Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti today said that her goal of having 80% of the Navy’s ships and aircraft ready to surge on short notice by 2027 may seem ambitious, but that it will be worth all the progress that can be made in pursuit of that total percentage.  

Franchetti, who recently delivered remarks on her just-released 2024 Navy navigation plan at a local Washington think tank, was asked afterward whether her relatively short-term 80% surge readiness goal was “aspirational, achievable [or] both.” 

“These are stretch goals, but I am confident we’re going to work hard to get after them,” Franchetti said of her plans to increase surge readiness. 

“And if we don’t make exactly 80% [readiness by 2027],” she continued, “we’re going to be further along the road than we would be if I hadn’t set such an ambitious goal.”  

Franchetti’s surge readiness goal falls under a portion of the Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy 2024 that targets seven areas the CNO sees as vital to fleet readiness.  

Titled “Project 33” in reference to Franchetti being the Navy’s 33rd CNO, the seven core fleet readiness targets the plan seeks to address by 2027 are:

• Ready the force by eliminating ship, submarine and aircraft maintenance delays.
• Scale robotic and autonomous systems to integrate more platforms at speed.
• Create the command centers our fleets need to win on a distributed battlefield.
• Recruit and retain the force we need to get more players on the field.
• Deliver a quality of service commensurate with the sacrifices of our sailors.
• Train for combat as we plan to fight, in the real world and virtually.
• Restore the critical infrastructure that sustains and projects the fight from shore. 

To illustrate her line of thinking as it relates to how she plans to reach the 80% surge readiness target by 2027, Franchetti gave the example of how the Navy was able to improve the readiness percentages for the F/A-18 Super Hornet in recent years. 

“In 2018, [then Defense] Secretary [James] Mattis challenged our aviation community to get F/A-18 readiness up from 50% readiness availability to 80%,” Franchetti said.  

“And now, six years on,” she continued, “we’ve been able to sustain 80% readiness for the F/A-18s because of the processes we’ve put in place.”  

Franchetti credited “data-driven, daily drumbeats of accountability” to make sure the Navy understood what the actual readiness levels of accountability for the F/A-18 were — as well as what the barriers were to achieving those proper levels — that led to the Navy successfully being able to sustain 80% readiness for the aircraft through 2024. 

The Navy has since been able to scale those methods of upping readiness levels to the submarine force and surface force, Franchetti said. 

“I am committed, and the team is committed to going after that stretch goal,” Franchetti said of the 80% surge readiness by 2027 target.  

“We have all those processes in place now, and I’m really looking forward to that.”    

Franchetti’s navigation plan focuses on 2027 as the year for the Navy to achieve maximized fleet readiness because that’s also the year China’s Xi Jinping has told his military to be ready for armed conflict. 

“As the CNO who will be at the helm into 2027, I am compelled to do more — and do more, faster — to ensure that our Navy is more ready,” Franchetti said. 

“I have a clock in my office that tells me there are 807 days left until 1 January 2027,” she added.  “There is no time to waste, and your Navy is ready to get after it.”

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