Vice Admiral Andrew J. Tiongson assumed command of Coast Guard Pacific Area in Alameda, California on July 8, 2022. He serves as the operational commander responsible for all Coast Guard missions westward from the Rocky Mountains across the Indo-Pacific, Arctic, and Antarctic regions, to the coast of eastern Africa. He concurrently serves as commander, Defense Force West and provides Coast Guard operational support to the Department of Defense and Combatant Commanders.

A 1989 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Tiongson has served on board five Coast Guard cutters and a U.S. Navy cruiser, serving as commanding officer of three of the cutters.

Tiongson discussed the roles and missions of the Pacific Area with Senior Editor Richard R. Burgess. Excerpts follow.

How would you describe the roles of the Coast Guard in the expanse of the Pacific area?

TIONGSON: The Coast Guard, in many ways, fills a little bit of a vacuum within the entire Indo-Pacific region   the smaller nations in Oceania, and the Western Pacific for nations like the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, et cetera, and Taiwan, for that matter. That niche that we fill is maritime governance, basically the array of Coast Guard statutory missions: search and rescue, marine environmental response, maritime security law enforcement, fisheries, facilitating commerce, and the global marine transportation system. All of those things are missions that we do day in and day out and, frankly, what I see mostly is nations within the Indo-Pacific that see how we can do that for our country, and they want to copy that [and] learn from it. They want to work with us and emulate how we provide maritime governance to the United States. That’s what we get from engaging with a lot of our partners throughout the Indo-Pacific region. 

How does the Coast Guard Pacific Area support U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM)?

TIONGSON: [Through] that niche that we fill. For example, a lot of what’s happening out in the Western Pacific are the coast guards. We see tons of articles about the Philippines coast guard and the PRC [Peoples Republic of China] coast guard interacting with each other. We, as a coast guard, fit right in there and we have very similar missions. So, it makes it easier for us to talk back and forth and we do that with our larger national security cutters. In fact, one of them is departing Hawaii today [May 21] heading into the Western Pacific, and it will have our first trilateral exercise with the [Republic of] Korea coast guard, Japan coast guard, United States Coast Guard working together to have a regional approach to maritime governance issues in that region.   

In other places ── Oceania or Blue Pacific Region ── our smaller cutters are even more prevalent and better. These small nations’ coast guards or navies are akin to these smaller vessels. It’s not like we’re overwhelming them with a large vessel that comes at your port. In fact, large vessels cannot even fit in some of these ports, but our smaller cutters can. We’re able to do subject matter expert exchanges on things like maritime law enforcement, search and rescue, those types of things. In a competition phase, maritime governance is extremely important. To help nations and to work with nations to exhibit maritime governance and proper maritime behaviors is key. I think that INDOPACOM is extremely grateful and wired into all of the things that we do.

Our national security cutters that go into the Western Pacific, the vast majority of the time will be under the tactical control of 7th Fleet and they work with us directly to ensure that we’re getting after our nation’s strategic goals. And with all the activities we do in the Oceania of Blue Pacific region, we work hand-to-hand with INDOPACOM.

What are the expectations of the trilateral agreement signed with the coast guards of Japan and the Republic of Korea?

TIONGSON: The expectations are very simple: In a nutshell, we will work together to improve the security, the safety and the prosperity of our shared regions. We have sent [USCGC] Waesche to execute that first implementation with the Korea coast guard, Japan coast guard, and U.S. Coast Guard, but it’s not our first trilateral that we’ve done. We’ve had great success working with Japan coast guard and Philippines coast guard, all working together, again, for the safety, security, and prosperity of the region as well as our nation, the United States.

As one example, there was an oil spill off of one of the Philippine Islands that rely upon the ocean for subsistence and their economy. The people that helped out the Philippine coast guard and the response to that [included] a five-person U.S. Coast Guard team and a Korea coast guard team, and Japan coast guard sent a couple of folks as well, so it’s amazing what you can do with small groups of people in this region. The U.S. Coast Guard commander O-5 running a unified command cell was able to address the issue and help employ all of the resources in the right way to get after that threat to the livelihood of this Philippine island. That woman O-5 ended up being the key adviser to the commandant of the Philippine coast guard and the president of the Philippines.

Not only is it about big ships and aircraft, but it’s also about small groups of people that go and provide such expertise, whether it’s an exchange of ideas or assistance. 

What is the operational impact of the new Sentinel-class fast response cutters (FRCs) based in Guam?

TIONGSON: The FRCs, first off, are game changers for the Coast Guard in general. Back in the day, we had patrol boats that were limited in terms of the sea states they could handle, the food that they could carry, the number of crew members and certainly their duration at sea. The FRCs have changed that. We are looking at FRCs giving new light on how we can employ those. So, for us, they’re very much a game changer, particularly in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. We have three that are stationed in Guam right now. We have sent them as far as Australia and the Philippines and, along the way, they provide IUU [illegal, unreported, and unregulated] fisheries enforcement. They will also pull into different partner nations and provide subject matter expert exchanges on things like search and rescue, maritime law enforcement, fisheries, humanitarian assistance and disaster response. In addition to that, what really makes them a big game changer for us is the 14 now bilateral agreements we have with nations in the Blue Pacific. Those are shiprider agreements that enable us to take one of their authorities that are underway with us and help that nation by enforcing their laws and regulations against anybody who is trying to take their sovereign resources in their exclusive economic zones [EEZs].

Our partnerships are becoming so strong that, now, in two countries, we have what is called an expanded and enhanced shiprider agreement in which we do not even need a physical human being on board the platform; all we need to do is call into the nation. An example could be a PRC fishing vessel that is in your EEZ fishing. Would you like us to enforce your laws and regulations, the rules and regulations? A lot of times it comes back, yes, and we exercise that agreement.

And, really, what they are doing is sending a signal that the United States presence is here. We want to become a trusted partner with you and in order to be that trusted partner, we have to be there.

In addition to the three FRCs we have in Guam, the Coast Guard was just appropriated two more, and those two more will go hopefully to Guam. We want to build up Guam with three new FRCs. And then we want to put one in Honolulu, Hawaii.

What has the USCGC Harriet Lane accomplished since it was based in Hawaii?

TIONGSON: Harriet Lane is a complete game changer for us. Harriet Lane recently completed her inaugural patrol, visiting nations like Samoa, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. They have done exactly what I mentioned the FRCs are doing but on a larger scale.

The Pacific Area is scheduled to receive the first of the offshore patrol cutters. What missions will they be performing?

TIONGSON: We are extremely excited to have new offshore patrol cutters starting out in our AOR [area of responsibility]. This is an incredible program for the Coast Guard and the largest shipbuilding program that we have had since World War II. I had the great opportunity to watch the first one, Argus, being launched late last year. They will provide us with more offshore capacity. Think of all of those types of missions that I mentioned   these platforms are going to be doing those types of missions for us globally. They are replacing our medium-endurance cutters, but I believe what we will see is that they will come with a great deal of capability and we will find new ways to employ them that we could not do with our 210-foot and even our 270-foot cutters.

How have the new HC-130Js aircraft at Barbers Point, Hawaii, added capability to your aviation operations?

TIONGSON: The cockpit avionics upgrades coupled with the efficiencies of the engines and a propeller-type design allow us to fly these HC-130J aircraft higher, get on scene faster and stay on scene longer. When you think in terms of maritime domain awareness and search and rescue, these things are definitely a game changer for our service compared with the HC130H model and the other fixed-wing assets we have had. Yes, we’re excited to have those in Barbers Point as well as Kodiak, Alaska, and to be transitioning to them in Sacramento, California. 

What concerns do you have about sustaining your icebreakers until the polar security cutter comes online?

TIONGSON: In a nutshell, there is more and more of a need for U.S. Coast Guard presence in the high latitudes than ever before. I see that in terms of great-power competition up in the Arctic region. I see that in Antarctica, with Chinese PRC research icebreaker vessels that are down there a great deal, and with Chinese expansion on that continent. The U.S. presence is needed. How that presence gets into those areas is via icebreaking. We need them [polar security cutters] fast and we needed them yesterday.

It is a challenge to sustain the two that we have right now. We have one heavy icebreaker, 1970s-vintage Polar Star, which provides icebreaking so that we can resupply our McMurdo station there, run by our National Science Foundation, and several other agencies there at are on that station for the scientific missions. After doing that, she goes right into the drydock and we try to fix everything. This is a vessel that works in the harshest of maritime environments. Am I worried about sustainment of it? Absolutely yes. The Coast Guard cutter Healy, that operates primarily for us in the Arctic, also is aging. She has done a trans-Arctic voyage and is set up to do yet another one. She runs the same type of schedule as the Polar Star: operations for several months and then a major maintenance period to keep her running.

Recently we were appropriated a commercially available icebreaker. It will help us a great deal in our missions that are Arctic-related. A light icebreaker, it could not handle the thickness of ice in the Antarctic, but definitely will help us out with what the Healy s mission is. 

Is the commercial icebreaker going to be crewed by Coast Guardsmen or by a contract crew?

TIONGSON: That’s a great question and we are working through differing courses of action for that. The first thing is we’ve got to figure out what the crew is going to be and look like. The second thing that has to happen is we have to paint the icebreaker in U.S. Coast Guard markings on the vessel so that people are not confused when they see our American flag flying proudly from it. The third is, over time, we have to militarize the vessel, about it meeting military specifications: the flight deck for landing helicopters, things like that, and certain military specifications for safety and security reasons. It is really a phased approach that happens over time. Although it was just recently appropriated to us, we still have to procure the vessel. We have set up its home port in Juneau, Alaska, in terms of the pier space and then certainly maintenance activities.

For your missions closer to home, are your forces sufficient or is the number of tasks overwhelming them?

TIONGSON: We are not set up that we can handle all of these things all at once. Right now, the biggest example would be Operation Vigilant Century [OVS], [with Atlantic Area cutters] working on irregular migration coming from Haiti and Cuba for which a lot of Coast Guard resources are out on the seas, ensuring their safety and our security as we move forward. As we surge into places like that off of Haiti in the Florida Straits area, that means that those assets can’t go somewhere else, so that hinders us in looking at different places. Typically, the Atlantic area would provide some of those cutters over to the Eastern Pacific to conduct the counter-drug mission. But, right now, they are not, because they are doing this OVS mission set. And so, we have to come up with unique and innovative ways to try to fill those vacancies. So, yes, we got pressurized to do those things here in defense of the homeland.

I will also offer that the Coast Guard, like the other armed services, has personnel issues in terms of our workforce and recruiting. Although recently we have been having great success and we are doing pretty well, we are still down about 2,500 people and, in our organization, 2,500 is a lot. We have been working very hard to figure out what can we not do in terms of priority of the missions and platforms that will loosen up the pressures on our people so that our people and platforms can focus on the highest risks to our nation. That means that we have laid up some 87-foot coastal patrol boats and did an advanced decommissioning of one of our 50-plus-year-old 210-foot cutters. We have released some of the pressure on the personnel system because now we don t have to fill those billets and positions. 

Is there anything you would like to add?

TIONGSON: What I would emphasize is I was very specific in the words “a trusted partner.” That’s what we are trying to be throughout the Indo-Pacific region and everywhere from Central America and South America, Arctic nations, Antarctic, and then certainly, Western Pacific, Central Pacific and the Blue Pacific.

One of our key things is that we always want to see the threats and challenges through the eyes of our partners, always meeting them where they are and with what they need. That’s an important phrase there because sometimes, with the U.S. in all of our might, we overwhelm some of these smaller nations. So, always meeting them where they are at with what they need is a very important thing to how engage with different countries. We are getting good support from our administration and Congress with what we talked about the Indo-Pacific and the Coast Guard. An example already was the Harriet Lane. We talked about the two additional FRCs that were appropriated to us in the FY24 budget. Previous to that, we’ve increased the number of liaison [personnel] and attaches we have in the region. We’ve stood up two other Centers of Expertise: The Marine Environmental Response Regional Activity Center and the IUU Fisheries Center of Expertise. These are all people. But again, it’s not about scale and aircraft. People engage a lot, provide subject matter expert exchanges, provide training and then they make a big difference throughout the region in terms of us being a trusted partner. On our unfunded priorities list, we have a second kind of Harriet Lane or Indo-Pacific support cutter. And then in our FY25 budget we have two additional FRCs for the Indo-Pacific area. So, a lot of things are happening and it’s very exciting to be part of this.

By Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Houthi forces who have been attacking shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden lack a center of gravity, making for deterrence by U.S and partner forces difficult, the commander of U.S. naval forces in the Middle East said in a webinar. 

Since November, a few weeks after the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists, the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, with cooperation from the navies of several allies and partners, has been engaged in protecting commercial shipping through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden from attacks by ballistic missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned surface craft, and unmanned underwater vehicles launched by the Houthi rebels in Yemen. 

“We have certainly degraded their capability,” said Vice Admiral George Wikoff, commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, commander, U.S. 5th Fleet, and commander, Maritime Forces, speaking in an August 7 webinar sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the U.S. Naval Institute and funded by HII.  

“However, have we stopped them? No,” Wickoff said, noting Houthi recent attacks on shipping, one of which damaged a commercial ship. “But our mission remains to disrupt their ability and try to preserve some semblance of maritime order while we give an opportunity for policy to be developed against the Houthis. 

“The challenge of the deterrence is, obviously, you have to have a center of gravity to hold at risk, and one thing we don’t really know that much about—and we find this through history—is it is very difficult to find a centralized center of gravity that we can hold at risk over time and use that as a potential point of deterrence,” he said. “So, to apply a classic deterrence policy in this particular scenario is a bit challenging.” 

Wickoff said the continuing naval operations in the BAM (Bab-el-Mandeb) Strait region will act as a “shock absorber.”  

He noted an almost 50% drop in commercial shipping through the BAM region in the September through December time frame, with a large drop until the beginning of February. 

“The reflected the maritime industry’s ability to re-calibrate and re-initiate their routes,” he said. “It’s a couple-months process to take transit patterns that go through the Red Sea and re-route them around the Cape of Good Hope, etc.” 

Since the beginning of February there has been a stabilization, with approximately 1,000 ships going through the BAM per month, compared with approximately 2,000 ships per month prior to the Israel-Hamas war, Wickoff noted. 

“Right now, the idea is to continue to maintain that decision space, try to preserve where we are right now … to allow other levers of government, other levers of the international community to pressurize the Houthis to stop what they’re doing in the maritime,” the admiral said. 

By Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor 

ARLINGTON, Va. — A global Information technology company has expanded its products in recent years to provide tailored digital enterprise software to shipbuilders, ship repair yards, air arms, and airlines.  

IFS is a global enterprise software company “working with some of the biggest, advanced shipbuilders in the world, across portfolio products,” said Matt Medley, IFS global industry director for Aerospace and Defense (A&D), during an interview with Seapower.  
 

“We focus on asset-centric and service-centric industries that tend to be highly regulated like aerospace and defense, one of our six core industries,” Medley said. “Shipbuilding here gets a special focus because we actually have two units that work on shipbuilding: the “gray” ships for defense that fall under Aerospace and Defense codes [and] the commercial — the “white ships” — under Engineering and Construction. 

“Shipbuilding is always complex, and of course when you add the defense angle onto it, with working with the federal government with all of the contracting rules, [it] becomes incredibly complex,” he said. 

IFS, a privately held company based in Sweden, has more than 6,000 employees. Topline revenues topped $1 billion in 2022, and are set to go to $2 billion in 2025, said Medley, a former Air Force C-130 pilot. The company’s North American headquarters is based in Chicago. The company’s products are used by more than 10,000 customer organizations. 

The IFS A&D sector is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. Medley said the company has been growing by a mixture of internal growth and acquisition of other companies, with the A&D sector formed by the 2017 acquisition of a company called MXI, which had developed an asset-management software product called Maintenix used by airlines such as Southwest Airlines. IFS A&D sells its products directly to government, militaries, and defense contractors. 

IFS is teamed with Lockheed Martin beginning in 2021 to provide digital transformation of U.S. Navy’s maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) legacy systems into “a single, fully modernized and responsive logistics information system,” according to a company release. IFS software enhances planning and execution of maintenance by using artificial intelligence, digital twins, and predictive analytics. 

IFS is now in the limited-deployment phase for introducing its solutions for the U.S. Navy’s aircraft fleet.  

“The Navy decided to start with one of IFS’s different applications for its first limited deployment,” Medley said. “The final solution will be an IFS product. They wanted to crawl before you walk before you run, because Maintenix is incredibly complex, and complex for a reason and that’s why it’s the Number One in the world in this market, because it has come very, very sophisticated guardrails to make sure that you don’t do things incorrectly.” 

The company’s core ERP (enterprise resource planning) IFS Cloud software is used by the shipbuilding and ship repair industry. 

“The prime OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] and the prime contractors are our biggest customers,” Medley said, noting that the list included the three General Dynamics shipbuilders — NASSCO, Bath Iron Works, and Electric Boat — and BAE Ship Repair, Vigor Shipyards, and Austal.  

IFS’s solutions for the ship industries include not only the core ERP functions such as accounting and management, but also materials management, subcontracting, project management, product development, engineering, procurement, constructed out-fit, operations, repair, and maintenance. 

“We code these solution sets across the breadth of the life cycle of the large asset — everything from design all the way out to sea trials and commissioning, integrating your operations out the entire value chain, forward and backward, and then internally as well with all of your processes all the way down to the shop floor,” Medley said. 

Medley said that the sale of a product is the beginning of a relationship, not the end, noting that it’s never “a sale and walk away.” 

Like most software companies, IFS uses an “evergreen model” to provide subscription-based ongoing updated software to its customers. The company issues major updates twice per year, in the spring and the fall. 

By Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Marine Corps is seeking counter-unmanned aerial systems technology to protect its installations. One of the companies bidding to be the provider is Parsons, in partnership with Rafael Systems Global Sustainment LLC (RSGS).  

Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (CUAS) is a sector of defense technology that has been of increasing focus over the last decade and has become even more to with the extensive use of UAS in the Ukraine War, the Israel-Hamas War, and the Houthi drone attacks against naval and commercial shipping in the Red Sea. 

The need to provide force protection extends not only to deployed forces but to their installations. 

The Marine Corps solicited proposals for “installation counter-small UAS,” said Christopher Hamilton, vice president for innovative technology solutions at Parsons, in an interview with Seapower. “They’re looking to protect Marine Corps facilities and infrastructure around the world from the small UAS threat, primarily Group 1and Group 2 UAS, but some Group 3 potentially as well. That’s the lower half of the UAS spectrum, but those drones, as we’ve seen, can do quite a bit of damage if configured in the right way and with explosives, or just wreak havoc in terms of security responses to drones, as we’ve seen with sporting events over the past year or so.” 

Parsons, in its proposal, is the prime solutions provider, delivering overall program management, sustainment, and systems integration, while RSGS is providing the Rafael Drone Dome System, a Parsons spokesman said. 

The Marine Corps requirement is focused on its permanent installations in the United States and overseas, Hamilton said, noting that Parsons has “years and years of experience of developing, integrating, and deploying critical infrastructure protection systems, and over the past few years, CUAS has become really the most critical of those infrastructure protection components. 

He said the Marine Corps requirement for infrastructure protection played to the strengths of Parsons, which has been “deploying CUAS systems for other clients around the world to do very similar functions.” 

Parsons’ analysis of the Marine Corps requirement came down to providing two capabilities: the most effective system and the most available system — 100% of the time. 

The Drone Dome system would be tailored specifically for the Marine Corps. Hamilton said it was the most battle-proven system and has been deployed in several different theaters with great success in defeating threats. 

In addition, Hamilton said that Parsons “has the knowledge and experience to manage a global logistics enterprise, where you’re looking to maintain near 100% availability of systems. We do that today.” 

The Drone Dome system includes a command-and-control system, RF sensors, radars, and kinetic and non-kinetic effectors that are options. The Marine Corps requires a modular open systems approach to allow the system to adapt to evolving threats. It will make maximum use of artificial intelligence.  

“It’s clear that the Marine Corps wants a system that evolves over time,” Hamilton said. 

Parsons, based in Chantilly, Virginia, has a center of excellence for CUAS at Summit Point, West Virginia, where it assesses CUAS threats.  

Parsons delivered its proposal to the Marine Corps in April. A single contract award in the competition is expected this summer. The program is to have a duration of at least 10 years. 

By Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor  

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73) arrived at Naval Air Station North Island, California, July 10, 2024, after its “round-the horn” voyage from Norfolk, Virginia, around Cape Horn to the Pacific Ocean. The carrier soon will succeed USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) as the forward-deployed U.S. Naval Forces Japan aircraft carrier at Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Japan. 

The George Washington departed Norfolk on April 25, 2024, and completed a series of U.S. Southern Command exercises with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay, and conducted port visits planned for Brazil, Chile, and Peru. Embarked in the George Washington were the Carrier Strike Group 10 staff and aircraft and personnel of Carrier Air Wing Seven (CVW-7).  

At North Island, the George Washington will embark Carrier Air Wing Five (CVW-5) from USS Ronald Reagan and replace that carrier as the one forward-deployed to the U.S. Seventh Fleet.  

The George Washington was the forward-deployed carrier based in Japan from 2008 until 2015, when it was replaced in Japan by the Ronald Reagan. In 2017, the George Washington entered a Refueling and Complex Overhaul at the Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding yard in Virginia, an evolution that took six years, including the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. The George Washington’s nuclear propulsion plant is fueled to run another 25 years.  

By Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Marine Corps’ MQ-9A ER [extended-range] Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are capable of carrying an electronic warfare pod that renders the UAVs “mostly undetectable” to enemy radars, a senior Marine Corps official said.  

General Eric M. Smith, commandant of the Marine Corps, speaking July 2 at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, discussing the capabilities of a Marine littoral regiment and the forces supporting them — including the Reaper UAVs — pointed out the sensing mission of the regiments in the first island chain in the Pacific. 

“What they bring with them is a sensing and making sense capability;” Smith said. “Some of the programs are classified. Some of the pods that go on our MQ-9s are classified. It’s called a T-SOAR pod, and what it does is it can mimic things that are sent to it that it detects, turn it around, and send it back so that it becomes a black hole. It becomes mostly undetectable.” 

“Without crossing classification levels, it has the ability to somewhat disappear off of an enemy radar,” he said later in the webinar, in response to a reporter’s question. “I’ll just leave it at that.” 

Although not clear, the commandant may have been referring to the Scalable Open Architecture Reconnaissance (SOAR) pod, which L3Harris describes as a “groundbreaking, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) solution from L3Harris Technologies and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI). SOAR integrates L3Harris’ industry leading full-band signals intelligence (SIGINT) capability with a medium altitude long-endurance GA-ASI Predator B wing-mounted pod to offer unparalleled options for warfighters in the ISR domain. SOAR provides significant mission expansion for Predator B operations against modern threats in new operating domains and a new dimension for remotely piloted aircraft systems.” 

The builder of the SOAR pod and the MQ-9, GA-ASI, says on its website that the SOAR pod “provides long-range detection, identification, and location of radar and communication signals of interest. SOAR enables MQ-9 or other aircraft operators to provide standoff surveillance — seeing threats before threats can see the aircraft — and communicate actionable intelligence. The system leverages significant U.S. government technology investments in strategic intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems to provide a low-cost, widely deployable capability for a variety of National Security Council and Combatant Command signals intelligence collection objectives.” 

GA-ASI lists key benefits of the 634-pound SOAR pod as: 
 

• Enables long-range persistent surveillance of enemy communications and radar emitters 

• Enables cooperative collection and target exploitation capabilities 

• Features real time collection and onboard storage for post-mission analysis 

• Allows for true multi-intelligence target identification and tracking in real time 

By Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor 

ARLINGTON, Va. — A Spearhead-class expeditionary fast transport, USNS Burlington (T-EPF 10), is scheduled to deploy next week on a voyage to five countries in the Caribbean and Central and South America to provide humanitarian and civic assistance to the population and to promote regional good will under the U.S. Southern Command’s annual Continuing Promise mission. 

Making its second such deployment, the Burlington will deploy with more than 100 Sailors, Soldiers, State Department personnel, and crew members to provide medical, veterinary, and construction services, subject-matter exchanges, and cultural exchanges. The ship is crewed by 26 Civil Mariners of the U.S. Military Sealift Command.  

The Burlington, making the 14th annual deployment of Continuing Promise since 2007, will visit Jamaica, Costa Rica, Honduras, Columbia, and Panama during the two-month deployment. The countries visited differ from year to year.  

“We really try to spread the opportunity around the Caribbean and even — based on resources — to some of the other countries in South America,” said Rear Admiral Jim Aiken, commander, U.S. 4th Fleet and commander, Naval Forces, U.S. Southern Command, speaking to reporters during a June 28 phone conference. “We have a spreadsheet and spend a significant amount of time evaluating [and] assessing where we should go. So, we’re going to a lot of different countries than we did previously. The only one is actually a repeat country from last year is Panama. 

“So, going forward, we’ll keep looking for different opportunities and different engagements,” Aiken said. “This is based on a couple of things. First of all, there has to be a working relationship where there’s a need and a desire. The second thing is that we look at it and we really want to try to be strategic where there’s ‘no kidding’ need.  

Aiken listed the mission sets of the deployment as medical and veterinary assistance; humanitarian and disaster relief discussions; civil construction, bio-medical assistance, and the State Department’s Women, Peace, and Security Program discussions. 

He said the USNS Comfort is available for the Continuing Promise deployment “every two or three years,” with the ship planned for next year.  

While the Burlington, smaller than the Comfort, brings the assistance teams to port, the teams actually conduct their medical assistance in hospitals ashore side-by-side with local teams. 

Aiken mentioned that the “Navy staff has decided to convert a number of EPFs into hospital-like assets that actually could support surgeries and care actually on board.” 

“Both numerically and qualitatively, Continuing Promise has been one of the most impactful humanitarian missions in the U.S. Navy’s history,” said Lieutenant Commander. Cmdr. Zachary Smith, the mission commander the operation. “The mission is a symbol of our long-standing commitment to the nations and people of Latin America and the Caribbean.  

“We’ve delivered on our promises,” Smith said. “Working hand-in-hand with our partners we delivered over the course of the history of the mission more than 600,000 medical treatments, over 7,000 surgeries, and countless constructions projects, … and community relations events. Previous iterations of the mission have been extremely successful, and we anticipate making just as much of an impact this year.”   

According to a Navy release, ”30 U.S. Navy medical professionals, including general practitioners, nurses, pharmacists, radiologists, dentists, optometrists, and biomedical technicians from Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command (NMRTC Portsmouth, NMRTC Jacksonville, NMRTC Great Lakes, NMRTC Pensacola, NMRTC Camp Lejeune) and Naval Medicine Readiness and Logistics Command bring their expertise to this year’s iteration of Continuing Promise.  
  
“The Continuing Promise team includes a U.S. Army veterinary team from the 248th Medical Detachment (Veterinary Service Support), which will collaborate with host nation colleagues to provide direct public health education and animal care at local veterinary organizations in-country,” the release said. “U.S. Navy Seabees from Navy Mobile Construction Battalion 1 will assist in host nation led community engineering projects. U.S. Navy experts will host seminars and training exercises with host nation civilian officials and military professionals covering disaster preparedness and response. These exchanges aim to support host nation facilities, improve readiness, and empower local and national officials with the knowledge and experience to act with confidence during emergencies.”  

“This is a very special mission for me because I’ve seen it many times firsthand in my nearly three years in this assignment, Aiken said. “This is our shared neighborhood. We have friends and we have partners, and we enjoy the side-by-side that we have with each and every one of them. We learn from them, and they learn from us.”  

The admiral recalled a previous Continuing Promise deployment to Columbia and being approached by a citizen who had been assisted during a Continuing Promise four years prior by the medical team on board the hospital ship USNS Comfort. The person was given surgery on his palate. He approached, saying that the surgery “changed my life so much, and instead of me being ridiculed by my schoolmates I am now able to live a normal life. … I just wanted to come back and say, Thank you.’” 

“That’s the reason why I still get excited about this and every time we do this,” Aiken said. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — An information technology company expects its business with the U.S Department of the Navy to increase as task orders come under a government contract from the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) for document scanning and conversion services. 

In late April, the GPO awarded Iron Mountain a contract “to provide off-site document conversion and scanning services for the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA)” the GPO announcement said. “The contract covers a range of services including document preparation, scanning, optical character recognition (OCR), indexing, and output to various media. The estimated value of the contract is not specified, but it indicates 15-25 orders per year, with 5-10 being multi-year efforts, and scanning requirements ranging from 1,000 to 9,000,000 images per order. The contract term is from April 26, 2024, through February 28, 2025, with up to four 12-month option periods.” 

“Currently, with the Navy, we are kind of in our infancy in joining and partnering with them,” said Melissa Carson, general manager of Iron Mountain’s Government Solutions Group. “The thing we have with them is the traditional Iron Mountain business, records information management. We have a BPA [blanket purchase agreement] with them, a master agreement with them [the Navy’s records office], to help them with all their record storage needs across the whole naval installation. 

Iron Mountain provides records management and storage services to federal, state, and local governments as well as public education institutions. The company, with corporate headquarters in Nashua, New Hampshire, maintains 1,400 sites across the world in 110 countries. The company’s Government Solutions Group is based in Herndon, Virginia. 

Carson said the company also has partnered with some of the system integrators and has acquired some other companies. 

“We actually have made a couple of acquisitions here in the last couple of years and really have a robust solution that takes all this e-waste within that ecosystem and not only just takes it off their hands securely,” she said. “We’ve got proprietary software that does the data erasure that meets DoD standards off of hard drives, but also with the recent acquisition of Regency, we actually now have a goal of recycling components. We take it down to bare metals and are able to actually only put 8% in the landfill.” 

Iron Mountain digitized all of the Veterans Administration’s personnel files, part of which involved digitization of a million boxes of records. 

Iron Mountain expects task orders from the Navy similar to its work for the Veterans Administration. 

“Iron Mountain can do intelligent document processing with Insight AI [artificial intelligence], with one touch, create the image, classify it for records storage and retention, along with the metadata off of it,” Carson said, noting that her company can pass the data and images back to the agency—the usual scenario–or provide off-site storage. 

“We now with this Insight tool, have used the power of AI and machine learning models with natural language models behind it,” she said. “We’re now able to do millions of documents a month with 30% less labor, equipment, and facilities. We’ve been able to absolutely increase that capability and throughput so that one is lower priced — because it was also [prohibitively] expensive for many of these agencies to even start with that — so it’s not only saved that but it’s also eight times faster. So that’s why we’re able to digitize millions [of records] in a month.” 

Carson pointed to one example: “For a large financial agency in the government we were able to do a billion images in less than a year at 96% accuracy of pulling data off of these records. The old-fashioned way would have taken 30 years by 800 people. 

“Many agencies are finally getting policy changes so that once it is digitized, they do not have to hold on to that paper record,” she said. “Iron Mountain is full-life cycle: “We take it and shred it and we put all of that paper back into the paper industry. We are one of their biggest suppliers to be able to trade with recycled paper.” 
 

The tedious task of scanning documents has led to improvements in scanning technology. 

“We’ve been very influential with the scanning equipment suppliers,” Carson said. “We’ve forced them to innovate, too, so there is a particular machine that we’re actually using for the IRS [Internal Revenue Service]. We are actually taking their paper tax returns — so about nine million people still file with paper — and they come in crumpled, with coffee stains and all that. With this new scanning technology, we don’t need to do all of that repair anymore. Literally, it is sensitive enough that you scan it through even with a tear, even with coffee stains, even rumpled, and it looks like a perfectly good piece of paper.”  

Iron Mountain even has infrared scanners for fragile old onion-skin paper that never touches the paper.  

The company is working to make data storage technology more robust, and “future-proof,” to avoid obsolescence overtaking the technology and ensuring that digital records are accessible and readable. The company also maintains an inventory of obsolete technology in order to read older analog and digital records. 

The Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Division (NSWC IHD) is a working capital organization that develops and manufactures energetics for the Navy, Marine Corps and other services. The IHD in going through a $1.9 billion upgrade called the Energetics Comprehensive Modernization Plan (ECMP) to improve its capabilities and infrastructure to meet the requirements of the future.

Ashley Johnson, a Senior Executive Service civilian, became the technical director of Naval Surface Warfare Center, Indian Head Division in 2014. He discussed the role of the Navy’s own manufacturer of energetics with Senior Editor Richard R. Burgess. Excerpts follow.

What is the mission of the Indian Head Division?

JOHNSON:  The short answer is full-spectrum energetic materials, from cradle to grave. We do basic research, applied research, advanced technology demonstrations, manufacturing, logistics, engineering and fleet support. In the sense of energetic material systems, most people would immediately equate those two things like warheads, rocket motors, and bombs and so forth but it’s really much more expansive than that because it can involve fuzes and handling equipment associated with the systems — such as the packaging, handling, shipping and transportation.

Now that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over for the United States, and with the growing tensions of Russia and China, how is your work shifting?

JOHNSON:  My previous job was the director of Marine Corps Science & Technology and deputy chief of Naval Research, Office of Naval Research for expeditionary warfare and combating terrorism. Our investment in the GWOT [the Global War on Terrorism] writ large was really about finding the enemy: It was a C4ISR, big data, intel, logistics kind of thing, because the assumption, deservingly so, was that we could defeat our enemy without any issue once we found them.

As a result, for that period of time, not a lot was done in the United States in the development of state-of-the-art and attention to detail on the munitions industrial base, commercial or organic. I say that not accusingly, just saying that as a matter of fact. Unfortunately for us, all of our potential adversaries or adversaries — Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea — did not take that vacation. We had a large comparative advantage in that ammunitions space — range, speed, terminal effects, signatures management, safety to some extent. They recognized they were behind, and they continued to invest in those areas, so, we have lost a fairly large comparative advantage as we focused on the necessities of GWOT. 

We’re approaching something that looks an awful lot like the Cold War as it looked in the ‘70s and ‘80s with the Soviet Union, which had a large capability. The question is clearly not can we find them; the question is, can we defeat them because they have systems that can rival ours. The situation is driving us toward really looking at ourselves in the mirror and saying, what is our state-of-the-art? Is it representative of what we are really capable of or is it representative of what we’re willing to continue to keep using? What is our industrial base and are we capable of manufacturing and providing at the point of use all of the things that we think we need in the context of something like we’re seeing in Ukraine where Russia is coming to grips with that. You can use a tremendous amount of ordnance in these kinds of sustained conflicts. Do you have the industrial base with which to sustain that operation?

I was surprised to learn that Indian Head is not just an RDT&E activity but also a major manufacturing facility.

JOHNSON: Indian Head has been in energetics since 1890. Indian Head was established initially as a proving ground for Navy guns, and it literally was cut out of the woods in southern Maryland for that purpose. After its victory in the Battle of Manilla Bay, the Navy recognized that the only vulnerability in its crushing defeat of the Spanish Navy was the fact that the Spanish Navy used smokeless powder. Although it didn’t really factor much into the outcome, it was recognized as a significant liability.

And so, the Navy wanted to pursue the manufacture or acquisition of [smokeless] powder. A commercial vendor was busy manufacturing propellant for European markets and did not have the capacity to produce it for the U.S. Navy. Very shortly after that, a bill was put through Congress and Indian Head was established as a naval powder factory. The Navy started to make its own propellant at Indian Head over a hundred years ago. Indian Head continues to be the source for a lot of unique munitions.

Of course, that’s changed over the years.  For example, a plant was built at Indian Head solely for manufacture of every pound of the propellant for the Polaris Missile System. It did the same thing for [the] Poseidon missile.

Interesting. Is there anything you’re supplying to Ukraine with its war with Russia?

JOHNSON:  I really cannot comment. I would just say we’re relevant to that theater also and I’ll leave it at that.

Indian Head has been involved at the ground floor of supplying munitions for the Navy for over a hundred years and that’s kind of what we’re just being asked to do again.

Specifically, what are we concerned about right now? Solid rocket motors. The Standard Missile figures prominently in this conversation, as do things like Tomahawk. There used to be 12 manufacturers in the United States for tactical rocket motors and now there are only two commercial vendors: Aerojet Rocketdyne in Arkansas and Northrop Grumman, which is using a Navy facility in Rocket Center, West Virginia. That’s it. The largest capacity left in the United States to produce cast composite rocket motors is Indian Head. We have a very large latent capacity that isn’t really being used yet which is why those partnerships are so exciting. Aerojet has partnered with the Navy, and we are going to make rocket motors here for our Standard missile to augment the commercial supply which is exactly where our mission is. We go into areas where we are needed, or we go into areas where no one can go.

Indian Head is viewed as part of the organic — government-owned — industrial base. There is no competition with commercial vendors going on right now. All of us in the munitions industrial base recognize it’s an all-hands-on-deck situation. This is the only way that we’re going to meet this need. It’s kind of the way we’ve been doing business for over a hundred years anyway. It’s just for the last 10 or 15, we sort of forgot about it.

Why is the Energetics Comprehensive Modernization Plan (EMCP) needed?

JOHNSON:  We are a very expensive facility. The net replacement value for Indian Head is between $5 [billion] and $6 billion. You’d be hard-pressed to recoup that or duplicate it if I gave you that much money just because of how difficult it is to build facilities like Indian Head. If you have a facility with that kind of unique capacity and capabilities, it takes a lot of money to take care of it.

If you go through a period of time — 10, 15, 20 years — when you use munitions essentially as a bill payer for other requirements, you don’t generate the resources you need to take care of facilities like Indian Head. When you have to exercise it again, you’ve got a “big principal” that you’ve got to pay down. ECMP involves the restoration and sustainment of weight and capacity that the Navy owns. We can do things, but we’re a little out of shape, and so, it’s a readiness issue.

The other part of ECMP is about modernization and increasing capacity. Our commercial partners — Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman — are well over 90% and probably closer to 95% in the utilization rate of whatever capacities they have. There is a need for the industrial base of the United States, commercial as well as organic, to grow to meet the demand signal that we’re seeing for munitions and so forth. Ultimately, we’re getting to 11 times our current capacity to meet the demand signals that we see from all of our customers as well as our commercial partners. That second piece of ECMP really helps build out the capacity to meet the demand.

The third and probably the most interesting, at least for me, element of ECMP is about hybridizing our business and investment model. In the past, we had to operate like a business since we’re a working capital fund activity as opposed to a general funded activity. That creates problems in periods of a bear market because, if I’m asked to recoup all my cost from just my customers, when people aren’t buying things, it becomes hard to amortize the costs. That’s when things don’t get done. That’s when maintenance becomes an issue because you have to start making choices. And so, what we’re doing with ECMP is trying to establish more of an ownership and responsibility at the Navy level off the top so that those things get paid for first and then we enter into more of a time and materials conversation with our customers.

So, it’s the hybridization of the business and investment model of Indian Head so that there is an appropriated line of accounting that gets put into this equation in addition to a working capital.

What are some of the major projects or improvements that are involved?

JOHNSON: Some of the initial stuff is really quite simple: fixing loading docks that have cracks in them; fixing secondary roads that have large potholes that I’d rather not drive nitroglycerine over; general improvements to the roads, lighting or other utilities. We may need a half a million dollars to unlock the latent capacity that’s there. I just can’t get at it because I’ve got these secondary and tertiary issues which are preventing me from using it.

With modernization, we’re talking about very specific improvements like casting and curing [of rocket propellant and warheads]. A major part of being able to make rocket motors is being able to mix the composite propellant. It needs very specialized vertical mixers. We have them in all sizes, but we need more of them. A major project improvement would be a second cast composite plant where we would increase the capacity of a lot of those unit operations, but also, do it in sort of a state-of-the-art. Indian Head’s cast composite plant was built 35 to 40 years ago. You wouldn’t do that now the same way, so we’re going to take advantage of efficiencies in industrial engineering and state-of-the-art equipment to basically double down or triple down on the capacities that we currently have.

So, really, the focus that is most meaningful is our cast composite manufacturing and that addresses modern rocket motors as well as warheads.

By cast composite, you mean mixing the chemicals and then molding them for a rocket motor?

JOHNSON: Yes. The process is very similar to making a cake batter. The very first thing that we do is get all the ingredients, then we put them in a mixer that looks an awful lot like a KitchenAid mixer. It’s obviously a little more involved than that but effectively does the same thing. We blend the ingredients, then once we get them out, we cure the mixture and it hardens in the places we want it [rocket motor or warhead body]. And then it gets assembled into an all-up round. That entire process involves mixing, casting and curing and the transportation of those assets.

What categories of engineers do you need?

JOHNSON: Engineers of just about every flavor, right now primarily mechanical and chemical. Actually, mechanical dominates but we need both. But I need industrial engineers, I need electrical engineers, so just about every type and flavor. I also need the hard scientists, too: physicists and chemists.

We have another mission that has to do with chem/bio which I won’t get into right now, but it’s a big part of what we do, so we have biologists. We have life scientists here as well. We’ve got maybe about a thousand technical people all the way through Ph.D., close to a hundred Ph.D.s here in the hard sciences. But I have a need for program managers, comptrollers and business folks. Now with this huge modernization effort I need guys who actually need to be able to do construction and construction management whether it be contracting or building management.

What is Indian Head’s place in the local economy?

JOHNSON: We’ve got about 2,500 government civilians and about 500 contractors. I might have to add 500 to 700 individuals just in our manufacturing operations alone to meet the demand signal. They’re going to government civilians, contractors, and partners like Aerojet people who are going to be working here side-by-side with our guys. It’s a big shot in the arm or opportunity for the state and for the local communities because we’re just going to get bigger. Indian Head is already, on any given day, the largest employer in the county.

How do you plan to attract extra employees?

JOHNSON: That’s the easy part. It’s not hard to get people excited about being a patriot. It’s not hard to get people excited about coming to do what we at Indian Head. Energetics work is pretty exciting. You make things that go boom and whoosh, and it’s also exciting science. So, attracting talent is easy; it’s the retention of the talent that’s harder. Can you compete for people’s attention in terms of how the environment looks around? Is it a nice place to live? Are there things to do? We’re working with the state and the county on that because where we are located it’s kind of out of the way and that might be for obvious reasons, but it’s still an issue with regard to being able to retain people. We’ve got to try to make that ecosystem around us as inviting as possible.

The other piece is really about people who are drawn to this work like to do stuff and, like over the last 10 or 15 years, you can’t retain talent when people aren’t doing anything. And so, a lot of people have left the market or, if they’ve got into it, they got bored because we really weren’t buying a lot in the area of munitions and/or similar systems, and so, they’ve left. I think the demand signal will take care of that. But it’s important to commit to this, because, after these surges are over, we need to maintain our focus on this area.

The $1.1 billion build-up of the Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Division (NSWC IHD) will affect not just the facility but also the surrounding community. Kelly Robertson-Slagle is the Director of Economic Development for Charles County, Maryland, home of NSWC IHD. She works closely with the NSWC IHD to coordinate county development and support its infrastructure improvements and personnel growth.

How will the Navy’s planned investment at Indian Head affect Charles County’s economy?

ROBERTSON-SLAGLE: First and foremost, there will be new business opportunities for our existing county businesses. By that, I mean the Navy’s $1.1 billion investment will be spread across 500 infrastructure projects over the next 10 years. This investment will open up opportunities for our local businesses to potentially bid on these projects. Having that type of investment here in Charles County will be extremely impactful.

Second, new commercial development and redevelopment opportunities translate into additional commercial tax revenue. Right now, there are about 2,700 people located behind the gate of the base, and manufacturing is on a nine-to-five schedule. Within the next five years, manufacturing on the base will occur 24/7, which means more foot traffic. We expect an increase in commercial enterprises setting up on the western side of Indian Head, attracted by the growing population. We hope to welcome various businesses, from retail stores and restaurants to service providers, to address the current scarcity in these sectors.

Equally important are the new job opportunities and workforce training opportunities that will be created. As the base’s manufacturing facilities upgrade to meet modern “smart arsenal” standards, there will be a substantial need for a knowledgeable, 21st-century “smart workforce.” We are collaborating with NSWC-IHD and various strategic partners, including the Charles County Public School System, the College of Southern Maryland, the Energetics Technology Center and other private energetics industry partners, to develop advanced workforce programs.

These initiatives will train individuals in the specialized skills necessary for operating energetics manufacturing effectively, and we want to ensure that we’re developing the appropriate level of apprenticeships. Our aim is to provide residents with experience at NSWC IHD with full-time employment opportunities locally. We are actively seeking these opportunities and are also focused on sparking interest in younger generations to sustain local workforce engagement. We must be able to expand our workforce pipeline in Charles County.

We’re also engaging with our K-12 system to provide students with opportunities to interact with the base, experience the technology and gain an understanding of the energetics fields. Our goal is that whether they pursue vocational training, higher education or construction-related courses, their experiences will encourage them to return to Indian Head. We hope they know they will have a job to return to with excellent pay, a good quality of life, and a place where they will want to set up shop and raise their families.

What is the estimate of Indian Head’s annual contribution to the county’s economy in terms of dollars?

ROBERTSON-SLAGLE: In FY 2022, the total payroll for Indian Head in Maryland was $346 million, with an additional $44.6 million generated through Maryland-based contracts. Of those dollars (between payroll and Maryland contracts), 68% went to employees or businesses in Charles County.

Beyond their annual tax contributions, the county benefits from NSWC IHD’s presence. Charles County Public Schools and the College of Southern Maryland gain in-kind mentorship opportunities, such as sponsoring science fairs, providing internships, and funding robotics programs and research initiatives. They’ve been fantastic community partners to us for many years, and we don’t see that slowing down at all. If anything, we see that ramping up a bit.

What type of infrastructure do you have to consider with the expansion?

ROBERTSON-SLAGLE: The base borders the town of Indian Head, which is its own municipality (one of three in Charles County). From a county perspective, we continue to work hand-in-hand with the Town of Indian Head to help address infrastructure improvements that must occur with the increase of employees and traffic. One of our monitoring priorities is Maryland Highway 210, from the county line all the way to the base gate. In collaboration with the Town of Indian Head, we are addressing traffic flow, safety, and walkability within the town.

Additionally, broadband infrastructure is always a top priority, not just for the western side and the base but across the entire county. We are particularly proud of a recent project, completed in partnership with the state and the town, which extended high-end fiber optics to the base. This project, which was one of the 500, has enabled the base to implement a closed-loop fiber infrastructure behind the gate.

The base recently signed an MOU [memorandum of understanding] with our local electric co-op, Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative, to take over management and upgrades of the electrical infrastructure behind the gate. The county is certainly committed to supporting those efforts as well.

Does Charles County have the workforce it needs, or do you expect a large influx of new residents?

ROBERTSON-SLAGLE: It’s a combination. Historically, Southern Maryland has largely been a bedroom community for federal government employees. Currently, we have slightly more than 5,000 Department of Defense [DoD] civilian employees residing in Charles County. To us, that’s a serious selling point! We already have a very strong DoD civilian workforce here. Regionally, up to 500,000 professionals could potentially be part of this hiring pool. We are robust in this regard. Valid DoD or contractor opportunities at the base could attract federal employees who currently commute outside of Charles County to consider employment closer to home so that they can work and live within the same community.

The base has also been working on what they call “CITE” agreements — public-private partnership agreements where private defense businesses specializing in the development of energetics can partner with the base, bringing a portion of their workforce to enhance the manufacturing capabilities on site.

With these CITE agreements, we also expect to attract an additional workforce. There’s potential for individuals to move to Charles County or the broader Southern Maryland area in pursuit of these job opportunities.

That reminds me of when Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) moved from Arlington, Virginia, to Patuxent River, Maryland, and defense contractors sprang up like mushrooms along Highway 235.

ROBERTSON-SLAGLE: Yes, NAVAIR transformed that whole corridor; they’re still doing fantastic things down there. We expect a similar turnout along [Highway] 210, in what we call our “Western Charles County Technology Corridor.” We are already receiving phone calls from contractors and interested parties who are aware of the business opportunities at the site. They are exploring real estate and potential redevelopment opportunities, preparing for when those contracts are awarded. It’s an extremely exciting time for us.

Why is Charles County such a prime location for defense installations?

ROBERTSON-SLAGLE: Charles County is within a 40-minute drive of several key federal labs and military installations. We also offer easy access to major cities like Baltimore, Richmond, and Washington D.C., which includes proximity to government agencies, customers, and suppliers, and keeps defense and federal contracting firms on the cutting edge. We’re sitting in what I call a “sweet spot.” We developed a map that shows Charles County’s proximity to Joint Base Andrews, Naval Air Systems Command in Pax River, Navy Support Facility Dahlgren [Virginia], and Indian Head, as well as Washington, D.C. Charles County also maintains one of the highest percentages of engineers and doctoral scientists in Maryland and one of the highest percentages of engineers and doctoral scientists in the country.

Upskilling is essential for local companies to stay ahead of the marketplace. Our partnership with the College of Southern Maryland and its cutting-edge upskilling capabilities is invaluable. If a company needs to upskill its workforce to implement new technologies, it can tap into a resource pool like never before to develop custom curricula focused on skill enhancement. Every industry faces challenges with an aging workforce, and upskilling is crucial. With the pace of technology, we can’t be competitive without it.

The College of Southern Maryland, a two-year community college, was formed almost 20 years ago by three individual colleges in Charles, Calvert and St. Mary’s counties. This merger, aided by the three boards of county commissioners in Southern Maryland, was an extremely smart move, creating cutting-edge opportunities, better use of budget and opportunities to grow.

The college’s Velocity Center, located just outside the base gate, partners with NSWC IHD. It provides a space where base officials can conduct training and host various events outside the gate, including machine shops, training classes, STEM events and diverse community activities in collaboration with the base. This setup allows personnel from Indian Head access to share industry best practices without jumping through a thousand hoops [the security protocols] to enter the base. That facility has turned out to be a fantastic asset for us, not just in Charles County but definitely for the base itself.

We also have great partnerships with the University of Maryland College Park, The Higher Education Center and many more. When it comes to the College of Southern Maryland, however, located right here in Charles County, you can’t beat the flexibility and the caliber of programs we can implement together.

On average, lease rates in Charles County offer companies about a 34% savings compared to other areas in the D.C. Metro area. We have affordable utilities, clean energy options and incentives to provide to industries considering Charles County. When we are approached by businesses interested in our county, our team can show them turnkey properties, although they must still navigate the regulatory review process for new construction. We are committed to keeping this inventory active and available for commercial businesses and industries looking to establish themselves here.