Purpose and Procedures

NAVSEA's Underwater Ship Husbandry (UWSH) Division (SEA 00C5) is chartered to develop and approve techniques, procedures, and equipment to perform Naval ship repairs waterborne. NAVSEA has developed requirements and procedures for performing the inspection, maintenance, and repair of the underwater hull and hull appendages on waterborne surface ships and submarines. These requirements and procedures can be found on SUPSALV's CAC enabled website.  

In addition to developing and approving procedures, NAVSEA 00C5 has assembled and maintains a collection of specialized fly-away equipment that is not frequently used by individual activities, but is required for a variety of UWSH repair operations. This equipment is managed and maintained in our ESSM warehouses.

The equipment is available to U.S. Navy Regional Maintenance Activities for the conduct of waterborne repairs to Fleet units. This equipment supports such repairs such as:

• Hull welding (wet and dry chamber)
• Hull inspections including underwater photography and video documentation
• Monoblock and controllable pitch propeller replacement and repair
• Propulsion shaft and bearing repairs
• Auxiliary propulsion unit (APU) and secondary propulsion motor (SPM)     repairs
• Masker emitter belt cleaning and repairs
• Surface ship and submarine sonar dome repair
• Cathodic protection inspection and repairs
• Painting and fairing
• Fin stabilizer repairs
• Submarine retractable bow plane and VLS cable repair

Activities preparing to accomplish any of the above repairs and require the use of additional specialized equipment should contact SEA 00C5. An inventory of the UWSH equipment maintained in the ESSM System can be found on the UWSH Inventory page.