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August 3, 2018 | International, Naval
Coast Guard Commandant Schultz Optimistic Congress Will Fund New Heavy Icebreaker Program
By: Ben Werner
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Fiscal Year 2019 money for a Coast Guard heavy polar icebreaker is frozen on Capitol Hill, but the service's commandant is optimistic the project will ultimately be funded.
The Senate's Fiscal Year 2019 Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill includes $750 million for the heavy icebreaker but the House version zeroed-out the heavy icebreaker money for the year to make additional funds available for building a barrier along the U.S. southern border.
The department's border wall budget request was for $1.6 billion, but House appropriators recommended spending $5 billion on border security infrastructure, according to the Homeland Security Funding bill approved last week by the House appropriations committee.
However, there is still time to make the case for restoring polar icebreaker funding, Adm. Karl Schultz, the new Coast Guard commandant, said on Wednesday at a Maritime Security dialogue hosted by the U.S. Naval Institute at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“The Senate marked up their version of the project and the $750 million (for a heavy icebreaker) was still in. That bill has to be conferenced,” Schultz said, referring to the process where members of both the Senate and House iron out differences in their appropriations bills before each chamber votes on the new unified version.
The process is long and because of some of the contentiousness surrounding funding for Department of Homeland Security programs, Schultz said there's a strong chance a final bill will not be considered until after the fall midterm elections. Along with overseeing the Coast Guard, DHS is in charge of several agencies governing immigration, customs and border control.
Building a heavy polar icebreaker has strong support inside the Trump administration, Schultz said. His superiors – both the secretary of Homeland Security and President Trump – support the project. Trump even mentioned the project during his remarks at the June 1 change of command when Schultz took charge of the Coast Guard.
Full article: https://news.usni.org/2018/08/01/35453
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June 20, 2019 | International, Naval
Navy Mulling How to Make Surface Fleet Flexible, Lethal
By: Otto Kreisher WASHINGTON, D.C. — A panel of senior Navy civilian officials said the planning efforts for the future combat fleet was focused on making the fleet more flexible, interoperable and lethal. There also is an emphasis on open architecture to make it easier, quicker and cheaper to upgrade combat systems, they said. Those priorities would reduce the cost of sustaining the fleet going forward, the officials said at the American Society of Naval Engineers' annual Technology, Systems & Ship symposium on June 19. Michael Stewart, deputy director for integrated warfare systems, said his job was to look at the available capabilities across all the different surface platforms to make the fleet more capable and lethal. He also would ensure that all requirements going forward were clearly tied to the National Defense Strategy, since “we can't afford to fund everything.” John Hootman, the deputy director for surface warfare, said he was looking at the architecture for the future surface combatants in the 2030-2040 timeframe, when the Ticonderoga-class cruisers and some of the early Arleigh Burke destroyers would be retiring. But, he said, “we can't know what we'll need until we know how we'll fight.” In response to a question, Hootman praised the creation of the Surface Development Squadron, which will help in that effort to determine how the future fleet would fight. Hootman also emphasized the need to look at capabilities across the fleet, not at specific platforms, to promote commonality across the fleet, including a common combat system that could equip the whole range of surface combatants and even the amphibious ships. But that focus on common systems also could apply to the hull, mechanical and electrical elements of future ships. “The push for commonality is key.” Another official extended that quest to communications systems, arguing that every different circuit in the fleet reduces capacity, flexibility and the ability to integrate operations in the strike group. Steven Dries, filling in for Rear Adm. Steven Pardoe, director of integrated warfare, noted that the capabilities that ships would need in the future will change, which makes it all the more important to field systems that can be modernized with software changes, rather than having to tear out hardware. Hootman stressed the same thing as a way to more efficiently modernize ships and gain commonality. He also cited the savings in training sailors to operate and maintain systems that are common across platforms. https://news.usni.org/2019/06/19/navy-mulling-how-to-make-surface-fleet-flexible-lethal
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May 22, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence
BAE Makes Big Bet On Small Companies: FAST Labs
By THERESA HITCHENS BOSTON: BAE Systems, the third-largest defense contractor in the world, is funding innovative small startups to get innovative technology quickly to its Defense Department customers. Through an initiative called FAST Labs, BAE is both providing seed capital directly to startups and funding a number of accelerators to widen the potential market. The standard tactics include simply buying a smaller company to gain its technology or investing in a startup in order to control the direction of its research. Instead, BAE's FAST Labs is attempting to serve as a middle man connecting startups with DoD customers and BAE's various units. “By giving [the startups] the feasibility money, we can expose them to those harsh requirements that exist in the aerospace and defense world, but we can also in turn do social engineering inside our company,” Jerry Wohletz, the vice president and general management of BAE FAST Labs, told me. The idea is to introduce the startups' designs to BAE's factory and engineering work force, he said, “because we need to get it out of R&D land and get it into those products and services” that BAE knows its defense customers are looking for. FAST Labs is focused on research related to next-generation electronics, intelligent autonomous systems, cyber, electronic warfare, and sensors and processing. Wohletz explained that BAE does in-house research on capabilities that are solely of interest to DoD and the Intelligence Community, but it is reaching out to startups in order to partner on products and services based on commercial market needs. “A lot of aerospace and defense companies have venture capital funds,” Wohletz said. “That's not what we are trying to do. This is not an equity play to drive bottom line performance. We talk here about innovation velocity. We want speed to market.” Therefore, BAE is also putting its money — but more importantly its time — into a number of technology accelerators, such as Techstars in Boston, Capitol Factory in Austin, Texas, and MASSChallenge with hubs in both cities. FAST Labs has a team of scouts whose job is to attend pitches all across the country. “This is not based on ownership. We leave them their freedom,” Francesca Scire-Scappuzzo, who heads the scout team, told me. “We want innovation not just to support our market, we want to support their own innovation” for the commercial market. “Other defense contractors are trying to get involved with venture capital, but they for the most part don't really get it. BAE was in early, and they had the benefit of being linked with us,” Lt. Col. Dave Harden, chief operating officer of AFWERX, the Air Force's innovation hub, told me during the Techstars Air Force Accelerator Demo Day here last Thursday. Indeed, BAE cosponsored the event, and put upfront investment in at least three of 10 start-up companies participating. Neither Wohletz or Scire-Scappuzzo would tell me the size of BAE's budget for startup investment, but Wohletz said “it's getting bigger every year.” Further, the company is using accelerators not just to help itself innovate, Wohletz said, but also to find foreign companies to partner with in bids where the buying country requires offsets, such as India. “It's a completely different way of looking at this than we have done in the past,” he summed up. https://breakingdefense.com/2019/05/bae-makes-big-bet-on-small-companies-fast-labs/