TRANSCRIPT 🔗
WEBVTT
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We are discussing issues that include workforce, workload, and potential federal legislation impacting our repair yards.
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But John, I'd like to start off and say it's not a workforce problem.
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We have the capacity.
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In fact, STA put out a one-pager on for ship repair last year that says, look at all the dry docks in the U.S.
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Well, we're putting uh budget-wise and uh and contract-wise with non-nuclear surface ship repair is inadequate to support the fleet the Navy needs and the nation needs.
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Uh 355 is the congressional requirement for a number of ships.
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We're not even close to that.
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Not even close.
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Welcome to Ship Repair Radio, the official podcast of the Virginia Ship Repair Association.
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I'm John Polovček, president of the Virginia Ship Repair Association, and your host.
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Today we are discussing issues that include workforce, workload, and potential federal legislation impacting our repair yards.
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With me is Kevin Terry, the Senior Defense Advisor for the Shipbuilders Council of America.
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Kevin brings 40 years of experience supporting Navy ship material readiness.
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Before joining SCA to advocate for our industry nationwide, Kevin served as the general manager of General Dynamics NASCAL Norfolk, managing more than 800 employees.
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Kevin also served as a commanding officer at the Supervisor of Shipbuilding in Newport News.
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Kevin, thanks for being on the show today.
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John, thanks for having me.
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I'm uh very passionate about what you're doing here with the Visra radio and uh anxious to be invited.
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Thank you.
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Yeah.
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So Kevin, I'm gonna I'm gonna get right into it to keep our keep our listeners going.
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You know, Kevin, you know, just read your your your background.
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You've been in in and around the yards for for decades.
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Um I would imagine you have an opinion on what's the biggest issue on ship repair.
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Is it is it the declining workload?
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Is it a workforce problem?
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Something else?
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What's the what's the biggest impact?
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Well, John, I'd like to start off and say it's not a workforce problem.
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We have plenty of workforce.
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In fact, um eager listener of your your podcast since uh rollout last uh July 4th, um the speakers you've had to date are fantastic, and I think everyone everyone to a T has been uh spot on about it's the workload problem.
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Um this this repair industry I've seen over my uh years of experience has just been up and down, uh particularly this port.
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You know, as a pro proud uh veteran and taxpayer, I would go down Hampton Boulevard on my way to the naval station and see a beautiful blue sign that said, Welcome to Norfolk Naval Base, the world's largest naval base.
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That sign doesn't exist anymore, by the way.
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They took that down, and it's it's true, it's not the largest naval base anymore.
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Yeah, that's uh that's a that's not a point.
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Uh that's not lost on me, but I don't think that's very well known.
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I have talked to some state delegates and and others, and everybody still says the largest Naval base.
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But go ahead, Kevin, I cut you off.
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No, no, that's um, but in my capacity at the Shipbuilders Council of America as an advisor for the ship repair industry, I work closely with John as well as the other four ship repair associations, and I think every one of them has the same issue.
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It's up and down.
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There's nothing that you can plan, and and being a general manager for almost 10 years, uh in you were looking for where your next meal is coming from.
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It's it's it's it's a problem the Navy knows they have.
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We've been talking about it for years.
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Unfortunately, the problem does not get better.
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No, no, and and actually it um the numbers are working against us, I think.
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If you look at the 30-year shipbuilding plan, I think in the next five years, if I just look at surface combatants, I think there's 30 decommissionings and maybe 29 new holes being added.
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So those numbers are those numbers are against us.
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And Congressman Rob Whitman puts that out every year that we we're decommissioning more ships than we're building.
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And that is true.
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And particularly in this port, the numbers are just decreasing faster than we're getting new ships in port.
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Um so you can't build a workforce that's dependable and there to support our strategic uh defense.
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Yeah.
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So in your eyes, Kevin, having been at this and in and around the ours for for 40 years, it's it's workload.
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It is workload, and workload comes
Load full transcript
from the budget.
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And the budget for non-nuclear surface ships is not right.
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You know, it's the last to be funded.
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Um, SCA has been working on a legislative proposal for FY27 NDAA that actually earmarks and has total transparency on what is spent uh year over year for OMIN and OPN budgets.
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And we hope that gets passed.
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Yeah, right.
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So having owned the 1B, 4B account uh as the uh comproller at the Fleet Forces account at Fleet Forces back uh back in 2020, 2010, back back there.
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I know that that account is is is is tremendous and it's got a lot of things in it um as well.
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So I think the financial transparency we've got to do.
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And it turns out to be a slush one.
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Yeah.
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And our companies that are so vital to ship repair and to our national defense are are paying the price for that.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Sorry.
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So I'm gonna I'm gonna uh pivot here for in a little bit, but you know, you were you were at drama dynamics NASCO for years, uh working directly with the government.
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Now you're at SCA and you're managing this ship repair and other government aspects uh relationship for um superpositions council of America.
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Can you describe aspects of repair that hinder our private yards from getting ships in and out of time, in and out of maintenance on time?
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You know, I hear it it takes 30 days to get a change request.
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Um I I hear that uh uh material availability is a problem.
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Um the Navy looks at the yards and goes, you don't have the right workforce to to go to who who's right?
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Who's what who's is there enough blame to go around or who's got the who's got you know the fault here?
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There is enough blame to go around, I'll be honest with you.
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But again, that doesn't get us anywhere.
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You know, who shot JR, uh to use an old term.
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But I'd say let's just say blame is 50-50, okay, 50% government, 50% industry.
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Okay, fine, we're beyond that.
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But um industry wrote a letter, in fact, SCA letterhead back in September 2024, just a year and a half ago, about all the issues that are affecting ship repair.
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And let me be clear, John, to your listeners.
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Six six-page letter, right?
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Six-page letter that everyone told me that that Admiral Green would not read because it's six pages and you have to keep it to one page.
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But I do know Admiral Green read it.
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And in that was um, again, feedback from all the companies nationwide and all the ship repair associations of the real issues affecting ship repair.
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And let me be clear to your listeners that uh the industry is adamant about delivering on time.
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They want to deliver ships.
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Yeah, they're all they're all they're all patriots.
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They they want to they they want to help the Navy and get ships back in service.
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And so, how do you get there?
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You got to have material on time.
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There is not one availability that I've heard of in my years of experience that they've had all the government furnished material provide it at 30 days prior to the start of the avail.
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That is in the contract.
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That's the government's commitment.
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Never never met.
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Um, having a robust change management program that you talked about, 30 days, that would be nice if you could get changes in 30 days.
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You know, commercial ship repair, we we heard at a conference two weeks ago in Jacksonville, Florida, they can get changes settled that day, if not that hour.
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So why is it take you know, 30 days on average to get change management done?
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There's some really basic blocking and tackling of ship repair that just isn't getting fixed year over year.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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What other kind of what other kind of things were in that six-page letter?
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I know there was uh uh there were there are other items in there.
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Well, one was about the uh workforce stability.
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You know, you got to build the bench and you gotta have your team that's um there working this avail that has the lessons learned for the next avail.
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You go peaks and valleys with your workforce, all that skill and that experience that you've learned on that one DDG or that one LPD is lost if they don't have another LPD or DDG to fit the void.
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Yeah, you know, the N the Navy's working on a new acquisition strategy, this uh MS M MMS MSSP, right?
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Um, you know, it's got a little bit of a bundling aspect on what what what's your opinion?
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I mean I think that's a good start.
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Unfortunately, you know, they've been at it for a couple years now, um, and
we expect the RFP to come out later this month, but that's a good start to bundle or to group a number of ships into a uh ship reporting.
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That's for the um the CMES.
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CMES not for a CNO, you know, industry SCA particularly with the SRE support.
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We've been advocating for to include CNO avails into that MSSP.
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But right now, you know, crawl, walk, walk, run.
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Uh the Navy's been telling us that it MSSP's got to be CMAV only.
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CMAV or smaller.
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Yeah, I so I think you uh you've what you what you've laid out here is there's there's uh government issues, there's uh you know issues at the yards that could certainly do uh do better.
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But there are there are known there are known things.
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And um do you do you think we're working on them?
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I don't think we're working on the right things.
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And that was the point of the six-page letter.
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The Navy actually came to SCA um earlier than uh earlier that summer and asked me, hey, can you put on in writing what are the issues?
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And so it took a little while to get consensus across the different companies, large and small, across the different ports and uh interests uh east and west coasts.
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But um at the end of the day, I think that six-page letter is really worth rereading again.
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Uh, we know what the issues are, and we we do discuss this with the Navy on a regular uh basis.
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I set up uh industry navy discussion panels.
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In fact, we're having a virtual one next week, and we have in in-person meetings three times a year.
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Uh so discussions are being had, but is the needle moving?
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No, and it's certainly not moving fast.
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Yeah, certainly not moving fast as right.
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And so David, I'm gonna move to a kind of a different a different topic here.
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Um and and I hope that you can answer this from your shipbuilding Council of America uh experience.
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I I read article after article constantly saying that the you that the United States does not have enough shipbuilding and repair capacity.
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Talking from an SAA perspective, can you help describe the national landscape?
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How many yards, right?
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What what is the truth in capacity?
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Absolutely.
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We have the capacity.
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In fact, SCA put out a one-pager on for ship repair last year that says, look at all the dry docks in the U.S.
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And it's it's eye watering, John.
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You've seen the chart.
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Yep.
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Um That's why I'm asking.
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If you throw that out.
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Uh, you know, again, not all dry docks in the U.S.
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are Nav C certified.
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They don't have to be, but we have a lot of capacity in the ship in the ship repair uh uh landscape across the country, um, east, west, and the Gulf Coast.
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There's a lot in the Gulf Coast right now.
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And these are good red-blooded American uh paying jobs.
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They're all patriots, and I just would love to see that capacity uh utilized.
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Again, um I'm a reader of the past and and love history.
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Uh, you know, I know what we did with the Liberty shipbuilding program and with uh nationalizing shipbuilding and ship repair.
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We got to get there and we got to get there fast.
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Yeah, I think uh I think that that one pager from SCA said that there were 800.
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There's over 80 shipyards in the country, yes.
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Yeah.
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One of the issues that um, you know, you bring you mentioned dry docks.
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Um there was a document uh, I believe produced by the Navy that had uh docking availabilities in uh the port of Norfolk.
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And I think there was a period of time uh coming in in FY27 where of the of the uh dry docks here in in Norfolk, the the three dry docks, one one would be empty, one would would not be not be filled.
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And I and I so I look at that and I go That's criminal.
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Yeah, yeah.
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We we have capacity.
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So then you extrapolate that out to the to the 80s shipyards and then all of the other dry docks.
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Right.
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So from SCA's perspective, there's capacity to do both shipbuilding and repair.
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Absolutely, John.
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And on the ship repair side for dry dockings, we've been advocating both uh SCA and the SRAs over the last two years to shorten the duration of the availabilities.
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The veils that go long go late.
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Okay, so now the Navy had listened, does has listened and has shortened the DDG uh docking intervals to six years.
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That's good.
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So um the dot the DDG theoretically will get into docks more frequently
for shorter durations.
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We need to see that effort being carried forward to the other uh classes of ships like LPDs.
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Yeah, so you know it's funny, so on a previous uh previous guest, Admiral Admiral Hackett, North McNaval, he went down the same line.
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We've got to stop making repair look like shipbuilding, these shorter cycles, shorter repair periods, shorter docking periods is what he advocated in the public yards, right?
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Which we've been talking about in the the we must bring that same mentality to the to the private.
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Absolutely.
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There's a lot of work that can be done at the naval base that should be done at the naval base and not into the And only do the work and dock that you need to dock.
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Correct.
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But back on the dry docks, I will say our private sector shipyards, not just here in the port of Norfolk, but in all our fleet concentration areas have made tremendous investments, not just in dry docks, but in cranes and peers and even personnel.
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And that investment over time, if you can't uh uh get the payback, they're never gonna make another investment.
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And so that's back to the your first question.
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It's back to the workload.
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Workload.
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Exactly.
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Right.
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And so so that is a there is a cycle there that um I'm not quite sure um uh whether it's Navy leaders uh or congressional leaders, others, that they don't understand it all flows from workload.
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Yes, and you're not gonna make the investment if you don't see the workload, right?
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There's a lot of people talking about repair is a declining business item.
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Right.
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And again, uh those that have owned cars, and I think everyone's owned a car, owns a home, as they get older, they require repair.
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And these ships are designed with the service life, the non-nuclear ships, for 30 to 35 years.
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They need continuous maintenance, they need continuous modernization to last.
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Carriers and bigger ships can last up to 50 years, but only if you do the maintenance and the modernization.
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Yeah, I think that's why your financial transparency push from from SCA, and I completely agree with it.
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We've got to get to the point of understanding um that that's non-nuclear surface Navy, uh, what's what's really in the budget and what's what's what's programmed, what's budgeted, right?
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Then what's executed.
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I think we won't be able to see that.
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I think absolutely.
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I think we need to have an honest conversation.
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We have to look at the facts.
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But that takes a budget to keep that fleet maintained over 35 years.
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And rest and reset the force.
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Let's let's look at the future a little bit.
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Um I there's been a lot of talk about Ships for America Act.
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Um, and I think a lot of people uh look at that and go, that's shipbuilding.
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Yeah.
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But I uh I I I know that there's repair in there.
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Can you give me uh can you give me a little bit of your uh perspective uh from uh from from SCA about what's in that and how it might impact repair?
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I would love to, John.
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Thank you.
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I think all of us as taxpayers need to understand Ships for America Act Better.
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Uh it's a bicameral and bipartisan legit piece of legislation that has been proposed over two years ago that has the complete support of uh Shipbuilders Council of America and the Ship Repair Associations.
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There's a section in 401 that, you know, may not stay as section 401, but does talk about the commercial ship repair aspect.
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We have uh commercial ships in the program for maritime security program, and which a subset of that is tanking program.
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So MSP, TSP are the acronyms uh that take a stipend from the U.S.
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government every year just to be on the books to do a uh carrier uh uh transfer, transfer um under their vessels during the year.
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Well, guess what?
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None of those ships are required to have that ship repair in the U.S.
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We have plenty of able-body shipyards that have the capacity and the facility to do that type of ship repair, but nothing in the legislation to date has required them to have ship repair.
00:17:16.240 --> 00:17:26.079
The Ships for America Act, particularly this section, is one that SEA has been advocating to have some teeth in the legislation to have these commercial vessels repaired in the U.S.
00:17:26.480 --> 00:17:26.640
Again.
00:17:27.119 --> 00:17:32.160
I think there's a there's some type of sliding scale of percent of maintenance being.
00:17:32.559 --> 00:17:33.680
That's what we're advocating for.
00:17:33.920 --> 00:17:35.839
So again, that's getting some legs.
00:17:35.920 --> 00:17:44.079
The White House recently passed over portions of the uh Congressional Ships for America Act uh in a White House
legislative proposal.
00:17:52.319 --> 00:18:07.759
I think a key aspect uh from my conversations with uh uh Captain Carmel, the the Marat administrator, um he was keen to point out the Maritime Security Trust Fund uh as ways to incentivize and pay for some of these things.
00:18:07.839 --> 00:18:11.680
I don't need does SCA have an opinion on the maritime security trust funds.
00:18:12.079 --> 00:18:16.559
We think that's actually I think that's the bank that needs to keep our industry healthy.
00:18:16.960 --> 00:18:25.200
Um and you get that back through the the the fines or the the um yeah the uh penalties if you don't have a ship repair in the U.S.
00:18:25.680 --> 00:18:34.319
Yeah, so I think there I I I look to the future and I and I just say this conversation on the maritime is is everywhere.
00:18:34.559 --> 00:18:52.160
And um I think uh I think uh Virginia Ship Repair Association members, uh, and I know there's a lot of overlap between SCA and and VSRA and and their and their membership, I I think you would tell them that we're out here advocating for these types of things.
00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:59.599
And Ships for America Act is just to use a buzzword from President Kennedy these, you know, from six years ago, you know, rising tide lifts all boats.
00:18:59.680 --> 00:19:10.400
And so Ships for America Act, although oriented towards commercial shipbuilding and ship repair, will rise all tides for military uh and uh government ship repair as well.
00:19:10.640 --> 00:19:10.720
Yeah.
00:19:10.880 --> 00:19:14.640
So Kevin, I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of give you the last the last word here.
00:19:14.799 --> 00:19:31.119
You know, you have uh you have a wealth of experience uh in in the Navy, supervised shipbuilding, um uh your experience running um uh general dynamics NASCO and now being an advocate at SCA.
00:19:31.839 --> 00:19:36.799
What's the one or two things that you want people to walk away with after listening to this podcast?
00:19:37.119 --> 00:19:42.480
Well, John, I think simply I'm uh I'm glad you're doing this podcast.
00:19:42.559 --> 00:19:44.319
I think it's coming at the right time.
00:19:44.480 --> 00:19:46.960
I hope all your listeners uh continue to listen to it.
00:19:47.039 --> 00:19:47.759
I know I will.
00:19:47.920 --> 00:19:49.279
We gotta have the discussion.
00:19:49.359 --> 00:19:50.880
We have to face facts.
00:19:50.960 --> 00:19:54.799
You know, I'm a Rickover fan, came up in that program just like you did.
00:19:54.960 --> 00:20:02.160
And uh, you know, we have to face facts brutally honestly and look ourselves in the mirror and give us the red face tests or the Boston Globe test.
00:20:02.559 --> 00:20:14.400
And what right now, what we're putting uh budget-wise and uh and contract-wise with non-nuclear surface ship repair is inadequate to support the fleet the Navy needs and the nation needs.
00:20:14.559 --> 00:20:18.000
Uh 355 is the congressional requirement for a number of ships.
00:20:18.079 --> 00:20:18.880
We're not even close to that.
00:20:19.039 --> 00:20:19.680
Not even close.
00:20:20.079 --> 00:20:21.119
And so I am worried.
00:20:21.200 --> 00:20:30.799
I'm worried as a veteran, I'm worried as a taxpayer, I'm worried as a uh someone that's been there, done that, of what our future looks like just a year, five years, or 10 years away.
00:20:30.960 --> 00:20:33.599
We need to advocate, we need to have this conversation.
00:20:33.759 --> 00:20:37.599
We need to be spending the dollars that our national security depends on.
00:20:37.839 --> 00:20:39.200
Hey, Kevin, thank you.
00:20:39.359 --> 00:20:44.400
Um, I I appreciate the kind of words on the podcast, and I really appreciate you being here today.
00:20:44.559 --> 00:20:46.720
It it is all about workload.
00:20:46.960 --> 00:20:56.880
Um, I I applaud SCA for the financial transparency that you're you're trying to uh bring there and everything you're doing for uh everything that you're doing for repair.
00:20:56.960 --> 00:21:03.119
So again, Kevin, thank you for being a guest on Ship Repair Radio and sharing the perspectives with us.
00:21:03.359 --> 00:21:10.000
If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our podcast on your uh favorite platform or application.
00:21:10.240 --> 00:21:16.640
You can send us your comments, thoughts, and ideas for future topics to radio at VirginiaShiprepair.org.
00:21:16.799 --> 00:21:20.559
That's radio at VirginiaShipRair.org.
00:21:20.880 --> 00:21:24.960
Thank you for the conversation today, Kevin, and you see you next time.