NORFOLK, Va. — Since 2015, the Government Accountability Office has made 39 unclassified recommendations related to Navy ship maintenance delays.
The Navy or the Department of Defense concurred or partially concurred with 37 recommendations, but they had implemented just six of those recommendations as of September 2020.
The bottom line, according to a new GAO report published this week is repair jobs just aren't getting done on time.
From the fiscal year 2014 to the end of the fiscal year 2020, the Navy incurred more than 38,600 days of maintenance delay.
"It's a very serious problem and the Navy needs to be doing more to fix it," said retired Navy captain Joe Bouchard.
The former commanding officer of Naval Station Norfolk says if the problem isn't corrected, the consequences could be dire.
"The worst-case scenario would be if the pre-deployment training was cut short to make up for the delay getting out of a yard period," Bouchard said. "That is a serious threat to operational readiness. And then one of the cascading effects is deployed units have to stay deployed longer because their replacements aren't available yet. And it just keeps snowballing."