Navy Boss Lays Out Ambitious Goals on Ships and Recruiting But Dodges on Accountability

The Navy's chief of naval operations, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, rolled out a document this week laying out her vision for the fleet -- a set of several lofty goals in a wide swath of areas that the admiral says will be met in two years' time.

Both the document itself and Navy websites talk about goals, including filling all service jobs to 100%, clearing out years of maintenance backlogs, and providing a barracks room to any sailor who wants it. Each of the goals is even assigned a "single accountable individual" in the plan.

However, when asked what accountability will look like should the Navy fall short, officials on Thursday backed away from the stronger language inside the document and instead described the goals as "aspirational" or "stretch goals."

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The top officer's plan -- known as NAVPLAN 2024 -- comes two years after the last Navy-wide plan that was released by her predecessor, Adm. Michael Gilday, and nearly a year after she was confirmed by the Senate to the top post.

On Thursday, during a discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank located in downtown Washington, D.C., Franchetti said that the goals she laid out are not only "realistic" but that "all of these goals were 100% agreed to by our four stars, by the type-commanders and, most importantly, by the single accountable individual who is going to be responsible to me to achieve this goal."

"I have no doubt in my mind that we are going to get there," Franchetti said. "Where we're getting off track, I'm going to know about it."

However, when Military.com asked what the accountability actions for missing the goals would be, the answer was less firm.

Cmdr. Desiree Frame, a spokeswoman for Franchetti, told Military.com in an email that the targets were "stretch goals -- intended to be aspirational not punitive," though she said "the single accountable officials will provide periodic updates to CNO on their progress."

One of the top goals is fielding more ships, submarines and aircraft, and the plan calls for an ability to be able to surge up to 80% of the surface fleet.

However, right now, many of the Navy's ships struggle to get through their shipyard maintenance periods on time, and some of the service's larger vessels have experienced very public and serious breakdowns at sea.

USNI reported Wednesday that maintenance for all of the Navy's surface ships is about 2,700 days behind schedule. That figure, however, is still an improvement from last year, when it was about 3,000 days, or four years ago, when it was 7,700 days.

One submarine, the USS Boise, has been sitting in a shipyard awaiting maintenance for nearly a decade.

Earlier this month, the Navy's amphibious ship fleet -- critical to deploying Marines around the globe -- suffered the third publicly known breakdown this year that forced a ship back to port.

One of those three breakdowns was the USS Boxer in April, which was forced to return from its deployment just 10 days after setting sail after it developed an issue with its rudder.

Franchetti also aims to grow on the success the service has managed to achieve in recruiting.

The plan declares that, by 2027, the Navy will not only be meeting its recruiting goals but will rebuild its delayed-entry program -- a pool of applicants ready but waiting to ship to boot camp -- that it depleted in the past several years in an effort to try and make up for recruiting shortfalls.

The goal is also to not only fill every job in the active and reserve wings of the Navy to 100%, but man deploying units such as ships to 95%.

In January, the Navy's top personnel officer said that the service was short about 22,000 junior sailors at sea, and the service's models suggested it would be down by about 16,000 sailors across the force in the fall.

Military.com reached out to the Navy for updated figures, but the service was not able to provide them in time for publication.

And while the Navy appears to be set to meet its recruiting goal this year, the plans laid out by Franchetti means that recruiters would not only have to maintain but step up their efforts in years to come.

Despite all the challenges facing the service, the Navy website for the plan proclaims that "the Navy will be ready for sustained high-end joint and combined combat by 2027."

"We are shooting for very high, very tough stretch goals here, and I know that," Franchetti said.

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