The Ghost of the LCS Maintenance CONOPS Still Haunts the Fleet

...imagine not being able to change your own tire...

Once a bad theory is adopted because it makes sense to one cohort (GOFOs who went to a two-week MBA camp) and is encouraged by others (influential civilian companies looking for another income stream), at the expense of what the first cohort should have been focused on but is an unpopular topic (winning wars), it spreads and develops its inertia.

Even when one area discovers the theory does not survive contact with reality, other areas carry on because, well, going along is easier than admitting error and changing.

When the maintenance CONOPS for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) came out in the mid-00s with its reliance on civilian contractors and OEMs being responsible for maintenance that, on a normal ship, is done by the ship's company—many of us warned that it would not work.

The miasma of arrogance that characterized the Age of Transformation™ would not hear of it, as you would not be able to make the manning CONOPS slide work if the maintenance CONOPS didn’t paper over the gaping holes.

The Cult of Efficiency™ was in its ascendancy, while the Church of the Combat Effective™ were driven into basements, meeting in hushed tones.

After over a decade and a half of everyone suffering through a series of senior leaders making farcical excuses, a half decade ago, Big Navy started to (officially) accept the reality that it was all vanity. Eventually the truth came out, as in the below from 2021, and a slightly better solution was found—though more work needs to be done.

The Navy is beginning to implement contracting approaches for LCS maintenance in order to help mitigate schedule risk, while taking steps to avoid it in the future. GAO found in the 18 LCS maintenance delivery orders it reviewed that the Navy had to contract for more repair work than originally planned, increasing the risk to completing LCS maintenance on schedule. A majority of this unplanned work occurred because the Navy did not fully understand the ship's condition before starting maintenance. The Navy has begun taking steps to systematically collect and analyze maintenance data to determine the causes of unplanned work, which could help it more accurately plan for maintenance. The Navy has also recently begun applying some contracting approaches to more quickly incorporate unplanned work and mitigate the schedule risk, such as (1) setting a price for low-dollar value unplanned work to save negotiation time and (2) procuring some materials directly instead of waiting for contractors to do so. Such measures will be important to control cost and schedule risks as additional LCS enter the fleet in the coming years.

Other similar vanities of that era are being corrected. The rebirth of SIMA is another example of positive change, but as mentioned earlier, more work needs to be done.

This 'outsource it to the civilian sector—it briefs really well' mentality wasn’t just limited to the LCS program. Make no mistake, this was never about making a more combat effective Navy, no, this was always about feeding the Potomac Flotilla's warped priorities and industry's grasping business models.

The Marines are suffering under the same mindlessness:

The Marine Corps is facing “significant” challenges keeping some of its most important weapons in working order, because Marines too often must rely on contractors for equipment upkeep, the service’s second-ranking general recently wrote to a Senate panel.

Gen. Bradford Gering, the Marine Corps assistant commandant, described for the Armed Services Committee cases involving several high-profile military systems — including parts for communications terminals and for armored vehicles — that Marines sometimes wait months for contractors to fix, when Marines could complete the repair in days or even hours for a fraction of the price if they controlled the data.

…

Warren and Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., have championed a so-called right-to-repair provision in the fiscal 2027 NDAA that would give the military services more control over the data they need to maintain their systems more rapidly than they do today and at lower cost. Their provision would expand the military’s access to repair materials, hold accountable companies that falsely assert restrictions and permit the military to contract with companies other than the original system manufacturers to perform repairs in wartime and contingency operations.

If “right to repair” rings a bell, it is because a parallel fight is taking place against John Deere—one of the agriculture industry’s “Primes.”

This is a bipartisan effort, as it should be.

Civilian and uniformed leaders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on down have supported shifting control over data rights from industry to the government to increase competition, reduce prices and ensure troops can fix their equipment on the battlefield.

The department has begun to make some changes along those lines but many lawmakers believe a statutory change is required.

Warren and Sheehy wrote Armed Services leaders in May to summarize the armed forces’ support for their measure.

However, it has its opponents.

Rep. Mike D. Rogers, R-Ala., the House Armed Services Committee chairman, has been sympathetic to the industry’s concerns.

Late last year, the defense contractors successfully killed a right-to-repair proposal in the final negotiations over the fiscal 2026 NDAA.

The issue is shaping up to be one of the big defense fights looming in the coming months, as lawmakers hope the NDAA can be enacted for the 66th consecutive year.

It needs to be fixed, as we cannot fight wars like this.

Because the Marine Corps is reliant on contractors to fix certain systems as a result of data restrictions, Marines have to wait too long and pay too much to fix several of their most important pieces of equipment, Gering said.

One such system, he said, is the Amphibious Combat Vehicle program, which fields armored vehicles that can operate on both the water and land.

Gering cited a panel in the driver’s compartment of the amphibious vehicle where key system controls are located.

The panel “costs $3,040.88 to replace and takes approximately eight months for the repair via support from a secondary repairables exchange contract,” he said. “With access to an original part, however, the repair cycle could be reduced to less than one month — a trained Marine could repair this component in approximately four hours.”

…

Another key system affected are the masts that hold antennas for Mobile User Objective System terminals. These terminals link Marines who are on foot or in vehicles to communications satellites, providing the troops with smartphone-like voice and data connections to command posts that are beyond the line of sight.

Marines were able to develop their own replacement mast that can be built for $10 in 10 hours, whereas a replacement mast from the original manufacturer “could cost up to $5,644.37 and take more than seven months to deliver,” Gering said — adding that the Marine Corps’ mast is “more durable than the original version.”

This is a good fight…one that we never should have to fight…but a good one.

BZ to all making this push.