Military Readiness: Progress and Challenges in Implementing the Navy's Optimized Fleet Response Plan
Abstract:
To meet heavy operational demands over the past decade, the Navy has increased ship deployment lengths and has reduced or deferred ship maintenance. These decisions have reduced the predictability of ship deployments for sailors and for the ship repair industrial base. They have also resulted in declining ship conditions across the fleet, and have increased the amount of time that ships require to complete maintenance in the shipyards. Increased maintenance periods, in turn, compress the time during which ships are available for training and operations, referred to as employability. To address these issues, the Navy began implementing a revised operational schedule in November 2014, referred to as the Optimized Fleet Response Plan OFRP. The OFRP seeks to maximize employability while preserving maintenance and training with continuity in ship leadership and carrier strike group assignments, and restoring operational and personnel tempos to acceptable levels.