Navy League 2025: US Navy seeks to revamp maintenance of big-deck amphibious force

US Navy officials are now preparing maintenance work packages for USS America , pictured here, to help make the work period more efficient. (US Navy)

The US Navy (USN) is changing the way it conducts the planning and execution for big-deck amphibious ship maintenance availabilities, USN officials noted on 7 April during a panel on readiness at the Navy League Sea-Air-Space 2025 conference and symposium.

“With these complex avails for a big-deck amphib, the lead maintenance activity is going to need some more time for that,” Vice Admiral Brendan McLane, commander, Naval Surface Forces, said.

For example, releasing an availability package on the work needed 120 days before a contract for the work could be awarded is too little preparation time, Vice Adm McLane noted. “A [contract-award]-minus-120 is not going to cut it. What we're going to pilot this year is a signature of available – that's what we're calling them – on the East Coast and West Coast, where we launch a package of A-minus-500, and award an A-minus-360. That will give them a lot more time to plan.”

He added, “The other big point that we've learnt is on the execution side. We had a big problem with QA [quality assurance]. We heard a lot of stories about how each avail goes wrong, but one of the common denominators is when it comes to the QA part. We found that the work didn't pass, and we needed to redo it. That sometimes took months.”