ARLINGTON, Va. — The search continues for five Marines whose KC-130 Hercules transport/refueling aircraft collided Dec. 6 with a Marine Corps F/A-18D Hornet strike fighter over the Pacific Ocean.

The two Marines in the F/A-18D apparently ejected; one was rescued in fair condition, the other was recovered and declared dead, III Marine Expeditionary Force said in a Dec. 6 release.

“The search-and-rescue operations continue for the remaining five U.S. Marines who were aboard the KC-130 Hercules and F/A-18 Hornet involved in a mishap about 200 miles off the coast of Japan around 2:00 a.m. Dec. 6,” the release said. “The aircraft were conducting routine training and aerial refueling was a part of the training; as to what was taking place when the mishap occurred, that is under investigation.”

Forces from the U.S. Navy and Japan are assisting in the search.

“U.S. 7th Fleet is supporting ongoing search-and-rescue efforts with a Navy P-8A maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft flying out of Kadena Air Force Base, along with assistance from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and the Japanese Coast Guard,” the release said.

The Marine Corps has not yet released the names and units of the seven personnel involved. Marine Aircraft Group 11, headquartered at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, includes one F/A-18D squadron, Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 242, and one KC-130J Super Hercules squadron, Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 152.

The loss of the KC-130J would be the first J-model lost by the Marine Corps. The KC-130J entered service in 2004. More than 50 have been delivered to the Marine Corps.

WASHINGTON — Sustainability is the key issue for U.S. naval operations in the Arctic, a Navy official said.

“The Navy has to be agile [in its Arctic operations],” Jeffrey Barker, a deputy branch head for Policy and Posture in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, said Dec. 4 at a forum, The Arctic and National Security, sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. “But we’re not going to do anything unless it is sustainable.

“I see this as a balance of space, time, and force,” Barker said.

Barker said the Navy would respond to any combatant commander requirements to operate more often in the Arctic. He stressed that the Navy would work closely with the Coast Guard, Air Force and international partners to accomplish assigned missions in the region.

“We can’t do it all our ourselves,” he said.

Barker cited a recent Government Accountability Office report that said that, in his words, “what we are doing aligns with the National Security Strategy. We think we are positioned very, very well.”

Although the recent focus on increasing Arctic operations has been brought about by the changes in the ice coverage of the Arctic Ocean, the Navy has long been a regular operator in the region.

“Most of the missions we do [in the Arctic] we can accomplish with submarines,” he said. “The submarines are up there to deny bastions to the Russians.

WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin expects to produce the first engineering development model (EDM) of a heliborne electronic warfare pod by late 2019, a company official said.

Orders for materials for the ALQ-218 Advanced Offboard Electronic Warfare (AOEW) pods began last month, Joe Ottaviano, director of electronic warfare programs at Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems, told reporters Nov. 28 at the Association of Old Crows convention.

The AOEW pod is designed to be taken aloft by an MH-60R or MH-60S Seahawk helicopter and serve as an offboard electronic attack system to counter anti-ship cruise missiles. The helicopter provides power and mobility for the pod, but the pod’s operation is independent of the helicopter crew and linked to the SLQ-32(V)6/7 shipboard electronic warfare system.

“It’s bringing capability that hasn’t been brought before,” Ottaviano said, who noted that testing will be a challenge because of the novelty of the capability. “It is designed to be autonomous or [alternatively] work with the fleet.”

He said Lockheed Martin expects to roll out the first AOEW EDM in late 2019. The system completed its critical design review in June. The company has been awarded a contract for six EDMs. Initial operational capability is planned for the 2020. Additional pods are expected to be ordered in a low-rate initial production order in the 2021-2022 time frame.

The pod has successfully completed a fit check on the MH-60 helicopter and can be attached to either side of the helicopter.

“How to get all of this capability in a very small pod was a challenge,” Ottaviano said, noting that the pod “generates a lot of heat” and has no supplementary cooling system.

WASHIGNTON — The commander of the newly established U.S. 2nd Fleet said he is looking at various options for a new headquarters and the possibility of having a command ship.

“We are looking at options to equip the 2nd Fleet with a platform that allows us to show that we are indeed lean, agile and expeditionary,” Vice Adm. Andrew “Woody” Lewis, said Nov. 28 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

“For the foreseeable future, the 2nd Fleet will be located at Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads, but we are looking at options for both permanent and expeditionary spaces that would allow for flexibility and mobility,” Lewis said. “This could be a combination of facilities at Naval Station Norfolk as well as options for a command ship through our Military Sealift Command.

“Mobility allows to be ready to fight, ready to fight so we don’t have to,” he said. “As a lean and expeditionary staff, a small number of our team will operate forward either from a ship or an austere location as a command-and-control element with reach-back capability to our home guard.”

USS Mount Whitney, currently the flagship of U.S. 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea, was the flagship of the former iteration of the U.S. 2nd Fleet that was in existence from February 1950 until it was disestablished in September 2011.

The current U.S. 2nd Fleet was established on Aug. 24. Lewis said he is driving his staff to reach full operational capability in 2019. He expects to be fully staffed in January with 80 personnel.

WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin is developing a digital upgrade of the analog electronic surveillance measures (ESM) system installed on the Navy’s E-2D Advanced Hawkeye carrier-based early warning aircraft and plans to complete development by 2022.

The current ALQ-217 is the analog ESM system that alerts operators to radar activity and identifies the emitter.

Under a $65 million contract awarded in June, Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems is developing the digital upgrade and is scheduled to complete the engineering and manufacturing development phase — including design, qualification testing, acceptance testing and flight testing by 2022, Max Pelifian, Lockheed Martin’s program manager for Advanced Airborne Electronic Warfare, told reporters Nov. 27 at the Association of Old Crows International Symposium. The next phase will bring the digital system to initial operational capability.

The ALQ-217 includes eight line-replaceable assemblies — antennas, antenna front ends and a receiver/processor — of which five will be upgraded under the contract.

Lockheed has been providing the analog ALQ-217 to the E-2 aircraft since 1999. Lockheed Martin has delivered 28 ALQ-217 analog sets for the E-2C Hawkeye and 46 sets for the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye. The company has 29 more on order for the E-2D, some of which could receive the digital upgrade on the production line if the timing permits.

The company completed the Navy’s system requirements review for the digital upgrade this month. The critical design review is anticipated by the end of 2019.

WASHINGTON — The Navy is looking at options for the Advanced Gun System (AGS) on the Zumwalt-class guided-missile destroyer (DDG) as it completes mission systems installation, options that include developing a new round or removing the guns all together.

The Zumwalt DDG is equipped with two 155 mm AGS guns — built by BAE Systems — for which the Long-Range Land-Attack Projectile (LRLAP) was developed by Lockheed Martin. The LRLAP, however, proved too costly and its range too short, resulting in its cancellation. The Navy has been exploring options to develop a new round but is not letting the lack of one delay the ship’s entry into the fleet.

“We determined that the best future for that ship is to get it out there with the capability that it has and separate out the Advanced Gun System, leaving everything else in place,” Vice Adm. William R. Merz, deputy chief of naval operations for Warfare Systems, testified Nov. 27 before the Senate Armed Services Seapower subcommittee, in response to a question from Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, the state in which the Zumwalt class has been built.

“[The Zumwalt] is a very capable platform with or without that gun,” Merz said. “We will be developing either the round that goes with that gun or what we are going to do with that space if we decide to remove that gun in the future. The ship is doing fine, on track to be operational in 2021 in the fleet.”

Merz said the Zumwalt, built as a land-attack platform, has been “remissioned to a strike platform, whether sea targets or land targets. It takes advantage of its tremendous arsenal of VLS [vertical launching system] cells. Those VLS cells are larger than any other surface ship VLS cells so that opens up an aperture of more weapons options for that ship.”

He termed the projectile challenge “as a science and technology challenge, not an engineering problem. We just cannot get the thing to fly as far as we want.”

Asked by King if the Zumwalt would be a platform for a future directed-energy weapon, Merz said the ship had the “balance of SWAPC — space, weight, power and communications — that allows us to expand this ship over time. She is going to be a candidate for any advanced weapon system that we develop.”

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy has awarded a contract to shipbuilder VT Halter Marine toward advance work for the eighth Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey ship (T-AGS).

The Naval Sea Systems Command awarded to VT Halter Marine a “not-to-exceed $9 million undefinitized contract action for functional design engineering, procurement of long-lead time material, and limited advanced production to support the Oceanographic Survey Ship (T-AGS 67),” the Defense Department announced on Nov. 19.

VT Halter Marine, based in Pascagoula, Mississippi, has built seven Pathfinders, six of which were delivered between 1994 and 2001. One of these, USNS Sumner, was withdrawn from service in 2014. A seventh, USNS Maury, was delivered in 2016. It is 15 feet longer than the earlier Pathfinders and features a moon pool to facilitate operation of unmanned underwater vehicles.

The Pathfinder class is operated by the Military Sealift Command for the Naval Meteorology & Oceanography Command.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Lockheed Martin is in the process of integrating the Over-the-Horizon (OTH) Weapon System on its Freedom-variant littoral combat ship (LCS) and has identified the ship to be built ready for the missile system.

The first Freedom LCS to be built ready to receive the Naval Strike Missile (NSM), the weapon of the OTH system, will be LCS 27, the future USS Nantucket, Joe DiPietro, vice president of Small Combatants and Ship Systems, said Nov. 15 in a teleconference with reporters from Annapolis, Maryland.

The NSM, developed by Norway’s Kongsberg, is a ship- and ground-launched anti-ship cruise missile that will be integrated by Raytheon Missile Co. into the OTH system. It will give the LCS an OTH anti-ship capability as an initiative to improve the lethality of the Navy’s warships.

“We’re working on the design and integration of that,” DiPietro said. “[The Navy] had us do space and weight on our previous hull that was awarded for the Naval Strike Missile and now we’re working on the modernization package to be able to put that in to an in-service asset as well.”

Rear Adm. Joseph P. Neagley, program executive officer, Unmanned and Small Combatants, told Seapower last month that the NSM will be installed on all LCSs, regardless of which mission package is installed.

DiPietro said Lockheed Martin also is working on a backfit of the NSM, but that the Navy will determine the schedule of ships to be fitted with the NSM.

DiPietro also said the company is working on the integration of the Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program Block II Lite into the Freedom variant.

“We actually already have put that test asset on LCS 1 Freedom and ran through the range and tested it with our COMBATSS21 configuration, being a derivative of Aegis,” he said.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy has awarded Lockheed Martin a $22.7 billion contract modification for 255 F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighters, the Defense Department said in a Nov. 14 release. Of the order, 42 aircraft are for the Navy and Marine Corps.

Naval Air Systems Command awarded the low-rate initial production contract modification for Lot 12 aircraft plus more added by Congress for fiscal 2018-2019.

The 255 Lightning IIs in this order include 36 F-35Bs for the U.S. Marine Corps and 16 F-35Cs for the U.S. Navy. The order includes 64 F-35As for the U.S. Air Force; 60 F-35As for Foreign Military Sales; and 71 F-35As and 18 F-35Bs for nations partnered in the F-35 program. Work under the contract is expected to be completed by March 2023.

The F-35’s production remains in low rate because it has not yet completed its operational test and evaluation.

The Marine Corps’ F-35B made its first operational shipboard deployments this year and on Sept. 27 Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 211 conducted the Lightning II’s first combat missions, over Afghanistan in support of Operation Freedom Sentinel. The Navy’s first F-35C fleet squadron, Strike Fighter Squadron 147, has been formed and is training in its new aircraft.

PHILIPPINE SEA — A Carrier Air Wing 5 (CVW-5) F/A-18F experienced a mechanical issue that resulted in the crew ejecting while conducting routine operations in the Philippine Sea Nov. 12, Task Force 70 public affairs said in a release.

“The crew was immediately and safely recovered by USS Ronald Reagan search-and-rescue aircraft and brought back to the ship for evaluation by medical personnel, the release said. “Both aviators are in good condition.”

The F/A-18F was flown by Strike Fighter Squadron 102, one of four Super Hornet squadrons assigned to Carrier Air Wing Five.

Two other CVW-5 aircraft have been lost in mishaps over the past year. On Nov. 22, 2018, a C-2A Greyhound assigned to Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 30 Detachment Five crashed into the Philippine Sea while en route to Ronald Reagan, killing three Sailors. On Oct. 19, an MH-60R Seahawk assigned to Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 77 crashed on the flight deck of the carrier, injuring 12 persons.

CVW-5 is embarked onboard Ronald Reagan and is currently underway in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations in support of security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.

Ronald Reagan has resumed normal operations and the crash is under investigation.