Vice Chief of Naval Operations Visits Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard

Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, visited Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility (PHNSY & IMF) Dec. 14, 2022, to assess progress on implementing the Navy’s Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP) and conduct a review of ongoing ship maintenance availabilities.

During her visit, Franchetti met with PHNSY & IMF leadership for operational briefings and toured the shipyard’s dry dock areas that will be modernized beginning in 2023. The first modernization action proposes to construct and operate a new graving dry dock and waterfront production facility to support current and future classes of the nation’s nuclear-powered submarines.

After carefully weighing the strategic, operational, and environmental consequences of the proposed action, the Navy announced its decision Dec. 16, 2022, to select Alternative 4 from the Final Environmental Impact Statement (https://www.PearlHarborDryDockEIS.org) for PHNSY & IMF.

Phase one of the project will see the construction and operation of Dry Dock 5 along with auxiliary facilities, a weight-handling system, and upgraded utilities. Phase two includes the assembly of a waterfront production facility that will increase collaboration and efficiency among the workforce, reducing lost operational days by recapitalizing and reconfiguring shipyard infrastructure towards improving industrial performance resulting in sustained improvement in the shipyard’s maintenance processes.

According to Franchetti, the proposed facilities will provide needed dry dock capability at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard for efficient maintenance, upgrades, and repairs in order to return combat-capable submarines to the fleet on time. Completing ship and submarine maintenance availabilities on time is vital to the Navy’s mission and maintaining maritime superiority.

“Our public shipyards are critical to our nation’s national defense,” said Franchetti. “The future of our submarine force relies on the key infrastructure provided by Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility. The dedicated civilians and Sailors putting in the work here every day have a direct impact on delivering of our Navy’s warfighting advantage.”

The dry dock construction activities are expected to result in projected increased employment of 2,500 jobs during the construction period and a projected $200 million in annual salary for construction workers, creating a measurable beneficial impact on the local economy. Originally designed and built in the 20th century to support construction of new ships using industrial models of the time, PHNSY & IMF is not efficiently configured to optimize its current (and projected) mission to conduct depot-level maintenance and upgrades of nuclear-powered submarines.

The SIOP mission is to execute the Navy’s once-in-a-century investment to reconfigure, modernize and optimize our four aging naval shipyards into new, modern facilities that will serve this nation into the future.

In addition to SIOP, Adm. Franchetti participated in several small-group discussions with project leadership teams and engineers to underscore the importance of the work done by the PHNSY & IMF team in regards to local Naval Sustainment System – Shipyards (NSS-SY) initiatives.

Franchetti acknowledged the challenge posed by both local and corporate barriers across the Navy’s four public shipyards and committed to supporting the critical mission of our naval shipyards and their people, especially as the shipyard undergoes its most significant modernization transformation since the upgrades to support nuclear-powered ships in the 1970s.

“SIOP is essential to supporting the future needs of the Navy’s nuclear submarine and aircraft carrier force,” said Franchetti. “The average age of our Navy’s dry docks is approaching 100 years. Recapitalization such as that planned for Pearl Harbor must be completed to accommodate current and future platforms and new configurations of Virginia-class submarines. I’m incredibly proud of the skill and dedication I’ve seen from the workforce and excited to see these future projects come to fruition. The investments we’re making here will have a critically important impact on our future fleet.”

PHNSY & IMF is a field activity of NAVSEA and a one-stop regional maintenance center for the Navy’s surface ships and submarines. It is the largest industrial employer in the state of Hawaii, with a combined civilian, military and contractor workforce of approximately 7,100. It is the most comprehensive fleet repair and maintenance facility between the U.S. West Coast and the Far East, strategically located in the heart of the Pacific, being about a week’s steaming time closer to potential regional contingencies in the Indo-Pacific.