GAO Report Shows Navy Submarine Overhauls Completed On Schedule Just 11% of Time

According to a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday, the Navy’s four primary public shipyards completed only 11% of scheduled depot-level maintenance for attack submarines between fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2025. The remaining 89% of projects ran over schedule, resulting in 3,040 days of delays from 2016-2020 and 3,454 days from 2021-2025, equating to more than 18 years of cumulative downtime. These overruns have generated roughly $3.4 billion in extra costs and eliminated over 15,000 operational days, with projected losses of another $3.1 billion and similar lost days over the next half-decade.

Active idle time peaked at 1,518 days in 2022 but fell to 166 days by fiscal 2025, while inactive idle periods, such as the USS Pasadena’s extended stay, also incur significant expenses. Private yards, General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingall Industries, have performed poorly on the few maintenance jobs they received. The GAO urged the Navy secretary to have the Chief of Naval Operations direct the Naval Sea Systems Command to explore faster decommissioning options and to create a plan that reduces inactive idle time, to which Navy officials verbally agreed.