entire mess solely and personally his fault.  Congress needs to immediately fire SecNav and CNO.  Of course, if either had an ounce of integrity, they’d resign in shame.

 

NAVSEA and SUPSHIP need to be eliminated since neither perform an effective, useful function.

 

 

 

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[1]Government Accountability Office, “Navy Shipbuilding, Increasing Supervisors of Shipbuilding Responsibility Could Help Improve Program Outcomes”, April 2022