The Navy maintains submarine readiness through a fleet-wide cycle of crew training, certification, deployment and maintenance—not by expecting every boat to be available at once. When a submarine is out of service, the Navy must restore the boat, keep its crew and support systems managed, and balance the work against limited shipyard capacity. Those tasks are under strain: the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Navy has not fully mitigated attack-submarine maintenance challenges, and its public report does not establish whether the Navy will meet its 2027 availability goal.
“Out of service” can mean different things
A submarine can be unavailable because it is undergoing planned depot maintenance, waiting to enter a shipyard, taking longer than planned to finish maintenance, or waiting for decommissioning and reactor defueling. These conditions are not interchangeable: an active boat awaiting maintenance may be unable to conduct normal operations, while a boat designated for decommissioning is inactive and cannot operate.
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| Situation | What is happening | Readiness consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Waiting to enter depot maintenance | The boat is awaiting shipyard capacity. It may remain active, but if its certification for normal operations has expired, it cannot operate. | Operational capability is unavailable while the boat waits. |
| Depot maintenance in progress | The shipyard is carrying out extensive work such as an overhaul, alterations, refit, restoration or nuclear refueling. | The submarine is not available for deployment during the work. |
| Maintenance delayed after induction | Depot work takes longer than planned. | The boat returns to operations later than scheduled. |
| Waiting for decommissioning | A boat designated for decommissioning awaits shipyard capacity and reactor defueling. | It is inactive and unable to operate; GAO says such boats can remain crewed and commissioned while waiting. |
The Navy also performs shorter, less complex intermediate maintenance. That is distinct from depot maintenance, which involves more extensive work and is central to the shipyard-capacity problem.
How the Navy plans submarine readiness
The Optimized Fleet Response Plan is the Navy’s force-generation construct. For attack submarines, the Fleet Response Training Plan and submarine-specific certification directives shape the sequence of training, certification and deployment. GAO describes a notional 12-month training and certification period followed by a nominal six-month deployment. A 30-day post-deployment stand-down can make the notional interval between full cycles 19 months. These are planning descriptions, not a promise that every submarine follows the same timetable.
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Extensive depot maintenance interrupts that cycle and can last 24 to 36 months, according to GAO. A boat returning from maintenance must be brought back into the readiness process; a boat whose certification has expired cannot simply be treated as available for normal operations while it waits.
Who manages the work
Readiness depends on coordination among commands, personnel and shipyards. GAO describes the responsibilities this way:
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- Fleet commanders oversee force generation and readiness certification.
- Type commanders manage readiness and maintenance for specific platforms.
- Naval Sea Systems Command oversees design, construction, delivery and maintenance.
- Navy Personnel Command assigns sailors.
- Naval Supply Systems Command oversees ship and submarine supply support.
Four public naval shipyards perform attack-submarine depot maintenance: Portsmouth, Norfolk, Puget Sound and Pearl Harbor. General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipbuilding, private shipbuilders that build nuclear-powered vessels, also perform some attack-submarine depot work. The number of facilities does not by itself show how much work can be completed: maintenance relies on available capacity, workforce and materials.
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GAO’s August 2026 report describes substantial lost time and estimated support costs across FY2016–FY2025. Its headline estimate and its broader table total cover different categories, so they should not be conflated.
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| Measure | FY2016–FY2025 finding | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| More than 15,000 operational days lost; about $3.4 billion in estimated costs | GAO’s headline figure | Maintenance delays and active idle time; the $3.4 billion figure is not the total including inactive idle time. |
| About $4.17 billion in estimated costs | GAO’s table total, in calendar-year 2025 dollars | About $1.98 billion for active idle time, $722 million for inactive idle time and $1.46 billion for depot maintenance delays. |
| About 11 percent completed on time | Attack-submarine depot maintenance at public shipyards | GAO’s FY2016–FY2025 measure. |
| 8,906 days active idle time | 1,518 days at the FY2022 peak; 166 days in FY2025 | Historical active idle time reported by GAO. |
| 3,287 days inactive idle time | 1,260 days in FY2025 | Historical inactive idle time reported by GAO. |
The cost figures are GAO estimates based on Navy operating-and-support data. They estimate costs of supporting submarines without operational capability, not the cost of a particular repair or a consumer purchase.
Why decommissioning creates another readiness problem
When an attack submarine is designated for decommissioning, it still needs shipyard work, including reactor defueling. If dry-dock and workforce capacity are not available, the boat can spend a long period inactive while taking up support resources. That differs from an active boat waiting for maintenance: it is not awaiting a return to operational service.
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USS Pasadena illustrates the issue as reported by GAO in August 2026. The submarine entered inactive idle status on January 1, 2025, and was not expected to enter Norfolk Naval Shipyard for decommissioning until November 15, 2028. GAO said Pasadena remained fully crewed despite being unable to operate because its dive certification had expired. The expected shipyard date was a projection in the audit, not a completed event.
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GAO said the Navy had not fully evaluated alternatives for more efficient decommissioning or established a plan with implementation steps and timelines to reduce inactive idle time. It discussed pier-side defueling, reduced crewing under an Alternate Inactivation Construct, and service-life extensions as possible approaches—not as a set of measures all adopted or approved. As of November 2025, two attack submarines had been decommissioned using the reduced-crewing construct.
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Progress on one measure does not settle fleet readiness
Active idle time fell from its FY2022 peak to 166 days in FY2025, but GAO also reported continuing depot-maintenance delays and projected growth in inactive idle time. Without mitigation, the audit projected that 15 submarines would enter inactive idle time in FY2026–FY2030, representing more than 14,000 days and $3.1 billion in associated costs. Those are projections, not observed outcomes.
There are examples of maintenance finishing ahead of schedule. The Navy reported that USS Colorado completed its scheduled maintenance period 29 days early on June 10, 2026, crediting coordination between the shipyard and the submarine’s crew. That single boat’s result does not establish that fleet-wide delays have been resolved.
What public evidence says about the 2027 availability goal
The Navy’s 2024 Navigation Plan set a goal of 80 percent attack-submarine operational availability by 2027. GAO’s August 2026 public report is a version of a classified report and omits operational-availability data, as well as its comparison of U.S. force generation with strategic competitors. It therefore does not say whether the Navy is on track to meet the goal; maintenance-delay statistics alone cannot answer that question.
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