ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy has awarded Boeing a contract for the design and production of wing glide kits for Quickstrike-Extended Range (QS-ER) aerial-delivered sea mines. 

The Naval Sea Systems Command awarded the $58.3 million contract to Boeing for the design and production of non-functional wing glide kits, glide kit prototypes articles and glide kit shipping containers, according to a 20 July Defense Department announcement. 

The banded-on kits will be designed to convert Quickstrike aerial-delivered sea mines into Quickstrike-Extended Range variants. Upon launch, the wings of kits extend and provide a glide capability to the mines that extend their drop range and provide a protective standoff range from enemy defenses to the launching aircraft. The mines will be able to glide approximately 40 nautical miles from the launching aircraft when dropped from 35,000 feet. 

In addition to the wing kits, the QS-ER will be equipped with the precision-guidance kit used by the Joint Direct-Attack Munition. The QS-ER also is equipped with sensors — including acoustic, magnetic and seismic — to detect passing ships and submarines. 

Both the Navy and Air Force have aircraft that can deliver mines, including the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet strike fighter and B-52 Stratofortress heavy bomber. The mine-delivery capability is expected to extend to the Navy’s P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, which has replaced the mining-capable P-3 Orion.     

U.S. interest in offensive mining has increased in recent years in the era of great power competition and the increasing naval capabilities of China and Russia. 

PASCAGOULA, Miss. – The Navy’s newest berthing barge, Auxiliary Personnel Lighter (APL) 67 sailed away from VT Halter Marine’s shipyard this week en route to Naval Base San Diego, the Program Executive Office–Ships said in a July 21 release. APL 67 will eventually be delivered to Yokosuka, Japan.   

APLs are 82-meter-long barges that can berth up to 611 people, 74 officers and 537 enlisted personnel. Mess seating is available for 224 enlisted personnel and 28 officers in 20-minute intervals, allowing food service for 1,130 personnel to have three meals a day.  

APLs are equipped with offices, classrooms, washrooms, laundry facilities, a medical treatment facility, a barber shop and a fitness center. 

“The modern APLs make the lives of our Sailors easier while their ships are in port for maintenance or training events.” John Lighthammer, acting program manager, Support Ships, Boats and Craft, Program Executive Office Ships. “We look forward to continuing to get these vessels delivered to the fleet to provide support while our Sailors focus on mission.” 

VT Halter Marine is in production on APL 68 and three other APLs. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — With the Navy planning on decommissioning its remaining Cyclone-class coastal patrol ships over the next two years, the opportunities for junior officers to command ships early in their careers are drying up. A new ship now being planned for the fleet may provide a solution to the problem. 

Most Navy warships — destroyers, littoral combat ships (LCSs), amphibious transport dock ships and dock landing ships — are commanded by surface warfare officers with the rank of commander. The forthcoming Constellation-class frigate likely will be the same. Cruisers are commanded by captains who previously have commanded a smaller ship. 

In an earlier era, such as World War II, many small warships, such as destroyer escorts, were skippered by lieutenant commanders. Antelope-class patrol gunboats during the Vietnam War were commanded by lieutenants. Today the Coast Guard has many ocean-going cutters, such as Sentinel-class fast response cutters, that give lieutenants early command experience. Command at sea for a junior officer has been shown to produce a more mature, experienced mariner accustomed to facing hard decisions that require sound judgement.  

Vice Adm. Roy Kitchener, commander, Naval Surface Forces, was speaking July 22 to reporters at a media roundtable when asked about the diminishing opportunities for lieutenants and lieutenant commanders to gain experience in command of a ship. 

“I think about that a lot,” Kitchener said. “I’m a big believer in early command opportunity if you’re truly trying to develop good COs [commanding officers] at the O-5, O-6 [commander, captain] level. It really gives them a broader understanding of the force.  

“One of the things we’re looking at right now, tracking pretty closely, is the Marine Corps’ initiative for the LAW, the Light Amphibious Warship,” he said. “I see that as perfect opportunity for early command for our future officers. I think that’s a great mission for them. Right now, I think on that we’re on track.”  

Kitchener said he has “looked a little bit at about LCS, but not where I want to talk about my thoughts on it, but I do think the LAW is something perfectly suited for [early command].”   

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy’s next-generation nuclear-powered attack submarine, SSNX, will combine the best technologies and capabilities from earlier submarines to produce the finest hunter the world’s oceans have ever seen, according to the service.

“We’re looking at the ultimate apex predator for the maritime domain,” said Rear Adm. Bill Houston, director, Undersea Warfare, Division, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, who has been selected to be the Navy’s next commander, Submarine Forces, speaking in a pre-recorded webinar of the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Prequel.

Houston said the SSNX has “got to be faster, carry a significant punch, a bigger payload, a larger salvo rate. It’s got to have acoustic superiority and simultaneously we’re going to work on operational availability with respect to maintenance and life of the ship.

“We’re taking what we already know how to do and combining it together,” he said.

The Seawolf-class SSN, which entered service in the late 1990s, “has incredible speed and payload,” he said. “We’re going to take that Seawolf trait of payload and speed; we’re going to take Virginia class acoustics and sensors; and then we’re going to take Columbia’s [nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine, or SSBN] operational availability and life of ship.

“We’re going to put that all together [for SSNX] — the apex predator — because it really needs to be ready for major combat operations,” he said. “It’s going to need to be able to go behind enemy lines and deliver that punch that is going to really establish our primacy. It needs to be able to deny an adversary’s ability to operate in their bastion regions.”

Houston said that the Navy is “confident we’re going to be able to do that because we’ve already built that on those platforms. We know how to do that. We just have to mesh it together with one platform. The systems we have, with electronic design, the tools, the stuff that we’ve already developed, we’re going to capitalize on that.”

The admiral explained that the SSNX is timed to capitalize on the ‘very robust” design team for the Columbia-class SSBN when that program is ramping down amid production of the SSBNs.

“We’ll be ramping up in SSNX because we’ll have the design and the RDT&E [research, development, test and evaluation] done,” Houston said. “It takes a significant amount of time and effort for that RDT&E to develop this apex predator. That’s what we’re going to do over the next decade working on the systems for SSNX. We’re very confident we can get there. It’s a daunting task, but the team is more than capable of doing it.”    

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy urgently needs to modernize its battle force in order to meet the near-term challenges of China and Russia if it is to continue to dominate the maritime domain and protect the freedom of the seas, two Congress members and a naval analyst said.

“We as a nation must become a sea power again,” said Dr. Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain, former director of Navy History and Heritage Command, and now vice president of the Telamus Group, speaking in a pre-recorded webinar of the Navy League’s Sea-Air Space Prequel event. “We’re facing a rising global competition right now. This [2022] budget quite frankly in reading of it, is just unserious. It’s unserious in that amount that was funded there and it’s as unserious in the terms of cutting back forces just as we should be adding forces, trying to keep the defense industrial base primed and, in fact, expanding. So, when we actually cut back on the number of surface combatants we’re building, we’re sending a mixed signal to the industrial base when we ought to be singing as a chorus right now about what is needed.”

Hendrix said the U.S. government “seems to be leaning toward a budget that is purely focused on 10 to 15 years out when, in fact, we’ve just had a significant warning from an outgoing retiring four-star [Adm. Phil Davidson, former commander, Indo-Pacific Command] that really the threat can exist six years from now. So, how are we going to meet that near-term threat? That calls for us to be looking at how we modernize and extend the lives of the platforms we have now, which is what we are not doing as a Navy or Department of Defense.”

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, also speaking in the webinar, said the Navy needs to “build a battle force for 2025, not 2045. As Adm. Davidson has warned, we may have six years or less before the PRC [Peoples Republic of China] takes action against Taiwan. We could have just years to prepare for a war that could decide the course of the 21st century, and that war would be waged, first and foremost, by the sea services. So, we can’t pay lip service to the idea of naval supremacy anymore, we have to earn it. We have to do better if we want to avert disaster and — make no mistake — that is where our present course leads us. We have to act with sense of urgency to advocate for, to build, and resource American seapower before it’s too late.”

Gallagher said Congress needs “to be honest with the American people about the stakes, what it’s going to cost, and the hard choices we have to make. If we fail to reverse the current trends, we’re going to wake up one day and we will either have lost a war or thrown Taiwan under the bus and, in so doing, destroyed American military deterrence in the process.”

“We need to take swift action to improve our fleet architecture to respond to the threats that China poses today,” said Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Virginia), vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee, also speaking at the webinar, noting the need to ready the battle force for 2025, not just 2045.

“The position we find ourselves in is no fault of today’s naval leadership. We’ve really lost a generation of shipbuilding — ship classes that haven’t been built to the same quantity or capability that was initially intended. There is a bigger debate going on in Congress about what the future Navy, the future force structure looks like, and I, myself, was quite disappointed with this [2022] budget from the Navy that in fact did not grow the fleet … and proposed to decommission more ships than it was going to build” in 2022.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy’s top officer has described what he sees the U.S. Fleet will look like in 2025, a benchmark which he says the Navy will have made investments so that the fleet will have made notable strides with fielding increased combat capability.

CNO Adm. Michael Gilday, speaking in a prerecorded webinar of the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Prequel, listed some of the major platforms and weapons that will make the fleet more capable by 2025:

Under the sea:

• “All of our Block III and IV [Virginia-class attack submarines] should be delivered by 2025 with an undersea weapon that is more lethal and has greater range.”

On the sea:

• “We [will be] just on the cusp of delivering our first Constellation-class frigate.”
• “We will be delivering the [Arleigh Burke-class] Flight III DDGs in earnest.”
• “We are investing in a longer-range weapon, the Maritime Strike Tomahawk that gives us range and speed to reach out and touch an adversary.”
• “We believe that we will be delivering the Zumwalt-class destroyers with a hypersonic missile capability.”

In the air:

• “We’ll have half of our [carrier] air wings [with] a fourth- and fifth-generation mix [of strike fighters], which analysis has shown to be quite effective against our adversaries. Tied in with that is a longer-range air-to-surface missile that gives us greater reach and greater punch.”
• “Our P-8s [maritime patrol reconnaissance aircraft] we are investing in with an upgrade.”

“All of that is coming into play by 2025,” the admiral noted. “So, we do have an investment strategy that incrementally gets us to a more capable, lethal fleet — not necessarily a bigger fleet — unless we saw a rise in the [budget] topline.”

CHANTILLY, Va., July 21, 2021 — VTG has been selected by the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division, to equip more ships in the U.S. fleet with an innovative laser designed to counter threats from unmanned aerial systems.

Under the prime, single-award contract, VTG will install and integrate the AN/SEQ-4 Optical Dazzler Interdictor, Navy (ODIN), a directed energy weapon, aboard five U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

“Our team is honored to support NSWC-PHD in integrating this innovative defensive technology into the fleet. The ODIN laser represents a significant advancement for the Navy in addressing asymmetric threats and protecting our sailors,” said John Hassoun, VTG president and CEO. “Delivering next-generation capabilities to our warfighters is something we’re passionate about. VTG’s depth of expertise with ODIN, together with our skilled fleet modernization team, cutting-edge manufacturing and prototyping capabilities, and long-term legacy of support to the Navy, makes us uniquely qualified to perform this mission critical work.”

In 2020, VTG successfully integrated the ODIN laser aboard the USS Stockdale (DDG 106) and USS Spruance (DDG 111) through a separate sole-source contract, completing both projects on time and on budget, and setting the standard for future directed energy weapon installations aboard U.S. Navy ships.

ODIN is used to counter adversary UAS-mounted intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. This laser for the optical dazzling of adversaries’ long-range and very long-range surveillance systems is being developed and built by the government at NSWC Dahlgren Division, and rapidly fielded to meet an urgent fleet need. The ODIN laser will be employed on surface combatants to counter asymmetric threats and to provide a scalable response for escalation of force.

Over the past decade, VTG has modernized 240 different surface ships, aircraft carriers and submarines. With a record of exceptional quality, uncompromising safety, and on-time and on-budget delivery, VTG ensures that our sailors have a competitive advantage over near-peer adversaries now and in the future. 

WASHINGTON — The Navy’s expansion to a larger fleet is hampered not only by the flat topline of the fiscal 2022 budget but also inflation in the costs and complexity of shipbuilding, a senior Navy admiral said.  

As the Navy works to tailor its battle fleet to meet the challenges of the era of great power competition and divest some platforms that are aging out or needed less in terms of priorities, it also faces costs exceeding inflation that put pressure on the shipbuilding budget.    

While the U.S. Navy proposes retirement of 15 battle force ships in fiscal 2022, it proposes to fund only eight battle force ships in that year, a setback in terms of growing the fleet to a congressionally mandated level of 355 ships.  

“What we’ve seen over the last 10 or 11 years is essentially a flat budget, said Vice Adm. Randy Crites, deputy chief of naval operations for Integration of Capabilities and Resources, testifying July 21 during a hearing of the defense subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “We have not kept pace with inflation. Back in 2010 we had about 280 battle force ships. We declined as we went through sequestration down to 271 and we built our way out of that up to about 297 today. That occurred as a result of a number of reform efforts and divestitures that we did inside the service.  

“That challenge that we’re facing now is that the good ideas, the [divestiture of] things that we don’t need to bring to the future fight, we’re starting to run out of that,” Crites said. “So, we’re challenged as we see labor costs far exceeding inflation; the cost and complexity of the work we’re trying to do; and materials we’re trying to buy all outpacing inflation. Yet we need to balance within the program that we have.” 

Crites said the Navy’s current priorities have not changed.  

“The No.1 priority is to bring in Columbia [ballistic-missile submarine. No. 2 is to ensure that we have a ready force; No. 3 is to make sure that we’re bringing the capabilities that we need; and No. 4 has been capacity that we can afford,” he said. 

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — Teledyne Technologies Inc.’s subsidiary, Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc., has been awarded an indefinite-quantity/indefinite-delivery contract with a maximum base value of $27.4 million from the U.S. Navy for the Littoral Battlespace Sensing-Glider (LBS-G) program, the company said in a July 19 release. 

The contract, awarded under full and open competition, includes a single five-year ordering period and five one-year option periods. The option periods, if exercised, have a ceiling value of $39.2 million. 

Teledyne Slocum gliders are long-endurance, buoyancy-driven autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that provide a highly persistent means to sample and characterize the ocean water column properties. They can do this at spatial and temporal resolutions not possible using other vessels or tactical units alone. The AUVs host a range of oceanographic sensors to support antisubmarine warfare, mine countermeasures and Naval Special Warfare mission areas. 

Teledyne Brown Engineering and sister company, Teledyne Webb Research, will perform the design, development, fabrication, production, test, and support of the LBS-G systems. Under a previous contract awarded in 2009, Teledyne delivered 203 gliders to the U.S. Navy. 

“We are pleased to announce the continuation of Teledyne’s successful partnership with the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command to deliver this capability,” stated Jan Hess, president of Teledyne’s Engineered System Segment and Teledyne Brown Engineering. “We look forward to supporting the Navy and assisting with its awareness and understanding of the ocean’s conditions.” 

Teledyne Slocum gliders provide the U.S. Navy the capability to conduct persistent sampling of large ocean areas for long periods of time. They also allow focused sampling to obtain extremely high-resolution data within a smaller, tactically significant operating area. The LBS-G System, part of the LBS Unmanned Undersea Vehicles program, is part of a solution to close critical capability gaps allowing the U.S. Navy to characterize adequately and persistently the physical ocean environment on tactical and strategic scales in a battlespace. 

ARLINGTON, Va.—The U.S. Navy’s 2022 budget proposal to decommission seven guided-missile cruisers is not just based on the age and material condition of the ships. According to the chief of naval operations (CNO), the lethality of the cruisers’ combat system is lagging behind the developing threat capabilities.

CNO Adm. Michael Gilday, speaking in a prerecorded webinar of the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Prequel, noted that the seven Ticonderoga-class cruisers are equipped with the SPY-1A or early SPY-1B radars, which are the oldest radars that are the main sensor of the Aegis Combat System. The SPY-1A is an analog system, increasingly anachronistic in the Digital Age.

The radars “are approaching obsolescence … and they have difficulty actually seeing the threat, based on the speed and the profiles that we see threat missiles flying at these days.”

Gilday said the cost to own and operate the seven CGs over the five-year Future Years Defense Plan would come to $5 billion.

“These ships on average right now are 32 years old,” he said. “We are seeing cracks. We are seeing challenges in the material condition of these ships that are, to a certain degree, unpredictable. So, they’re ‘unknown unknown.’ When we tried to deploy a ship most recently [USS Vella Gulf] and had to bring it back twice because of fuel tank cracks, is an example of something we just couldn’t predict that we have to react to, and it does have an impact on reliability. We need to be able to provide the secretary of defense reliable assets that they can count on to do the nation’s business.”

The CNO said the above factors “really came into play from a realistic standpoint in terms of making the argument for the best of those cruisers. The cost alone with respect to cruiser modernization is running tens of millions of dollars above what we had originally estimated, largely due to the unknowns that come into play with hulls that are over three decades old.”

The seven cruisers marked for decommissioning are USS San Jacinto (CG 56), USS Lake Champlain (CG 57), USS Monterey (CG 61), USS Hue City (CG 66), USS Anzio (CG 68), USS Vella Gulf (CG 72), and USS Port Royal (CG 73).