Abstract. The Oliver Hazard Perry class of frigates and the Arleigh Burke class of destroyers, the US Navy's newest combatants, share a common design fault despite, or perhaps because of, a 20-year difference in design time. This paper describes the fault and links the underlying cause of the error to a lack of readily available historical knowledge. A solution is proposed to prevent the recurrence of error repetition by increasing the visibility of corrective maintenance actions to designers and of the status of material condition throughout the fleet to the maintenance managers and operations planners. The results of the process include better design, elimination of repetitive design errors, and true depictions of fleet readiness as a systems engineering solution.