The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are aggressively changing course
and refocusing their resources and training to prepare the fleet and
expeditionary forces for a “Great Power Competition” with China and Russia. But
a growing number of Navy officers and defense analysts are warning that current
and planned maritime logistics capabilities are seriously inadequate to sustain
forward-deployed combat forces in an extended fight against such peer
competitors.

This deficiency would be particularly severe in a high-intensity
conflict against China, which is rapidly developing military capabilities
specifically aimed at keeping U.S. forces far from their shores and able to
threaten Pacific Ocean-based logistical support facilities, the critics warned.
A fight against a resurgent Russia could be a repeat of the 1940s “battle of
the Atlantic” with a small Military Sealift Command (MSC) force and an American
merchant marine fleet — a fraction of the size of the World War II armada — trying
to evade scores of sophisticated Russian submarines in a desperate effort to
reinforce and supply U.S. forces in Europe.

“Failing to remedy this situation, when adversaries have U.S. logistics networks in their crosshairs, could cause the United States to lose a war and fail its allies and partners in their hour of need.”

Comprehensive report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment

“Failing to remedy
this situation, when adversaries have U.S. logistics networks in their
crosshairs, could cause the United States to lose a war and fail its allies and
partners in their hour of need. An unsupported force may quickly become a
defeated one,” said a comprehensive report released this spring by the Center
for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment (CSBA).

A
similar warning was issued by retired Navy Capt. Pete Pagano, who wrote in the
May edition of the journal Proceedings: “The combat logistics force must be
able to sail in harm’s way and defend itself, with enough ships in inventory to
absorb losses and still sustain Navy forces at sea. The Navy will not possess
sufficient surface combatants to meet this demand signal, even if it reaches
its goal of 355 ships.”

Last
October, the U.S. Maritime administrator, retired Rear Adm. Mark Buzby, said
the Navy told his agency that it would not be able to escort sealift and supply
ships during a major war. For those ships to survive, crews have been told to
“go fast and stay quiet,” with the latter referring to reduced electronic
signaling. But MSC ships, with sustained speeds of 15 to 20 knots, can’t go as fast
as 30-knot Navy warships.

Also, in
May, defense analyst Loren Thompson,wrote in Forbes that the well-trained and
equipped U.S. military is facing “a big operational challenge that few
policymakers or politicians are even aware of — its ability to get to the fight
is wasting away. So even with the most capable fighting force in history, the
United States might find itself unable to respond effectively to future
military contingencies. … Until recently, military planners could at least
assume the safety of commercial sea lanes outside war zones. But now even that
assumption is being called into question.”

‘Unchallenged Sea to Contested Waters’

MSC Commander Rear Adm. Dee L. Mewbourne in 2017 told Seapower, “The operating environment is changing,” going from “unchallenged sea to contest waters. … I would maintain that the debate over whether we’re sailing in contested waters is over.” Looking at the situation today, “there is a persistent threat to the ships that are going through those areas,” Mewbourne added, citing missile attacks on U.S. and other ships sailing near Yemen and China’s growing sea-denial capabilities.

“The question
might be, ‘Will it be like it is, or could it get worse?’ I would suggest it’s
the latter,” Mewbourne said, showing a graph depicting a rising curve of the
threats from China and Russian and a nearly flat line of likely U.S. sealift
capability to meet that threat. To adjust, Mewbourne said he is working on ways
to harden his fleet of tankers and ammunition and cargo ships and to train his
crews of primarily civilian mariners to survive in contested environments.

The most comprehensive analysis of the threats to maritime
logistics was the 124-page CSBA report, “Sustaining the Fight, Resilient
Maritime Logistics for a New Era,” which Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer
praised, saying “this is a critical issue for the [Department of the Navy]. We
have not funded it, and we
really have to get after it.

“It is key that we focus on this now,” Spencer said at
the report’s rollout. “Over the past two decades, our naval logistic
enterprises have performed admirably, in an environment of truly expanded
responsibility and resources that were constrained. But the world has changed. …
And we have to start addressing this in earnest” and not as “business as usual.”

Spencer noted that the National Defense Strategy recognized the logistical problem,
“and we have to stay ahead of it.” He saw the report as “a forcing function.”

‘Brittle’ Maritime Logistics Forces

The CSBA report said that although the defense strategy listed “resilient and agile logistics” as one of the eight capabilities that had to be strengthened for the great power competition, the Navy’s latest 30-year shipbuilding plan reduced the funding for maritime logistical forces and “further reduces the logistical forces as a proportion of the fleet.” It also noted that “decades of downsizing and consolidation” have left U.S. maritime logistics forces “brittle” and contributed to the decline of the U.S. shipbuilding industry and the Merchant Marine, which is expected to carry the bulk of military material and equipment for an overseas contingency.

To create a logistical force able to prevail in a major conflict with a peer competitor, CSBA recommended increasing that force from the current 299 ships to at least 364 by 2048. Most of those ships are not included in the Navy’s target of a 355-ship battle fleet.

“Over the past two decades, our naval logistic enterprises have performed admirably, in an environment of truly expanded responsibility and resources that were constrained. But the world has changed.”

Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer

The largest
increases CSBA proposed would go to refueling capabilities, from the current 21
tankers and fleet oilers to 69; the towing and salvage fleets, from five to 25;
and maintenance and repair, from two tenders to 17.

The report also
recommended growing cargo and munitions support from 12 ships to 25 and
creating a combat search and rescue (CSR) and increasing medical care capability
from the current two large and aging hospital ships to seven. That would
include platforms for CSR helicopters and MV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft and small
“expeditionary medical ships,” based on the expeditionary fast transports
currently being built.

This larger
logistical support force would include several new ship types — including a
variety of tankers and smaller oilers able to refuel combatants and commercial
tankers to move fuel forward to replenish fleet refuelers. The CSBA report also
urged that munitions ships be able to reload vertical launching system (VLS)
tubes at sea and that new tenders be able to repair surface combatants and even
unmanned surface vessels.

The greater
numbers and new types of support ships are needed, the report argues, to allow
logistical support to continue despite the high attrition expected in a great
power conflict, to provide support in contested waters, and to make up for the
likely damage to forward support facilities such as Guam, the Marianas and
Diego Garcia.

Still in Need of an ‘Expeditionary Navy’

Much of the CSBA recommendations were supported in a July 24 opinion article in Real Clear Defense by surface warfare Capt. Anthony Cowden, who wrote: “A navy that cannot rearm itself at sea, that cannot conduct ship systems repairs organically” without use of a friendly port “is not an ‘expeditionary’ navy. … The United States needs an expeditionary navy, and that’s not what it has.”

The CSBA report echoed
the call from the congressional sea power subcommittees to expand and modernize
the sealift fleet, much of which is old and still powered by ancient,
inefficient steam power plants. The report endorsed the congressional plan to
have U.S. shipyards build a variety of new ships using a common hull under the Common
Hull Auxiliary Multi-Mission Platform concept and buy used cargo vessels off
the international market.

Spencer supported
that two-track plan, but said, “I can’t afford a lot of $400 million new ships,”
when he could buy a lot of surplus ships for much less. He said he has been “up
on the Hill asking for some money” to update the sealift fleet.

CSBA estimated the
cost of buying the additional ships and different capabilities at $47.8 billion
over 30 years, which the report said would be $1.6 billion a year above what
the Navy plans to spend on its maritime logistics capabilities.

The need for that spending was illustrated by the CSBA report’s co-author, Harrison Schramm, who said the Chinese are focusing on counter-logistics in their campaign plans because “they know that forward-deployed naval forces are limited by magazine size.” Once the onboard munitions are expended, the U.S. fleet’s capabilities are drastically diminished, Schramm said. That problem is aggravated, he added, by the Navy’s inability to reload VLS tubes without use of a functioning port.

The report also stressed a point that Buzby also made: The U.S. flagged merchant marine has shrunk to a degree that it would be of limited help in providing logistical support in a major conflict. And, CSBA noted, leasing cargo ships or tankers from larger international fleets is complicated by the fact that China owns or controls a substantial portion of those ships. And Buzby also warned that if the U.S. tried to expand its civilian merchant marine for a crisis, it would have trouble manning those ships — because of an estimated shortage of more than 1,000 qualified mariners.

Ever since the V-22 Osprey entered service for the first
time in 2007 — nearly two decades after its first flight — the tilt-rotor aircraft
has been in heavy use by the U.S. Marine Corps and has seen action in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Libya and Kuwait. But there is one stubborn problem that continues
to plague the program: readiness.

The aircraft was long delayed in reaching the field due
in no small part to deadly accidents during its development and a hefty price
tag, but when it finally did arrive, the V-22 gave the Marines the versatility
the service craved — an aircraft that could land on the deck of an amphibious
assault ship like a helicopter but speed off like a fixed-wing aircraft when
necessary. While the battles over development and procurement are long over,
the Pentagon continues to struggle with a stubbornly low availability rate for
an aircraft that serves not just the Marines but also the U.S. Navy and the U.S
Air Force.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUNJTAybCQQ

Currently, four out of 10 of its Ospreys are unavailable
for combat, according to the Marine Corps, which means the program is a long
way from the goal of 80% overall readiness set by former Defense Secretary Jim
Mattis. Several media outlets reported earlier this year that the overall
readiness rate of the aircraft was even more dismal — 52%.

The question of why readiness is so low is complicated,
but the uniqueness of the aircraft may be a large factor.

Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Teal
Group, said that the limited number of users of the V-22 makes it tough to have
an adequate stock of V-22 spares available.

“Normally, a pool of users — services and countries — can
share costs and inventories, but the Marines are the only sizeable user, and
the [Air Force] CV-22 community probably focuses on its own systems and
missions,” Aboulafia said. Even when the Navy gets [Carrier Onboard Delivery]
V-22s, the Marines will still oversee budgeting. Adequate provisioning is
further complicated by the shipborne nature of the platform.”

But the Marine Corps says that while the overall availability rate may be low, training and deployed squadrons have higher overall readiness levels. The service also says it’s taking significant steps to improve the aircraft’s overall readiness.

Better Readiness With Block C

Capt. Christopher Harrison, a Marine Corps spokesman,
said that while the availability of the Marine MV-22 fleet is currently at
around 60%, he also noted that training squadrons and deployed aircraft, which
have a common Block C configuration, regularly report an 80% mission-capable
rate.

The Marine Corps is trying to improve availability with
the V-22 Readiness Program (VRP), which Harrison described as a “top
priority” of the service, Harrison said.

“VRP takes a holistic approach to readiness recovery by
providing contract maintenance support, increased engineering support and
improved training for our maintainers and increased component supply depth and
breadth,” he said in an email response to questions from Seapower.
“VRP also consists of two major aircraft modification plans: The Common
Configuration-Readiness and Modernization [CC-RAM] initiative and nacelle improvements.”

CC-RAM aims to improve on availability rates by
modernizing older Block B aircraft with upgraded avionics and components to
produce the Block C, which are in production now. In addition to having “readiness
enhancements,” making more of the fleet in the Block C configuration
streamlines maintenance and sustainment, Harrison said.

Meanwhile, the nacelle improvement initiative includes
improving wiring harnesses and making the nacelle easier to maintain, he said. “We
believe we’ll see an additive positive effect on readiness by introducing more
reliable systems, streamlined procedures and improved maintainability.”

Analytics in Use to Improve MCR

In addition to those two initiatives, the Marines are using analytics to reduce scheduled maintenance and spot emerging trouble areas, which could improve mission-capable rates by as much as 15%, he claimed.

CC-RAM started in January 2018 and four aircraft are
currently undergoing modifications.

“The Osprey is our most in-demand and deployed aircraft,”
Harrison said. “At any given moment, five to seven VMMs are forward-deployed.
The MV-22 transformed the way the Marine Corps conducts assault support.
Capable of self-deploying, the Osprey’s speed, range and lift allows it to
sustain and move the MAGTF [Marine Air-Ground Task Force] anywhere in the world,
and it is routinely at center stage for humanitarian assistance operations.”

“The Osprey is our most in-demand and deployed aircraft. The MV-22 transformed the way the Marine Corps conducts assault support.”

Capt. Christopher Harrison, a Marine Corps spokesman

Boeing — which produces the aircraft jointly with Bell —
said in a statement that fleet enhancements and upgrades that are funded
through the Defense Department budget outyears include an improved engine inlet
separation system; a cockpit engine health indicator; component reliability and
safety improvements for swashplate, rudder, conversion actuators, O2N2
concentrator and shaft-driven compressor; and rotor blade time-on-wing
improvements.

Bell Boeing received a performance-based logistics and
engineering (PBL&E) contract in January that includes other initiatives
meant to boost the reliability of the aircraft. “Bell Boeing have the
flexibility to incorporate data analytics into maintenance efforts, yielding
innovative approaches such as predictive and condition-based maintenance to
improve aircraft availability and readiness,” their statement reads.

The company supports three customers: the MV-22 for the
Marine Corps, the CV-22 for Air Force Special Operations Command, and the
CMV-22 for the Navy. In all, more than 350 aircraft are scheduled to be built,
Boeing said.

“Bell Boeing is also executing a supply chain contract,
which includes the purchase, repair, stocking and delivery for more than 200
part numbers,” the statement notes.

A total of 129 Block B Ospreys will get the CC-RAM
upgrade, Boeing said. The last of those aircraft was built in 2011. “Boeing
expects to see a marked improvement in the mission-capable rate of Ospreys that
go through CC-RAM,” according to the company.

The company also expects to see “marked improvement” in
availability rates through the nacelle improvement initiative.

Other investments are being
made to address the problem of the mission-capable rate. Boeing reportedly
spent $115 million and two years transforming a 350,000-square-foot facility
near Philadelphia into a fuselage factory for V-22s. The facility will be home
to the CC-RAM program, making it a key part of the push to improve readiness.

The
focus of the U.S. Navy’s efforts in mine warfare over the last two decades has
been mine countermeasures (MCM) — locating and neutralizing hostile mines. New
airborne systems such as the Airborne Laser Mine-Detection System and the
Airborne Mine Neutralization System were developed, and the MCM Mission Package
for the littoral combat ships includes new systems, some unmanned, to “take the
man out of the minefield,” as proponents call the overall focus of the effort.
The efforts are well-needed: Since World War II, mines have sunk more U.S. Navy
ships than any other weapon.

Check out the full digital edition of Seapower magazine here.

With
MCM modernization efforts well underway, the changing world geopolitical
situation is bringing new emphasis of the other aspect of mine warfare —
offensive mining — that has not seen such attention since the end of the Cold
War. The rise of Russia and China and the modernization of their navies has
marked the return of an era of “Great Power Competition” has brought offensive
mining from a dormancy to renewed emphasis and development of new sea mines.

Sea
mines — sometimes called “weapons that wait” — have a strong deterrent effect
on shipping. With sensitive magnetic, acoustic or contact fuses and hiding in
waters where they are difficult to detect, their covertness and lethality have
a strong effect on the morale and effectiveness of ship crews and can shut down
harbors and transit lanes from shipping more effectively than other methods,
effecting a blockade.

Sea
mines are an ancient technology, but came into widespread use in World War I,
when 235,000 sea mines were laid by the belligerents’ ships and submarines. During
World War II, between 600,000 and a million sea mines were laid by the
belligerents. During World War II, aircraft, finally powerful enough to carry a
payload of mines, became the dominant mine-laying platform.

The
United States’ use of aircraft to conduct offensive mining achieved some
extraordinary successes during World War II. U.S., British and Australian
aircraft mined the Yangon River in Burma, inflicting severe losses on Japanese
merchant shipping in February 1943. Navy TBF torpedo bombers mined the harbor
of Palau in March 1944, closing the harbor for 20 days and bottling up 32 ships,
which were sunk or damaged by airstrikes.

The
most successful aerial mining offensive was Operation Starvation, the campaign
to cut off the Japanese homeland from food and other supplies brought by
shipping. Beginning in March 1945, 160 U.S. Army Air Force B-29 bombers were
used to lay 12,000 mines in and near Japanese waters. At a cost of 15 B-29s
lost in the operation, 293 Japanese merchant ships were sunk by the mines.
According to the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, one in 21 air-laid mines struck
a ship, compared with one in 12 submarine-laid mines. Even though the
submarine-laid mines were more effective, the aerial mining proved to be 10
times less expensive per tonnage sunk.

The
U.S. Navy used offensive mining to good effect during the latter stages of the
Vietnam War. During Operation Pocket Money in May 1972, President Richard Nixon
ordered the mining of Haiphong Harbor to cut off the seaborne flow of supplies
to North Vietnam. Four Navy A-7E and three Marine Corps A-6A aircraft laid
mines that bottled up 32 ships in the harbor for more than 10 months. The
mining operations continued through the rest of 1972, resulting in the laying
of more than 8,000 mines in the coastal waters of North Vietnam and 3,000 in
rivers and inland waterways.

The
only U.S. use of mine-laying since was during Operation Desert Storm in January
1991. According an email from Sean P. Henseler, a professor and deputy dean of
the College of Maritime Operational Warfare at the Naval War College and former
intelligence officer of one of the two participating squadrons, four A-6E
aircraft conducted mine-laying, each armed with 12 500-pound Destructor mines
(general-purpose bombs fitted with Snakeye retarding fins and mine fuzes), of
the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. One A-6E was shot down and its two-man crew was
killed.

Renewed
Interest

The
capability for offensive mining has remained intact — though low-key — in
subsequent years. But over the last two years, the Navy has shown more interest
in offensive mining and has accelerated improvements in its mining weaponry.

“Mines provide an
effective means of achieving sea control and sea denial,” a Navy official said
in an email provided by Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Chambers. “Mining
creates an additional factor that must be taken into account by our
adversaries’ decision-making.”

According to the Navy
official, “munitions requirements are determined based upon COCOM [combatant
commander] requirements and input, coupled with fiscal considerations. War-gaming
is a useful tool to determine numbers.”

Today, naval mines can
be deployed from a variety of aerial and subsurface platforms, including attack
submarines, Navy F/A-18 strike fighters and P-3 maritime patrol aircraft, and
Air Force B-52, B-1 and B-2 bombers.

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 equipped with a target-detection device for magnetic,
seismic and pressure detonation.

For
these air-delivered mines, the Navy 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.

One
indication of the growing importance of naval mines is that one of the items on
the Navy’s 2020 unfunded priorities list was $71 million for the Quickstrike JDAM-ER,
which a Navy spokesman said “provides a means to deliver increased capability
to the COCOMs.”

The Submarine-Launched Mobile Mine is a modified Mk37 torpedo armed with
a target detection device. This shallow-water mine can be covertly launched into
a harbor, anchorage, shipping lane or other area to interdict ship and
submarine traffic.

The
Navy 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, Virginia. The Navy is conducting
testing of the new cylindrical-shaped mine, including 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 antisubmarine 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, George said.

“The
initial payload for Hammerhead is planned to be the Mk54 torpedo,” a Navy
official said. “The vision for the program is to use existing technologies,
where possible, while seeking opportunities to upgrade and expand the
capability as new technology becomes available.”

One
thing that has changed offensive mining in recent years is the GPS.

“GPS technology has
opened up additional possibilities for increased precision and longer-range
delivery,” a Navy official said.

GPS
also will aid in the post-war mine clearance, in that “the location of minefields must
be carefully recorded to ensure accurate notification and facilitate subsequent
removal and/or deactivation,” the official said.

The Navy’s chief of naval
operations has a mine warfare plan under development.

Less ice in the Arctic is inviting more human activity. While
the environmental changes in the far north have opened the previously fully
frozen ocean and its coastline to opportunity, the Arctic is naturally a cold
and inhospitable place that is unforgiving for the unprepared.

As the access, interest and presence in the Arctic has grown,
new icebreakers and ice-capable ships are being built, and policies and
strategies have been updated. International research efforts are studying the
changing environment, and military exercise programs are learning and
practicing how to operate there.

Check out the full digital edition of Seapower magazine here.

Speaking at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space exposition in May,
Commandant of the Coast Guard Adm. Karl Schultz announced that the service had just
contracted for its new Polar Security Cutter (PSC), calling it the “first
recapitalization of the heavy icebreaker capability in the nation in more than
40 years.” Simultaneously, and what Schultz said was no coincidence, the Coast
Guard issued its new “Arctic Strategic Outlook.”

The U.S. Navy released “Strategic Outlook for the Arctic” in
January, which outlines the objectives of defending U.S. sovereignty and the
homeland from attack, ensuring that the Arctic remains a stable and
conflict-free region, preserving freedom of the seas, and promoting
partnerships within the U.S. Government and with allies and partners to achieve
these objectives.

According to the Danish “Defence Agreement 2018-2023,”
“Climate change brings not only better accessibility, but also an increased
attention to the extraction of natural resources as well as intensified
commercial and scientific activity. There is also increased military activity
in the area.”

According to the document, the Danish Defence presence and tasks are based on close relationships with the populations and local authorities of both Greenland and the Faroe Islands. “Although climate change and increased activity in the region necessitate increased presence and monitoring, Denmark continues to strengthen surveillance, command, control and communication, and operational efforts in the Arctic.”

All of these documents and action underscore concerns about
presence, sovereignty, safety and security, environmental, economic, and world
power competition in the Arctic. Russia has been open about its massive
military buildup in the Arctic, but Russia has a vested interest in extracting
resources and building access to markets. In fact, Russia gets 20 percent of
its gross domestic product from the north — not the situation in North America.
In 2018, China announced in its official Arctic strategy a $1 trillion program
to develop polar regions economically, declaring itself a “Near-Arctic State.” Russia’s
military expansion and China’s attempts to invest in a ports on Baffin Island
and airports in Greenland have alarmed the West. However, all the nations have
a goal to maintain the Arctic as a low-tension area, stressing cooperation and
collaboration.

Prepared for the High
Latitudes

The Coast Guard conducts annual the Arctic Shield exercise
to familiarize themselves with Arctic operations and evaluate new equipment. In
addition to the Navy’s long-running series of undersea Ice Exercises, the Navy
and Marine Corps also conducted major exercises in the high latitudes like NATO’s
Trident Juncture in and around Norway last fall, and is demonstrating
expeditionary maneuvers up in Alaska during the Arctic Expeditionary
Capabilities Exercise in September.

There are many challenges in conducting military exercises
in the Arctic, but they help warfighters to better understand and deal with the
lack of infrastructure, communications, logistics, medical response capability
and vastness of the region. For starters, they require ships designed and
equipped for high latitudes.

The Royal Danish Navy has operated in the waters off
Greenland for many years, and currently has Thetis-class frigates and Knud
Rasmussen-class arctic offshore patrol vessels that are optimized for the icy
waters.

The Royal Canadian Navy has commissioned the first of six Harry
DeWolf Arctic and offshore patrol vessels, and two more are planned for the
Canadian Coast Guard. The CCG is also modifying three icebreakers procured from
Sweden for use in Canadian waters and is building at least two new icebreakers
as part of the National Shipbuilding Strategy. And the Canadian Armed Forces
continue to exercise and operate in the extreme north, and even conducting
diving operations with partner nations beneath the Arctic Ocean, as part of its
continuing Operation NANOOK series of training exercises.

There has been an increase in traffic in Canada’s Northwest
Passage, including transits by the Crystal Serenity cruise ship in 2016 and
2017. But the ice is unpredictable and prevented ships from getting through
last year. The 27 rural communities in Canada’s Nunavut territory are not
connect by roads, but must be resupplied once a year by ship or barge, and are
dependent on the capability to operate in the Arctic in the summer. Both the Royal
Canadian Navy and Coast Guard hope their new ships will allow them to work
farther north, and upgrading a former mining pier at Nanasivik to be used as a
refueling port will let them stay longer.

Cooperation

Also speaking at Sea-Air-Space, U.S. Coast Guard Deputy
Commandant for Operations Vice Adm. Daniel B. Abel talked about profound
partnerships and native knowledge. He served previously in command of the 17th
Coast Guard District in Juneau, Alaska, where he learned to “Listen to those
who live there, who are impacted by the Arctic.”

The Alaskan coastline is more than 6,600 miles long, Abel
said — more than the entire coastline for the lower 48 states. So cooperation
is an absolute necessity.

“We work closely with our partners in the Arctic, including
our neighbors in Canada, who are the best partners we could ever have,” Abel
said.

But that includes all the players in the Arctic. “The
distance across the Bering Strait is 44 miles, the same distance as Washington
is to Baltimore. That’s how close the United States is to Russia,” Abel said.
“Clearly, we have to cooperate.”

Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard Jeffery Hutchinson,
speaking at the Sea-Air-Space, said the Arctic is “not as frozen as it once
was, but from where we sit, there’s still lots of ice.”

The U.S. and Canada work closely with the other Arctic
nations, as members of the Arctic Coast Guard Forum. “We all understand the
vastness in the Arctic, in the ice, on the seas and on the land. It requires
everyone to pull together,” Hutchinson said. “There isn’t an Arctic nation that
hasn’t had to rely on another Arctic nation, at some point — and I say that
with pride and humility.

One important way nations cooperate in through scientific
research and environmental data collection. This fall the German research
icebreaker Polarstern will get stuck in the Arctic ice on purpose, and drift
for a year as teams of 600 scientists and researchers from 17 countries rotate
on and off the ship to collect data that would otherwise be impractical or
impossible. The Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic
Climate (MOSAiC) will study the Arctic climate system and how it relates to
global climate models. The U.S., Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, New
Zealand, Norway and Sweden are participating in the International Cooperative
Engagement Program for Polar Research (ICE-PPR), which shares in the
development and use of polar sensors and remote sensing techniques, data
collection, environmental modeling and prediction, and associated human factors
involved in operating in the extreme latitudes. The Canadian Armed Forces are
leading the multinational Joint Arctic Experiment.

Survival Gets Personal

While the places of the far north — like Alaska, Greenland,
or Nunavut — are enormous, and major the research efforts being conducted there
require many people working together, the bottom line for any military
operation or scientific project there comes down to personal survival.

The real enemy is the Arctic itself. In 2015, two
experienced polar explorers, Marc Cornelissen and Philip de Roo, fell through
the ice while on an expedition to measure sea ice thickness.

Maj. Gary Johnson from the Canadian Army Doctrine and
Training Mobility command runs the Canadian Arctic Training Center in Resolute,
which served as a base for Operation NANOOK-NUNALIVUT 2019 and the Joint Arctic
Experiment. As a logistician, he said any military activity in the far north
must address mobility, sustainability and survivability. “Whatever we do, it
has to be deliberate; it has to be planned. It’s an environment that can take
your life if you don’t respect it.”

Johnson looks at it as a crawl-walk-run situation. “Up here,
crawl means survive. The next phase is to operate, and the end goal is to thrive.

During NANOOK-NUNALIVUT, platoons traveled by snowmobile to
secure a landing zone while other soldiers built ice shelters and igloos. As
part of the Joint Arctic Experiment, researchers monitored the soldiers for
frostbite, which in the -60 degree Celsius temperatures can affect exposed skin
in two minutes.

Eyes, ears and voice
of the North

The vast majority of the people in the Canadian North are
indigenous, which has implications for Canadian Armed Forces operations in the
North. In fact, the face of the Canadian Armed Forces in the north is
indigenous.

Canada has 1,800 Canadian Rangers, a component of the
Reserve, most of whom are indigenous.

The Canadian Armed Forces are represented in every community through
the Ranger program. They are not only Canadian Armed Forces Reservists, but
they’re also selected by their communities. So within their communities,
they’re seen as leaders and examples to the young people, respected by their
peers and the people in their villages. “That level of connection is invaluable,
because they’re the eyes and ears and voice of the North,” said Brig. Gen. Patrick
Carpentier, commander, Joint Task Force North. “They connect to us on a
constant basis. So it’s a sensor that we wouldn’t otherwise have for what is
going on in different communities in the north. Our expectations are
that they will be masters of the terrain around their own communities and they
will be able to spot anything that changes, and pass word back to the 1^st
Canadian Rangers Patrol Group headquarters, and on to Joint Task Force North
headquarters in Yellowknife.

“We are on the land of the Inuit,” said Carpentier. “We look
to them to bring their traditional knowledge to us as we conduct operations in
the North. Nothing we do here would be possible without the Rangers.”

“It’s not a matter of they need our support,” said Hutchinson. “Rather we need their support, their knowledge and understanding.”

Edward Lundquist traveled to Yellowknife and Tukyoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, and Resolute, Nunavut, to report this story.

---

Sporting spectacles such as the Pro Bowl and Boston Marathon
draw big crowds. Now they are also drawing swarms of U.S. Navy recruiters.

Recruiters have always gravitated to where the potential
applicants may be, to talk about Navy opportunities. Navy Recruiting Command
initiated “swarming” in December 2018, to bring extra recruiters and resources
together for high-profile events.

“This concept will give us the ability to support bigger
events with heightened visibility while bolstering prospecting, increasing Navy
awareness and closing leads,” said Rear Adm. Brendan McLane, commander of Navy
Recruiting Command.

“We focus on big events and bring in our top recruiters from
around the country to take advantage of the increased attention which those events
have. We ran a pilot right before Christmas in Miami for two back-to-back Miami
Heat NBA games,” McLane said.

The Miami swarm included 55 recruiting personnel who visited
12 high schools, three community outreach events and attended two Miami Heat-Houston
Rockets basketball games Dec. 17-22.

“It was very successful, and we followed that with the Pro
Bowl in January, which also coincided with a military expo focused on high
school kids in Orlando. We did the Mobile Navy Week in Alabama at the end of
February. And then in March, we were at the Minnesota Ice Hockey State
Championship in Minneapolis and the Boston Marathon in April,” McLane said. “We
bring in our best instructors from the Recruiting Academy, and the recruiters of
the year from the other districts, as a way of recognizing them, and we swarm.
We visit the high schools in much larger groups than we usually do.”

McLane said groups of recruiters visit a number of high
schools to make presentations in the classrooms, particularly about STEM
subjects, to drive recruitment for the nuclear field and other advanced career
fields. “We also invest in local media about 14 days before the event.”

According to Interior Communications Electrician 1st Class
Hilary A. Martin, assigned to Navy Recruiting District, Raleigh, and a
participant in the Miami swarm, the Navy can offer young people an education,
health care and travel, a chance to serve their country and a career.  “I’m a communications electrician, and I work
with some of the most advanced systems and equipment, which not only is
exciting but helps prepare me for other jobs when I eventually get out of the
Navy.”

The swarm includes one of CNRC’s two virtual reality trucks,
which offers young people the chance to put on a 360-degree virtual reality
headset with amazing graphics and become immersed in a tactical scenario. “You
get a dog tag that has your info on it and then you become a special boat
driver who has to go into a hot extraction point to get the SEALs out, and
drive them back down the river,” McLane said. “After your mission, you get your
debrief, and you can see if you performed as well as your friends.”

“The centennial generation have grown up with the internet
and technology, so we appeal to them with things like virtual reality goggles
where they get to see a 360-degree view on a carrier flight deck and more,”
said Capt. Matthew Boren, Navy Recruiting Command’s chief marketing officer.
“They want to see it, and we have the virtual reality truck where they can go
on a virtual mission to extract a SEAL team. We are a technical Navy with some
of the most high-tech combat systems in the world, so we need really
well-trained and smart operators that have the skills to run those systems.”

“We are a technical Navy with some of the most high-tech combat systems in the world, so we need really well-trained and smart operators that have the skills to run those systems.”

Capt. Matthew Boren, Navy Recruiting Command’s chief marketing officer

“All these things combined drive the number of contacts up,
which leads to higher numbers of interviews, which leads to greater numbers of contracts,”
McLane said.  “That leads to recruits
graduating and going on to [initial job training] “A” schools so they can fill;
vital billets in the fleet.”

McLane said the plan is ensure that there are an equal
number of swarms in both the east and west recruiting regions.  “You can count on swarming events occurring
every month throughout the nation.”

Edward Lundquist traveled to Navy Recruiting Command’s headquarters in Millington, Tennessee, to report this story.

After years
and years of waiting, the last variant of the Joint Strike Fighter — the F-35C Lightning
II — is officially operational. But it’s still a couple of years away from
making an impact on the high seas — and some questions about the plane remain.

The U.S. Navy
on Feb. 28 declared that the F-35C, the aircraft carrier-capable variant of the
fifth-generation stealth fighter, had reached initial operational capability
(IOC). The Marine Corps vertical-lift F-35B and the Air Force conventional F-35A
variants already have been declared operational.

Of the three JSF variants, the F-35C is the one that is “not in a particularly good place.”

Richard Aboulafia, Teal Group’s vice president of analysis

The first
F-35C squadron, Strike Fighter Squadron 147, completed carrier qualifications
aboard the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) as a precursor to IOC. All that remains is
a couple of years of preparations until the first squadron deploys aboard the
Carl Vinson.

However,
issues still surround the aircraft, which was plagued by development and
production delays over its history.

A report
issued in March by nonprofit watchdog Project on Government Oversight declared
that the F-35 was “far from ready to face current or future threats,” citing
data that allegedly shows “unacceptably low” mission-capable rates. The
watchdog group also stated that the F-35 was initially promised at $38 million
per plane but that they now average $158.4 million apiece.

Ceremonies and a flyaway May 23 at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, marked the deactivation of the Navy’s first F-35C fleet replacement squadron and its consolidation with the second F-35C FRS.https://t.co/2GwzQKLNW8

— Seapower Magazine (@SeapowerMag) May 28, 2019

Despite all
the questions that surrounded the program for years, the plane is here. And the
Navy is preparing to introduce its variant into the fleet.

The IOC was a
joint declaration between the Navy and Marine Corps, because the aircraft will
be flown by both services. In the six months before that, the “last couple of
pieces” began coming together for the program — training, crews and the like,
Brian Neunaber, one of two national deputies for the Navy’s F-35 program, said in
an interview with Seapower.

“So we have
airplanes,” Neunaber said. “VFA-147 immediately reported to Carrier Air Wing
Two. It’s involved with unit-level training, and they will commence air-wing
workups, probably in the middle of next year.”

That said,
the F-35C is still a couple years away from actual deployment. Their first ship
— the Carl Vinson — is in drydock at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for repairs and
modernization after concluding a busy deployment cycle.

“She’ll come
out of the shipyard in the middle of 2020, and shortly thereafter the entire
air wing will start working up with Carl Vinson, and sometime in the middle of
2021,” the first deployment is expected, Neunaber said, noting that the
deployment after that would probably take place six months later, and
eventually all carriers would be flying the F-35C.

The Vinson’s F-35C
squadron will consist of 10 planes. Every air wing in the fleet eventually each
will have a squadron of 10 aircraft before the Navy goes to two squadrons per
carrier, he said. The program of record stands at 340 F-35Cs, Neunaber added.

Doubts, Praise for F-35C

Of the three JSF
variants, the F-35C is the one that is “not in a particularly good place,” said
Richard Aboulafia, Teal Group’s vice president of analysis.

Aboulafia said
he believes that, though the Navy is going ahead with purchasing the aircraft,
the sea service isn’t enthusiastic about the F-35C. He noted that the Navy
wants to keep buying the F-35C’s predecessor, the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, and
that appetite hasn’t seemed to diminish as the F-35C finally reaches IOC.

The Navy has
a lot of reasons to hedge its bets, he argued.

“Why pay the
up-front price at all — rather than wait for someone else to drive down the
cost?” he said, also noting that the Navy “is less convinced themselves that [the
F-35C] has much value at sea. There’s also an institutional preference for
twin-engine fighters.”

Aboulafia also
claimed the F-35C could diminish the Navy’s case for large-deck carriers. “If
the [F35B] works, and Marines deploy Bs and Cs together and the difference isn’t
all that great, then you have a situation where the case for large carriers is
a little undercut,” he said.

In a worst-case
scenario — at least for a sea service that wants to keep operating a fleet of
large aircraft carriers — the Navy could lose support for even a carrier fleet
of 10 ships and see an argument for smaller carriers supplemented by amphibious
ships gain a lot of steam, Aboulafia argued.

Though many
have expressed doubts about the Navy’s enthusiasm about the F-35C, the service
has continued to publicly and emphatically support the fighter. The Navy argues
that the F-35C offers the latest in technology and is perfectly suited to fight
a modern war.

“The F-35C is
ready for operations, ready for combat and ready to win,” the commander of Naval
Air Forces, Vice Adm. DeWolfe Miller, said in a statement following the
declaration of the fighter’s IOC. “We are adding an incredible weapon system
into the arsenal of our carrier strike groups that significantly enhances the
capability of the joint force.”

Capt. Max
McCoy, commodore of the Navy’s Joint Strike Fighter Wing, predicted that the
F-35C would make us “more combat effective than ever before.”

“We will
continue to learn and improve ways to maintain and sustain F-35C as we prepare
for first deployment,” McCoy added in a statement. “The addition of
F-35C to existing carrier air wing capability ensures that we can fight and win
in contested battlespace now and well into the future.”

Some 10,000 Marines and Sailors stretched their
logistical muscles to support and supply sea-based operations during a major
exercise to prepare naval expeditionary forces for enemy threats and a
potential future fight across an island-dotted battlespace.

During Pacific Blitz 2019, they built expeditionary
bases, cleared and repaired an airfield and seaport, resupplied units on land
and warships at sea, and created medical care, refueling and rearming
positions. The exercise, held March 12 through March 31 in Southern California,
combined two regular training events — maritime prepositioning exercise Pacific
Horizon and amphibious integration exercise Dawn Blitz.

The force-level training event for I Marine Expeditionary
Force and the Navy’s 3rd Fleet, supported by Naval Expeditionary Combatant
Command (NECC), focused on distributed maritime operations with emphasis on
expeditionary logistics and sea control. That includes operational capabilities
to refuel, resupply, repair, and rearm expeditionary forces dispersed at sea
and ashore — and likely against capable, peer-like enemy forces. Those missions
are critical to the Marine Corps and Navy concepts of Distributed Maritime
Operations (DMO), Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment (LOCE) and
Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO).

https://youtu.be/4kKxor1DES4

The campaign-level exercise required fleet and force
battle staffs to integrate and “action officers work through the pains of: how
do you actually do this, how do you coordinate, do our systems talk well to
each other and how do we get better at those pieces,” said Lt. Cmdr. John
Ruggiero, a lead planner at NECC headquarters in Virginia Beach, Virginia,
exercise liaison to 3rd Fleet and I MEF. Both sides want “to ensure that we
continue to build on what we’ve learned, to make sure we document what we’ve
learned and keep that going.” Lessons learned will wrap into follow-on
exercises such as Large-Scale Exercise 2020, Ruggiero said.

NECC provided something of a bridge supporting fleet and
force missions in the battlespace, where expeditionary advanced bases, advanced
naval bases, sea bases, airfields and ports provided logistical hubs to support
and sustain operational forces.

“We are constantly looking for opportunities like Pacific
Blitz where we can demonstrate this capability,” said Cmdr. Brian Cummings,
NECC explosive ordnance disposal planner and exercise liaison to 3rd Fleet and
I MEF. “When people think Navy, they think airplanes, they think carriers, they
think DDGs and they think submarines — but they’re not necessarily thinking
expeditionary teams of four to 10 people that are thinking of putting missiles
back on DDGs in disassociated locations.”

Sailors worked with 1st Marine Logistics Group to
construct advanced naval bases and facilities at simulated “islands” in the
scenario-based exercise. In a first, they removed and unpacked an Expeditionary
Medical Facility from the roll-on/roll-off cargo ship USNS Sgt. William R.
Button (T-AK-3012), set it up at an expeditionary base at Camp Pendleton,
California, and later broke it down, packed it up and reloaded it onto Button.

“When people think Navy, they think airplanes, they think carriers, they think DDGs and they think submarines — but they’re not necessarily thinking expeditionary teams of four to 10 people that are thinking of putting missiles back on DDGs in disassociated locations.”

Cmdr. Brian Cummings, NECC explosive ordnance disposal planner, exercise liaison to 3rd Fleet and I MEF

Navy Seabees at five sites built several berthing areas,
did concrete slab and masonry work, repaired a damaged airfield, repaired and
rebuilt a 3.5-mile gravel road and, in a proof-of-concept, built a
90,000-square-foot heavy equipment storage area with a 24-foot wide, 8-foot
tall berm.

“The best part of this exercise was all these projects were
real-world projects, with the exception of the berm … being utilized by their
customers,” said Builder 1st Class Jacob Kusay of Naval Mobile Construction
Battalion 5.

But it wasn’t just about construction. The road and berm
projects were part of the realistic battle scenarios, Kusay said, so “we set up
our own 360-degree security, maintained their own security watch 24/7 until the
project was completed.”

More than 100 Marines with Marine Aviation Logistics
Squadron 16 packed their mobile facilities onto aviation logistics ship SS
Curtiss (T-AVB-4) at Port Hueneme, California, and got underway to do aircraft
maintenance at sea, a new experience for maintainers accustomed to working in
hangars and airfields.

#USNavy #Seabees conducted training at @CampPendletonCA during exercise Pacific Blitz 2019. #PacBlitz19 provides an opportunity for Navy Expeditionary forces to ensure they are capable, interoperable and deployable on short notice to provide #NavyReadiness wherever needed. pic.twitter.com/pSl7kyd9US

— U.S. Navy (@USNavy) March 13, 2019

“That’s kind of why we do this, to operate outside our
comfort zone to expand our capabilities,” said Capt. Mark Stone, supply officer
with 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing’s aviation logistics department. Stone helped
coordinate movements by boats and MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotors and CH-53E Super
Stallion heavy-lift helicopters to and from the Curtiss.

The Marine Corps relies on Curtiss and SS Wright (T-AVB-3)
on the East Coast to provide at-sea intermediate-level maintenance of rotary
and fixed-wing aircraft. Marines repaired, tested or maintained aircraft parts
brought to the ship. Those they couldn’t fix were sent to the depot for
overhaul. Marines “repaired a significant amount of components for us to get
back to MALS-16 to support the flight line,” Stone said. By the end of the
exercise, Marines on the ship had fixed or repaired 134 components, Maj. James
Moore, MALS-16 operations officer, said in an email.

Pacific Blitz “gave us a great overview, start to finish, of how would we do this down range as far as transportation, getting equipment supplies and ordnance from point A to point B.”

Chief Aviation Ordnanceman Raymond Gibree

Pacific Blitz provided a rare, hands-on training in an
expeditionary ordnance reload operation typically handled by Navy Munitions
Command teams. It was the first time Navy Cargo Handling Battalion 1 did the
rapid resupply mission, a new capability the Navy is weighing expanding since
the future distributed battlespace may require other units to rapidly resupply
and reload warships.

Sailors used a forklift and crane to load an SM-2 missile
into a vertical launch system tube on guided-missile destroyer USS Michael
Murphy (DDG-112) March 13 at Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station, California.

“It gave us a great overview, start to finish, of how
would we do this down range as far as transportation, getting equipment
supplies and ordnance from point A to point B,” said Chief Aviation Ordnanceman
Raymond Gibree, senior adviser with the reload team.

“We garnered a tremendous amount of experience with the reps
and sets we got, under the oversight of NMC,” Gibree said. “We are expected to
do this mission in many different locations, under many different circumstances
and under permissive, hostile and uncertain areas.”

The scenario
included transporting the team on two Navy ships and utility landing craft to
reach Michael Murphy. It helped “make sure we can provide that capability to
the fleet in more locations, more responsive to their requirements,” Ruggiero
said, “wherever they happen to be.”

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Sea services leaders expressed unwavering support during a May 6 panel discussion for the nation’s future ventures in space — no matter whether the effort is split among the nation’s existing military branches or a new United States Space Force is created.

The panelists at Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space 2019 reiterated
the need to increase the nation’s space initiatives as rival nations such as
China, Russia, India and Japan build their push toward the stars.

“Space is no longer an uncontested environment,” said
Rear Adm. Christian Becker, commander, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command.

As other countries stake their spots in space, the U.S.
needs to hold its “ground,” like when the maritime forces were first formed, Becker
explained.

“Space is very much akin to the maritime,” Becker said.
“We first went to sea to trade, and then we went to sea when we realized other
people could stop our trade. … Made sure we can maintain freedom at sea.”

Don’t expect the U.S. Space Force to appear overnight,
however. Services like the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard are still evaluating
the personnel needed to staff an agency dedicated to the Final Frontier.

“Space is no longer an uncontested environment.”

Rear Adm. Christian Becker, commander, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command

“We are assessing as part of the [Navy Department]
how we can meet the mission needs of the Space Force,” Becker said. “We’re not
there yet at our level of understanding, but that’s what we have to pursue.”

Finding and retaining the talent necessary to develop a
fully operational Space Force is a significant challenge, said Brig. Gen. Lorna
Mahlock, the Marine Corps’ chief information officer.

“It’s exciting to think about space … but we have to make
sure we develop the skill [to maintain a Space Force] and do it right,” Mahlock
said.

However, she emphasized that, no matter the
obstacles, the Marine Corps “embraces building the Space Force” and will offer its
full support.

A combined-arms task force of about 1,700 U.S. Marines and Sailors have deployed into Australia for six months of intensive training and an array of exercises that will involve contact with perhaps a dozen allies and friendly nations in strategically vital Southeast Asia and the southern Pacific.

The deployment, called Marine Rotation Force-Darwin (MRF-D) 2019, will provide the Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) a smorgasbord of training — some in jungle and mountain terrain — practicing amphibious and humanitarian-assistance, disaster-relief operations and combined-arms, live-fire drills in a training area the size of Connecticut, said Marine Col. Charles A. Western, the liaison officer to Australian Defense Forces for Marine Forces Pacific.

Asked the value of the Darwin rotations, Western emphasized “readiness.”

Noting that he had made three deployments to Okinawa with an infantry battalion, he said, “When you go to Okinawa, you are at the top of your readiness spectrum when get there,” having conducted all the extensive pre-deployment training, including live-fire drills.

But in Okinawa “some of the training is circumscribed by what you can fire, by how big the training areas are,” Western said.

What Darwin and the Northern Territory of Australia provides “is the ability to maintain that level of training when deployed, if not increase it. … When they deploy here, along with the Australians, they focused on their training and their readiness. So, it’s really a great opportunity for them to come out here,” he added.

“Speaking from a tactical level, this is me with my Marine infantry hat on, the biggest reason for us to come to Australia is this big, huge training area — the Bradshaw Field Training Area.”

The MAGTF also will participate in numerous multilateral exercises along the northern and eastern coast of Australia and as far away as Thailand, building relations with close allies and partner nations, Western said.

“That’s one of the pillars of MRF-D, the multilateral engagement. We are arm-in-arm with the Australians in everything we do. And there are 10 or 11 multilateral events that we participate in while we’re here.”

The MRF-D deployments have gradually increased in size since the first Marine Rotation Force-Darwin in 2012, taking advantage of the extensive open area and established Australian bases in the sparsely populated Northern Territory and building on a century of close relations with the Australian military.

“Last year, 2018, was designated the Year of Mateship,” Western said, a play on the Australian habit of calling friends “mates.” Last year marked 100 years since U.S. troops fought alongside the Australian Army in World War I in Europe. “We’ve been shoulder-to-shoulder everywhere since.”

U.S. and Australian forces also fought together extensively in the southern Pacific during World War II and again in Korea, Vietnam and some of the 21st-century fights against violent extremists.

MRF-D 2019 involves a MAGTF that consists of an aviation combat element (ACE), Medium Tilt-Rotor Squadron 363 from Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii; a ground combat element (GCE), 1st Battalion, 1st Marines; a logistical combat element (LCE); and a command element from Camp Pendleton, California, Western said.

VMM-363, a MV-22B squadron with 10 tilt-rotor Ospreys, will be augmented by four AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters and three UH-1Y Venom utility choppers.

The force of 1,705 Marines and Navy support personnel, such as doctors, nurses, medical corpsmen and chaplains, may be augmented by additional Marines for Exercise Koolendong, the capstone event at the end of the rotation, he said.

U.S. forces began arriving in April and will depart in October.

The GCE and LCE will be based initially at Robertson Barracks in Darwin and the ACE at Royal Australian Air Force Base Darwin. During the rotation, the Marines will conduct training and exercises at the Bradshaw and Mount Bundy training areas in Northern Territory, a jungle training area on the east coast, and at multiple other locations along the east coast for Talisman Saber 19 and other bilateral and multilateral events, Western said.

Talisman Saber is a U.S. Pacific Command exercise, held every two years, that will involve U.S. Navy ships, the MRF-D Marines, Australian, Japanese and Canadian forces and “a bunch of other nations participating,” Western explained.

“A big chuck of Talisman Saber is really about sea power, with the Marines and Australians and the Japanese Army amphibious forces.” U.S. Marines will embark on U.S. or Australian amphibious ships and conduct combined amphibious operations with the Australian landing forces.

“All the [U.S.] services are involved. It’s a joint and combined exercise with the Australians,” Western said. “So, the U.S. Air Force is coming down.

“The MRF-D is really just a small part of that,” he said, providing forces to the Okinawa-based III Marine Expeditionary Force, which will command the combined landing force.

MRF-D also will participate in exercise Southern Jackeroon, which will be conducted in the Australian training area, with Australian, Japanese and U.S. Army elements, Western said. They also will provide some subject matter expertise in engineering to the Australians, “a train-the-trainer kind of thing. And we are participating aboard the HMAS Canberra, one of their LHDs [amphibious assault ships] in an exercise in Thailand.

“We are providing some Marines to PacFleet for one of their CARAT exercises, which goes throughout the Pacific area,” he added.

CARAT, or Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training, is an annual series of bilateral exercises conducted by the Pacific Fleet with countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand have participated in previous CARATs.

Other multilateral exercises the Marines will participate in include Exercise Carabaroo, with the Philippines and Australia; Southern Jackeroo, with Japan and Australia; and Indo-Pacific Endeavor, Western said. Carabaroo, which combines the names of the Philippine carabao and the Australian kangaroo, is an urban warfare training exercise conducted in Australia.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert B. Neller said in a March 18 memo to Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer that the unbudgeted assignment of Marines to the Mexican border, the unfunded Pentagon-directed force increase for MRF-D, the need to repair more than $1.7 billion in damage to two East Coast Marine bases and other unexpected activities are “imposing unacceptable risks to Marine Corps combat readiness and solvency.”

The unexpected diversion of personnel and funds could force him to reduce support for Talisman Saber and cancel several planned international exercises, including two with Indonesia, Neller said in the March 18 memo.

Western said he is “tracking the possible impact of budget shortfalls. They will not affect the bulk of MRF-D that begins flowing in next month, just the possible Force Enhancement deployment of the Hawaii-based infantry battalion later in the summer.”

Some of the MRF-D Marines will take advantage of their deployment to conduct training at the Australian jungle training center, experience that could be increasingly important given the growing focus on Asia.

“Koolendong is really our capstone exercise, a combined force exercise with the Australians,” Western said. It comes at the end of the deployment, so they can demonstrate the skills built up during the six months in Australia, he said.

“We bring all elements of the MAGTF together to conduct a live-fire exercise” in the vast Australian training area. “It’s an opportunity to do a MAGTF-level live-fire event,” something that is difficult to achieve in other training ranges.

Although Koolendong is conducted primarily with the Australians, French troops also will be involved, Western said. “They send a platoon out every year” from their base in New Caledonia, he said.

The level of international engagements by MRF-D is increased because Australia makes a point of inviting the militaries from nations in the region to participate in or observe their exercises with the U.S. forces, Western said.

“It’s their country, and we are more than willing to work with the Australians in their efforts to invite multiple countries to come down and participate. Every year, they have an international observers program in which they bring senior international military officers from the region down to Darwin to see what the Marine Corps and the Australians are doing. It is a bit of outreach,” he said.“Regional engagement is one of our pillars for the MRF-D program.” ■

Adm. John M. Richardson began serving as the 31st chief of naval operations on Sept. 18, 2015, and he’s in his last year at the helm of the U.S. Navy. During the intervening years, Richardson has focused the Navy on the emerging “Great Power Competition” with Russia and China and has pushed for more agility and lethality in the fleet, higher velocity learning and rapid technological innovation.

At sea, Richardson served on two attack submarines and one ballistic-missile
submarine before commanding the attack submarine USS Honolulu.

He also served as commodore of Submarine Development Squadron 12; commander, Submarine Group 8; commander, Submarine Allied Naval Forces South; deputy commander, U.S. 6th Fleet; chief of staff, U.S. Naval Forces Europe and U.S. Naval Forces Africa; commander, Naval Submarine Forces; and director of Naval Reactors. He also served as naval aide to the president.

The CNO discussed the Navy’s posture with Senior Editor Richard. R. Burgess. Excerpts follow.

From the start of your tour as CNO, you spoke of the return of the “Great Power Competition.” How has the Navy’s posture shifted to counter that?

RICHARDSON: We’ve shifted in a number of different ways. One is that the way we train and educate our people has changed. [We’ve] adopted a competitive mindset. The very first thing that we do with people from all over the country when we bring them into the Navy is send them to boot camp. We’ve been fortunate enough to meet our recruiting goals for more than 12 years now even with a Navy that is growing about as fast as we can bring people in. Of late, we’ve made the assessment and the corresponding decision in the Navy that if we’re going to truly be competitive, we’ve got to sort of start at the very beginning to instill the attributes that will be decisive in that competition including, if necessary, combat. Those attributes are things like toughness and initiative and accountability and integrity. And so, we’ve ramped up the difficulty level of boot camp. We’ve made it tougher or harder. The response of the recruits has been stunning. Our retention has gone up. We have more recruits finishing even with the new curriculum than we did before. We’re teaching them a lot of resilience skills in terms of how to manage stress on their own and as a team. Those Sailors are reporting to their commands, ships, submarines and squadrons much more ready to contribute to the running of their commands. That is the feedback we’re getting from their chiefs and LPOs [leading petty officers], which is about as honest a feedback as we could ever hope to get.

We’ve put a lot of emphasis in the acquisition of technologies, tools and capabilities that would be decisive in the Great Power Competition to make sure that we are moving forcefully into the future to evaluate and assimilate technologies like directed energy, hypersonics and unmanned things like autonomy, artificial intelligence and machine learning — all of those things that are going to be a decisive part of Great Power Competition now and in the future. Not only are we moving into these technologies because they’re important, but we’re trying to move into them and get them into the hands of our Sailors much faster. We’ve had some successes moving acquisition into the future faster.

Finally, I would say that all of that is great, but you’ve got to go out and you’ve got practice, get ready, take your capability to sea and run it through its paces. That is the thing that combines both the people and the technology. We’ve been investing heavily in readiness since I got here, particularly in the last three years.

You were a submariner in the Cold War. The Russian and Chinese navies are increasing their capabilities and quantities? Comparing then to now, what do you see are differences and similarities?

RICHARDSON: The similarities are that it’s really a global competition just as the Cold War was. It’s a competition that I believe is going to define sort of the world order going forward. That’s almost where the similarities leave off. This is a much more complex and complicated competition now with not just the bipolar Cold War phenomena that we had — really an exception to history to have the world in two camps — but now, a much more multipolar competition with both China and Russia already being global powers. With the idea of China being an Asian power, there are different aspects of that as we pivot to Asia. With the economic dimensions — with different allies and partners than during the Cold War — we’ve got to be mindful of the complexity that we face in this multipolar approach. Folks who take the approach that this is going to be a redux of the Cold War are really oversimplifying the challenge that faces us. We need to set our minds for the complexity that this new version of Great Power Competition brings to us.

You’ve interacted with your Chinese counterpart numerous times. Has your interaction been able to affect the level of tensions in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait?

RICHARDSON: That’s a difficult question to answer. I hope that, by virtue of having a relationship and communicating frequently, we gain a deeper understanding of each other’s perspectives, be less likely to be surprised by one another and through that understanding we can make sure that there is a consistency. We can hold ourselves accountable to our actions being consistent with our words. We can also do everything we can to work together in areas where we have common interests. In those areas where we clearly have differing perspectives, we can manage and come to resolution on those perspectives in a way that minimizes the tension and particularly minimizes the chance for a miscalculation or something like that that could escalate. This communication channel allows us, if something should happen, to call one another up and, hopefully, keep it in perspective and de-escalate without it growing out of hand. Instead, we can mitigate that type of spread.

In a recent forum you talked about trying to move the ballistic-missile defense (BMD) mission of Aegis ships in the Sea of Japan, for example, ashore to free up the ships rather than keeping them in a box. Has that gotten any further or is that still just something in discussion?

RICHARDSON: I think it is moving forward. It is linked to this idea of dynamic force employment, which is linked to the idea that naval forces are fundamentally maneuver forces where ships are made to move on the sea and aircraft, obviously, are made to move through the sky. It’s a bad matching of capability to mission if we have a ship that is persistently assigned to a BMD mission of a land asset. Often, it’s a little bit mischaracterized. I’m 100% behind the BMD mission, which is a super important mission and one that the Navy can contribute to both with the Aegis weapons system afloat or ashore. My real comment is that in the execution of this mission, if you have an emergent asset that you want to defend and a ship can get there and be effective in its defense, then by all means, the ship is a good answer to that emerging challenge. But years down the road, if it looks like this is going to be a persistent mission, then it seems to me that we should do something like build a capability ashore, a more permanent capability for a permanent mission. And then, you liberate that multimission ship to go back to its fundamental missions of being able to maneuver around the world and flow to where the challenges are.

Do you have any concerns about the unpredictability of Dynamic Force Employment having a negative effect on the morale of crews with their schedules constantly in flux?

RICHARDSON: That’s the Navy I joined in the early ’80s when I was commissioned, a very dynamic, unpredictable time. You may recall that it wasn’t uncommon for us to be hanging out at home and, if the ship was ready to get underway, you could get that late-night call that said, OK, it’s time for us to move out. Report to the ship, grab your sleeping bag and get on down, we’re getting underway. We’d get underway at night and head on out. In my case, my submarine would be missing from imagery the next day, missing from the pier where it was the day before. In order to compete effectively in this Great Power Competition, we just can’t be super predictable, and so, this idea of dynamic assignments, agility, all of that is an important part. We’ve started to get into this a little bit with the Harry S. Truman strike group, and we’re mindful that this is a little bit of a new thing for many of our families.

Overall, our Sailors and their families have responded really positively. Both our Sailors and their families joined the Navy because they wanted to go out and respond to those places where the nation needed them and still needs them. We’re seeing crews lean into this mission with a lot of enthusiasm. I will tell you, though, we are learning some lessons, too, in terms of how we can better take care of our Sailors and their families as we get back into this type of dynamic maneuvering. Each one of these deployments gets a little bit better than the one before.

Your No. 1 priority is strategic deterrence. How confident are you that the Columbia SSBN’s tight schedule and hefty budget will be met?

RICHARDSON: It’s not just the Navy’s No. 1 priority, it’s the nation’s top priority to make sure that we maintain an effective strategic deterrent. Right now, the thinking is that the [nuclear deterrent] triad remains the best way at going about that. Of the three legs of the triad, the submarine is both the most responsive and survivable leg, so it’s important for the whole nation, in fact, for the free world, to make sure that this is the capability that is reconstituted and is maintained. We’ve been on strategic alert since 1960, and it looks like we’re going to need to remain on strategic alert. It’s very important that this program deliver on time with the capabilities that it needs to do its job. It’s got a tremendous amount of support across the entire enterprise — in Congress and the Department of Defense — that I feel pretty confident about. It’s an incredibly complex thing to do, as you can imagine. We are challenging ourselves in terms of the timeframes in which we’re going to need to build it, and so, that is my No. 1 call to the program. Right now, it’s on track, but I need to get more margin into the schedule. It’s complicated enough that once we start testing in sea trials, we’re inevitably going to find things that are going to need fixing — unexpected things will pop up and we need to build time into it to get that done.

“The workforce and materiel base don’t respond well to fits and starts, peaks and valleys. Our hope is that by laying in a steady build rate — not only for submarines but for the rest of our Navy ships — that we’ve got inherent stability. In that way, we get the industrial base to a real healthy, stable condition.”

The desired attack submarine force level currently is 66 boats. Do you think that’s achievable in the budget climate, especially when it looks like the budget might level off for a while?

RICHARDSON: Yes, I think it is achievable. To get to a force level of 66 submarines, if it’s a 33-year life, let’s say, of a submarine, then that’s two submarines per year. That’s a pace that we’ve demonstrated that we can maintain. It’s an interesting question you ask because it bears on shipbuilding. Our 30-year shipbuilding plan is a great read, if you’re a scholar of this part of the business, and it advocates for exactly what you say — a steady approach, given the resources that we have so that the industrial base that builds and supports these ships can have some reliability and stability. The workforce and materiel base don’t respond well to fits and starts, peaks and valleys. Our hope is that by laying in a steady build rate — not only for submarines but for the rest of our Navy ships — that we’ve got inherent stability. In that way, we get the industrial base to a real healthy, stable condition.

The new aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, has had some difficulties. Are you confident that this class of ship is going to be affordable?

RICHARDSON: Yes. We must step back and appreciate just what an amazing accomplishment the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier is. It’s a brand-new class of super carrier, [with a] new propulsion plant, new reactor plant, lots of new technologies in terms of power generation, world-class electrical power generation — three times the electrical power of its predecessor — and doing that for fewer people through a lot more adoption of reliable automation. What are we using that extra power for? Things like electromagnetic catapults, arresting gear that can be tuned to the aircraft type, dual-band radar [and] very powerful sensors, new technologies like these weapons elevators. We made the deliberate decision when we started this that we were going to put all these new technologies on the first ship of the class — so very, very ambitious.

By and large, we’ve got through all the technical difficulties for these technologies and are stepping through it. The electromagnetic catapults are working. The advanced arresting gear is working. The dual-band radar is on track. There are some other technologies — the weapons elevators — we’re continuing to work through those. The ship is in PSA [post-shakedown availability] right now, the first PSA for the first ship of the class. It’s not unexpected that you may learn some things that are going to cause you some delays. That is just the nature of doing innovation.

We’re having that happen at a world-class level in the Gerald R. Ford, so, in the not-too-distant future, we’re going to look back and say we did something that probably only the United States of America can do in terms of innovating something at this scale and complexity. It’s going to break every record for every carrier that’s ever sailed, and it’s going to allow real innovation to occur at the air wing, the real punching power of the carrier. By virtue of all these technologies, we’re going to be able to innovate an air wing that is going to be stunning in lots of variable types of aircraft, one of which is going to be the unmanned tanker, and so, we’re going to, I think, really be happy.

Despite all of that aggressive approach to innovation, the first ship of the class, of any class, almost always sees some cost overrun. The overruns for the Ford have been below average for first ships of the class, and we just need to be mindful of perspective. All the analysis that we have shows that these carriers are going to be survivable even in the face of some of the emerging technologies that people talk about. I’m looking very forward to seeing the Gerald R. Ford get back to sea.

With a new force structure assessment coming up at the end of the year, what conditions have changed since the last one was done that you think might have influence?

RICHARDSON: What hasn’t changed? This Great Power Competition is getting sportier every day. Both of our competitors — China and Russia — have increasingly capable armed forces, especially navies, so there is the force-on-force technological change, with technologies that are not just new at sea but new altogether. The geostrategic landscape is changing quickly as nations rise and nations shrink. China is certainly a nation with strategic expansion having a greater influence in the Asia-Pacific and around the world. For all those reasons — the geopolitical, geostrategic, technological landscapes and the human dimension of those landscapes — all of that has changed and it’s changing faster and faster. Even though the last force structure assessment was done in 2016, you’d think you get a little bit of runtime on that assessment, but things have changed quickly enough that it’s time to go back in and make sure that our assumptions are still valid, that we haven’t missed an opportunity to take advantage of an emerging technology or an emerging geostrategic opportunity and just do that assessment again.

Reading recently about the U.S. Asiatic Fleet in World War II and its submarine force, its performance was considered less-than-stellar. The Navy hasn’t fought war at sea since World War II with the exception of a couple of confrontations like Operation Praying Mantis. What needs to be done to train our crews to be on the step for combat at sea?

RICHARDSON: That’s a great question, one that we think about a lot. You’re exactly right. In that interwar period where we learned so much as a Navy, we had 20 years of practice to learn how to do naval aviation from aircraft carriers with visionaries like Adm. [William] Moffett and Adm. [Joseph Mason] Reeves. We did a lot of work in surface-to-surface types of engagements. And then we did a lot of the operational strategic level planning in the interwar period. We did some work with the submarines but, strategically, we just got that wrong in the interwar period and, therefore, we built a submarine force that was largely focused on scouting and reporting and maybe closing to engage another warship.

When the war broke out, we found out a number of things. One, there is nothing like combat, and so, even though we had a tremendous amount of work in surface tactics, we found that we needed to learn on the fly. We needed to learn our way from engagements like Savo Island, where we really got defeated. We had to learn on the fly in the whole Solomon Islands campaign such that almost exactly a year later we completely flipped the coin in terms of capability so that at the battle of Cape St. George it was complete victory — 5-to-0 — in terms of destroyers. And it’s minds like Arleigh Burke’s and such that led us through that, but also minds like our junior officers who designed the combat information center to make best use of technologies like radar. My point being that, with respect to preparing for combat, one, you must have a very sober view of what combat may bring. That’s why we’re making boot camp tougher. We’re delivering tougher Sailors. We’ve got to do our very best to approximate what that might be, and then we’ve got to make our training as absolutely realistic and prototypic as possible. The more realistic you can make your training, the better you’re going to be making that transition into combat.

Also, we are very mindful that, as much as we prepare, as good as our estimates are, it’s going to be different when combat erupts on the opening rounds. So, we’ve got to remain flexible and continue to learn in the early parts of conflict, because it’s the nature of our business. It’s not going to go perfectly the first time. It’s not going to go exactly how we foresee it. We’ve got to build in flexibility. That’s why the “Design for Maintaining Maritime Security,” both version one and now version two, puts such a premium on the ability and the agility of learning, because the team that learns faster than the other is the team that wins. We basically just outlearned our enemies in World War II. That learning combined with our industrial capacity were the keys to victory. That learning happened at every single level in the Navy, from five-star Adm. [Chester] Nimitz all the way down to the junior officers and junior Sailors who were innovating and creating on the fly.

We’ve got to make sure that our connectivity — the network that connects us all — is more resilient than the enemy’s. It will degrade, but we’ll have to be more effective in the degraded state than our enemy, and we’ll heal faster than they do, too, and we’ll get reconnected faster. I think probably we’ll see less operating independently than we did before.

I have great confidence that, as the network degrades and we’re more autonomous, more on our own than maybe we are right now, we’re going to be at a great advantage because of the way we train our officers to think on their own. The idea of mission command is an important part of our preparation for conflict right now.

Anything else you would like to add?

RICHARDSON: We’re starting and ending a lot of our talks, speeches and conversations with, I would call them, first principles. Our first slide in many of our briefs right now has a picture of George Washington and this quote: “It follows then as certain as that night succeeds the day, that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.” We spend some time talking about what America means and represents to the world. That idea of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — those principles that are instilled in all our founding documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution — are reflected in some of the greatest speeches that our leaders have given. Our Navy has been there since the very founding of the country defending those principles. We have a responsibility as a military power, but also as a diplomatic power. Very important diplomatic events have happened on Navy warships in sovereign U.S. territory — signing of treaties, hosting by our ambassadors, that contribution to national power. At the very start of the Navy, we were out around the world defending our sea lanes. America is a maritime nation. Two-thirds of our trade, two-thirds of our jobs, two-thirds of our economy are tied directly to the sea, so we continue to be out advocating for a system of rules and norms that allows free trade across those sea lanes to go to and from America’s markets, that allows access to markets overseas for us to sell and purchase our goods. It’s important that the American people and our Sailors understand that the Navy is a principal advocate for everything that America stands for, and an American Sailor in uniform on a liberty call ashore is often the first person, the first American, that somebody overseas may meet. It’s a great responsibility, but our Sailors are magnificently prepared to be warfighters at sea, but also diplomats defending our prosperity. ■