The New Board of Inspection and Survey Process Will Fail the Fleet

The Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey (InSurv) process recently was simplified, but the change will do more harm than good. An InSurv ship inspection ostensibly accomplishes two objectives. First, since 1882, it has used a standard and comprehensive data-collection and inspection process to inform Congress whether its investments in Navy ships were a wise use of taxpayer money. Second, it informs Navy type commanders of systemic material and programmatic issues throughout the fleet. With this data, type commanders can reassign funding or alter policy to address system flaws that may be common across platform type. In 2019, the InSurv inspection process was significantly streamlined in an effort to be less onerous for ship crews, while supporting a higher frequency of inspection. Unfortunately, this change has generated a declining trend in material readiness in the surface navy, with nine functional areas of the 36 ships inspected in 2019 evaluated as “degraded”—an increase from eight in 2018.¹

For years, most surface warfare officers viewed InSurv inspections as a greater threat than any potential adversary. The inspections required months of grueling preparation, late nights, and seven-day workweeks. The results of an InSurv inspection—called an InSurv Figure of Merit (IFOM)—could accelerate or derail a commanding officer’s career. As such, no admiral has been afforded a carpet redder than the one rolled out for an InSurv team—the stakes were high.

The old inspection took the better part of a week. The new one (called the material inspection) takes two days, including a three-hour outbrief at the end of the second day. InSurv teams now check approximately 100 fewer pieces of equipment on an Arleigh Burke–class destroyer, for example. This makes it less costly and time-consuming to prepare for an inspection. For crews, today’s InSurv inspection is a mild version of its former self. Surface ships are now required to have a material inspection once every three years, but the new InSurv inspection is not delivering the quality assessment needed to make important material resourcing and maintenance decisions.

While the old inspection would require months of preparation—including ships providing documentation to the InSurv team up to 120 days in advance—commanding officers now are notified of a material inspection only 30 days prior. This much shorter timeline alleviates crew anxiety and allows them to remain focused on operations and routine maintenance. It also prevents officers and crew from gaming the system by, for example, suddenly opening a number of Category 2 and 3 casualty reports or borrowing functional equipment from sister ships to improve their IFOM and make their ship seem to be in better material shape than it actually is. The InSurv inspection was never intended to be an assessment of the captain and his or her crew. The purpose is to assure Congress that the Navy is sustaining its ships at reasonable cost. Thus, a 30-day notice gives ships enough time to prepare.

The most significant change with the new material inspection is that the InSurv team has consolidated some warfare areas into broader inspection categories, and in doing so has dropped some equipment from the inspection list. For example, on Arleigh Burke–class destroyers, the area-defense and self-defense detect-to-engage (AD/SD DTE) inspection category has been incorporated in the overall combat systems operability test (OCSOT). No longer are ships required to coordinate with aircraft as part of the material inspection, and OCSOT can be run at almost any time throughout the underway portion. Similarly, during the undersea warfare detect-to-engage inspection, ships are not required to expend the Mk 39 Expendable Mobile Anti-Submarine Training Target, which frees several hours of preparation and inspection time. This saves man-hours and cost while still meeting the congressional reporting requirement.

From a tactical performance perspective, however, a more limited material inspection has a significant downside. For instance, the OCSOT does not test the Mk 99 fire-control system to the same extent that the AD/SD DTE did. In a recent inspection of a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, the InSurv team failed to discover issues with this equipment, and the crew discovered it had a significant targeting issue only after the ship was back at sea. In other words, it was too late. Regarding the USW DTE, the Tactical Towed-Array Sonar (TACTAS) no longer will be inspected. TACTAS is important submarine detection equipment that, in light of Chinese and Russian submarine activity, has become even more critical.

With less-comprehensive inspections, type commanders receive a less complete picture of fleetwide issues. Some issues will not be identified soon enough to proactively repair or replace equipment, and ships will not get the support they need. Ship crews will be left to pick up the pieces.

After type commanders began receiving less information, the adage, “What burdens my boss so, too, shall burden me” reverberated throughout the fleet. Because InSurv teams began looking at far less equipment, type commanders could no longer rely on material inspection reports and began requiring ships to submit their readiness evaluation reports ahead of inspections. These reports, known as Read Es, were required for the old InSurv inspections. In other words, all the equipment is still inspected, but now ships essentially go through an InSurv inspection twice, once to support the type commander and once to support the InSurv Board.

A shorter InSurv inspection is not necessarily a gift to those on sea duty. In the long term, because systemic maintenance issues will not be so clearly identified, future commanding officers will be left with underfunded and poorly managed equipment, which can have profound operational effects.

This situation is a symptom of an overly siloed Navy, unwilling or unable to coordinate and thoroughly implement policy changes. From the waterfront perspective, it appears the changes to the InSurv inspection regimen were not anticipated, leaving commanders flat-footed and desperate for better data. Navy leaders need to consult one another and determine a smarter way to collect data without reimposing a tremendous burden on ships.