James Geurts, the U.S. Navy’s acquisition chief and 2020 Wash100 Award recipient, said he is “seeing many more” suppliers continue operations following closures resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, National Defense Magazine reported Wednesday.
Geurts, who serves as assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, told reporters at a teleconference that over 200 suppliers stopped operations over the past six to eight weeks. The Navy has been monitoring over 10K firms in the defense industrial base amid the health crisis, he noted.
“As we've gone through the crisis, we have not had to shut down any of our shipyards — both private or public — and as I look at the case count, we are having [a] relatively flat number of cases and more folks coming back than getting infected,” he said.
According to Geurts, attendance for Navy personnel is also “creeping back up” after a 50 percent drop.