John Phelan, the newly appointed secretary of the Navy, has identified readiness as his priority for the service. The official joined Adm. James W. Kilby, acting chief of naval operations, during a recent House Appropriations Committee hearing to discuss current military challenges and how they plan to address them, the Department of Defense said Thursday. 

Learn more about the critical challenges and opportunities that the U.S. Navy is currently facing at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Navy Summit on Aug. 26. Register for the in-person event here.

Strengthening US Shipbuilding Capability 

Part of Phelan’s plan for the Navy is to rebuild the “hollowed-out maritime industrial base,” which he told lawmakers is critical to national security.

According to the official, he recently visited eight shipyards across the East Coast and the Indo-Pacific and spoke with leaders and tradesmen at each location. In one shipyard in Japan, he noted that workers get the same productivity in one shift that American shipyards would achieve in three shifts. 

One factor that he noticed that is different in Japan compared to the U.S. is age. Phelan explained that the average age of the Japanese shipyard workers is 50, which is a reflection that shipbuilding is a career. Japanese welders also do not deal with paperwork, whereas American welders spend up to 40 percent of their time filling out forms.

“I now have a clear picture of where our shipbuilding dollars have been going, and [I] am developing a plan to fix what’s broken,” he stated.

Kilby admitted during the hearing that Navy platforms “are not as ready as they need to be.” The service is aiming to ensure that 80 percent of ships, submarines and aircraft are combat-surge-ready by January 2027. 

The Navy, he shared, is working on reducing maintenance delay through training, modernization and sustainment. The official also noted that consistent and predictable funding will be critical to readiness efforts.

Recruiting More Sailors, Making More Munitions

Kilby also flagged workforce shortage as another challenge for the Navy. He said the service needs approximately 23,000 sailors to man ships, but the Navy is on track to significantly reduce the shortage by the end of fiscal 2026. 

“We’re committed to attracting and developing Americans who can innovate, solve hard problems and dominate in combat,” commented the acting naval operations chief.

He also noted that the Navy is seeing a strain on the munitions industrial base, a problem highlighted by ordinance expenditures in the Red Sea against the Houthis. 

Kilby assured that the Navy is working with contractors and new entrants to the maritime industrial base to develop kinetic and non-kinetic weapons at speed and scale. 

The Government Accountability Office has called on the Department of Defense to update or develop new guidance that reflects the expanded use of presidential drawdown authority, or PDA.

A modified guidance would better represent the expanded PDA, which now provides U.S. military equipment from the DOD inventory beyond the statutory $100 million annual ceiling, GAO said in a report published Thursday. The new guidance will help the government decide “how much or which equipment to provide to foreign partners,” the office added.

DOD Failed to Conduct Budget Impact Assessments

The GAO study found that since 2022, Congress had authorized the president to expand PDA, leading to the drawdown of $31.7 billion of defense articles and services to Ukraine and over $1 billion to Haiti and Taiwan. In exchange, the DOD received $45.8 billion to replace equipment provided to Ukraine. However, GAO noted that while PDA was accelerated to help Ukraine, the Pentagon failed to conduct operations and maintenance, or O&M, budget impact assessments for the packages. The report warned that without proper guidance from DOD, decision-makers would not receive the critical information to review the effect of PDA packages on military services’ O&M budgets.

To address the potential issues, GAO stressed the importance of new guidance on using available funds to replace DOD equipment shipped to partners through PDA. Such guidance would ensure that “U.S. military services do not face greater than anticipated readiness impact,” according to the report.

GAO Exercising Oversight of Ukraine Funding

GAO conducted the study to exercise its oversight of funding provided to Ukraine as mandated by the Consolidated Appropriations Act and to meet the requirements of the 2024 DOD appropriations bill, which directed the office to review the agency’s execution of PDA and related funding since February 2022.

Various organizations within the U.S. Army are combining expertise, strategies and test data to develop new ways to ensure the delivery of reliable and accurate positioning, navigation and timing information to the warfighter through M-code. 

In a blog post on Wednesday, the Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, or PEO IEW&S, discussed collaborations that led to the delivery of approximately 27,000 M-Code capable receivers, fielding of over 2,500 ground Assured PNT systems, production of 7,000 precision guidance kits and installation of 46 M-code aviation navigation systems on Blackhawk helicopters in 2024.

Know more about present Army initiatives, programs and efforts at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Army Summit on June 18. Register for the in-person event here. 

Army Leading Development of M-Code, Assured PNT Capabilities

Project Manager Combat Ammunition Systems, or PM CAS, worked on upgrading its Precision Guidance Kit M1156 and Excalibur munitions to improve performance in areas where GPS is degraded or denied. In one PGK M1156 variant, PM CAS added an anti-jam capability. The organization plans to field the M1156E5, the new variant of the PGK M1156 with anti-jam capability, in 2026. 

Meanwhile, PM Aviation Mission Systems Architecture, or AMSA, upgraded its legacy Embedded GPS Inertial Navigation Systems, or EGIs, by switching from the Selective Availability Anti-spoofing Module cards to  M-code GPS receivers. The new Enhanced Aviation Global Air Traffic Management Localizer Performance with Vertical Guidance EGI Military code, or EAGLE-M, has three variants that accommodate the unique needs of over a dozen aviation platforms. 

PM PNT deployed rapid and robust software updates to its legacy Defense Advanced GPS Receiver, or DAGR, systems and Ground Based-GPS Receiver Application Modules, also called GB-GRAMs. According to the organization, the update improved system survivability in GPS-challenged environments. When aired with highly capable anti-jam antennas, the update can create the Mounted Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing System, or MAPS, Generation I capability well-suited to support U.S. Army Europe and U.S. Pacific Command missions. 

“This partnership was critical to the Army’s transition from legacy GPS to Assured PNT,” commented Mike Trzeciak of PM PNT. “Not only did our partnership facilitate the fielding of key capabilities to soldiers, it also enabled the development of the next generation of technologies like software-defined radios, vision-aided and alternative navigation to diversify, secure and provide trustworthy PNT.”