Impact of materials deterioration and corrosion on the readiness of U.S. naval aviation

Abstract

The U.S. Navy faces high corrosion costs, surpassing the expenses of most-price ships and weapons systems. Naval aircraft operating in harsh environments are especially susceptible to corrosion, which affects nearly all their components and materials. Corrosion is responsible for over a quarter of the maintenance expenses for naval aviation – every hour of maintenance related to corrosion results in multiple hours of lost availability. Lengthy delays in aircraft maintenance jeopardise the Navy and Marine Corps’ ability to maintain readiness. Corrosion, especially stress corrosion cracking/corrosion fatigue, is one of the primary technical reasons why Admiral William F. Moran, then Vice Chief of Naval Operations, reported to the U.S. House Armed Services Committee in February 2017 that ‘the Navy's overall readiness has reached its lowest level in many years’ and is continuing to decline, as demonstrated in this paper. The consequences of neglecting these issues became tragically evident when a U.S. Marine Corps KC-130T Hercules crashed in Mississippi in July 2017, killing all 16 servicemen on board. The investigation revealed that the growth of a corrosion fatigue crack was ‘ultimately the root cause of this catastrophic mishap’. This crash and dozens of other aircraft accidents could have been prevented if the Department of Defense had made a rule to seek the advice of subject matter experts rather than just talking about corrosion costs and battling cosmetic corrosion relying on the expertise of and mainly, if not exclusively, dealing with barely trained graduates of short corrosion courses. Misunderstanding what corrosion (theoretically and practically) means and how it should be addressed is the leading (and only) cause of the lack of visible success in ‘fighting corrosion’ across all military services, especially in naval aviation.