ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy has ordered an additional CMV-22B Osprey carrier-onboard delivery aircraft, according to a Dec. 9 Defense Department contract announcement. 

The Bell Boeing Joint Project Office, Amarillo, Texas, was awarded a $170.4 contract modification by the Naval Air Systems Command for the CMV-22B and for the exercise of options the for V-22 Common Configuration Readiness and Modernization (CC-RAM) Lot 4 requirements and for planned maintenance interval inspections, repairs, shipping and storage containers and tooling in support of the V-22 CC-RAM program,” the announcement said. 

The Navy’s CMV-22B replaces the C-2A Greyhound for the Carrier On-Board Delivery (COD) mission. Its mission is to transport personnel, mail, supplies and cargo from shore bases to aircraft carriers at sea. Forty-four of the 48 Navy program of record aircraft will be delivered under the June 2018 multiyear procurement contract.    

The CMV-22B differs from the MV-22B by having a high-frequency radio, extra fuel capacity, improved fuel dump capability, improved lighting for cargo handling and a public address system. The aircraft can carry up to 6,000 pounds up to a range of 1,150 nautical miles. It is capable of internally carrying the F-135 engine power module for the F-35 Lightning II.   

The CMV-22B made its maiden flight on Dec. 19, 2019 at Bell Flight’s Amarillo, Texas assembly facility and later flew to Naval Air Station Patuxent River to continue flight testing in February 2020.   As of November 2020, seven CMV-22Bs have been delivered to the Navy.  

Operational Test and initial operation capability are scheduled for 2021; full operational capability is scheduled for 2024.   

ARLINGTON, Va. — Northrop Grumman plans to compete in the Navy’s Very Light-Weight Torpedo Program next year, company officials said.  

Dave Allan, the company’s director of Strategic Growth for Undersea Systems, told Seapower in a Dec. 8 teleconference the company expects the Navy to issue in January 2021 a Request for Proposals for the taking the non-production-designed VLWT prototype — designed by Penn State Applied Physics Lab (APL) — into a production design. and develop it over three years as an All-Up Round it to be suitable for manufacturing. Other Transactional Authority will be used to deploy the torpedo to the fleet.    

Allan said the company would be bidding to develop for production the Compact Rapid Attack Weapon (CRAW), the offensive version of the Counter Anti-torpedo Torpedo (CAT), a defensive weapon developed by Penn State APL for use by aircraft carriers to defeat incoming submarine-launched anti-ship torpedoes. Five aircraft carriers were fitted with CAT launchers. 

The hardware-enabled, software-defined VLWT would be equipped with advanced electronics and processing power, with the software enabling the same weapon to serve in an offensive or defensive role. 

The nine-foot-long VWLT is one third of the size of the Mk54 — the Navy’s most advanced light-weight torpedo — and weighs just over 200 pounds, compared with the 608-pound Mk54. With this weight advantage, a platform can carry more torpedoes or carry the same number at longer ranges and give the platform more endurance. The VLWT could be carried by surface, airborne, and undersea platforms, manned and unmanned.   

David Portner, Northrop Grumman’s program manager for Undersea Weapons, said the VLWT could be carried by such anti-submarine aircraft as P-8A maritime patrol aircraft, MH-60R helicopters and MQ-8 Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicles.  

During an Advanced Naval Technology Exercise two years ago, Northrop Grumman demonstrated the deployment of a VLWT from a surrogate helicopter simulating a Fire Scout. 

The torpedo is fitted with a parachute to reduce the shock of impact with the water. The VLWT also could be fitted with a glide wing kit similar to the one on Boeing’s HAAWC (High-Altitude Anti-submarine Weapon Concept), which is in development to extend the launch range and altitude as well as precision guidance for the Mk54 torpedo.   

The VLWT also could be deployed from a vessel such as a littoral combat ship by way of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV). Fortner said a USV could carry VLWTs away from the ship and put them close to the target. 

Portner said the Navy already has demonstrated that the legacy Surface Vessel Torpedo Tubes that fire Mk46 and Mk54 light-weight torpedoes could be fitted with internal sleeves to accommodate the smaller-diameter VLWT, but a new launcher could be developed to house a larger number of VLWTs. 

He said one or more VLWTs could be fitted to an ASROC (Anti-Submarine Rocket) in place of a MK54 torpedo if the Navy decided to do proceed with that. 

ARLINGTON, Va.— With the Navy and Marine Corps aircraft readiness in much better shape than recently of note, the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) is changing focus to improving the warfighting capabilities of its aircraft for a high-end fight.  

“We’re shifting that to lethality,” said Vice Adm. Dean Peters, speaking Dec. 3 in a Defense Forum 2020 webinar sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute. “We want to build on that. We want to make sure getting after all of those mission systems that are critical to the high-end fight. That’s a deliberate focus of the Air Boss [Vice Adm. Kenneth Whitesell, commander, Naval Air Forces] and of DCA [Deputy Commandant for Aviation Lt. Gen. Mark R. Wise]: lethality, survivability, all of those things we need for the high-end fight.” 

Peters said that NAVAIR has been restructured to a mission-aligned organization from a functionally aligned organization. 

“A lot of things that you do in a functionally aligned organization are institutional, and you are very focused on maintaining the sanctity of your technical responsibilities,” he said, “But that doesn’t necessarily translate into being able to maneuver quickly to attack problems. 

“We’ve had a very significant and a very deliberate pivot towards readiness,” he said. We lost focus as resources did become constrained and we had to re-cultivate this sense of health of naval aviation. We’ve done that over the last couple of years and we’re not where we need to be by any measure. We do have some challenges but, starting at the beginning of the fiscal year ’19 and ending at the end of fiscal year ’20, we really increased the mission capability of our platforms dramatically.”   

The Navy and Marine Corps have 300 more aircraft that are mission-capable today than they did at the start of fiscal 2018, after then-Defense Secretary James Mattis ordered the services to bring their strike fighter fleet to an 80% mission-capable rate. 

Peters said the Naval Aviation Enterprise is “maturing those cutting-edge technologies at our warfare centers. All of this enabled by the structural changes that we made, but it’s more than that. It’s our work force, really dedicated and talented.” 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy’s experience with fielding new warships in the last two decades has shown that an evolutionary approach to ship design is more likely to succeed than a revolutionary approach, the commander of Naval Sea Systems Command design said.   

“As we go forward and look at future platforms, [consider an] evolutionary approach versus a revolutionary approach,” said Vice Adm. William Galinis, speaking Dec. 3 in a Defense Forum 2020 webinar sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute. “Where we have done that [evolutionary approach], frankly we’ve been pretty successful.” 

Galinis pointed to the evolution from the Spruance-class destroyer to the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser to the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer (DDG 51) as an example of evolutionary design success. 

“The design margin, the robustness of the DDG 51 design continues to prove [itself] even today even as the first three Flight III ships [are] under construction, which right now are state-of-the-art capability going to the fleet,” he said.  

“Where we’ve taken that more revolutionary approach, we have in fact struggled,” he said. “With DDG 1000 [USS Zumwalt], just the number of new elements of that design that came into play — everything from the hull form to the propulsion plant to the deckhouse to the sensor suite to the network—as we did that, quite frankly, the mission requirements changed for that platform and we’re coming through that. In the end, the Navy and the country are going to get a good ship but it’s going to come at a cost.” 

Galinis said that taking the evolutionary approach instead of a revolutionary approach is a key element to bring on a good, reliable platform once you get through the design and construction phase. 

Because of the capital-intensive character of ship design and construction, prototyping is difficult, but Galinis said the Navy is doing more prototyping of ship to reduce risk. He pointed to the land-based prototypes of the Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarine’s power plant and drive train and of the SPY-6 Air and Missile Defense Radar on the DDG Flight III with the ship’s electrical system. Prototyping also is proceeding with the Navy’s unmanned surface and underwater vehicles.       

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Coast Guard plans to deploy one of its Bertholf-class national security cutters (NSCs) to the U.S. Fifth Fleet area of responsibility to escort some new fast response cutters for basing in the Persian Gulf, the Coast Guard Commandant said. 

Speaking Dec. 3 in a Navy League Special Topic Breakfast webinar, Adm. Karl Schultz, commandant of the Coast Guard, said the NSC will deploy in 2021 through the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea to the Persian Gulf while escorting two new Sentinel-class fast response cutters (FRCs) for duty in the Gulf. 

The FRCS will be the first of six to be forward deployed to the Coast Guard’s Patrol Force Southwest Asia, where they will participate in maritime security operations under the auspices of the Navy’s U.S. Fifth Fleet. The 154-foot-long FRCs will replace six 110-foot-long Island-class patrol boats in the Gulf. 

Schultz praised the capabilities of the service’s FRCs, 41 of which have been delivered by Bollinger Shipyards. The FRCs already have been extending the Coast Guard’s reach into the South Pacific from Hawaii and now Guam, with two of three FRCs for Guam already in place. 

The Coast Guard has made three deployments to the Western Pacific with NSC. Bertholf and Stratton deployed there in 2019 and performed such missions as enforcing sanctions against North Korea and engaging with allied and partner nations. While the Navy destroyers USS John McCain and USS Fitzgerald were going through repairs from collisions, the two NSCs were able to assume missions and free up destroyers and cruisers for the ballistic-missile defense role in the Sea of Japan.  

The Waesche deployed to the Western Pacific in 2020 but suffered a fire and is in Japan for repair. In addition, the Kimball deployed to the South Pacific for fisheries patrols near Fiji. The Bertholf was diverted from a counter-drug patrol in 2020 and sent to the Galapagos Archipelago where it used its ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicles to observe possible Chinese fishing fleet violations of the Ecuadorian Exclusive Economic Zone. 

Schultz also said the service’s newest NSC, the Stone, would be deployed on its shakedown cruise in 2021 off the Atlantic coast of South America to, among several missions, counter illegal and unreported fishing violations. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The secretary of the Navy has announced that the U.S Fleet Forces Command would be re-designated the U.S. Atlantic Fleet in acknowledgement of the realities of great power competition, particularly with Russia.  

Navy Secretary Kenneth J. Braithwaite, testifying Dec. 2 before the Readiness and Management Support subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, took the opportunity to announce the forthcoming change, noting that the changing world requires that the Navy must evolve to meet the threat.  

“Our existing structure operates on the premise that we still live in a post-9-11 state, where NATO’s flanks are secure, the Russian Fleet is tied to the pier, and terrorism is our biggest problem,” Braithwaite said. “That is not the world of today. As the world changes, we must be bold, evolved, and change with it. Instead of perpetuating a structure designed to support Joint Forces Command, we are aligning to today’s threat. 

“To meet the maritime challenges of the Atlantic Theater, we will rename Fleet Forces Command as the U.S. Atlantic Fleet and will refocus our naval forces in this important region on their original mission, to controlling the maritime approaches to the United States and those of our allies,” he said. “The Atlantic Fleet will confront the reassertive Russian Navy, which has been deploying closer and closer to our East Coast with a tailored maritime presence, capability and lethality.” 

The U.S. Atlantic Fleet commander will have two numbered fleets assigned, U.S. Second Fleet, headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, and U.S. Fourth Fleet, headquartered in Mayport, Florida. The U.S Second Fleet was reestablished in August 2018 to confront the increasing Russian activity.   

The original commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet staff, has a long pedigree that began in 1906, when the North Atlantic Squadron and South Atlantic Squadron were combined. The fleet existed in various forms until 2006, when the chief of naval operations renamed Commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, to Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command, which assumed the duties of the former fleet plus the mission of the former Commander, Fleet Forces Command, which was “to serve as the primary advocate for fleet personnel, training, requirements, maintenance and operations issues,” according to the Fleet Forces Command website. 

For a detailed history of the commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet and Fleet Forces command staff, see https://www.usff.navy.mil/About-Us/History/ .

ARLINGTON, Va. — The secretary of the Navy has announced the name he selected for the second Constellation-class guided-missile frigate. 

Navy Secretary Kenneth J. Braithwaite, testifying Dec. 2 before the Readiness and Management Support subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, took the opportunity to announce that the second frigate would be named USS Congress. 

The new frigate would be the seventh U.S. naval ship named Congress. 

The first USS Congress was a row of the Continental Navy that fought on Lake Champlain during the American Revolutionary War. Built in 1776, the ship fought in the Battle of Valcour Island. The ship was severely damaged in the battle, which killed more than 20 of its crew. The ship was run aground and burned after only a week of naval service. 

The second USS Congress was a 28-gun frigate built in New York for the Continental Navy. Before it completed fitting out to fight in the Revolutionary War against Great Britain, it was burned in October 1777 in order to prevent its capture. 

The third USS Congress was one of the six frigates authorized by the Naval Act of 1794 and designed by Joshua Humphreys. The 38-gun wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate was launched in 1789 and participated in the Quasi War with France, the First Barbary War, and the War of 1812. The frigate captured or assisted in the capture of 20 British merchant ships. The ship was laid up in 1913 for lack of repair funds but returned to service in the Second Barbary War in 1915. The frigate participated in anti-piracy operations in the Caribbean and later became the first U.S. Navy ship to visit China. The ship served as a receiving ship (a training barge) from 1824 to 1834. 

The fourth USS Congress was a 52-gun sailing frigate commissioned in 1841. It served in the Mediterranean Sea and the South Atlantic Ocean, participating in a blockade of Uruguay. Decommissioned in 1845 but recommissioned later in the same year, the frigate operated in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. During the Mexican War, its crew fought in two land battles and the occupation of Los Angeles. The ship also attacked enemy fortifications in western Mexico. Returning to the Atlantic in 1848, the ship was placed in reserve. In 1850, the ship was assigned to the South Atlantic to counter the slave trade before being decommissioned in 1853. Recommissioned in 1855, the frigate operated in the Mediterranean before again being decommissioned in 1858. Recommissioned in 1859, the ship served in the Brazil Squadron until 1861, when it joined in the blockade of the Confederacy. The frigate was sunk in Hampton Roads, Virginia, by the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia on March 8, 1862, with the loss of 120 Sailors in its crew.   

The fifth USS Congress was a screw sloop commissioned in 1870. It served in the South Atlantic Ocean, Arctic, Caribbean Sea, and Mediterranean Sea before being decommissioned in 1876. 

The sixth USS Congress (ID-3698) was a privately owned fishing vessel that was acquired in 1918 and commissioned as a patrol vessel, serving along the U.S. East Coast until 1919.  

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy has decided to decommission and scrap the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6), which was severely damaged by a shipboard fire in San Diego in July. 

In a Nov. 30 teleconference with reporters, Rear Adm. Eric H. Ver Hage, commander, Navy Regional Maintenance Centers and director of Surface Ship Maintenance and Modernization at Naval Sea Systems Command, said that Navy Secretary Kenneth J. Braithwaite and Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday made the decision after the Navy completed a “comprehensive material assessment” and considered three possible outcomes. 

Rebuilding and repairing the Bonhomme Richard would have taken five to seven years and cost an estimated $2.5 billion to $3.2 billion, Ver Hage said.  

Alternatively, rebuilding the ship as another type of ship, such as a hospital ship, a tender, or a command-and-control ship, would have taken five to seven years and cost more than $1 billion, more than a new alternative ship would be estimated to cost. 

Decommissioning and scrapping the ship would take nine to 12 months and cost an estimated $30 million, he said. 

Replacing the Bonhomme Richard with a new America-class (LHA 6) amphibious assault ship would take five to six years and cost an estimated $4.1 billion. 

The Bonhomme Richard was built for $750 million in 1998 dollars, equivalent to $1.2 billion today. Ver Hage said the Navy had invested $250 million in the ship during its modernization that was in progress when the fire broke out. 

The admiral said usable parts and material would be harvested from the ship before it was scrapped. The crew would be involved in the inactivation process. Their eventual reassignment from the ship to other assignments would be governed by the type commander, Commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet. 

The ship will be towed to a scrap yard, possibly to Brownsville, Texas, where some of the Navy’s retired aircraft carriers have been scrapped. 

Congress was notified of the Navy’s decision on Nov. 30, the day the crew also was notified. 

“We did not come to this decision lightly,” Braithwaite said in a Nov. 30 release. “Following an extensive material assessment in which various courses of action were considered and evaluated, we came to the conclusion that it is not fiscally responsible to restore her. 
 
“Although it saddens me that it is not cost effective to bring her back, I know this ship’s legacy will continue to live on through the brave men and women who fought so hard to save her, as well as the Sailors and Marines who served aboard her during her 22-year history,” Braithwaite said. 

All investigations associated with the fire onboard LHD 6 remain ongoing, the Navy said.  

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy has ordered two more Surface-to-Surface Missile Modules (SSMMs) for integration into the Surface Warfare Mission Package of the littoral combat ships, bringing to four the number of SSMMs on order. 

The Naval Sea Systems Command awarded Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. a 10.7 million firm-fixed-price contract modification for two additional SSMM systems for delivery by November 2022, a Nov. 20 Defense Department contract announcement said. 

The SSMM is a modular weapons system that fires Lockheed Martin-built AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire missiles from launchers built by Teledyne Brown Engineering. Each launcher houses a total of 24 missiles. A prototype launcher has demonstrated the capability to defend against multiple swarming Fast Attack Craft/Fast Inshore Attack Craft (FAC/FIAC). During one test, a volley of six missiles were launched in rapid succession from an LCS, successfully destroying a swarm of six high-speed targets. 

More than 100 missiles have been fired to date with a greater than 90% successful engagement rate.  

The SSMM achieved Initial Operational Capability on the Freedom-variant LCS in February 2019 and was deployed on USS Detroit in November 2019. 

Northrop Grumman is under contract to build four SSMM systems so far. The Navy has a requirement for 12 SSMM systems. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The official in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations in charge of coordinating interoperability of the combat systems between the Navy’s ships, submarines, aircraft and their sensors said the service needs to “resist the urge to drive up complexity.”   

Kelly McCool, acting director, Digital Warfare Office (DWO), in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, speaking Nov. 19 in the Virtual Combat Systems Symposium sponsored by the American Society of Naval Engineers, was addressing the Navy’s Fully Integrated Combat Force concept. 

“We’re not focused on a single integrated combat system on a single platform. We need a force that’s fully integrated and distributed,” McCool said.  

“The first challenge I see is that we don’t write requirements to buy a fully integrated force,” she said. “We write requirements and develop systems [with] interoperability as a second thought, as an after-thought, as a fall-out. We’re learning some of those lessons with our unmanned systems where we did not pay enough attention to the networking, and now we’re doing the corrective actions to make sure the network can support our unmanned systems.  

“We’re going to fight on the network, so we have got to value and resource and set requirements that are associated with the networks and the data that is needed to make the timely decisions and the tools that are needed to make those timely decisions,” she said. 

She said that with the surface, subsurface, aviation and expeditionary resource sponsors, the information warfare/intelligence sponsor, and all of their stakeholders “there’s the potential to drive up the complexity.”  

McCool said “the second challenge we all are faced with here is we really need to resist the urge to drive up the complexity in this problem so that we are not faced with another ForceNet or some effort that just becomes too complex, [with] too many stakeholders. In my experience, when you have a lot of stakeholders, we sometimes don’t make those hard decisions about what is the most important. We add everybody’s voice in and then you have some competing requirements. This drives complexity. It drives to the frustration that the acquisition timelines become long.” 

McCool, who spent most of her career so far on the acquisition side but now works on the resourcing side, said that she has strong interest in wanting to make sure we approach the requirements in a way that allows us to grow and evolve with the technology, and not be so complex and so prescriptive that we lock ourselves in too early and force some major acquisition development program. That said, there definitely is this space a need for the government to set some parameters.”  

She said that she was “really doubling down on the networks, getting the requirements right for our Naval Tactical Grid, getting the requirements right for the data, the decision support tools and the architectures we’re going to need across the board and doing that in parallel with the Integrated Combat System development so that we’re loosely coupled but we’re not creating this development upon development that becomes a snowball that’s unachievable. 

“So, there’s some black art there and we’re going to have to work through that,” she added.