During his first official visit to Fleet Readiness Center East, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper focused his attention on FRCE’s future capabilities and workforce development.

The governor met with FRCE leadership Nov. 12 to discuss the depot’s role in the evolution of Navy and Marine Corps aviation. While aboard the facility, he toured the depot to get a firsthand look at aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul operations, and meet with several members of the workforce.

Fleet Readiness Center East employees who come up with a money-saving idea have a chance to earn a portion of that savings, under the depot’s Beneficial Suggestion Program. Leaders credit the program with generating cost-saving ideas while it rewards suggestors for their innovation and hard work.

Fleet Readiness Center East’s commitment to safety has earned the depot designation as a Star Site in the Occupational Health and Safety Administration’s Voluntary Protection Program (VPP).

The recognition makes FRCE one of fewer than 60 facilities across the entire Department of Defense to hold Star Site status, and the only Naval Air Systems Command facility to earn the distinction.

Fleet Readiness Center East marked a maintenance milestone August 15 when a tug pulled a completely assembled AV-8B Harrier to Marine Attack Training Squadron 203. The departure marked the completion of the last U.S. Marine Corps AV-8B inducted at FRCE for Planned Maintenance Interval 1, which was the 121st AV-8B PMI-1 since the depot inducted its first in June 2003.

A training program recently offered at Fleet Readiness Center East prepared service members to make aircraft and component repairs at the squadron level, which will increase flight-line readiness by reducing aircraft downtime.

An additional three to four F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets will be mission capable (MC) by the end of the fiscal year after Commander, Fleet Readiness Center (COMFRC) intensified its attention to six high-level components this summer.

A recently-completed facility will bring a new strategic capability to Fleet Readiness Center East and the F-35B Lightning aircraft line next year. When the new F-35 laser shock peening facility is fully operational in 2020, FRCE will be one of two sites in the world that will use laser technology to strengthen F-35 structural components.

As the Department of Defense shifts its focus to sustainment, Commander Fleet Readiness Centers (COMFRC) is working toward significant improvements in naval aviation’s maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) infrastructure.

The Infrastructure Optimization Plan (IOP) Phase 2A officially kicked off this week, an initiative keenly monitored by Navy senior leadership that will offer an opportunity to increase fleet readiness through strategic investments at the depots. 

More than 40 area middle-schoolers got the chance to learn from working engineers when Fleet Readiness Center East supported the Eastern North Carolina Summer Middle School Engineering Camp June 24-28. The camp, hosted at Craven Community College’s Havelock Campus, challenged rising seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders with tasks including building a robotic arm, engineering a crash-safe car, and using human-centered design to help one engineer with an everyday task.