From U.S. Central Command, April 28, 2024 

TAMPA, Fla. – Between 1:48 and 2:27 a.m. (Sanaa time), April 28, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) successfully engaged five airborne unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) over the Red Sea. 

It was determined the UAVs presented an imminent threat to U.S., coalition, and merchant vessels in the region. These actions are taken to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for U.S., coalition, and merchant vessels. 

By Program Executive Office Unmanned and Small Combatants (PEO USC) Public Affairs 

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Navy embarked the first Mine Countermeasures Mission Package (MCM MP) aboard USS Canberra (LCS 30), April 18, service officials announced. With the MCM mission package now onboard LCS 30, the Navy is looking forward to the first MCM Mission Package deployment in Fiscal Year 2025. 

As part of the embark process, the Navy installed sensors, unmanned vehicles, support containers and the software that enables Sailors to execute MCM operations from an Independence-variant Littoral Combat Ship. The embarkation marks the formal turnover of the MCM mission package to the ship, signifying the crew is ready to commence onboard training and maintenance of the mission package in preparation for its first deployment. 

“Today, the LCS Mission Modules program delivers to the Fleet a modernized and integrated MCM mission package that removes Sailors from the minefield and allows for the future retirement of legacy MCM ships,” said Capt. Matthew Lehmann, program manager of the LCS Mission Modules (PMS 420) program office. 

An integrated suite of unmanned maritime systems and sensors, the MCM mission package locates, identifies, and destroys mines in the littorals while increasing the ship’s standoff distance from the threat area. Embarked with the MCM mission package, an LCS or a vessel of opportunity can conduct the full spectrum of detect-to-engage operations (hunt, neutralize and sweep) against mine threats using sensors and weapons deployed from the MCM Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV), an MH-60S multi-mission helicopter and associated support equipment. 

The MCM mission package achieved Initial Operational Capability (IOC) on March 31, 2023, following rigorous initial operational testing and evaluation (IOT&E) of the full mission package, including the AN/AQS-20 system, during the fall of 2022 aboard USS Cincinnati (LCS 20). With the deployment of the first MCM mission packages in Fiscal Year 2025, the Navy will commence the process of divesting from aging MH-53 helicopters and Avenger Class MCM ships. 

PEO Unmanned and Small Combatants leads the Navy’s efforts to provide littoral combat ships with mission-tailored capability to Combatant Commanders to provide assured access against littoral threats, leveraging unmanned naval capabilities for enhanced operational effectiveness. 

April 24, 2024 | By C. Todd Lopez, DoD News 

Recruiters across the military are challenged every day to bring young people into service. But the chief of naval operations said she thinks the Navy has what young people are looking for — if only they knew more about it. 

“All the services are facing some challenges in recruiting, and it’s really broader than that,” said Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti, who spoke yesterday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s probably challenges in just propensity to serve, in general.”  

One challenge the Navy has in recruiting, Franchetti said, is that so many young people are simply unaware of what it does.  

“If you don’t live near a coast or you don’t live near a base, you may not really know what your Navy does every day,” she said. “So, talking a little bit about … operations in the Red Sea, keeping commerce flowing having your Amazon box get to your doorstep, there’s a lot of stuff that people don’t even recognize every day that your Navy is out there doing.”  

Young people, part of Generation Z, are now of age to consider military service, and Franchetti said the Navy must consider what that generation values if they’re going to be convinced to enlist in military service.  

“Thinking about what they value, what they’re looking for … in terms of wanting to understand why, wanting to understand the values of the organization, I think we have a really good story to tell, because we’re all about honor, courage, commitment, democracy … and the pursuit of all who threaten it,” she said. “But also, it’s about helping them become the best version of themselves … we offer a lot of opportunity, we have 150 different career specialties that they can go into.”  

Spotlight: Taking Care of Our People 

The Navy offers careers in nuclear engineering, cyber and medical, for instance. And most recently, a new career field in robotics has opened up, she said. And every career field is available to both men and women.  

“You can really work in any field that you want to, so you can get some of your own skills, test out your own leadership abilities because we’re all leaders in the Navy,” Franchetti said. “I think those are good things for them to think about … I’d really like to have our sailors sell themselves. That’s the best way to do it.”  

If the Navy can convince young people to enlist, Franchetti said, it’s equally important to ensure the Navy remains a place they want to stay, that they aren’t going to be disappointed with their choice to enlist. The admiral said the Navy is doing a lot to retain service members.  

“We are also focusing on a lot of things that we know some of the younger people are interested in: making sure that folks have access to internet, making sure they have access to the gym, making sure they have access to health care, good-paying compensation, making sure they have a place to live that isn’t on the ship,” she said. “… A good quality barracks room, good quality food … that’s some of the work that we’re doing to make sure that we can be that world-class employer.” 

Apr. 24, 2024  

NOAA Marine and Aviation Operations will hold a ceremony May 6 at Naval Station Newport in Rhode Island to break ground on a new facility that will serve as the future home of the NOAA Marine Operations Center-Atlantic. Four NOAA research vessels will be based at the new facility, which will also serve as the headquarters for NOAA’s Atlantic fleet. 

In December 2023, the U.S. Navy, on behalf of NOAA, awarded $146,778,932 to Skanska USA, from New York, to build the new NOAA facility. Funded in part by the Inflation Reduction Act, it will include a pier that will accommodate four large vessels, a floating dock for smaller vessels, space for vessel repairs and parking and a building to be used for shoreside support and as a warehouse. 

NOAA’s fleet of 15 research and survey ships are operated, managed and maintained by NOAA Marine and Aviation Operations. Ranging from large oceanographic research vessels capable of exploring the world’s deepest ocean, to smaller ships responsible for charting the shallow bays and inlets of the U.S. The fleet supports a wide range of marine activities, including fisheries surveys, nautical charting and ocean and climate studies. NOAA ships are operated by NOAA Corps officers and civilian professional mariners. 

23 April 2024 

Student engineering teams from Princeton, Washington College and the University of Alabama have won first place in their respective events at the “Promoting Electric Propulsion” (PEP) boat races, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the American Society of Naval Engineers (ASNE). 
 
In just six years, this electric boat-building competition has grown from a single university to 34, with more than 200 students who took part in the five-mile races on Broad Bay in Virginia Beach. Dr. Steve Russell, program officer, Sea Warfare and Weapons department, said he launched the PEP competition with a colleague from ASNE, Dr. Leigh McCue, and Tim Cullis, Naval Sea Warfare Center Carderock, after seeing a public race by local hobbyists in the Chesapeake Bay. 
 
“It gave us the idea this would be a good way for the Navy to get engineering students interested in electric propulsion, so we did it.” 
 
Russell said they are reaching hundreds of science and engineering students every year. The PEP racing event not only offers students valuable learning experiences, it provides the Navy and Marines with a workforce for the future. 
 
“The goal is to create a pipeline of graduating engineers who have worked on a suite of problems that are currently issues within the U.S. Navy. They come out of school after having designed and built a boat like this, and learning about high power electronics, propulsion, hull design, cooling and boat stability – the naval architecture parts of it,” Russell said. “So far, we’ve hired many of them into the warfare centers and our industry partners.” 
 
The teams of college students come from universities all over the country. Some are very well known, like Princeton and Texas A&M, but others are much smaller and not necessarily easily recognized. That doesn’t mean the smaller universities aren’t as competitive. Russell said Washington College in Maryland came in first and second place, respectively, in the 2022 and 2023 manned race, as well as placing first in 2024. 
 
“They don’t even have an engineering school. It’s just a group of students who go to school near the Chesapeake Bay and they built a couple of very good boats,” he said. 
 
The PEP competition includes manned and unmanned boat races. Russell said the manned competition seems to be more exciting for the students. It is a race, after all – and they can go pretty fast. Most of the entrants, though, register for the unmanned competition. Regardless of which category the teams fall into, they are all involved in meaningful and, in some cases, record-breaking work. 
 
“While we’re not really looking to use any of the techniques that the students come up with, their innovation has been very impressive. For example, the Princeton team last fall took their boat down to a river in North Carolina and beat the world record for electric boat speed on the water with an average speed of 114 mph,” Russell said. “What we’re really trying to do is to get them interested in solving Navy-related problems, and hopefully they will pursue careers in the Navy.” 
 
It’s also become something of an industry event where the students are introduced to industry partners in the area. Since its inception in 2018, the PEP competition has helped recruit 44 engineering graduates for the Navy. Eleven others gained engineering positions with industry partners. 
 
For more information on PEP, visit their website at https://www.navalengineers.org/Education/Promoting-Electric-Propulsion-PEP

By Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The secretary of the Navy said the shortage of workers in the U.S. shipbuilding industry could be partially alleviated by allowing more legal immigrants into the country to work in the shipyards. 

Speaking April 23 at the Stimson Institute, a Washington think tank, SECNAV Carlos Del Toro acknowledged that supply chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected the ability on shipyards to meet delivery schedules of Navy ships, said he thought “the bigger problem than that … is actually the lack of blue-collar workers that we have in this country. 

“Regretfully, we’re a pretty divided country politically, you might say, but it really is time for Congress to get together and pass comprehensive reform and increase the amount of legal immigration that we actually allow into this country [and] increase the amount of work visa programs that are authorized for blue-collar workers to come from other nations and actually do the work here as has actually existed since the founding of our government, very much so,” Del Toro said. 

The SECNAV noted the current unemployment rate in many U.S. states is low, “but what we’ve got to do is open up the spigot a bit, basically, on legal immigration to allow blue-collar workers to come here and also to devote an enormous amount of resources into re-training individuals so they can actually work in our shipyards and be employed by the types of trades that are open to shipyard workers, for example.” 

Del Toro noted the U.S. government will in the next five years “be pumping in $15 billion investment into the submarine industrial base alone and an additional billion-dollar investment into the surface industrial base as well.” 

The SECNAV also noted that the atrophied U.S. commercial shipbuilding industry needs to be reinvigorated by a “whole-of-government effort around a national maritime statecraft.” 

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Raytheon, an RTX business, recently broke ground on a $115 million, 26,000 square-foot expansion of its Redstone Raytheon Missile Integration Facility, which will increase the factory’s space for integrating and delivering on critical defense programs by more than 50 percent. 

The expansion will also bring an estimated 185 new jobs to the area, growing RTX’s employee footprint in Alabama to more than 2,200 people. 

“This important investment in the Huntsville region will help us meet the growing needs of our military customers and service members,” said Raytheon President Phil Jasper. “It will also ready our operations to accelerate delivery of our vital counter-hypersonic solution.”    

Raytheon’s Redstone facility is the final integration point for many missile programs for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, U.S. Navy, and other defense customers. The facility currently handles integration of nine variants of the Standard Missile family, including Standard Missile-3 and Standard Missile-6, and will accommodate additional defense programs, including the Glide Phase Interceptor.  

3 April 2024 

From U.S. Pacific Fleet Public Affairs 

U.S. Pacific Fleet spokesperson Navy Commander Hayley Sims provided the following readout: U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Stephen Koehler participated in the 19th Western Pacific Naval Symposium (WPNS), which was hosted this year in Qingdao, People’s Republic of China from 21-23 April. 

WPNS is a multi-lateral organization with a history dating back to 1987. It includes 23 member and seven observer nations with maritime safety equities throughout the Western Pacific. Responsibility to host WPNS activities, including working groups and symposiums, is rotated annually among member countries on a volunteer basis. WPNS provides naval leaders the opportunity to discuss maritime matters of mutual interest while also giving the United States, allies, and partners an opportunity to underscore the importance of safe and responsible operations in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific. 
  
Discussions during this year’s symposium included maritime issues, areas for cooperation, and military-to-military communication. 
 
While at the symposium, Koehler met bilaterally with heads of Navy from Australia, Bangladesh, Chile, Colombia, France, Thailand, United Kingdom, and Vietnam to discuss the importance of continued multi-lateral exercises and combined operations that enhance interoperability and boost deterrence in support of a shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific region. Consistent with standard practice at WPNS, Koehler also met with host-nation representatives from the People’s Liberation Army Navy to discuss the importance of maintaining open lines of communication, operational safety, and regional security concerns. 
  
Admiral Koehler is traveling throughout the region after assuming command of U.S. Pacific Fleet earlier this month. He first made stops to Japan and Republic of Korea where he met with senior officials to discuss the increasing security challenge in the Indo-Pacific and the importance of trilateral cooperation between Japan, Republic of Korea, and the United States to demonstrate the strength and resolve against those who challenge regional stability. 

April 19, 2024 

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III announced on April 19 that the president has made the following nominations: 

Navy Vice Adm. Michael E. Boyle for reappointment to the grade of vice admiral, with assignment as deputy chief of naval operations for Operations, Plans, and Strategy, N3/N5, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Pentagon, Washington, D.C.  Boyle is currently serving as commander, Third Fleet, San Diego, California. 

Navy Rear Adm. Dion D. English for appointment to the grade of vice admiral, with assignment as director for Logistics, J-4, Joint Staff, Pentagon, Washington, D.C.  English is currently serving as director, Supply, Ordnance and Logistics Operations Division, N4L, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

By U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa / U.S. Sixth Fleet Public Affairs 

April 20, 2024 

COAST OF ICELAND  –  The Virginia-class nuclear-powered fast attack submarine USS New Hampshire (SSN 778) conducted a brief stop for personnel and supplies off of the coast of Iceland, April 18, 2024. 
 
This is the second time a U.S. Navy submarine has conducted a brief stop in Iceland since the Icelandic Minister of Foreign Affairs informed the United States that U.S. Navy submarines were allowed to make short visits in Iceland to receive supplies and personnel. The first U.S. Navy submarine to visit Iceland 
was the Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS San Juan in April 2023. 
 
“It is an honor to be back in Iceland to conduct a brief stop for personnel and supplies, and we thank our Icelandic Allies for their continued support as we operate in the region in support of our NATO Allies and partners,”said Capt. Benjamin Selph, commodore, Task Force 69. “Stops like this are visible 
demonstration of the strength of the U.S.-Icelandic relationship and our commitment to promoting security and stability in the region.” 
 
As founding members of NATO, Iceland and the U.S. share a long history of cooperation as we work towards mutual goals of safety and security in the region. Now in its 75th year, the NATO Alliance is a testament to the power of collective defense and the strength of solid relationships between Allied and partner nations. 
 
In addition to allowing U.S. Navy submarines to conduct brief stops for personnel and supplies, Iceland also provides host country support to U.S. and Allied maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft (MPRA) from Keflavik Air Base. 
 
For more than 80 years, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-U.S. Naval Forces Africa (NAVEUR-NAVAF) has forged strategic relationships with allies and partners, leveraging a foundation of shared values to preserve security and stability. 
 
Headquartered in Naples, Italy, NAVEUR-NAVAF operates U.S. naval forces in the U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) and U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM) areas of responsibility. U.S. Sixth Fleet is permanently assigned to NAVEUR-NAVAF, and employs maritime forces through the full spectrum of joint and naval operations.