Navy 'fleet response' posture could strain shipyards, crews.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

A combination of a shrinking fleet and escalating commitments around the world has prompted the U.S. Navy to come up with a new model for its ship maintenance and repair operations.

Under a blueprint called "fleet response concept," the Navy will reshuffle ship maintenance schedules and relocate shipyard workers as needed, in an attempt to boost the service's war readiness.

Although the idea is viewed as a common-sense approach to meeting these growing demands, Navy officials and outside experts concede that, so far, nobody really is sure whether the U.S. industrial base can adapt to the new model, at least in the foreseeable future. It also is unclear to what extent the improved combat readiness will come at the expense of the quality of life of Navy personnel.

The fleet response concept will seek to "institutionalize" the kind of buildup that the Navy executed in anticipation of the war with Iraq, a conflict for which the Navy deployed 70 percent of its ships, said Adm. Vernon Clark, chief of naval operations.

Rather than focus on deployment dates, the Navy will need to work "readiness angles," Clark said at a breakfast meeting with reporters. The bottom line, he said, is to be able to "scramble" at least five or six carrier battle groups on short notice, when contingencies arise.

This marks a drastic departure from the structured procedures and schedules typically associated with ship maintenance availabilities.

"We have been a Navy that is fundamentally a rotational force," he said. "We will continue to be a Navy that is a rotational force. But we will also be a Navy that is a rotational and a surge force."

In charge of carrying out the fleet response concept is Adm. Robert J. Natter, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command.

The Naval Sea Systems Command will see that U.S. shipyards adapt to the fleet response concept, said Rear Adm. William Klemm, NAVSEA's deputy for logistics, maintenance and industrial operations.

"We have to change the business in the industrial concept," he told reporters. "No longer are we going to be sitting here two years in advance, planning how to do the availability. I may very well be told that a ship coming back in a month needs to be reconstituted for a following deployment."

The problem with the industrial base is that it never was designed for the flexible approach to ship maintenance the Navy is now adopting, Klemm said.

"In the Cold War era, we assigned ships to shipyards, [in] rotational assignments,"...