From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Assessing the Readiness of the Navy's Ships Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Sharon Pickup, Director, Defense Capabilities and Management Related GAO Work: GAO-12-887: Military Readiness: Navy Needs to Assess Risks to Its Plan to Manage Ship Readiness Released: September 2012 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's September 2012. In 2010, the Navy concluded that the readiness of its ships was below acceptable levels and would not be able to fully support reliable, sustained operations at sea. A group led by Sharon Pickup, a director in GAO's Defense Capabilities and Management team, recently evaluated the Navy's efforts to improve the readiness of its ships. GAO's Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Sharon to learn more. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] When we're talking about the readiness of the Navy's ships, what are we talking about? [ Sharon Pickup: ] Well there are a lot of aspects to the readiness of Navy ships to include its ability to operate for extended periods and maintain all its systems in operating order, the training of its crew and their ability to perform the missions aboard the ships as well as be able to repair equipment if there, if problems arise. And also the ability of the Navy to provide the necessary personnel to operate the ship. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] In this report your team looked in particular at certain kinds of ships. What were they? [ Sharon Pickup: ] Well the Navy has a number of different kinds of ships and submarines and we focused on what the Navy terms its surface force. So that, those kinds of ships would include frigates, cruisers, and destroyers, and that's, that was the focus of what we looked at. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Your team looked in part at how the Navy evaluates the state of readiness of its ships. Can you talk about what you found there? [ Sharon Pickup: ] Sure. The Navy has a lot of different ways that they look at the readiness of a ship, and one of the key ways is periodic inspections of different aspects of the ship's operating systems, structure, personnel, and training. So not only do they do what are called maintenance type inspections, they also do evaluations that are intended to evaluate the adequacy of the training that the ship's crews get or their ability to repair certain types of equipment. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] You also looked at the Navy's new strategy to improve ship readiness. What steps did you find that they've taken? [ Sharon Pickup: ] Well what we found is that because of problems that the Navy was experienced with the readiness of its ships, that it decided to take a more systematic and integrated approach to the way that it scheduled ships for maintenance, training, and deployment. And more specifically, what it tried to do was set up a schedule so that there was more predictability in when ships would undergo, for example, major repairs, and when they would undergo certain training programs and how they would deploy. So that it was a more even keeled approach to maintaining the readiness of ships over a period of time. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] And what is GAO recommending in this report? [ Sharon Pickup: ] Well what we found was that there was a lot of factors that affected the Navy's ability to keep its ships on the maintenance, training, and deployment schedule that it was calling for under its new strategy. And so these factors were things like whether or not they had enough people at the shore facilities that did the inspections and repaired the ships as well as demands that occurred that the Navy wasn't aware of such as needing to deploy overseas on short notice. And so what we recognized was that the Navy had not done an assessment of all the factors that could affect its ability to stay on these schedules and that we were recommending that they needed to do what we termed a risk assessment so that they had a better idea of the things that would affect their ability to stay on schedule and would be able to develop mitigation plans with alternatives so that they could fully implement the strategy. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Finally, for taxpayers interested in the state of readiness of our military and our Navy, what's the bottom line here? [ Sharon Pickup: ] I think the bottom line is that the nation depends heavily on the Navy to provide a ready fleet of ships to perform the missions that are required to protect our national security, and so that from the taxpayers standpoint there's a lot of resources that are invested into maintaining the ship's readiness. And so we think it's a very good idea that the Navy has developed this strategy to try to manage readiness better but we also think that there are steps that it can take to enhance its ability to maintain the readiness of ships at a high level and a lower cost. [Background Music] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO.gov and be sure to tune in to the next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional Watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.