WASHINGTON — The Navy must be able to rapidly adjust to changing geopolitical situations and technological advances to maintain maritime superiority, the Navy’s top officer said.

“We’ve got to, in the Navy, restore agility,” said Adm. John M. Richardson, chief of naval operations (CNO), said Jan. 28 to an audience at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Richardson was not talking just of acquisition agility, a recent theme of other Navy officials to make the weapons procurement more responsive to emerging requirements, though he touched on that need as well.

The CNO said that agility has three dimensions, one of which is conceptual agility in the way the Navy operates.

“Frankly, we just need more imagination,” he said. “We have a conceptual or imagination challenge to be competitive at the low end of the spectrum [of naval warfare]. At the high end there is this capability challenge as technology moves faster and faster and more tools become available. We want to make sure that at the high end we get things done, get them done faster, get them out to the fleet faster so that we will compete.”

The second dimension is geographical agility.

“The Navy got very, very good at putting strike groups together,” he said. “Those strike groups would leave Norfolk or San Diego and book it to the [Persian] Gulf. They would do their operations and stay there as long as they could and then they would come back. We got excellent at that. But that was very predictable. We had the Optimized Fleet Response Plan, optimized to get the most presence for the least amount of resources. It got pretty optimized that way.

“It wasn’t very flexible, it wasn’t very dynamic, and it wasn’t very agile,” Richardson said. “As we regain that muscle memory [and] go back and do those sorts of things, this geographic agility, going to places we haven’t been in a long time, we’re doing so a little bit less predictably [with] fewer indicators of where we’re going to go, is a big part of our business.

Richardson made the same point with the Navy’s role in ballistic missile defense (BMD).

“We’ve had some ships protecting some pretty static assets on land for a decade now,” he said. “That [BMD] ship is designed to be a maneuver force. If that asset is going to be a long-term protective asset, then let’s build something on land and liberate these ships from this mission.

“[BMD] is an important mission,” he said. “We will be there as long as we need to, but it seems that land-based system is better suited to protect a land-based asset than a ship. Then I can take

a ship out of those small boxes where they have to stay for ballistic missile defense and get them moving again.”

The CNO noted the recent voyage of the USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group north of the Arctic Circle as an example of geographic agility, the first such carrier operations since 1991.

Speaking of the third type, technological agility, the CNO said, “We simply have to get better at this. It’s a strategic Achilles’ Heel. It’s the lack of tempo in terms of how we can field technology to the fleet. We cannot get outpaced in this.”

Richardson also said the current great power competition “is going to be a long competition. We have to think in terms of infinite-game-type strategy.”

He pointed out that, at the high end of the warfare spectrum, “the U.S. Navy must always de-escalate on the high end on our own terms. Which is another way of saying we want to have the best capability on the water.”

ARLINGTON, Va. — While mine countermeasures dominate the Navy’s efforts in mine warfare, the service has accelerated improvements over the last two years in its weaponry in offensive mine warfare, the ability to lay anti-ship and anti-submarine mines.

The service now is developing the Clandestine Delivered Mine (CDM), Capt. Danielle George, the Navy’s mine warfare program manager, said Jan. 17 at the Surface Navy Association convention in Arlington. The Navy is conducting testing of the new cylindrical-shaped mine and is scheduled to conduct end-to-end testing during the second quarter of fiscal 2019. Initial deliveries are scheduled for 2020. George said she was not at liberty to reveal the delivery platform(s) for the CDM.

Another new mine program, started in 2018, is the Hammerhead, an encapsulated torpedo designed to lie in wait for submarines. The capsule for the torpedo would be anchored to the ocean floor, much like the Mk60 CAPTOR mine of Cold War vintage that housed a Mk46 anti-submarine torpedo. (The CAPTOR was withdrawn from the Navy’s inventory in 2001.) The Hammerhead will be designed to have modular architecture to allow for technology insertion. The Navy expects to issue a classified request for information for the Hammerhead this year.

Until recently, the Navy’s mine inventory was limited to the Mk62, 63 and 65 Quickstrike air-delivered mines and the Submarine-Launched Mobile Mine. The Mk62 and Mk63 Quickstrike mines are blast/fragmentation 500-pound Mk82 and 1,000-pound Mk83 bombs, respectively, equipped with influence target-detection devices for use in shallow water. The Mk65 is a thin-walled casing with a 2,000-pound warhead and equipped with a target-detection device for magnetic, seismic and pressure detonation.

For these air-delivered mines, the Navy has ordered new target-detection devices and adapters from Sechan Electronics Inc. during the last quarter of fiscal 2018. The Navy also has adapted the Joint Direct-Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kit for the Quickstrike weapons, allowing for more precise seeding of the mines. This capability was demonstrated in Exercise Valiant Shield in 2018. In addition, an extended-range version of the JDAM Quickstrike — through installation of a wing kit — will be tested during the third quarter of fiscal 2019.

The Navy has not laid aerial mines in a conflict since Operation Desert Storm in 1991, when A-6E aircraft seeded mines in Iraqi waters. The capability remained intact, though low-key, in subsequent years.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships (LPD 17s) in production are incorporating improvements as the class progresses to the Flight II configuration, the Navy’s program manager said.

“The mission remains the same,” Capt. Brian Metcalf, the LPD 17 program manager, noted Jan. 16 at the Surface Navy Association symposium of the role of the 14 older Flight I LPDs and the forthcoming Flight II ships.

The Flight II LPD 17 ships, beginning with LPD 30, will incorporate improvements that include the Enterprise Air Search Radar (EASR), Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) architecture, a destroyer-style mast, boat deck, SLQ-32 Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program Block, and the Rolling Airframe Missile. The Flight II will retain the same hull form and propulsion plant as a Flight I ship but have improved fuel efficiency and electrical distribution. The Flight II will be capable of handling the CH-53K King Stallion heavy-lift helicopter.

The future USS Fort Lauderdale (LPD 28), a Flight I ship, will be the first LPD to have CANES installed and be fitted with a destroyer-style mast. The ship is scheduled for delivery in fall 2021. Metcalf said CANES will be back-fitted to older ships of the class.

The future USS Richard M. McCool Jr. (LPD 29), the last Flight I ship, will have the EASR installed. The ship is scheduled for delivery in 2023.

The Flight II ships will replace the Navy’s eight Whidbey Island-class and four Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ships.

Metcalf said the Flight IIs will be interchangeable with and operate in the same manner as Flight I ships and improve an amphibious ready group’s (ARG’s) communications, enhancing the ARG’s ability to operate in a disaggregated manner, which is more typical of operations in recent years.

“They can do anything,” Metcalf said of the San Antonio class, including “recovering spacecraft or put 800 Marines in your back yard.”

The 11 commissioned ships of the San Antonio class have completed 21 deployments, he said.

USS Portland (LPD 27) is the next to deploy, departing in 2020. It will have a solid-state laser weapons system installed.

Metcalf stresses that the LPDs were not just troop carriers, but are combatants built to military specifications.

“They will have to fight to get to the fight,” he said, speaking of the need to operate in a high-threat environment.

The Navy plans to procure 13 Flight II ships. Metcalf said the Navy has the option of a block but not yet the authority for one from the Congress.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Naval Sea Systems Command has awarded to the Lockheed Martin LCS team a fixed-price, incentive-fee contract for an additional littoral combat ship, LCS 31, the company said in a release.

LCS 31 will be built in Marinette, Wisconsin, at teammate Fincantieri Marinette Marine’s (FMM’s) shipyard. The ship will be the 16th Freedom-variant LCS ordered by the U.S. Navy to date.

“The team will leverage capital investment and improvement in the shipyard and efficiencies created with serial production to maintain high quality at an affordable cost,” said JoAnn Grbach, senior manager, Naval Programs Communications, Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems. “Today, there are seven ships in various stages of construction. The Navy just commissioned LCS 13 (Wichita) and we’re preparing to lay the keel for LCS 25 (Marinette).

“We are excited to continue our partnership with the U.S. Navy and FMM to build and deliver capable ships to the fleet,” said Joe DePietro, vice president and general manager, Lockheed Martin Small Combatants and Ship Systems. “With the Freedom variant in serial production, we continue to enhance efficiency and incorporate capability while maintaining ship and program affordability.”

The value of the contract was not released by the Navy yet because of ongoing competition.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Austal USA officials have revealed features of its conceptual design for the Navy’s competition for the Future Guided-Missile Frigate (FFG(X)), an evolution of its Independence-class littoral combat (LCS) design.

The company has provided an artist’s concept and displayed a model Jan. 15 -17 at the Surface Navy Association symposium.

The general form of the Independence is preserved — the trimaran hull, the large flight deck aft, the Mk110 57 mm gun — but many changes are featured.

The Austal FFG(X) design has a longer hull with deck space aft of the flight deck. Occupying that space is a 32-cell-array Mk41 Vertical Launching System battery and two sets of tube launchers for the Naval Strike Missile. The SeaRAM launcher is forward of the bridge rather than on the aft super structure atop the helicopter hangar.

The helicopter hangar is large enough to accommodate an MH-60 helicopter and an MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicle. On top of the hangar, where the SeaRAM launcher is on the Independence class, the space was blank.

Terry O’Brien, Austal USA’s vice president of business development, said the space was reserved, per the Navy’s requirement, for a future directed-energy weapon.

The face of the deckhouse superstructure is not as streamlined as on the Independence. The ship’s speed requirement is less than the 40-plus knots of the LCS, and, accordingly, it would be driven by twin controllable-pitch propellers rather than waterjets.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The program manager for the Navy’s new-construction Arleigh Burke-class (DDG 51) guided-missile destroyers reveled in the stability of the program in wake of the passage of the 2019 defense budget and the approval of multiyear procurement of 10 destroyers.

The first passage of a defense budget in 10 years without a continuing resolution enabled the Navy to proceed early in the fiscal year with a multiyear procurement for fiscal 2018 through 2022 of six DDGs for Ingalls Shipbuilding and four for Bath Iron Works, with each contract offering an option for five more DDGs.

Each shipyard was awarded a DDG in the 2019 budget and Congress awarded a third DDG, with the Navy giving the ship award to Bath Iron Works.

“You know, here we are in January and all my ships are awarded,” Capt. Casey Moton, the DDG 51 program manager, said Jan. 16 at the Surface Navy Association symposium. “It’s a good deal. I like that.”

Moton said the multiyear procurement was “very important to us” and would bring cost savings in terms of economic quantity of order.

He said that the program has 22 ships under contract, 10 of them currently under construction. The first Flight III version, DDG 125, is one of the ships under construction at Ingalls. Its keel-laying is scheduled for June. The first Flight III ship to be built at Bath Iron Works is DDG 126, the construction of which will begin this year. A total of 13 Flight III ships are under contract.

The Flight III has capability enhancements including the Raytheon-built SPY-6 Air and Missile Defense Radar and Aegis Baseline 10/Technical Insertion 16 software. The SPY-6 gives a 15-decibel increase in sensitivity over the SPY-1 radar on the earlier DDG flights. An air conditioning capacity of more than double the current capacity will give the increased cooling needed by the Flight III ships.

Moton said the testing of the SPY-6 “has gone very well” and has performed successfully in 14 ballistic-missile tracking events, with one more test to go.

He said that a SPY-6 radar will be installed at the Lockheed Martin facility in Moorestown, Pennsylvania, for “full array integration with the Aegis Baseline 10 Combat System.

Despite the favorable fiscal climate, Moton stressed that “shipbuilders need to continually work to get cost down.”

ARLINGTON, Va. — The cost estimates of the Navy’s future guided-missile frigate (FFG(X) are coming in under the required threshold and trending downward toward the cost objective, the program manager said.

Speaking Jan. 17 to an audience at the Surface Navy Association symposium, Dr. Regan Campbell noted that the cost threshold for the ship will be under the $950 million threshold (in fiscal 2018 dollars).

“We started close to the $950 [million],” Campbell said. “We’re trending close to the $800 [million].”

She estimated that government-furnished equipment will total to one-third of the cost of the ship. Most of the equipment is common with other ship types, its selection aiding in the control of costs.

The Navy plans to fund one FFG(X) in 2020 and two per year thereafter for a current requirement of 20 ships.

The program office has completed a set of initial design reviews of the five competing designs and is planning a second set this spring. The program is in the 11th month of the 16-month conceptual design phase competition.

“We now have a CDD [Capabilities Description Document] that has been Navy-approved,” Campbell said, noting that the program is soon coming up for approval before the Joint Requirements Oversight Committee. “Our requirements are secure.”

The program office expects to issue a draft request for proposals in the spring for a detailed design and construction contract award in the fourth quarter of 2020. The down-select will award only one design.

The FFG(X) will be equipped with the Raytheon-built Enterprise Air Search Radar, the Mk110 57 mm gun, the Mk41 Vertical Launching System — armed with the Standard Missile-2 surface-to-air missile and Block II of the Evolved SeaSparrow Missile — the Block II of the SLQ-32 SEWIP (Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program), with a space reservation for SEWIP Block III. The ship will be able to carry one MH-60R Seahawk helicopter and one MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicle.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The readiness of the Navy’s Forward-Deployed Naval Forces (FDNF) stationed in Japan is improving, the Navy’s surface warfare chief said, crediting a new command, the Naval Surface Group Western Pacific, with driving much of the improvement.

“The ships are producing better readiness,” Vice Adm. Richard A. Brown, commander, Naval Surface Forces and Naval Surface Force Pacific, told reporters in a Jan. 11 teleconference, noting that there was “a lot of hand-wringing” when the additional layer of command was added to the FDNF following the two 2017 at-sea collisions involving the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain.

Investigations revealed that many FNDF surface ship crews were going on patrol without all of the certifications in specific warfare areas, caused in part by heavy operational schedules that hindered crew training in all of the required areas.

The Naval Surface Group Western Pacific was established to provide more supervision of the training and other support to the FNDF surface ships.

“The Naval Surface Group Western Pacific is on point,” Brown said, noting that ships in the group are now “going out fully certified.”

ARLINGTON, Va. — The various mission modules for the three mission packages designed for the Navy’s littoral combat ship (LCS) are progressing through their testing milestones toward their initial operational capability (IOC), a Navy official said.

“This is really a good time to be in mission modules,” Capt. Ted Zobel, the Navy’s mission module program manager, said Jan. 15 at the Surface Navy Association annual symposium, noting that two years ago progress was less impressive.

Zobel is in charge of development of mission modules for three mission packages currently in development for the LCS: Surface Warfare (SUW) Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) and Mine Countermeasures (MCM).

He said that the Surface-to-Surface Mission Module of the SUW package — a launcher that fires the Hellfire Longbow missile — has completed developmental test on USS Milwaukee (LCS 5) and USS Detroit (LCS 7) and is in operational test on Detroit. A total of 55 missiles have been fired to date with a greater than 91 percent hit rate. He showed a video of the missiles being fired from an LCS and successfully destroying a swarm of six high-speed targets.

Zobel said the Hellfire missiles countered the targets that were “pretty representative of an attack by FIAC (fast inshore attack craft).”

The SSMM will reach IOC in the second quarter of 2019 on USS Jackson (LCS 6).

The preproduction test article of the ASW package’s Variable-Depth Sonar (VDS), delivered from Raytheon in November, is going through testing on board a ship at the Atlantic Underwater Test and Evaluation Test Center at Andros Island in the Bahamas. The VDS is scheduled for installation on USS Fort Worth (LCS 3) during the third quarter of 2019, with developmental test scheduled for August or September.

Zobel said the VDS “should be able to [reach] IOC in 2020.”

With the COBRA (DVS-1 Coastal Battlefield Reconnaissance and Analysis) sensor reaching IOC last year, all three aviation mission modules of the MCM mission package are certified to deploy on an Independence-variant LCS. During fiscal 2019, the MCM package will be integrated on a Freedom-variant LCS, Fort Worth.

Zobel said the Knifefish MCM autonomous underwater vehicle went through integration testing on an Independence-variant LCS in December. The UISS (Unmanned Influence Sweeping System) was in its last week of integration testing and is on track for developmental test and operational test by 2021. The full MCM package is slated to reach IOC in 2022.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy is beginning to move forward on its plans for a force of future combatants that will include three types of unmanned surface vessels (USVs), a service official said.

The Navy “is just starting a dialogue with industry,” Capt. Peter Small, the Navy’s program manager for Unmanned Maritime Systems, said Jan. 15 at the Surface Navy Association symposium.

The Navy envisions the Future Surface Force to include a Large Surface Combatant, a Small Surface Combatant, a Large USV, a Medium USV and a Small USV. The concept is in the technology maturation phase of development.

Under the concept, a Large USV is envisioned to provide distributed fires. The Medium USV is envisioned to provide distributed sensing and communications relay. The Small USV — the Mine Countermeasures USV — would provide mine sweeping, mine hunting and mine neutralization.

The Large USV could be partially manned or optionally manned, Small said.

A draft request for proposals is expected to be issued for the Medium USV within the next two months.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) currently is experimenting with the Sea Hunter medium-displacement USV, a vessel developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and turned over to ONR for further concept and technology development. A second Sea Hunter is being built by Liedos for the Navy.

Small said he expects the Sea Hunter to be transferred to the Unmanned Maritime Systems program office in the future and that his office is “working to extract all the information that we can.”

Small stressed that the Navy must be able to adapt and upgrade future USVs using a standardized architecture that will be streamlined enough to avoid complex intertwining as systems are added or changed.

Over the next two years, Small said, the Navy will develop the Unmanned Maritime Autonomy Architecture, which is intended to become a feature of future requests for proposals.

Small said the Navy is taking a “crawl, walk, run” approach to development of the future USVs and their command and control systems, stating that it needed to bring craft into service “such that we can learn along the way.”