ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy has ordered long-lead materials and activity to support production of eight P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft for its patrol squadrons plus 10 more for foreign military sales.  

Naval Air Systems Command has awarded an $800 million contract modification for long-lead materials and activities for Lot 11 production of 18 P-8As, including eight for the U.S. Navy, six for the Republic of Korea Navy and four for the Royal New Zealand Air Force, according to a Pentagon contract announcement. 

The funds for the work were appropriated in the fiscal 2020 budget.  

The Navy was authorized to procure nine P-8As in the 2020 budget, but one was targeted to be delayed or cancelled as part of a reprogramming request to shift some Defense Department funds to construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

WASHINGTON — The Navy will commission its newest Expeditionary Sea Base, USS Hershel “Woody” Williams (ESB 4), during a 10 a.m. EST ceremony Saturday, March 7, in Norfolk, Virginia, the Navy’s Office on Information announced in a March 6 release. 

The future Hershel “Woody” Williams is the first ship to bear the name of Marine Corps Chief Warrant Officer Four Hershel Woodrow Williams, the last surviving Medal of Honor recipient recognized for heroism at the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II. 

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia will deliver the commissioning ceremony’s principal address. The ceremony will be highlighted by a time-honored Navy tradition when Ms. Tracie Jean Ross and Ms. Travie Jane Ross, ship sponsors and daughters of Hershel “Woody” Williams, will give the first order to “man our ship and bring her to life!” 

“This ship honors a man who dedicated his life to service — heroic service as a Marine, and continued service to his fellow veterans,” said Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly. “This dedication will live on in USS Hershel ‘Woody’ Williams as the ship is deployed around the world bringing additional capability to our growing fleet. The ceremony on Saturday will also represent the dedication to service demonstrated by the men and women who worked tirelessly to build this ship and their commitment to quality and innovation.” 

The future Hershel “Woody” Williams is optimized to support a variety of maritime-based missions and designed around four core capabilities: aviation facilities, berthing, equipment staging support, and command and control assets. ESBs can be enhanced to meet special operations force missions through increased communications, aviation and unmanned aircraft system support. 

Built by General Dynamics NASSCO, the Montford Point-class is comprised of five ships across two variants: Expeditionary Transfer Docks and Expeditionary Sea Bases. Acting as a mobile sea base, ESBs are part of the critical access infrastructure that supports the deployment of forces and supplies to provide prepositioned equipment and sustainment with flexible distribution. 

The platform has an aviation hangar and flight deck that include four operating spots capable of landing V-22 and MH-53E equivalent helicopters, accommodations, work spaces, and ordnance storage for an embarked force. The platform will also provide unmanned aviation vehicle operations, enhanced command and control, communications, computers, and intelligence capabilities to support embarked force mission planning and execution. The reconfigurable mission deck area can store embarked force equipment including mine sleds and rigid hull inflatable boats. 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy’s controversial decision to propose one Virginia-class attack submarine (SSN) instead of two in the fiscal year 2021 budget was a matter of budget priorities — not a concern over shipyard or program capacity to start construction of the Columbia ballistic-missile sub, the Navy’s top acquisition official told Congress. 

“I had less confidence six to nine months ago where we were seeing some of the Block IV [Virginia SSN] deliveries starting to move to the right, and the concern was can we maintain the cadence to not add risk to Columbia,” James F. Geurts, Navy assistant secretary for research, development and acquisition, said March 4 during testimony before Seapower and Projection Forces, a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. 

Geurts repeated his previous assertion that “the No. 1 way to reduce risk to Columbia is a stable, well-performing Virginia program.” 

The Navy worked closely with the submarine builders, Electric Boat and Newport News Shipyard, to stabilize the transition from Block III to Block IV. 

“I am happy to report that over the last six months that has stabilized,” he said. “My concerns are not, now, ‘Can they execute?’ he said. “They just need to continue to execute.” 

Geurts said that at the time a “relief valve” was created by making the 10th Virginia-class SSN an option in the recent multiyear Block V procurement. The second 2021 Virginia SSN became “more of an affordability issue, not an execution issue,” he said. “I’m confident [the shipyards] can execute [building] the ship.” 

The second Virginia SSN is atop the Navy’s list of 2021 unfunded priorities. 

“We need to add that ship in this year, or we’ll just have to work on that at the start of Block VI,” Geurts said. “I don’t think there is a way to execute three [submarines] in a Columbia year with a high degree of success.” 

“Submarine construction is very sensitive to cadence … and dips in workload, so there is some work we’re going to do at the end of 2023 with the shipbuilder,” he added. “The last thing we want to do is lay off folks [only] to climb this giant Columbia wall. 

“If we cut short and have a large gap at the end of Block V [production] before having Block VI move in and Columbia start up, that will be a risk to execution not only in Virginia but to Columbia.” 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy is looking at acquisition strategies for procuring four amphibious warfare ships over the next few years to achieve economies, the Navy’s top acquisition official said. 

During March 4 testimony about the fiscal 2021 shipbuilding proposal before the Seapower subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee by James F. Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said he was pleased that the 2021 proposal had accelerated the planned procurement of amphibious assault ship LHA 9 from fiscal 2024 to fiscal 2023. 

Geurts said that the acceleration was enabled because Congress had appropriated funds and given incremental funding authority “relatively early to that need.”  

“Our challenge in the future budgets will be to place that money back in the program so we can deliver that LHA,” he said.  

Wicker asked about the possibility of a multiyear procurement for three Block II San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships (LPDs 31, 32 and 33) and LHA 9. He referred to a request last year from the Seapower subcommittee to “review alternative acquisition strategies for amphibious ships to leverage multiple-ship contracts, which have saved billions of dollars. In this review, the Navy reported that significant savings could be achieved by procuring various combinations of amphibious ships.” 

“There is tremendous potential as [said] in our report to Congress, and as we’ve looked at it even further to doing a block buy of the three LPDs and the LHA,” Geurts said. 

“We see that savings to be in that 8% to 12% range, which would be a billion dollars back in taxpayer savings. So, we’re looking at that closely. We’re also executing that advance procurement, long-lead funding that’s been appropriated with the incremental authority. The things that I’ve seen in the draft of the SHIPS Implementation Act in terms of giving us more authorities to do smart procurement will be tremendously beneficial.” 

The Huntington Ingalls shipyard where the Navy’s amphibious warfare ships are built is in Pascagoula, Mississippi. 

PATUXENT RIVER, Md. — The Specialized and Proven Aircraft program office (PMA-226) recently completed a modification on several U.S. Navy F-16A Fighting Falcon aircraft to increase readiness and service life, according to Naval Air Systems Command. 

The FalconUp modification improves F-16A readiness by extending their fatigue lives by more than 500 hours and provides the configuration baseline to incorporate the funded Falcon Star program, which adds an additional 3,750 hours to the service lives of the aircraft. 

“The FalconUp upgrade incorporates structural improvements that extend the service life of the aircraft from 3,665 hours to 4,250 hours,” said Capt. Ramiro Flores, PMA-226’s program manager. “The program procured and installed proven structural modification kits on 10 U.S. Navy aircraft that enhanced and strengthened their internal structure.” 

PMA-226 used a rapid acquisition approach, in this case a build-to-print strategy to minimize risk and eliminate the need for test plans, systems engineering plans and design reviews. Build-to-print is a process in which a manufacturer produces products, equipment or components according to the customer’s exact specifications. 

The program office leveraged existing designs that the U.S. Air Force and international partners have used to install the modification and have been including it in production of the F-16 for more than two decades. The Navy competitively awarded the contract to ES3 Prime Logistics Group Inc., which has previously manufactured the same components for the Air Force and PMA-226. 

“Since the proven design has flown thousands of hours in this configuration, and it doesn’t require expansion of the current flight envelope, we were able to deliver this training capability to the warfighter much faster than a traditional program,” said Lt. Cmdr. Heather Bliss, PMA-226 adversary program team co-lead. 

“The upgrade allows the Navy to provide mission ready adversary aircraft for Naval aviation advanced tactical and aerial combat training, extending the operational life of the F-16A through 2025,” said Boyd Forsythe, PMA-226 adversary program team lead.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Naval Air Systems Command has ordered two MV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor transport aircraft and provided funds to continue the modernization of the Osprey fleet. 

According to the Feb. 28 Pentagon contract announcement, NAVAIR awarded Bell-Boeing a $165.3 million contract under the fiscal 2020 defense budget for the two MV-22Bs and for repairs to the existing Osprey fleet under the Common Configuration Readiness and Modernization (CC-RAM) program. 

The CC-RAM program is designed to reduce about 70 different sub-configurations of the Osprey fleet to standard configurations. Most of the existing Osprey fleet is the Block B configuration. Bell-Boeing delivered the first of 129 Block B MV-22Bs to be converted to Block C standards to the Marine Corps on Dec. 10.  

The Block C incorporates upgrades added as a result of lessons learned in combat deployments of the Osprey. The upgrades include improved cockpit displays, a display in the passenger/cargo cabin, chaff and flare dispensers and a weather radar. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy will christen its newest Freedom-variant littoral combat ship (LCS), the future USS Cooperstown (LCS 23), during a 10 a.m. CDT ceremony on Feb. 29 in Marinette, Wisconsin, the Pentagon said in a release. 

Alba Tull will serve as the ship’s sponsor. In a time-honored Navy tradition, she will christen the ship by breaking a bottle of sparkling wine across the bow. Jane Forbes Clark, chairman of the board of directors of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, will deliver the ceremony’s keynote address.  

“The christening of the future USS Cooperstown marks an important step toward this great ship’s entry into the fleet,” acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said. “The dedication and skilled work of everyone involved in the building of this ship has ensured that it will represent the great city of Cooperstown and serve our Navy and Marine Corps team for decades to come.” 

LCS 23 is the 12th Freedom-variant LCS, the 23rd in the class. The Cooperstown is the first ship named in honor of the city. LCS 23 received its name on July 25, 2015, during a ceremony at the Hall of Fame and it honors the veterans who are members of the Hall of Fame. These 64 men served in conflicts ranging from the Civil War through the Korean War. 

LCS is a modular and reconfigurable ship, designed to meet validated fleet requirements for surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare and mine countermeasures missions in the littoral region. Using an open architecture design, modular weapons, sensor systems and a variety of manned and unmanned vehicles to gain, sustain and exploit littoral maritime supremacy, LCS provides the U.S. joint force access to critical areas in multiple theaters. 

The LCS class consists of two variants, the Freedom variant and the Independence variant, designed and built by two industry teams. The Freedom-variant team is led by Lockheed Martin in Marinette (for the odd-numbered hulls). The Independence-variant team is led by Austal USA in Mobile, Alabama, (for LCS 6 and the subsequent even-numbered hulls).

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy’s forthcoming Integrated Naval Force Structure Assessment (INFSA) differs from the 2016 FSA by some inflection points, including a reduced emphasis on large surface combatants, the Navy’s top official said. 

Acting Navy Secretary Thomas B. Modly, speaking Feb. 28 at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, noted several inflection points.  

“One of the more significant things is de-emphasis on large surface combatants,” Modly said. “You will see that number come down in favor of more small, highly capable surface combatants like the frigate and some of the things that we’re thinking about doing with the LCS [littoral combat ship].” 

He said another inflection point is unmanned vessels.  

“There is a large discussion about how unmanned [vessels] would work,” he said. “The numbers of the end-state of that are still in flux, and I’m fully comfortable with that being in flux because, frankly, we don’t have any right now. Whether we end up of 45 or something [unmanned vessels] that we don’t know or 50 or 75 we don’t know, it’s sort of irrelevant.” 

“We know we have to start down the path towards unmanned to understand how that’s going to work, and that’s both underwater and above water, [including] large, medium, small, etc.,” he said. 

Modly also said that two new classes of ships are being considered by the Navy. One is a smaller, lighter, more lightly manned amphibious ship that “can provide the distributed maritime operations and the expeditionary advanced base operations that are part of [Marine Commandant David H. Berger’s] vision.” 

The second class is a combat support ship.  

“We currently don’t have those kind of ships in the fleet right now, nor on the drawing board,” he said. “In this [fiscal 2021] budget, we have dollars assigned to start research and development.” 

Modly noted that there are differences between the Navy Department’s analysis and that of the Defense Department’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office. 

“I don’t think they’re that significant, when you’re talking about a plan that’s going to evolve over 10 years, so it’s [Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s] prerogative and so we’re supporting him in taking a look at that,” he said. “The next couple of months we’ll probably tighten up some of those differences.” 

“We’ve got to invest in a new amphib; we’ve got to invest in a new combat support [vessel]; we’ve got to invest in the frigate,” Modly said. “We’ve got to think about how we accelerate the pace in which we’re going to acquire the frigate. We’ve got to think about unmanned.”  

Modly said the Navy and Marine Corps both assigned three-star flag officers to conduct the INFSA, a study that included campaign analyses. 

“It’s a good starting point for this future force structure,” he said. “What we want to do now is take it out of the realm being something we do every four years. This is how we have to start thinking as a department. So, we are developing a process now to take that statement around and iterate it continually so that it can inform our budget process in more of a real-time manner.”

PASCAGOULA, Miss. — The U.S. Navy accepted delivery on Feb. 28 of the future USS Tripoli, the newest America-class amphibious assault ship, from Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Ingalls Shipbuilding Division, the Navy announced.   

Amphibious assault ships project power and maintain presence by serving as the cornerstone of the amphibious ready group or expeditionary strike group. These ships transport elements of a U.S. Marine expeditionary unit or Marine expeditionary brigade with a combination of aircraft and landing craft. Optimized for aviation capability, Tripoli will enhance Marine aviation with an enlarged hangar deck, greater maintenance capability, and JP-5 fuel capacity. 

“On behalf of the entire team, I am grateful to take delivery of this versatile warfighting asset,” said Tom Rivers, amphibious warfare program manager for Program Executive Office (PEO)-Ships. “The Navy and industry team has worked persistently to deliver this platform, ready to integrate the Marine Corps air combat element, including the Joint Strike Fighter, to our combatant commanders.”   

USS Tripoli incorporates the fuel-efficient gas turbine propulsion plant, zonal electrical distribution, and electric auxiliary systems first installed on USS Makin Island (LHD 8). LHA 7 will be 844 feet in length, will have a displacement of about 44,971 long tons and can operate at speeds of more than 20 knots. 

“Shipbuilding is a team sport, and LHA 7 is no exception,” said Capt. Nathan Schneider, supervisor of shipbuilding, conversion and repair (SUPSHIP) Gulf Coast at Naval Sea Systems Command. 

“LHA 7 represents the culmination of significant work effort by shipbuilders here at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, suppliers around the nation, and government stakeholders both here in Pascagoula as well as Naval Sea Systems Command and the Program Executive Office-Ships in Washington, D.C., along with the warfare centers around the country.” 

With Tripoli delivered, the ship will focus on moving crew aboard and preparing for commissioning and sail-away later this year.  

HII’s Pascagoula shipyard also is producing Bougainville (LHA 8), the guided missile destroyers Delbert D. Black (DDG 119), Frank E. Peterson (DDG 121), Lenah H. Sutcliffe Higbee (DDG 123) and Jack H. Lucas (DDG 125) and amphibious transport dock ships, Fort Lauderdale (LPD 28) and Richard M. McCool Jr. (LPD 29). 

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Huntington Ingalls Industries has reached an
important milestone in the construction of the aircraft carrier John F.
Kennedy as the first of 2,700 compartments were turned over to the ship’s crew,
the company announced.

The completed spaces allow Sailors to begin training on the carrier
while final outfitting and testing progresses at the company’s Newport News
Shipbuilding division.

Earlier this month, Sailors assigned to the pre-commissioning
unit began coming onboard the ship and working in some of the compartments,
which include a training facility, offices and habitability spaces.

Turning over crew training areas earlier in Kennedy’s
construction was a lesson learned from the construction of the USS Gerald
R. Ford. As a result, the Kennedy’s construction team was able to
complete and turn over 63 compartments to the ship’s crew over four months
earlier than on Ford.

“The first Sailors coming onboard is a significant step in the
life of the ship,” said Mike Butler, program director for Kennedy. “Our
completing and turning over these spaces to the crew will allow them to start
on-hands, shipboard training, and learn the systems and components they will
operate when the ship joins the fleet.”

Over the next two and a half years, other spaces, such as
berthing and mess areas, will be completed, and distributive, mechanical and
combat systems, such as catapults and radar arrays, will be tested.