By Sean Kennedy
A lack of repair capacity is hampering the Navy’s submarine fleet, preventing their deployment and decommissioning, and driving up costs.
An August 27, 2026, Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that from fiscal year (FY) 2016 to 2025 the Navy spent $3.4 billion “to sustain crews and submarines that provided no operational capability.” Delays have resulted in 15,000 lost operational days over this ten-year period, including “active idle time,” which the GAO described as “a period when an attack submarine and its crew must remain pier-side because they are no longer certified to conduct normal operations and cannot be inducted into a maintenance period.”
The upshot is that the Navy has been paying full freight for crewed vessels that cannot be deployed, including $219,700 in daily active idle time costs for Los Angeles-class submarines and $237,080 each day for Virginia-class submarines. An August 27, 2026, Military Times article quoted GAO Defense Capabilities and Management Director Diana Maurer, who said, “Active idle time increases the strain on the heavily used sub fleet … It’s essentially a traffic jam – subs waiting to get into dry dock for depot maintenance.”
The delays at the docks exacerbate the decommissioning challenges. Vessels set to leave service must enter “inactive idle time” where the ship and crew “must remain pier-side until a shipyard has the capacity in a dry dock to defuel their nuclear reactor.” For example, the Los Angeles-class USS Pasadena entered inactive idle time in January 2025 but will not be decommissioned until November 2028. With an expired dive certification, Pasadena is fully crewed but not operational. While the submarine will be used as a training platform, the GAO estimated the decommissioning delay will cost more than $300 million.
Unfortunately, the decommissioning debacle will deteriorate further in the future. The GAO projects that between FYs 2026 and 2030, the Navy, “could incur more than 14,000 days of inactive idle time and $3.1 billion in costs to operate and support” 15 attack submarines set to enter inactive idle time. The Navy must do more to prevent this waste and mismanagement.