NORFOLK, Va. — The Navy successfully recovered the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye that crashed in the vicinity of Wallops Island and Chincoteague, Virginia, April 12, the service announced.   

U.S. Navy divers from Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 2 recovered the aircraft with collaboration from other interagency partners, as well local and federal actors. MDSU 2 specializes in salvage, a Navy mission area that includes recovery of submerged objects.   

“As Navy divers, we stand ready to conduct diving and salvage operations in any environment,” said Cmdr. Steve Cobos, commanding officer of MDSU 2. “We are grateful we could use our salvage expertise to help clear the site and safely recover the aircraft for the community and the surrounding environment.”  

Safety of personnel and preservation of the environment and surrounding wildlife were top priorities in salvage efforts and the Navy consulted with various local, state and federal entities to ensure salvage efforts were safe for personnel, the environment and the community.  

Navy divers recovered the E-2D by cutting the aircraft into sections and preparing each section to be lifted with a sling. A crane lifted each section out of the water and barges transported the aircraft pieces offsite. MDSU 2 also surveyed the site and surrounding area to identify and recover aircraft debris.  

The E-2D aircraft, attached to Airborne Command and Control Squadron (VAW) 120, crashed March 30. The mishap, which left one service member dead and two injured, remains under investigation.  

“We really appreciate the support from MDSU 2 and from the numerous local and state officials who assisted with recovery operations,” said Cmdr. Martin Fentress Jr., commanding officer of VAW-120.    

ARLINGTON, Va. — Combined Maritime Forces, or CMF, the U.S.-led multi-national coalition of forces enforcing maritime security in the U.S. Central Command are of responsibility, is establishing a fourth task force to enhance the security of the region. 

CMF is establishing Commander Task Force 153 (CTF-153) on April 17, with ceremonies to be held at U.S. 5th Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain, said Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of the CMF, whose duties also include commander, U.S. 5th Fleet, and commander, Naval Forces, U.S. Central Command. Cooper briefed reporters on the new task force in an April 13 press teleconference. 

CTF-153 will patrol the waters of the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden in an effort to expand capacity to cover those regions to counter activities such as human trafficking and smuggling of weapons and illegal drugs. 

The region also has seen combat action from Iran-supported Houthi rebels in Yemen firing missiles at shipping in the areas and using explosives-loaded attack boats.  

Cooper said the new task force will “definitely increase our deterrence posture” in the region.  

As the CMF’s fourth task force, CTF-153 joins CTF 150, responsible for maritime security outside the Persian Gulf in the Gulf of Oman and North Arabian Sea; CTF-151, the counter-piracy task force; and CTF-152, responsible for maritime security inside the Persian Gulf.  

With 34 member nations, the CMF is the largest standing naval partnership in the world. The member nations rotate command of the task forces. Cooper said he had “sufficient forces” to meet the CMF’s commitments.  

Cooper said the maritime security efforts have “always been our best when we’re teamed with international partners,” and that the United States is “teaming with a lot of navies who are very capable.” 

He singled out mention of the Egyptian navy, which joined the CMF a year ago and will strengthen the efforts to patrol the Red Sea and protect the Suez Canal.  

CTF-153 will first be commanded by U.S. Navy Capt. Robert Francis, who with his staff soon will embark on the command ship USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20), which normally serves as the flagship of the U.S. 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea. An officer from a partner nation will assume command of CTF-153 later this year, Cooper said. 

Cooper said that CTF-153 will typically include two to eight ships, plus maritime patrol aircraft as needed. The staff itself will be comprised of approximately 15 personnel. 

He said that with the additional task force the CMF will “be able to connect in ways we simply haven’t been able to do in the past.” 

APRA HARBOR, Guam — The Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Annapolis (SSN 760) arrived March 28 at Naval Base Guam from Naval Base Point Loma, San Diego, shifting its homeport as part of the U.S. Navy strategic laydown plan for naval forces in the Indo-Pacific region, Submarine Squadron 15 Public Affairs said April 10. 

“My crew is proud to join the submarine force team in Guam,” said Cmdr. James Tuthill, Annapolis’s commanding officer. “It’s an excellent place to live, with a strong sense of community and a clear mission. We worked hard to get the ship through a shipyard period ahead of schedule, and we’re ready to assume our place on the front line.” 
 
The security environment in the Indo-Pacific requires the U.S. Navy station the most capable ships forward. This posture allows rapid responses for maritime and joint forces and brings our most capable ships and submarines with the greatest amount of striking power and operational capability to bear in the timeliest manner. 
 
“I would like to personally extend a warm Hafa Adai to the Sailors and families of our fifth homeported submarine on Guam, USS Annapolis,” said Commander Joint Region Marianas Rear Adm. Benjamin Nicholson. “Guam and the Mariana Islands are incredibly important to the overall defense of the region, and this additional capability further underscores our commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.” 
 
In accordance with the strategic laydown plan of 2021, Annapolis makes the fifth Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine to be homeported in Guam alongside USS Asheville (SSN 722), USS Key West (SSN 758), USS Jefferson City (SSN 759), and USS Springfield (SSN 761). USS Springfield arrived in Guam one week before USS Annapolis on March 21. 
 
“As part of the U.S. Navy’s plan to put the most advanced and capable units forward, USS Annapolis completed a homeport shift from San Diego, California to Guam in order to support Indo-Pacific initiatives and missions,” said Capt. Bret Grabbe, commodore, Submarine Squadron 15. 

Commissioned April 11, 1992, Annapolis is the fourth ship of the United States Navy named for the city of Annapolis, Maryland. Annapolis has a crew of approximately 16 officers and 127 enlisted Sailors.  

ARLINGTON, Va. — A defense company in Hawaii has been tapped by the Office of Naval Research to develop an autonomous vehicle to deploy a fuel delivery system to support amphibious systems.  

Martin Defense Group LLC of Honolulu has been awarded a $15 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the development of an Amphibious Vehicle for Unmanned Surface Mobility, the Defense Department said April 6.  

“The AVUSM system provides the capability of autonomously delivering a lay-flat fuel line hose from a floating embarkment platform, through the surf-zone, to above a high-water mark line for fuel delivery in support of expeditionary advanced base operations,” the announcement said. “This is also known as a reach-to-the-beach capability. This contract provides for technology development and maturation with the objective of transitioning the technology/capability to Navy and/or Marine Corps acquisition programs.” 

Martin Defense also is the developer of the Manta Ray autonomous underwater vehicle for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Work expected to be completed by April 5, 2025. 

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The biggest problem with the effort to develop a joint all-domain command and control system that would integrate all the sensors and communication devices of the U.S. armed forces and our allies and partners may be that there really is no joint process. That was the situation described by a panel of experts at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space expo on April 5.

The challenge for the Navy alone was how do the forces operate beyond line of sight when they know they will not have uncontested communications, “how does the Navy do that when we have a proliferation of sensors” and how do they leverage the sensors on one platform with those on another “in order to get the effects that we need,” said Rear Adm. Susan BryerJoyner, director of the Naval Cyber Security Division. And as the Navy continues its move to distributed naval operations and cannot mass its ships together, it further complicates command and control, she said. The Navy needs to do more exercises to begin testing solutions to those problems, she advised. 

Andrew Mara, executive vice president of the Center for Naval Analysis, asked how with the aggregation of different sensors does anyone achieve effects, and how do they assure the logistical needs are met. “All of those pieces will have to come together,” he said. 

And Todd Harrison, Director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, noted that the issue becomes more complex when you try to bring together allies and partners in the desired coalition operations, when each of them have their own unique systems. 

Harrison suggested adopting the model of the F-35 Joint Program Office that has allied users of the F-35 included from the beginning of discussions. 

Harrison warned, “This is not the first time we tried to do this,” listing a host of supposed joint programs that failed to produce compatible communication systems among the U.S. forces. “It didn’t work. I fear it won’t again.” 

BreyerJoyner shared Harrison’s concern about the allies. Asking how would the Navy be able to fight as a joint and coalition force, which would be needed against China or Russia. “How would we share targeting information to get weapons on targets?” 

Margaret Calomino, senior director of Strategy at L3Harris, one of the contractors that provide electronic systems to the U.S. and allied militaries, said it “would be good” if all the services would come together to determine what they needed. She also called for exercises to develop solutions. 

SAN DIEGO — BAE Systems has received a $89.4 million contract from the U.S. Navy to perform major modernization work aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin (DDG 89), the company said in an April 5 release. The value of the competitively awarded contract could reach $95.2 million if all options are exercised. 

Under the depot maintenance period availability contract awarded, BAE Systems San Diego Ship Repair will dry-dock the ship, perform underwater hull preservation work, recondition the engineering spaces, upgrade its command-and-control equipment and refurbish the crew’s living spaces. The DMP work is expected to begin in May 2022 and be completed in November 2023. The company expects to dry-dock the ship at the San Diego Naval Base and then complete the remaining work at its Barrio Logan facility.  

“A depot maintenance availability is a significant project for upgrading the capability of Aegis destroyers,” said David M. Thomas Jr., BAE Systems San Diego Ship Repair’s vice president and general manager. “Our ship repair team has the critical know-how for repairing DDGs from our prior work. The DMP availability we’ll perform on the USS Mustin will usher the ship into a higher phase of fleet readiness.”  

BAE Systems’ San Diego shipyard is completing similar work aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Preble (DDG 88) and has previously completed a DMP availability aboard USS Shoup (DDG 86).  

USS Mustin is the 39th ship in the Arleigh Burke class and was commissioned in July 2003. The ship is named in honor of the Mustin family who has more than a century of service in the U.S. Navy. One other U.S. Navy combatant has carried the family name, USS Mustin (DD 413).  

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Navy’s MQ-4C Triton high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle is on track for initial operational capability with the new Integrated Functional Capability 4 (IFC-4) with a full orbit of four aircraft in fiscal 2023, a senior official said.  

Speaking April 4 to reporters in a roundtable at the Navy League’s Sea-Air Space expo, Rear Adm. Brian Corey, program executive officer for Unmanned and Strike Weapons, said IFC-4, which began flight testing in February, will give the Triton — built by Northrop Grumman (Booth 1300, Dock Space 2) — the capabilities needed to reach IOC and begin to replace the EP-3E Orion maritime reconnaissance aircraft. 

The Navy has had the MQ-4C with the baseline IFC-3 capability deployed in 2020 to the Western Pacific in an early operational capability. One aircraft assigned to Unmanned Patrol Squadron (VUP-19) remains deployed while a second has returned to the United States to give maintenance personnel more hands-on experience. 

Corey said with IFC-3 “the Navy was not ready to get the network right. We weren’t allowed to connect to the network. We’ve come a long way to an operationally relevant environment.” 

The number of planned regional orbits for the Triton originally was planned to be five, with four aircraft each. Beyond the first orbit, the future location and structure of the orbits is less defined and will be determined with regional combatant commander input.  

The Navy paused planned procurement of the MQ-4C for two years in 2021 and 2022, but the production line was sustained with an order of three Tritons for Australia and one for the U.S. Navy added in 2021 by Congress, followed by another congressional addition in 2022. The Navy has requested procurement of three Tritons for fiscal 2023. 

VUP-19, headquartered at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida, moved its maintenance detachment to nearby Naval Station Mayport, Florida, last year from NAS Point Mugu, California. The future of Point Mugu as a future Triton base is yet to be determined. The second squadron, VUP-11, will be based at NAS Whidbey Island, Washington, but the location of its Tritons there or at Point Mugu or elsewhere will be decided later. 

The EP-3E aircraft has a large crew of signals intelligence analysts, and the Triton IFC-4 represents a significant change in the analysis, with onboard processing largely replaced by a wide distribution of the intelligence information across many sites of the intelligence community, Corey said. 

Corey said the RQ-4A Global Hawk Broad-Area Maritime Surveillance — Demonstration aircraft which have supported the U.S. 5th Fleet since 2009, remain in service, with Congress having funded the BAMS-D for 2022 despite the Navy’s plan to divest it. The Navy again in the 2023 budget request targets the BAMS-D for retirement, with budget pressures overcoming the utility of the aircraft. 

A Navy admiral says that despite reports to the contrary, the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Arresting Gear systems aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) are working just fine.

Rear Adm. Shane G. Gahagan, program executive officer for tactical aircraft programs (PEO-T) at Naval Air Systems Command, said Monday, April 4 at Sea-Air-Space that the system had achieved 8,500 “cats and traps” on the Ford over the past two years.

The EMALS system has struggled with reliability issues over the years, but Gahagan insisted that it is performing well today.

“It works,” Gahagan said. “I read in the press … that it doesn’t work. It works day in and day out with cats and traps, and now it’s like every other program: How are we going to sustain it for the fight we need?”

He said the EMALS and AAG systems have a “lot of great capability” and that Sailors “love it.”

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Bell, a Textron company, is marketing its manned and unmanned tiltrotor aircraft to be the eventual replacements for the Navy’s MH-60R/S helicopters. 

Carl Forsling, Bell’s senior manager for military sales and strategy, told Seapower April 4 at the Navy League’s Sea-Air Space expo that the Bell tiltrotors would be ideal for implementation of the Navy’s Distributed Maritime Operations concept because of their speed, range and payload. 

The two tiltrotors are the versions of the unmanned Bell 247 Vigilant and the manned Bell 280 Valor.  

The Valor, currently offered as a replacement for the U.S. Army’s H-60 helicopters, is larger than the 247 and is designed to carry 8-12 passengers. It has two engines, one each at the wingtips driving a tiltrotor. Unlike those on the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey, the engines do not pivot, simplifying the mechanics of the movement and reducing cost. The marinized Valor would have a pivoting wing like the V-22 for storage in a ship’s hangar. The aircraft would be hardened for electromagnetic protection and be marinized for corrosion control in the salt-water environment. It would assume the roles of the MH-60S, including plane guard, rescue, medical evacuation and logistics. 

The marinized unmanned Vigilant would replace the MH-60Rs on surface warships such as guided-missile destroyers. The folding rotors and pivoting wing would allow storage in a warships’ small helicopter hangars. The Vigilant could be used for roles including surveillance, antisubmarine warfare, precision strike and aerial refueling. 

With both aircraft replacing helicopters, the speed and range advantage would allow the tiltrotors to cover more area at a faster rate, Forsling said, while carrying heavier payloads.   

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The U.S. Navy’s new CMV-22B Osprey tiltrotor carrier-onboard delivery aircraft’s capabilities have been a game-changer for medical evacuation from a carrier strike group, the Navy’s V-22 program official said. 

The CMV-22B, which is replacing the catapult-launched C-2A Greyhound COD aircraft in the fleet, takes off and lands vertically. It is less dependent on carrier launch-and-recover cycles and, therefore, more flexible in its ability to quickly launch from the aircraft carrier and carry a medical patient to facilities ashore. 

In addition to quicker launch capability, the range of the CMV-22B — which can be refueled in flight—give it an added ability to reach land-based medical facilities from farther out. 

Marine Col. Brian Taylor, the Navy’s V-22 program manager, speaking April 4 to reporters at a Naval Air Systems Command (Booth 947) briefing the Navy League’s Sea-Air Space expo at National Harbor, Maryland, spoke of a medevac from the one of the two CMV-22B detachments from that have deployed on aircraft carriers to the Indo-Pacific region so far from Fleet Logistics Multimission Squadron 30 (VRM-30). A CVM-22B launched from the carrier with a medevac patient and was able to land in a helicopter landing pad at the naval hospital in Camp Foster, Okinawa, a feat that the C-2A would not have been able to accomplish. 

Taylor MV-22B integrated well with carrier operations. He also said the Marine Corps’ MV-22B Osprey has qualified to operate from the hospital ship USNS Mercy. 

The Osprey is operated by the U.S. Marine Corps, Air Force, and Navy and by the Japanese Self-Defense Force. 

Taylor said the Osprey is expected to be in service through 2055. It reached initial operational capability in 2007. Under current contracts, production is expected to end in late 2024. The program office is focusing on sustainment and keeping the flow of parts and other resources necessary to keep the Osprey fleet operational through its service life. 

Last year the Marine Corps deactivated one MV-22B squadron — VMM-166 — as part of Commandant Gen. David Berger’s Force Design 2030 initiatives. Faced with the possibility of excess MV-22Bs in inventory, Taylor said his office is looking at inventory management of the fleet to develop a long-term plan, with an option that some Ospreys may be placed in storage, available as attrition aircraft.