US Navy News

[James1978]

Navy Dry Dock Closures Make a Bad Problem Worse
By Maiya Clark & Anna Given
March 23, 2023

In the flurry of news stories about munitions production and aid to Ukraine, the closure of four dry docks at a U.S. Navy shipyard six weeks ago went largely unnoticed. This development, however, will create massive problems for the Navy’s submarines and aircraft carriers, the industrial base, and national defense as a whole.

Why did the Navy close three dry docks at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and another at the nearby Trident Refit Facility in Bangor, Washington? Seismic concerns. These dry docks lie on a fault line, and the Navy determined that the risk of damage to ships using these facilities outweighed the risk of more maintenance delays caused by shutting them down.

How bad is it? A Navy report concluded that the earth under one dry dock at Puget Sound may be “subject to liquefaction in a seismic event.” In other words, there is a good chance that the dry dock—ship and all—could be sucked into a sinkhole during a significant earthquake.

The U.S. has only four public shipyards: Puget Sound and Pearl Harbor on the west coast, and Norfolk and Portsmouth on the east. These yards are responsible for maintaining the Navy’s nuclear-powered fleet, i.e., aircraft carriers and submarines. Between them, these shipyards had 18 dry docks. Now four of them (22 percent) are out of commission.

This will hurt the Navy’s ability to maintain and service their fleet. Currently, 36% of the Navy’s attack submarine fleet is either in—or waiting for—maintenance. With four dry docks offline, these numbers will likely get worse.

The closures also create extra risk for aircraft carriers. Carriers require especially large dry docks, and dry dock #6 at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard was the only dry dock on the west coast certified for nuclear aircraft carriers. With its closure, any nuclear aircraft carrier needing dry dock-level repairs or maintenance will have to be relocated all the way to the east coast, to the only remaining dry dock able to accommodate them.

The seismic assessment that led to the closures came as part of the $21 billion Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan (SIOP). SIOP began in 2018 as an attempt to address the increasingly poor conditions of the nation’s centuries-old shipyards.

All four Navy shipyards suffer from decades of underinvestment and neglect. They have too few functional dry docks, and their facilities and capital equipment are old and poorly configured. The SIOP involves re-engineering dry docks, reconfiguring facilities in the shipyards, and replacing capital equipment (like cranes). The plan was very precisely timed, and subsequent delays in implementing the plan are already taking their toll on ship maintenance schedules.

Ironically, the decision to close the four dry docks as a result of the seismic assessment will make completing the rest of the SIOP’s planned investments that much more difficult. The plan already required the Navy to close dry docks for years-long renovation periods. With four more dry docks closed, it is unclear how the Navy can make up for the lost maintenance capacity.

And while these closures are bad enough in peacetime, they make the idea of war in the Pacific that much more alarming. The lack of maintenance and repair capacity at public shipyards would severely restrict our ability to repair battle damage and keep aircraft carriers and submarines in the fight.

Without the basic infrastructure needed to support American naval interests, it is hard to say whether the Navy would be able to provide adequate defense capabilities if called upon to wage war. This is especially worrisome as China continues to expand naval influence in Southeast Asia and beyond. The Heritage Foundation’s Index of U.S. Military Strength finds the Navy fleet is not sufficient to counter China. But even if the U.S. had its congressionally-mandated 355 manned warships, all the best submarines and aircraft carriers in the world will be useless if the U.S. cannot service, maintain, and repair them.

The sudden closure of Navy assets in Puget Sound and Bangor should awaken Congress and the White House to this overlooked, but very real naval crisis-in-the-making. Unfortunately, the turmoil in Washington today makes it hard to capture the attention of distracted policymakers.

The U.S. now has the fewer public shipyards than any time since the end of the Second World War. Whether we re-acquire previously owned public shipyards or build a fifth, increasing naval infrastructure—including dry docks—is essential to maintaining a Navy that can defend the United States.

Maiya Clark is a senior research associate in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense. Anna Given is a member of Heritage’s Young Leaders Program.

[James1978]

NORTHCOM: Russia Close to Persistent Nuclear Cruise Missile Attack Sub Presence off U.S. Coasts
By: Sam LaGrone
March 23, 2023

Russia could have its most powerful and quiet nuclear attack submarines on persistent patrols off either U.S. Coast in the next two years, the head of U.S. Northern Command told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

In response to questions from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) on the threat of Chinese and Russian cruise missile submarines operating close to the U.S., NORTHCOM commander Gen. Glen VanHerck said that the deployments of the Russian Yasen-class nuclear cruise missile attack boats have been deploying more frequently.

“[The risk is] absolutely increasing. Within the last year, Russia has also placed their [Yasens] in the Pacific,” he said.
“Now not only the Atlantic, but we also have them in the Pacific and it’s just a matter of time – probably a year or two – before that’s a persistent threat, 24 hours a day. … That impact has reduced decision space for a national senior leader in a time of crisis.”

Also known by their NATO reporting name Severodvinsk class, the 13,800-ton Yasen-class attack boats are among the most capable submarines in the world. In particular, the three current boats in the class are capable of a special quiet operations mode that make them difficult to detect in the open ocean. In 2018, the lead boat in the class, Severodvinsk, evaded U.S. efforts to find it for weeks, according to press reports.

Navy officials have told USNI News that the service has become increasingly concerned with the efficacy of the Russian submarine force.

The growing ability of Russian submarines to operate undetected in the Atlantic pushed the Navy to reactivate U.S. 2nd Fleet and create a command for anti-submarine warfare across the Atlantic in 2018.

The Russian Navy has planned to build ten Yasen-class attack boats, with the fourth to commission later this year, according to Russian press reports.

The Russians have also recently delivered two new strategic nuclear submarines.

In January, the Russian Navy commissioned the 24,000-ton Borey-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine Generalissimus Suvorov. In July, the Russian Navy delivered Belgorod – a strategic weapons platform fitted with school bus sized nuclear torpedoes that can be fitted with a 100-megaton nuclear warhead.

VanHerck also emphasized the need for the U.S. to expand its operations in the Arctic, as Russia has modernized its assets in the region and China continues to push farther north.

“Russia has modernized their fleet of icebreakers. They’ve modernized their strategic defense along with their submarine forces. China is sailing into the Arctic under the guise of research [missions] and we know they’re doing military operations, surveying the seabed.”

VanHerck said the U.S. is short of assets in the Arctic as Russia and China continue to expand operations.

“We’re not organized, trained and equipped to operate and respond in the Arctic. Infrastructure is a big concern for me, whether that be runway links, whether that be buildings, whether that be weapons storage, whether that be fuel storage,” he said.
“We need persistence that requires icebreakers. We as a nation are in bad shape regarding icebreakers, and I fully support the Coast Guard’s plan. We need to go faster.”

[jemhouston]

Past time to build more

[James1978]

Indeed. This article stated the following:

In 2016, a Navy study estimated Dry Dock 6 needed “roughly $667 million in structural, mechanical and additional improvements.” In mid 2022, the Navy’s Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan held a public scoping meeting to evaluate the planned waterfront improvements, including a seismic refit of Dry Dock 6 and the addition of a second, carrier-sized dry dock.

I vaguely recall reading that there is talk of additional public shipyards being built. Though where they'd be, how much they'd cost, and how long they'd take to build are anyone's guess.

[Rocket J Squrriel]

Makes me want to go back in time to kidnap and maroon the base closure committees on a remote island never to be seen again.

Ever get the sense of futility with all of this? That we'll never see a proper, fully capable military again? We're so far down the hole in terms of equipment, men, doctrine that we aren't climbing out again unless there is basically a revolution?

[Johnnie Lyle]

Makes me want to go back in time to kidnap and maroon the base closure committees on a remote island never to be seen again.

Ever get the sense of futility with all of this? That we'll never see a proper, fully capable military again? We're so far down the hole in terms of equipment, men, doctrine that we aren't climbing out again unless there is basically a revolution?

They don’t care.

[Poohbah]

Makes me want to go back in time to kidnap and maroon the base closure committees on a remote island never to be seen again.

Ever get the sense of futility with all of this? That we'll never see a proper, fully capable military again? We're so far down the hole in terms of equipment, men, doctrine that we aren't climbing out again unless there is basically a revolution?

They don’t care.

They're never going to be accepting a flag with the thanks of a grateful nation.

[clancyphile]

Makes me want to go back in time to kidnap and maroon the base closure committees on a remote island never to be seen again.

Ever get the sense of futility with all of this? That we'll never see a proper, fully capable military again? We're so far down the hole in terms of equipment, men, doctrine that we aren't climbing out again unless there is basically a revolution?

Yup. Kurt Schlichter made some very excellent points.
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtsch ... s-n2621099

The last 35 years were really bad. Desert Storm was us coasting - George H. W. Bush was already starting to push a penny-wise and pound-foolish "peace dividend," and he failed to act properly after Tiananmen Square. Two big geopolitical mistakes.

BRAC did not help matters - if anything, it hurt real bad, and should have only been the first round, and even that should have been pared down,

[jemhouston]

Makes me want to go back in time to kidnap and maroon the base closure committees on a remote island never to be seen again.

Ever get the sense of futility with all of this? That we'll never see a proper, fully capable military again? We're so far down the hole in terms of equipment, men, doctrine that we aren't climbing out again unless there is basically a revolution?

Yup. Kurt Schlichter made some very excellent points.
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtsch ... s-n2621099

The last 35 years were really bad. Desert Storm was us coasting - George H. W. Bush was already starting to push a penny-wise and pound-foolish "peace dividend," and he failed to act properly after Tiananmen Square. Two big geopolitical mistakes.

BRAC did not help matters - if anything, it hurt real bad, and should have only been the first round, and even that should have been pared down,

I'd love to watch Kurt give a closing argument

[James1978]

We can argue all day long about whether the force structure reductions that started in the 1990s were wise, but they happened. Which means most of those BRAC closures had to happen too. If they hadn't, keeping all those bases open would have sucked money out of the modernization, maintenance and training budgets.

Once the 600 Ship Fleet became a thing of the past, there was no way the Navy was going to be able to keep eight shipyards open.

But we are where we are. Out shipyards are old and landlocked.

If we need more shipyards, where do we build them? And do we eminent domain some land and try build from scratch, or do we try to claw back and refurbish one or more of the yards we closed under BRAC?

[James1978]

US Navy to reopen Puget Sound dry docks after seismic retrofit
By Megan Eckstein
Mar 28, 2023

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy expects to reopen one submarine repair dry dock in Washington by April, with a second opening in May and the third by June, after they were closed due to emerging concerns over their ability to withstand seismic activity.

The Navy on Jan. 27 announced four dry docks would be closed – dry docks 4, 5 and 6 at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the dry dock at Trident Refit Facility Bangor — because even small seismic events “could potentially cause dry dock structural failures that pose a risk to our sailors and workforce and damage to our submarines,” an official told Defense News at the time, stressing that there was no immediate risk.

In a Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing Tuesday, Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, asked about the status of the repairs.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said the work at TRF Bangor was the most extensive, with repairs needed throughout the dry dock at the facility that repairs Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines. That effort is on track to wrap up in June, he said.

At Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, where aircraft carriers and attack submarines are repaired and modernized, Gilday said work is focused on portions of the dry docks near where a submarine’s nuclear reactor would be located. One should be completed in April and another in May, he said.

Gilday did not name which Puget Sound dry docks would be completed in which month, nor address a timeline for a fourth dry dock.

The Navy asked for $300 million in its unfunded priorities list to Congress for repairs. Gilday said the late 2022 and early 2023 discovery of the problem and analysis of the needed repairs was too late to insert this into the formal budget request, but he asked Congress to add this funding item during the markup process throughout this year.

In the longer term, the Navy will have to make additional upgrades at these two facilities and potentially elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest to address seismic vulnerabilities. Gilday said these upgrades would be considered alongside the ongoing Shipyard Infrastructure and Optimization Program, a 20-year effort to modernize and improve the four public shipyards.

That work is still being studied, and Gilday said it was too early to discuss the scope of potential long-term work.

But the need for this work is clear, he said.

“We really count on [Puget Sound Naval Shipyard] in terms of providing submarine maintenance for the fleet,” he said.

[James1978]

US Navy prioritizes ‘game-changing’ rearming capability for ships
By Megan Eckstein
Mar 28, 2023

WASHINGTON — In early October, the U.S. Navy reloaded a destroyer’s missile tubes using a crane on an auxiliary ship pulled alongside the destroyer, rather than a crane on an established pier.

Reloading a vertical launching system, or VLS, is a challenging maneuver, given the crane must hold missile canisters vertically, while slowly lowering the explosives into the system’s small opening in the ship deck.

It’s also a maneuver the Navy cannot yet do at sea. This demonstration took place while the destroyer Spruance was tied to the pier at Naval Air Station North Island, as a first step in creating a more expeditionary rearming capability.

But in the near future, that same evolution between a warship and an auxiliary vessel could take place in any harbor or protected waters around the globe. One day, it may even take place in the open ocean, thanks to research and development efforts in support of a top priority for the secretary of the Navy.

Carlos Del Toro is eyeing this rearm-at-sea capability as one of a handful of steps the service must take to prepare for conflict in the Pacific; other steps include strengthening logistics capabilities and identifying foreign shipyards that could conduct repairs to battle-damaged ships.

Today, the Navy’s cruisers and destroyers can only load and unload offices at established piers with approved infrastructure. For the Pacific fleet, these reload sites are in Japan, Guam, Hawaii and California.

But in a conflict with China — the Pentagon’s self-declared No. 1 geopolitical threat — these combatants could easily fire all their missiles in just one or two engagements, after which they would leave the fight to reload.

But piers in Japan and Guam could be destroyed, or the surrounding area could be contested enough that pierside ships would be too vulnerable. Sailing to Hawaii to reload would take vessels out of the fight for two weeks or more, with a trip to California costing at least three weeks.

For Del Toro, this is unacceptable.

Calling a rearming-at-sea capability “game-changing,” he told a New York audience late last year that “being able to quickly rearm our warships’ vertical launch tubes at sea will significantly increase forward, persistent combat power with the current force.”

A longstanding vulnerability
Del Toro was 18 years into his career as a naval officer when he took command of the destroyer Bulkeley in 2001. By that time, the Navy had lost its ability to rearm destroyers at sea.

The service had such a capability with previous platforms, but as new ships and missiles entered the fleet and the Cold War came to an end, the service opted against devoting resources to developing a new rearming method.

Two decades later, when Del Toro was sworn in as Navy secretary, he immediately began tackling the naval service’s logistics problems.

“Without question, logistics rises to the top in terms of priorities that are necessary — logistics in terms of the forward presence that we’re going to need in the Indo-Pacific, to forward-deploy parts and supplies and troops and everything that we need, in addition to the capabilities that individual ships themselves will need in order to be able to rearm,” he told Defense News on Feb. 17.

He put rearming ships at sea high on the list of logistics-related gaps the Navy must close.

“Over the course of decades, this is something we have actually studied, and now it’s time to make the necessary investments so that we can rearm our cruisers or our destroyers or our future frigates … at sea, should we be called upon to fight a war,” he said.

Maritime operations and naval logistics experts agree.

“Assuming the battle goes on longer than a single missile load, you need to rotate shooters out to reload and return to the scene of battle,” said James Holmes, a former surface warfare officer and the J. C. Wylie chair of maritime strategy at the Naval War College.

“If the fight is in the Taiwan Strait or South China Sea, far from the nearest port that can execute a reload, you are taking combatants off the firing line for a substantial time. We might make that work if we had a huge fleet and plenty of shooters to rotate in; but our fleet is lean in the extreme, in numerical terms,” he added. “We need the most we can get out of every platform, and that means rearming close to the scene of combat and getting back into action quickly.”

Tim Walton, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, who has written extensively on the topic of rearming at sea, said Del Toro is recognizing “the enormous opportunities of new VLS rearming capabilities.”

Indeed, Walton wrote in a 2019 study for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments that fielding just two or three ships that could rearm cruisers and destroyers in the Western or Central Pacific would, by getting the Navy’s combatants back on station more quickly, add the equivalent of 18 more cruisers and destroyers in the fleet.

“Viewed in this light, a fleet VLS rearming at sea capability could provide a ‘value’ in equivalent combatants of at least $11-37 billion, and would be a high-return investment for the Navy,” Walton told Defense News.

“The U.S. Navy is increasingly focused on identifying low-cost, high-impact options that can quickly boost the operational effectiveness of the fleet and joint force,” he added. “The swift introduction of a capability to rearm VLS at sea or at anchorage would have a major impact on operational effectiveness.”

Mixed success in tech development
Rearming a ship today can only take place in select ports. The destroyer or cruiser is tied to a pier; a crane, support equipment and personnel are on the pier; and one by one they lift missile canisters from the pier, then slowly lower them into the launcher cells on the ship.

The first step in making this evolution more expeditionary is to stage all the cranes, equipment and personnel on a support vessel instead of a pier. By doing this, a combatant could moor at any pier — no matter the infrastructure — and have the support vessel pull alongside to reload the missile cells.

Another option would involve anchoring in calm waters: at a harbor, the leeward side of an island that’s protected from winds and currents, or other bodies of water deep enough to allow the destroyer to enter but calm enough to keep the warship and the support vessel from rocking too much.

But the ideal end state is a rearming capability in the open ocean. Navy ships today refuel and resupply at sea, sailing alongside a Military Sealift Command auxiliary ship at about 12 knots to move goods and fuel. Though the fleet can do this safely while passing food, mail, spare parts and bullets, the service cannot currently safely pass missiles without risking damage to the weapon or its canister.

A support vessel capable of doing this rearm-at-sea mission would need several features, according to Jeff Green, the strategic sealift research and development program manager at the Carderock Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Maryland.

For starters, it would need the space and equipment to safely transport and handle the missile canisters, Green told Defense News. And it must be capable of safely mooring up against or maneuvering closely alongside the combatant. It would also need the equipment onboard to not only transfer the missile canisters to a destroyer, but to also ensure the canisters are vertical when loaded into the launcher tubes on the warship’s deck.

The Navy has long studied each of those pieces. The first two were achieved in a fall demonstration between the destroyer Spruance and the Ocean Valor, an offshore support vessel contracted by Military Sealift Command that serves as a research and development platform.

The third, involving the actual transfer of the missile, did not go as well.

Capt. Kendall Bridgewater, the commodore of Military Sealift Command Pacific, told Defense News on Feb. 23 the team conducted two demonstrations between Sept. 30 and Oct. 7: one rearming at the pier at Naval Air Station North Island, and one at anchor in the San Diego Bay.

During the first demonstration, Spruance was tied to the pier, and Ocean Valor used a dynamic positioning system to pull up close and hover in a position even as its crane swung a missile canister replica over to the deck of the destroyer, Bridgewater said.

In the second demonstration, Spruance left the pier and anchored off Point Loma, in the San Diego Bay. Ocean Valor made the same approach and used the dynamic positioning system to maintain a steady distance from the destroyer, despite the heavier winds and currents in this location.

“Unfortunately, that [missile transfer] was not able to be done because we saw that we had excessive motion between the two ships” beyond the safety limits, Bridgewater said. “We had excessive swing with the crane, which did not allow us to accomplish the at-anchor portion.”

So what does that mean for future development?

Ocean Valor — acting as a surrogate for any other existing or future Military Sealift Command ship — accomplished the first step of storing and handling the missiles. Bridgewater said the ship didn’t undergo any particular modifications to meet this mission; rather, it just needed the right crane, tilt fixture and personnel brought onboard.

The second step is safely mooring up against or sailing alongside the warship. Bridgewater said Ocean Valor and Spruance were outfitted with sensors for a dynamic positioning system, which basically took control of Ocean Valor’s steering and power and kept the ship exactly in the right place relative to Spruance.

The two ships were about 60 feet apart at the pier and 90 feet apart at anchor — very close, in naval operations — and Bridgewater said the system did so well he doesn’t think bumpers used during the demo are needed in the future.

But the third step — moving the missiles from the support vessel to the destroyer, and successfully into the VLS cells — is where the challenge remains.

Bridgewater said that, although Ocean Valor and Spruance held the correct positions relative to each other when the latter was at anchor, they were rocking too much in the wind and currents for the crane to safely swing the missile canister replica over to the destroyer, and certainly too much to allow personnel on the Spruance to get close enough to guide the replica into the launcher cell.

“Getting to an end state is going to require further research and development. We were part of one of those steps to get there, and the follow-on steps would be up to” experts at the Navy’s warfare centers, including Green’s team at Carderock, according to Leonard Bell, the deputy commodore at Military Sealift Command Pacific.

Commitment to find a solution
Del Toro met in San Diego with sailors and civilians involved in the Spruance demonstration. Despite the failure of the at-anchor portion, the secretary remains determined to perfect this expeditionary rearm capability and field it as soon as possible.

He noted that the Office of Naval Research and other Navy organizations are studying a range of options to “expedite the amount of time and the locations in which we can easily rearm our ships at sea. So the Spruance is the first of those technological experimentations that we’re pursuing; there may very well be more to come with additional investments” the Navy will request in fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026, he told Defense News.

Conducting an open-ocean rearm “would be the goal. But we start in safe harbor to be able to prove out that we can actually do this. We can learn from those experiments, and then we can take a look at what else the Office of Naval Research needs to” invest in for an open-ocean capability, Del Toro said.

The wind and sea conditions on the ocean “makes it a challenging problem,” he admitted. “But we have to do better, and that’s why we want to start making those investments now so we can get to a better place two, three years from now,” he added.

Green said the Navy is already developing multiple crane systems that could work better than the generic one used on Ocean Valor, as part of a near-term solution to put the crane and support equipment on non-Navy-certified piers or on auxiliary ships.

In the longer term, there’s another concept that calls for using the pulley system that moves containers of food and supplies during an underway replenishment. The TRAM concept — or transportable rearming mechanism — is 20 years old, but was not technologically feasible before. The Navy is not investing in the concept, but Del Toro described it as a “promising” idea at a recent American Society of Naval Engineers conference.

The hitch, however, is that the missiles, once moved by the pulley system to the destroyer, are too bulky and heavy for safe handling on the destroyer deck, and still must get vertically loaded into the launcher. Green said the Navy is also developing “equipment for inserting and removing the VLS canisters from the launcher,” which could either be used in conjunction with the crane or sent over via TRAM.

It’s unclear how quickly these development efforts will mature, or when the Navy might next conduct a test at sea.

For Holmes, the Naval War College expert, the technology shouldn’t be that hard in theory — the Navy just needs to make a sufficient investment.

“Conceptually it’s not hard at all. You’re basically just dropping a cylinder into a slightly larger cylindrical silo,” he said. “But the leadership’s commitment to solving the problem has been very slow to build” — until now.

“It takes commitment from top leadership to make most anything happen in the Navy. And what senior leader is going to invest finite time and energy in such a capability before it becomes obvious the lack of that capability means the difference between victory and defeat?” he added. “We as a Navy didn’t take the China challenge seriously for far too long, and now we’re scrambling to fix problems we would have been fixing long ago had we taken the challenge seriously.”

[gtg947h]

Reloading at sea assumes there are sufficient reloads to justify doing so. Do we even have that?

[Nightwatch2]

Reloading at sea assumes there are sufficient reloads to justify doing so. Do we even have that?

I don’t think we do and have never had sufficient numbers.

Reloading at sea, however, should really be considered as

Reloading in a protected anchorage or harbor. NOT in the open ocean!!

This has been a concept for a long time. We were looking at the idea waaaaay back when I was on 6th Fleet Staff.

[kdahm]

And the fact that some people are talking about it means that they are ignorant of the reason the former 61 cell VLS is now 62 cells once the reloading crane was removed. And the reasons for the crane removal.

[James1978]

Navy Estimates 5 More Years for Virginia Attack Sub Production to Hit 2 Boats a Year
By: Sam LaGrone
March 31, 2023

It will take five years for the two shipbuilders that build Virginia-class attack boats to deliver two submarines a year, according to the Navy’s latest estimates of the production schedule.

Three officials who have been briefed on the Navy’s estimates told USNI News that General Dynamics Electric Boat and HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding would put the program on a two-boat-per-year delivery schedule by 2028 with steady improvement in shipyard workforce recruitment and retention.

The two yards are currently on a pace to deliver about 1.2 submarines a year, Navy officials told USNI News this week.

“On the Virginia side of the house … they are significantly behind. They should be at two boats per year. … They have made some progress in moving in [the right] direction. I’m concerned particularly about the construction of the sterns and bows in Virginia and getting those up to Electric Boat up in Connecticut and integrating them all,” Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee this week.
“We are holding industry accountable in every which way that we possibly can and working with them at the same time to try to close these gaps.”

The two submarine yards split the construction of each Virginia-class and Columbia-class submarines into portions. Newport News builds the bow and stern sections of each boat, while EB builds the mid-section of each submarine to include the reactor compartments.

One legislative source told USNI News that some of the bow and stern sections for the Virginia-class boats have been several months late.

In a statement the week, Newport News said “we continue to work with urgency to deliver the highest-quality submarines to the Navy. We are applying lessons learned from previous Virginia-class submarines and streamlining our processes to execute more efficiently.”

Production schedules have been affected by COVID-19 work stoppages and the expanded workload for the Virginia-class payload module, in addition to balancing the construction of the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine line.

“The shortage of workers in the submarine community and across the nation is obviously a national challenge that we all have to address collectively,” Del Toro told HAC-D.
“We are working very closely with industry to try to close these gaps.”

Unlike the Virginia-class program, Columbia is on pace to meet its contract goal for a 2027 delivery.

Earlier this week, Del Toro said the program was 10 percent behind schedule, but Navy officials told USNI News he was referring to an internal EB 74-month timeline that is more aggressive than the Navy’s 80- month contract schedule.

“The shipbuilder and Navy created a six-month accelerated schedule to provide some margin in the lead ship construction process. The overall construction progress of the lead submarine is 10 percent behind that accelerated construction schedule. However, the contract dates, aligned with the Navy’s threshold requirements, are being met. The Department continues to closely manage Columbia’s schedule,” reads a Friday statement from the service to USNI News.
“Supplier base and industrial base workforce remain the top program risks. The Navy is taking steps to expand and strengthen the submarine industrial base by investing in six key areas: shipbuilder infrastructure, supply chain capability and capacity, scaling new technologies, addressing workforce trade skill gaps and constraints, expanding productive capacity via strategic outsourcing of large-scale fabrication, and government oversight of expanded industrial base efforts.”

However, an ongoing insurance dispute between the Navy and General Dynamics has added an additional delay to Virginia-class production.

The advanced procurement contracts for the next two Virginia-class attack boats are more than a year late because the Navy and GD have been unable to agree on each other’s share of responsibility in the event of an accident occurring either during construction or operations aboard attack boats that field Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles.

[James1978]

SECNAV Del Toro: Virginia Attack Sub Construction ‘Significantly Behind,’ District of Columbia Submarine 10% Behind Schedule
By: Sam LaGrone
March 29, 2023

Production of the Navy’s first-in-class Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine – District of Columbia (SSBN-826) – is 10 percent behind schedule, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro told a House panel on Wednesday.

Likewise, the production of Virginia-class attack boats is slowly improving but is “significantly behind” the target of two submarines per year, Del Toro told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee during a hearing.

Del Toro’s assessment was in response to questions from subcommittee chair Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who cited a January Government Accountability Office study that warned the Navy did not have a clear understanding of the program’s schedule risks. Del Toro contested the finding from GAO.

“We do have clear visibility into the schedule challenges that Columbia faces. She’s currently about 10 percent behind schedule is what she is given the challenges that we’ve faced with COVID and supply chain, not being able to get the advanced procurements that are necessary to be able to fulfill those requirements leads to her being 10 percent behind,” Del Toro told Calvert.
“The shortage of workers in the submarine community and across the nation is obviously a national challenge that we all have to address collectively. I do believe that increasing legal immigration in this country will help the blue-collar workforce, including those top workers that we need actually in the submarine force as well. … We are working very closely with industry to try to close these gaps.”

Following an earlier version of this post, a Navy official clarified to USNI News the estimate to which Del Toro was referring was an internal General Dynamics Electric Boat schedule 74-month schedule that was shorter than the Navy’s contract schedule.

The estimated $132 billion Columbia program is on a tight timeline to deliver the first boomer to the Navy in 2027 so it can complete years of testing before its first deterrent patrol. Navy officials have said repeatedly that there is no margin for schedule slips in the program and prioritized its budget and schedule over every other shipbuilding program.

In addition to Columbia, the Navy is funding the construction of two Virginia-class submarines a year, but has slipped on the delivery pace, Del Toro told the panel. The Navy requested $4.5 billion for two new Virginias in the Fiscal Year 2024 budget.

The construction of Columbia and Virginia is split between General Dynamics Electric Boat in New England and HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding, Va., under a teaming agreement that was forged at the start of the Virginia-class program. EB builds the middle sections that include the reactor compartment of both Columbia and Virginia boats, while Newport News builds the bow and stern sections. For the Virginia class, the yards take turns barging the sections to each other’s assembly facilities to join the sections.

“On the Virginia side of the house … they are significantly behind. They should be at two boats per year. They’re currently [at] around 1.4. They have made some progress in moving in [the right] direction. I’m concerned particularly about the construction of the sterns and bows in Virginia and getting those up to Electric Boat up in Connecticut and integrating them all,” Del Toro said.
“We are holding industry accountable in every which way that we possibly can and working with them at the same time to try to close these gaps.”

In a statement to USNI News, Newport News shipbuilding said, “we continue to work with urgency to deliver the highest-quality submarines to the Navy. We are applying lessons learned from previous Virginia-class submarines and streamlining our processes to execute more efficiently.”

Service leaders also gave updates on the two Los Angeles-class attack boats – USS Boise (SSN-764) and USS Hartford (SSN-768) – that are in for repairs at Newport News and EB, as the Navy’s public shipyards continue to struggle with a submarine maintenance backlog that prioritizes the ballistic missile submarine fleet.

Boise has been out of service since 2017 and the attack submarine has lost its diving certification while waiting for repairs.

“Boise is a victim, quite frankly to other higher priority maintenance items that took place with other boats getting them into the maintenance process,” Del Toro said.

The service asked for $600 million in its Fiscal Year 2024 budget to finish the repair work. Hartford is currently undergoing its own repair availability at EB.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday told the panel that developing the infrastructure and workforce to maintain submarines at private yards was “absolutely critical to maintaining our capacity for the future.”
Private yards have focused on new construction, while the Navy’s four public yards have repaired submarines. Gilday views the work on the two attack boats as a training program for HII and EB to handle more repair work in the future.

“Investments we’re making now with ships like Hartford and Boise, the return on investment there is yards are going to be proficient at that work in the future. …. We stopped doing submarine maintenance in private yards for well over a decade. We’re starting from scratch again,” he said.
“When you have the most complex machine in the world and you stop and then you try to restart, it takes time to get proficient. That’s why you’re seeing the delays, the delays with the submarines in the private yards. I’m optimistic that we’re going to get back on track.”

[James1978]

Northrop, Lockheed, Raytheon team up on Navy’s E-XX ‘doomsday’ plane
By Stephen Losey
Monday, April 3, 2023

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works and Raytheon Intelligence and Space are teaming up to bid on the Navy’s next command-and-control aircraft, to be used if a nuclear war breaks out.

The “E-XX” would replace the Navy’s fleet of 16 E-6B Mercury aircraft, which carry out a mission the Navy refers to as TACAMO, for “Take Charge and Move Out,” that allows the president, the secretary of Defense and other national leaders to communicate with and control forces such as nuclear missile-armed submarines.

The E-6B fleet is aging and must be modernized, the Navy said in fiscal 2024 budget documents released last month.

Jane Bishop, Northrop’s vice president and general manager for global surveillance, said Monday that the team working on the E-XX pitch has knowledge and experience on weapon system integration and battle management command and control, and will also include Crescent Systems Inc. and Long Wave Inc. Bishop spoke a briefing for reporters at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

Raytheon would provide integrated communications systems for the E-XX, and supports the current TACAMO program.

It remains unclear what other companies might compete for the Navy’s E-XX program.

The Navy decided to use the Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Super Hercules, a version of the C-130 with 15 feet added to the fuselage, as the platform for its TACAMO aircraft, said Henry Cyr, Northrop Grumman’s director for multi-domain command and control capture programs.

The stretched C-130 will be the right size for for the mission and will fly better than the E-6, he said.

The Navy wants the E-XX to use Collins Aerospace’s very low frequency radio system. The budget request calls for $213.7 million for TACAMO modernization, which would pay for three test aircraft. Cyr said the Navy will likely buy nine more planes in total and plans to award a contract for the E-XX in the first quarter of fiscal 2025.

Northrop officials expect the Navy to release its requirements for the aircraft in the coming months.

The Navy wants a quick transition, so the E-XX likely won’t bring significantly new technologies to the table, aside from more advanced radios and computing systems. The goal, Cyr said, is to take already-existing technologies and field them in a new air frame as soon as possible.

“This is not intended to be a new technology demonstration,” he said. “It is intended to take existing capability that can be fielded in the near term.”

TACAMO is a “can’t-fail” mission, too important to endanger by experimenting with something unproven, Cyr said.

“The nuclear command and control communication business, it is more important to do 100% of the time correctly than to maybe take a little bit of risk on developing new technology,” he said.

Of interest is the E-XX will not continue to carry the Air Force's Airborne Command Post mission, so the Air Force now has to find the money resurrect Looking Glass.

[James1978]

OSD Comptroller Says U.S. Shipyards Can’t Build 3 Destroyers a Year
By: Mallory Shelbourne
March 21, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Navy is keeping a two-ship-per-year cadence for its destroyer line because that’s a realistic goal for industry to work toward, according to the Pentagon’s top budget officer.

Despite Congress’ push for the Navy to start buying three Arleigh Burke-class Flight III destroyers per year, the Fiscal Year 2024 budget request unveiled last week showed the service buying two destroyers. That’s because U.S. shipyards are not yet able to build two destroyers per year, let alone three, Mike McCord said last week.

“I’m not hating on DDGs – my only point was that last year Congress added a third and the reason we didn’t budget for three is, again, we don’t see the yards being able to produce three a year. We don’t see them being able to produce two a year. And that’s just data. It’s not what we wish to be true. But everybody’s struggling with skilled labor. Everybody’s struggling with supply chain. So it’s not getting better very fast from the data that I’ve seen – whether with submarines or DDGs. So two a year seems to be a reasonable place,” McCord told USNI News at the McAleese Conference.

During the budget rollout last week, McCord said industry is currently building 1.5 destroyers per year, a number Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday has also cited when arguing that the shipyards have limited capacity.

McCord also argued that asking for more destroyers than industry can build takes away leverage from the Navy to negotiate with shipbuilders on price.

“If you keep sort of placing orders for things faster than they can be delivered, it’s good for the books, the balance sheets of the companies. But are you really, as the buyer, are you in the best place you’d like to be with any leverage or are you actually short of leverage when, you produce on time or you don’t produce on time. It doesn’t matter to me – I’m going to keep writing you checks,” McCord told USNI News.

The comptroller said both he and Susanna Blume, the director of the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) Office of the Secretary of Defense, don’t think putting more funding toward an extra destroyer is a wise use of resources that will help shipbuilders deliver it to the Navy quicker.

“It’s just sort of piling up in the orders book and we’re still going to have the same problems of the yards producing faster until we get through the supply chain and the workforce issues,” McCord said. “It is not to say that we would not be interest[ed] in a more robust production world where in having three DDGs or moving to three submarines, but it doesn’t seem to be … realistic.”

General Dynamics Bath Iron Works, one of the yards that build the destroyers, has spent the last several years digging through a backlog of work at its Maine yard that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated. HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding, the other yard that builds the Arleigh Burke destroyers, has performed better. Ingalls is also winding down the Coast Guard’s Legend-class National Security Cutter production line, which could open up more capacity at its yard in Pascagoula, Miss.

A spokeswoman for Ingalls Shipbuilding told USNI New in a statement that the yard is ready to support building three destroyers per year should the Navy go this route.

“Our shipbuilders will position to support whatever destroyer cadence the Navy needs and we have started by building, testing and taking the first Flight III ship to sea, which will be delivered later this year. We are a committed partner to not only our customers but to our network of nearly 1,200 suppliers as well. Together, we can build three DDGs a year if that is what the Navy and our country need,” Kimberly Aguillard said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Bath Iron Works told USNI News that it’s “working to aggressively recover schedule” at the shipyard.

“We support the call for a consistent demand signal that gives shipyards and suppliers the predictability to make major investments in workforce and facilities, both to expand destroyer production and to ensure that capability remains intact well into the future,” David Hench said in a statement. “Those capital investments are currently underway in Bath, and we are confident there will be significant schedule improvement so we can meet the Navy’s expectations by the time construction begins on the anticipated multi-year contract.”

Lawmakers have urged the Navy to work toward buying three destroyers per year and added a third destroyer on top of the Navy’s request for two in FY 2023. Congress also included a provision in the FY 2023 policy bill that would allow the Navy to ink a multi-year procurement deal for as many as 15 Flight III destroyers. If the multi-year procurement contracts are for fewer than 15 destroyers, the Navy must include at least one “pre-priced option” so it has the opportunity to buy 15 ships, according to the bill language.

Despite the authorities, the Navy, for now, is planning to buy two destroyers per year. The Future Years Defense Program, or the service’s five-year budget outlook, shows the Navy buying two ships per year from FY 2024 through FY 2028.

“We would love to live in a world where the yards could make three a year, or three submarines a year, but we don’t live in that world,” McCord said last week at the budget rollout.

[James1978]

Navy Seeing Better Trained Ensigns After Surface Warfare Reforms, Say Sailors
By: Mallory Shelbourne
April 10, 2023

ABOARD GUIDED-MISSILE DESTROYER USS HALSEY OFF THE COAST OF CALIFORNIA – When Cmdr. Amanda Browning joined the Navy, she learned how to drive and operate a ship from a set of CD-ROMs on a computer aboard Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay (CG-53). Twenty years ago, new surface warfare officers learned on the job after a cost-saving decision to trim upfront training, and the results were far from consistent.

Following the 2017 fatal collisions in the Western Pacific that killed 17 sailors, the Navy reversed course and invested billions of dollars in virtual shore trainers on both coasts and made time for new SWOs to get a feel for a 9,000-ton warship in the safety of a trainer.

While SWOs previously trained in an ad-hoc system that left evaluations up to individual ship commanders, young officers now experience an institutionalized training pipeline that leads to multiple go/no-go assessments. Since making those changes, the Navy has had a 99.27 percent pass rate for the first mariner skills assessment, according to a spokesman for Naval Surface Forces.

“As of 28 February 2023, 958 officers have attended OOD Phase 2. 951 of 958 officers have passed the mariner skills assessment,” Cmdr. Arlo Abrahamson
told USNI News. “Only seven officers have not passed the assessment by the third attempt and have not gone on to their second division officer tours.”

That new system is developing better young officers who check in to their first ship with more knowledge and skills than SWOs years ago, according to Browning.

“There’s much more of a standard baseline,” the commanding officer of Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Halsey (DDG-97) said of today’s ensigns.

Young officers today have spent dozens of hours in simulators before they walk aboard their ships, meaning they have a better grasp of seamanship skills and ship driving lingo.

“They show up talking about bearing drift, target angle. I don’t think I really got what that was until I met the ship on deployment and probably a month or two in of on-the-job training, standing watch every day, was I really feeling very comfortable with that,” Browning told USNI News during an interview in her office aboard Halsey.

“Right now, they’re getting enough reps and sets in the trainer to where they can confidently make those reports. And the second thing is the making of the reports – the verbalization of it. So they practice talking Navy talk, which is – it’s not hard, but it’s definitely a lingo. There are phrases that we use that you don’t use driving down the street.”

Mariner Skills Training Center
Part of what has helped raise the bar for young officers is the Officer of the Deck Phase I course they go through at the Mariner Skills Training Center. Both San Diego, Calif., and Norfolk, Va., have new facilities with virtual trainers and instructors who teach the course.

“They do really take people … most of whom have no experience doing any sort of ship driving and they teach us the basics,” said Ens. Lucas Arnold, an electronic warfare officer on Halsey who qualified for officer of the deck days before USNI News came aboard.

“I felt when I left the school house – I definitely felt comfortable. I felt like I was ready to come, not take the deck, but I definitely felt ready to be a conn – to stand conning officer.”

After completing the Basic Division Officer Course, which includes some simulator time but mostly focuses on classroom instruction, ensigns go to MSTC for the required OOD Phase I course that the Navy extended from four weeks to six.

“First two weeks you’re going to be doing radar, [maneuvering] boards, all of the basic functions before you get into the scenarios that you’re going to be doing because the following four weeks is just two-a-days of scenarios. So you get a lot of simulator time before coming to the ship,” Lt. Junior Grade Josh Hoefner, a strike officer aboard Halsey who also qualified for ODD in February, told USNI News.

Once the officers get to the ship, they start working on their qualifications. They have 30 months to earn their SWO pin, which requires them to pass three officer of the deck boards and three SWO boards. Many young officers earn their pin in 24 months, Arnold said.

The leg up from the simulators helps elevate a backlog of sailors waiting to get their qualifications, Browning said.

“It would be frustrating and really, honestly, demoralizing if you got stuck in a queue – because you sort of do get stuck in a queue – of when you arrived,” she said. “You would never get processed through fast enough to get enough on-the-job training in that time, that you just show up with now. So it’s really good.”

Container ships and the San Diego-Coronado Bridge appear in the distance on the screens inside the waterfront trainers during a USNI News visit to the training center in San Diego. The simulation creates a virtual navigation bridge for young officers to experience different sea states or environments. This allows them to try new scenarios, like a harbor transit or a contact report, in lower-stakes conditions.

“The simulator gives you the opportunity to make some mistakes that you can’t make in the real world. You know, if you want to try and maneuver and you’re like, ‘how would this work’ You try it in the simulator and you go, ‘okay that really doesn’t work.’ You can’t do that on the ship.” Arnold said.

“And then having someone there to be like, ‘hey, maybe try this’ is where you kind of learn your own style of managing a bridge team too. That’s really important.”

Aboard the Ship
Once young officers finish OOD Phase I, they have the chance to apply what they learned in the MSTC simulators to real-life scenarios when they get underway.

“You hit the ground running I think in all aspects of this job,” Arnold said about getting underway for the first time. “But there’s always someone there to say stop and do something different, or try this.”

First, they typically work under the instruction of a qualified conning officer to learn how to drive the ship.

“You almost feel over-prepared for some of the positions that you’re in because when you get to the ship, you’re not doing anything close to what you were doing [in the simulator.] You’re conning, which has its own aspects to it that are a little challenging,” said Hoefner. “You’re going to be looking out the windows the entire time when you’re on watch. You’re the primary lookout on the ship. You should be training the boatswain lookouts that are rotating through on the bridges.”

While USNI News was aboard Halsey, the crew was out for its first underway during the basic phase of workups, when they must demonstrate proficiencies to earn certifications, like for man overboard drills.

“Those officers have been onboard less than a month and they can drive a man overboard and meet the time requirements to get a [satisfactory] right out to sea for the first time. It’s their first underway,” CO Browning said.

“That’s not easy. It is incredibly dangerous. And those conns, who haven’t even been underway on a real ship since commissioning, – they’ve been out less than a month – and those are the conns doing it. They’re driving the ship” during man overboard drill certifications.

After several weeks of conning under instruction, officers will start the first board process for conning, which tests them on basic rules of the road and standard commands. Once they pass the conning qualification, they spend more time on the bridge and move on to the helm safety officer qualification. After earning both of those qualifications, they can begin standing junior officer of the deck watches

“That’s really the one where you start learning the bigger picture for running the deck. You start making contact reports to the captain. You start using bridge-to-bridge [communications]. You’re using the radar more. You’re talking on the net to combat and [central control station],” Arnold said.

“And then when you’re comfortable there, you start to stand officer of the deck under instruction. And that’s when you really start studying the nitty-gritty of the standing orders, asking people what kind of questions do they ask on an OOD board. What are their expectations for an OOD? And that’s kind of at the end of a months-long process or a year-long process, usually.”

Nearly two years ago, the Navy rolled out Officer of the Deck Phase II, a three-week course officers take after their first division tours. These courses and the overall revamped training pipeline were meant to address gaps the Navy identified in a 2018 assessment that found inadequacies in ship handling among its junior watch standers.

While the simulators can’t fully replicate real-life bridge situations, the young officers aboard Halsey said they felt ready to begin their qualifications and pursue the SWO pin.

“I think the thing that you really can’t capture in a simulator – nor would you want to – is the responsibility that you feel for having hundreds of lives saying, ‘I trust you to not get me in a dangerous situation,’” Arnold said.

“I don’t think any simulator or any schoolhouse can prepare you for that level of stress, but I think that it can provide you with the basic level of knowledge that you need to build that confidence and then go forward and take the deck in a real scenario.”