Navy announces major changes to GW's carrier air wing

An MH-60S Seahawk of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 23 shuttles supplies between the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and the combat support ship USNS Rainer in July 2008.

The U.S. Navy announced a host of changes to the USS George Washington’s carrier air wing Friday, in what amounts to at least the third significant Navy airframe upgrade in the Asia-Pacific region this year.

The HSL-51 Warlords squadron at Naval Air Facility Atsugi will swap their SH-60B and SH-60F Seahawk helicopters for newer MH-60S and MH-60R Seahawks, officials from Commander Naval Forces Japan said Friday.

Atsugi also will gain the HSM-77 Saberhawks squadron, which flies MH-60s, from the USS Abraham Lincoln’s carrier air wing at Naval Air Station North Island, Calif.

Additionally, North Island’s HSC-12 Golden Falcons will swap places with Atsugi’s HS-14 Chargers. The duty station changes and aircraft swap preparation will begin Tuesday and be complete by December 2013, Navy officials said.

The new helicopters are designed to handle submarine and surface warfare, cargo lifts, search-and-rescue and other missions, according to Navy documents and manufacturer Sikorsky’s website.

The changes are part of a master aviation plan devised by the Navy to place its most advanced assets in what it refers to as forward-deployed regions. Of those forward-deployed areas, the Pentagon and the Obama administration have singled out the Asia-Pacific region as their highest long-term priority.

The net addition of one helicopter squadron will lessen a load placed on other aircraft since the VS-21 helicopter squadron departed Japan eight years ago.

“The squadron that left in 2004 was never replaced, so the P-3s and other [anti-submarine warfare] assets worked overtime to fill in,” Commander Naval Forces Japan spokesman Jon Nylander said Friday.

Although the P-3 Orion aircraft are based in Hawaii and two other U.S. locations, they are frequently deployed to Japan to monitor regional waters. The upgraded P-8 Poseidon aircraft will replace the P-3 Orion within the next year, Navy officials told Stars and Stripes in August.

The Navy in Japan also replaced its EA-6B Prowlers with EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets earlier this year.

The new helicopters are unlikely to produce the uproar that greeted the deployment of the Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey hybrid aircraft to Japan in July. The tilt-rotor aircraft, designed to replace the Marines’ aging Sea Knight helicopters, has faced widespread opposition in Okinawa based on safety concerns, though military and Japanese officials maintain that the Osprey is mechanically sound.

Navy Delays Carrier’s Combat Tests

The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford is shown in an artist's rendition. The completed initial vessel, the first of three in the $40.2 billion program, is projected to cost at least $11.5 billion. Source: Huntington Ingalls

 

The U.S. Navy is inappropriately delaying or scaling back $70 million in needed combat testing of the USS Gerald R. Ford, an aircraft carrier that may cost $14.2 billion, in the name of cutting costs, according to the Pentagon’s top weapons tester.

A test that would “rigorously evaluate the ship’s ability to withstand shock and survive in combat” would be postponed until a second carrier in the new Ford class is built and may not be completed for seven years, Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department’s director of operational test and evaluation, told Navy Secretary Ray Mabus in a July 12 memo obtained by Bloomberg News.

Gilmore’s objections add to criticism of the carriers for their increasing price tag as well as their potential vulnerability to rival militaries with expanding arsenals of ballistic and cruise missiles, undersea mines, submarines, drones and cyber weapons.

“I recognize the need to expend resources wisely for all purposes, including testing, in the existing constrained fiscal environment,” Gilmore said in the memo. “I consider these test costs well-justified, particularly when considered in the context of the $27.8 billion cost to design and build the first three of these new carriers, clearly one of the most expensive combat systems the department has ever acquired.”

Once they’re fully equipped, the three carriers may cost $42.5 billion. The price tag for the Ford, the first carrier in the class being built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. (HII), based in Newport News, Virginia, has climbed about 18 percent in four years to $12.3 billion, according to Defense Department data.

Independent Office

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the final cost will be closer to $14.2 billion. The new carriers, the Navy’s costliest vessels, will rise 20 stories above the water, be 1,092 feet (333 meters) long and move at 30 knots (35 miles per hour) with almost 5,000 Americans on board.

Congress created Gilmore’s office in 1983 to independently oversee weapons testing, including approving test plans or disapproving them as needed. His office can influence spending on weapons programs by rejecting plans, taking its concerns to Congress or senior Pentagon officials, or finding that a weapon is ineffective or can’t be maintained.

The dispute centers on the Navy’s decision to change the agreed-upon test plan for the first carrier in the class without Gilmore’s approval. The Navy wants to shift “full ship shock trial” evaluations to the John F. Kennedy, the second carrier, in the move Gilmore says would delay conducting the tests and gathering needed data for five to seven years.

Rescinding Approval

The tests, estimated to cost about $60 million, are designed to evaluate a ship’s ability to perform its mission after absorbing repeated shock waves from underwater explosions using live ammunition detonated at a distance.

Gilmore rescinded approval of the test plan on July 12 and that decision remains in place, he said in an e-mail through his spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin. Gilmore also said he has informed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s staff of his concerns.

Gilmore said in the e-mail that the delay “is not appropriate” because the tests “provide information key to assuring a ship’s survivability in combat.”

Captain Cate Mueller, a Navy spokeswoman, said in an e- mailed statement that “the Navy and test office are committed to providing the most capable and survivable carrier.” The service’s differences with Gilmore “are in the technical aspects and phasing of the shock trials,” she said.

‘High-Cost Event’

Conducting the full shock test “is a high-cost event with schedule impact,” she said. The Navy also has been under pressure due to environmental impact concerns “to identify alternative means to validate ship shock design,” Mueller said.

The Ford carrier’s hull form “has been subject to extensive survivability modeling and simulation, robust equipment and system component testing,” she said, and the Navy’s decision to delay the full shock testing “is fully consistent with past practices for new ship classes.”

Gilmore wrote Mabus that postponing the full shock tests until they can be performed on the Kennedy “would preclude timely modification of subsequent ships of this class to ensure survivability.”

Conducting the tests on the first ship as originally planned would cause about a two-month delay in fielding the carrier, according to Gilmore.

“The data to be gained and risk mitigated are, in my view, clearly valuable enough to justify this delay,” Gilmore wrote Mabus.

Survivability Trials

Gilmore wrote Mabus that he also disagreed with a second Navy decision that would “limit the scope” of “total ship survivability trials” on the first carrier. These tests, at an estimated cost of $10 million, are designed to demonstrate the ability of the ship and crew to control damage resulting from simulated anti-ship weapons and continue fighting.

“I cannot accept elimination of key and essential survivability analyses,” including proposals to eliminate analysis of the carrier’s machinery spaces, “simply to satisfy budget reductions,” Gilmore said.

The Navy’s carrier test plans seem similar to the “bind we find ourselves in” with the F-35 being built by Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), Thomas Christie, a former director of Pentagon testing from 2001 to 2005, said in an e-mail this week. The Joint Strike Fighter is the Pentagon’s costliest weapon.

“We will have procured several hundred aircraft prior to the completion of testing, all of which may require substantial fixes and modification -- acquisition ‘malpractice’ as described by a senior official,” Christie said.

In addition to disagreeing with the Navy’s carrier test schedule, Gilmore said in February that the Navy lacks a target needed to check its defenses against China’s new DF-21D ballistic missile, which is designed to attack aircraft carriers.

The Navy has an “immediate need” for a test missile able to replicate the DF-21D’s trajectory as it descends, Gilmore said in his annual report.

Aircraft Carrier Funding Approved

A photo illustration of the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy (CVN 79).

Huntington Ingalls Industries (NYSE:HII) said that its Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) division has received a $43.4 million modification to a previously awarded contract from the U.S. Navy for purchase of materials for the construction of the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy (CVN 79), the second ship in the Navy's newest class of carriers.

The funds awarded to NNS will be used to purchase major, long-lead-time equipment, such as the ship's elevator machinery and large pumps. NNS is performing work on CVN 79 under a construction preparation contract that allows for engineering, planning, long-lead-time material procurement and initial manufacturing to begin before the full construction contract is awarded. The full contract is scheduled to beawarded in 2013.

"This award enables us to continue our construction preparation efforts, allowing us to provide a more efficient approach to building the ship that supports one of our most important goals, affordability," said Mike Shawcross, NNS' vice president, CVN 79 construction. "We see the Ford, the first ship of the class, steadily taking shape in our dry dock, and it's exciting to know we will be building John F. Kennedy right behind it."

John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) will continue the Navy's legacy of highly capable nuclear-powered aircraft carrier ship platforms. Enhancements incorporated into the design of the new class include flight deck changes, improved weapons handling systems and a redesigned island, all resulting in increased aircraft sortie generation rates. The Ford class will also include new nuclear power plants, increased electrical power generation capacity, allowance for future technologies and reduced workload for the sailors, translating to a smaller crew size and reduced operating costs. The result is a class of carrier that will have lower total ownership cost for the Navy and improved capability.

Lockheed Martin Completes On-Orbit Testing of First U.S. Navy MUOS Satellite

Lockheed Martin announced July 17th 2012 that it has completed on-orbit testing of the first Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite, designated MUOS-1, paving the way for the U.S. Navy’s multi-service operational test and evaluation phase in preparation for the start of operations in August 2012.

The successful on-orbit checkout of this revolutionary satellite is a great testament to the close coordination and partnership between the U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin team,” said Mark Valerio, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin’s Military Space line of business. “This event is another major milestone in our commitment to provide unparalleled communications capabilities that put mission-critical, real-time information in the hands of our mobile warfighters.”

MUOS-1 was launched Feb. 24, 2012 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. A next-generation narrowband tactical satellite communications system, MUOS will provide significantly improved and secure communications for mobile warfighters, including simultaneous voice, video and data.

                         

Lockheed Martin announced today that it has completed on-orbit testing of the first Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite, designated MUOS-1, paving the way for the U.S. Navy’s multi-service operational test and evaluation phase in preparation for the start of operations in August 2012.

                         

“The team successfully completed this critical on-orbit test phase in an effective and efficient manner to support our customer’s program schedule,” said Mark Pasquale, who oversaw the spacecraft test phase as Lockheed Martin vice president and MUOS program manager. “The satellite is exceeding all performance requirements as a result of the disciplined flight-like test program it was subjected to in the factory prior to launch.”

MUOS satellites are equipped with a wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) payload that provides a 16-fold increase in transmission throughput over the current Ultra High Frequency (UHF) satellite system, including global connectivity through the Defense Information Systems Network and support services such as full two-way voice and data transfers.

                         

                         

Lockheed Martin's MUOS operations team conducted the on-orbit deployment and checkout of all spacecraft systems over a three month period, with both payloads passing a series of rigorous on-orbit tests with existing UHF ground systems and new WCDMA test terminals.

A single MUOS satellite will provide four times the capacity of the entire UFO constellation of 8 satellites. Each MUOS satellite also includes a legacy UHF payload that is fully compatible with the current UHF Follow-on system and legacy terminals. This dual-payload design ensures a smooth transition to the cutting-edge WCDMA technology while the UFO system is phased out.

The first MUOS satellite and associated ground system will provide initial on-orbit capability this year, followed by the launch of the second spacecraft in 2013. The five-satellite global constellation is expected to achieve full operational capability in 2015, extending UHF narrowband communications availability to the armed forces well past 2025.

Navy doctor let kids hold dead Marine’s brain

A Navy pathologist has been reassigned to an administrative position for letting his children handle the brain of a deceased Marine Corps sergeant while his wife took pictures in their home.

Cmdr. Mark Shelly, a doctor of osteopathic medicine, admitted to the Virginia Board of Medicine to mishandling the deceased Marine’s brain while it was transported from Camp Lejeune, N.C., to Portsmouth Naval Hospital, board records show. When the military learned of it, Shelly was moved to a position at Portsmouth where he no longer performs autopsies. The medical board fined him $2,500 on June 28 and closed the case Tuesday after he paid the fine.

Shelly could not be reached for comment, but in a letter to the board he said he used “extremely poor” judgment.

Shelly was a regional medical examiner and would travel to different medical facilities to perform autopsies, a position that allowed for examinations without having to ship a person’s entire remains, said Paul Stone, a spokesman for the Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s Office at Dover Air Base, Del.

According to the board’s summary of the incident, after performing a Dec. 20 autopsy on the sergeant at Naval Hospital Camp Lejune, Shelly transported the sergeant’s brain in a “stock jar” to his home. While there, he took the brain out of the jar, and allowed his children to hold it while his wife took pictures. The next day, he took the brain to Portsmouth to be preserved for a neuropathological exam.

Stone said the exam was necessary because no obvious cause of death had been discovered.

A pathologist at Portsmouth said the incident at Shelly’s home did not impact his ability to determine the cause of death, board records said.

Navy officials agreed that Shelly’s actions were inappropriate.

“We strive to treat all of our patients, living and deceased, and their families, with the utmost dignity and respect,” said Capt. Dora Lockwood, a spokeswoman for the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.

Besides the fine, Shelly was fired Jan. 19 from his position as a medical examiner for the Tidewater, Va., region, a job he held in addition to his career with the Navy. He hadn’t told the service about his other employment, board records show.

The state licensing board learned about the incident Jan. 17 from an anonymous tip, a Navy official said. Stone said Shelly told the chief medical examiner at Dover what had happened after the board informed him of the allegations. The medical examiner suspended Shelly and visited the Marine’s family to tell them what had happened.

Medical personnel had been allowed to transport human specimens stored in a proper container between locations and were allowed to make stops along the way, but those rules were changed Jan. 20. It’s unclear if this incident prompted the new rules.

Navy admiral hints at jettisoning F-35 fighter

The Navy has planned to buy about 480 of the aircraft-carrier version of the F-35, even as the stealth fighter's costs have skyrocketed and the Navy prepares to shrink its fleet of ships for lack of money. A magazine column by Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, the chief of naval operations, suggests they may not be needed.

The chief of naval operations has penned an opinion column that has military analysts buzzing over whether it signals the Navy may be the first military branch to jettison the costly F-35 stealth fighter jet.

Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert’s column in the current issue of Proceedings magazine questions the value of radar-evading technology, or stealth, in flying to a target and bombing it in a world of rapidly improving radars.

At the same time, the Navy’s top officer champions the future of unmanned planes and standoff weapons such as ship-fired cruise missiles. Adm. Greenert also mentions the ongoing budget-cutting environment in Washington.

The Navy has planned to buy about 480 of the aircraft-carrier version of the F-35, even as the stealth fighter jet’s costs have skyrocketed and the Navy prepares to shrink its fleet of ships for lack of money.

To military analysts, all of Adm. Greenert’s points add up to a conclusion that the Navy is having second thoughts about pouring billions of dollars into the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Not true, says the admiral’s spokesman.

“Those reports are wrong,” NavyLt. Nate Curtis said. “The CNO [chief of naval operations] has stated he is committed to the Joint Strike Fighter.

“The CNO was not talking about a commitment to the Joint Strike Fighter. That isn’t the issue. He was talking about stealth in the future and looking at the return on investment. That’s what he talks about in that article,” Lt. Curtis said.

That has not stopped analysts from conjecturing about the Pentagon’s most expensive acquisition program in an era of mounting federal debt.

“Adm. Greenert’s controversial — and, potentially, hugely consequential — article raises several interesting points, among which is the contention that advances in sensing capabilities and electronic and cyberwarfare will increasingly degrade America’s stealth arsenal,” wrote Mackenzie Eaglen, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “This is not news. What is news, however, is the head of the Navy signaling a tepid commitment to the military’s largest acquisition program.”

In his column, Adm. Greenert does not mention the fighter by name, but he does note the limits of stealth technology. And the Navy is buying only one stealth aircraft — the F-35.

“We appear to be reaching the limits of how much a platform’s inherent stealth can affordably get it close enough to survey or attack adversaries,” Adm. Greenert says in a magazine that serves as a sounding board for active and retired officers. “And our fiscal situation will continue to require difficult trade-offs, requiring us to look for new ways to control costs while remaining relevant.”

The admiral, a former submarine commander now in the first year of a four-year term, writes of advances in radars and computers that can detect even the best stealth planes as they near a target.

“The Navy has been sending signals for a long time,” said Winslow Wheeler, an analyst at the Center for Defense Information, a budget reform group. “The most recent Greenert comments in Proceedings shows that longstanding information, available for decades, about the vulnerability of stealth to long-wavelength radars is beginning to sink in as the realizations of the gigantic dollar, tactical and reliability costs escalate.”

Designed as a multipurpose fighter to replace the Air Force’s F-16 Falcons and the Navy’s F-18 Hornets, the F-35 now carries a price tag of $395.7 billion for 2,443 planes.

U.S. Navy Rethinks The Silent Service

The U.S. Navy is rethinking how it will use its submarines in a future Pacific War. The problem is that a campaign against Chinese shipping is unlikely, in part because of what actually happened during the last great anti-shipping campaign, which occurred during World War II (1939-45). After the war, the U.S. analyzed its operations against Japanese shipping and found that submarines were important, but not the only weapon effective against shipping. Some 8.9 million tons of Japanese shipping was sunk or so seriously damaged (disabled) at the end of the war. Submarines accounted for 54.7 percent of this. But 16.3 percent was attributable to carrier-based aircraft, 14.5 percent to land- based planes and 9.3 percent to mines (most dropped by B-29s). Less than one percent was due to surface gunfire, and the balance of 4 percent was caused by accidents.

Because of their ability to operate in enemy-controlled (mainly by land-based aircraft) waters, submarines accounted for about 60 percent of the damage until the final months of the war. Then, during late 1944, carrier task forces went deep into enemy controlled areas, defending themselves against land-based warplanes and sinking a large numbers of ships. After April, 1945 Japanese shipping was restricted to the Korean and Manchurian runs and to shallow coastal waters. At this point the naval mines dropped by B-29s in Japanese harbors and inland waterways accounted for 50 percent of all ships sunk or damaged. That was then, but sixty years later the United States is able to monitor large ocean areas and has aircraft that are able to hit anything that's spotted. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. has adopted a new approach to any potential war with China. The U.S. Department of Defense has been told that, for the foreseeable future, there will be no more large-scale land campaigns. The air force, navy, and marines responded with a plan (AirSea Battle) that has been in the work for years. The new strategy is designed to cope with the rising power of China in the Pacific. AirSea Battle involves tighter planning and coordination of navy, marine, and navy forces, plus the development of some new weapons and tactics and cooperation with allies.

AirSea Battle has been widely accepted, as China continues to make all its neighbors nervous. That's because the Chinese name for China translates as "middle kingdom" as in "China is the middle of the world." The Chinese government, a communist dictatorship by any other name, is using nationalism to keep its pro-democracy opposition off balance. China has border disputes, expressed or implied, with all its neighbors. This has made the neighbors uneasy, especially as Chinese military forces have been modernized and more aggressive over the last decade.

While Air-Sea Battle was developed to keep the United States out of extensive land combat (the navy still has commandos and marines for brief operations ashore), those kinds of wars tend to show up when you least expect, want, or are prepared for them. For the moment, U.S. military planners believe they can avoid a large land war.

The U.S. Navy has been studying (and wargaming) the situation and that included an examination of American submarine use since World War II. After the 1960s, the U.S. shifted to using only nuclear propelled submarines. During the Cold War (1948-91), American subs were meant for use in defeating the growing Soviet (Russian) fleet. That force disappeared in the 1990s. At that point the Chinese fleet got larger and modernized, but is still nowhere near the size of the Soviet Navy. But this time the U.S. was facing a major trading nation. Unlike Russia, which was largely self-sufficient (or could get what it needed overland from neighbors), China requires thousands of ships a year to handle exports and imports. Like Japan during World War II, China is vulnerable here.

AirSea battle concentrates on military operations. But these will be heavily influenced by economic factors. For example, during World War II the United States was a largely self-sufficient "continental power." We exported much (more than any other nation on the planet), but did not have to import much. That has changed. Now the U.S. has to import a lot of its oil, special raw materials (like "rare earths" from China) and a lot of manufactured goods. The U.S. is now like much of the rest of the world, China included. If there were a maritime blockade of China, the U.S. and many other Chinese trading partners would suffer severe economic disruptions. There would be massive unemployment for all concerned and that would happen despite energetic efforts by everyone to find alternative sources to goods no longer available because of the disruption of the China trade.

Then there is the risk of nuclear war. Since the first nuclear weapons were used in 1945, there has been the longest period of peace between major powers in human history. These days a "major power" is one that has nuclear weapons and can deliver them against other nuclear armed nations. Thus any maritime blockade of China will be a very risky undertaking. That said, it can be done without submarines. Simply order the Western maritime insurance companies to withdraw insurance for ships or cargoes entering or leaving China. That will have immediate effect. China can scramble to try and replace the insurance covering, but along with the "insurance bomb" comes the U.S. declaration that the coastal waters of China are now under blockade and any ship ignoring that is subject to attack. It goes downhill from there, until compromise and moderation replace the war fever.

Meanwhile, the nuclear submarine community has done the math and found that their greatest contribution these days is not attacking enemy warships, but land bombardment with cruise missiles and intelligence collecting. Since the first nuclear subs showed up in the 1950s, only one, a British boat, has used a torpedo to sink a hostile warship. But hundreds of cruise missiles have been launched at land targets and uncounted (because they are highly classified) intelligence missions have been, and continue to be, carried out. All that is the recent past for subs, and is likely to be the future as well. World War II in the Pacific is not likely to be rerun. The U.S. Navy still expects its subs to go after enemy warships, and its surface and air forces to battle enemy subs. But a major war on shipping is much less likely.