Following nearly a decade of increased war fighting with a shrinking fleet and a spate of embarrassing ship readiness issues, the Navy is taking a new "holistic" look at how it can sustain its surface ships as it seeks to stretch the fleet's lifespan, officials said.

A four-member panel — two rear admirals, a retired vice admiral and a readiness and training official with the Navy's Fleet Forces Command — has been convened to examine a range of issues involving the Navy's surface fleet.

"It goes back to taking a look at how do you sustain the surface force for the expected service life?" said Capt Jeff Breslau, a spokesman for U.S. Pacific Fleet. "So everything that touches that inspections, manning, training, equipping — all of the things that go into sustaining a ship" will be examined.

The Navy intends to expand the operational life of some of its ships five years or more beyond the typical lifespans to help achieve a 313-ship fleet. The Navy now has 285 deployable ships.

Some members of Congress have raised concerns that a series of ship failings represents possible systemic problems with the Navy's manning, training and maintenance.

"These concerns bring into question the Navy's ability to achieve even the expected service life of its fleet and sustain fleet readiness, let alone extend the service life of entire ship classes," U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, said at a March subcommittee on readiness hearing.

The four-member panel's examination, which began in September and is expected to be completed early next year, will take into account troubling inspection results from 2008.

The Navy's Board of Inspection and Survey, known as InSurv, found that six ships across the Navy — including the Pearl Harbor-based cruiser USS Chosin — were "unfit" for sustained combat operations.

The Chosin's captain was not relieved of duty and "whatever they had to do to get themselves fit to proceed, they did that, and then during the training phase following the corrections, they did well," Breslau said.

Another Pearl Harbor cruiser, the USS Port Royal, ran aground last February off Honolulu Airport in well-marked shoal waters. A Navy Safety Investigation Board determined that a series of basic navigation errors put the 567-foot ship off course.

"Those types of incidents and InSurv inspections certainly factor into the (new) overall assessment, but there's no one incident that drives it," Breslau said.

EXPERT PANEL

The Fleet Review Panel is conducting a comprehensive overview of training, manning and maintenance trends and "where we are, where this is heading and whether we need to make adjustments," Breslau said.

"I don't know in the end how much of a shakeup this is going to result in. It's still too early to tell."

Breslau said the four-member panel includes:

• Retired Vice Adm. Phillip Balisle, who commanded Naval Sea Systems Command, as well as a destroyer, cruiser and the USS Abraham Lincoln battle group during his 36-year Navy career.

• Joseph Murphy, the assistant deputy chief of staff for operational readiness and training at Fleet Forces Command.

• Rear Adm. Arnold Lotring, the chief operating officer for Naval Education and Training Command.

• Rear Adm. (Select) Thomas F. Carney Jr., deputy chief of staff for plans, policies and requirements at U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Breslau said the Fleet Review Panel was an initiative of Adm. Robert Willard when he was still head of U.S. Pacific Fleet, which has its headquarters at Pearl Harbor, and Adm. John C. Harvey Jr., who commands U.S. Fleet Forces Command.

Willard in October assumed the top military job in the Pacific as head of U.S. Pacific Command, which has its headquarters at Camp Smith.

Jan van Tol, who commanded three warships before retiring from the Navy in 2007 and now is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a policy research institute, said he had not heard of the new review panel.

"It seems to reflect, obviously, a concern about material problems that the fleet has experienced in recent years," van Tol said, noting the InSurv inspections "have gone very, very poorly."

The Navy has since classified the previously unclassified inspection reports.

"The fact that Adm. Balisle is there suggests that it (the panel) is quite serious," van Tol said, noting Balisle's former role as head of Naval Sea Systems Command. "In other words, he's a real technical expert."

The U.S. fleet has "been run fairly hard in recent years" at a time when it has been shrinking in size, forcing increased use of its assets, van Tol said.

Budgets are tightening and maintenance funds have fallen short, and the Navy has found itself needing to do more with less.

SUBS, CARRIERS

Pacific Fleet's Breslau said a "holistic" approach is being taken by the Fleet Review Panel because the review will include a number of changes made by the Navy over the past decade, including the initiation of the Fleet Response Plan in 2003 to more rapidly prepare and sustain readiness in ships.

At the March 25 readiness hearing, Rear Adm. Philip Cullom, director of the Navy's Fleet Readiness Division, said surface ships had not been maintained "with the same rigor or discipline" as submarines and aircraft carriers.

The focus on "short-term, get the ship under way type of work" instead of life-cycle-focused work contrasted with the approach on subs and aircraft carriers, Cullom said.