19 décembre 2018 | International, Naval

5 takeaways: Top US Navy officer releases updated strategy document

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy's top officer released an updated version of his strategy document Monday, an expanded version heavy on goals for specific programs that extend beyond his tenure as chief of naval operations.

Almost twice the length of the first edition, Adm. John Richardson's Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority version 2.0 expands on some of the concepts laid out in 2016, and functions as a to-do list for both the fleet and the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations staff.

Here are five takeaways:

1) Adversaries

Design 2.0 is still aimed squarely at competing with China and Russia.

“China and Russia seek to redefine the norms of the entire international system on terms more favorable to themselves,” the document reads, and goes on to say that the U.S. “competitive advantage has shrunk and, in some areas, is gone all together.”

The U.S. Navy must be agile to keep pace with technology and the tactics of adversaries, the document outlines. To do so it must compete in “gray zone” areas as well as when the shooting starts – to compete with China and Russia in scenarios short of war as well as in direct combat, Richardson writes.

“Our adversaries can operate at different levels of intensity in different domains and the same time,” the document reads.

2) To-do list

The middle of the document greatly expands on the CNO's “lines of effort,” or areas of focus.

Under “Strengthening Naval Power,” CNO lists a number of strategic goals – including standing up the new Norfolk-based 2nd Fleet, which will control ships, submarines and aircraft based out of Norfolk; developing new concepts of operations that focus on fighting as a more spread-out force able to cover more territory through networking sensors; and continuing to apply the lessons learned from the two fatal guided-missile destroyer accidents in 2017.

The document outlines award date goals for contracts to major programs, from the future frigate (2020) and Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle (2023). It identifies the requirement for the replacement to the F/A-18 Super Hornet and E/A-18G Growler by the end of 2019 – a program known as Next Generation Air Dominance – to field by 2030.

Other initiatives include integrating more artificial intelligence and machine learning into warfare systems, as well as 3D printing for replacement parts. The document also establishes goals for personnel including making it easier for sailors to choose and negotiate orders and access their records on their smart phones.

3) New stuff

The document calls for a new three-star command inside OPNAV that is linked to a related effort to transform the Naval War College in Rhode Island and the Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, California.

Naval War College, combined with Naval Warfare Development Command, will support Development Group East, which will workshop and develop new concepts based on the new technologies entering the fleet.

On the West Coast, Development Group West will be supported by Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command the Post-Graduate School and will serve as a “center of excellence” for capabilities development.

The three-star inside OPNAV will be the coordinator for these new constructs, tasked with overseeing the Navy's “education, experimentation, exercise, and analytic efforts.”

The document also calls for the development and fielding of an offensive hypersonic weapon by 2025, a move to counter China and Russia's moves with similar systems. It also references a new “large-scale exercise” planned for 2020, although details are sparse.

4) Logistics

The new design puts an emphasis on what has become a glaring shortfall of the U.S. military, its logistics.

“We will aim to act as early as possible to de-escalate any crisis on our terms and be ready for the next move,” the document reads. “This will require we sustain the fight with the logistics capabilities needed to refuel, rearm, resupply and, repair our operational forces”

Later the document calls for the Navy to “posture logistics capability ashore and at sea in ways that allow the fleet to operate globally, at a pace that can be sustained over time.”

5) Takeaway

While the document is detailed, the overall tone shift of Richardson's design from documents released a decade ago is stark, according to James Holmes, a strategy professor at the Naval War College.

“The change of tone from the 2007 Maritime Strategy, our first strategy since the 1980s, is stunning,” Holmes said in an email. “The 2007 strategy was a document for a world that might turn competitive or might remain cooperative. The name China appeared nowhere, let alone as a potential foe, while there were a fair number of gauzy generalities and platitudes in there.

“You could track the shift in tone from 2007 through the 2015 ‘refresh' of the Maritime Strategy through Design 1.0 in 2016 to this document. Doing so tells you the world has changed around us and we are trying to change with it – or catch up where we've fallen behind.”

As for the detailed pieces of the document, they function as a good list of priorities, said Bryan McGrath, a former destroyer skipper turned consultant who worked on the last Maritime Strategy.

“This is a solid statement of command intent,” McGrath said. “It is essentially a worklist for his subordinates to guide and prioritize their efforts. It seems to me that any interest to an audience broader than the Navy flag community would be in understanding CNO's priorities.”

Military Times reporter Geoff Ziezulewicz contributed to this report.

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/12/17/top-us-navy-officer-releases-updated-strategy-document-five-takeaways/

Sur le même sujet

14 juillet 2020 | International, Naval

Navy Inks Deal For New Unmanned Fleet
The $34 million deal marks the service's first real thrust to get unmanned ships into the water, despite Congressional worries the service is moving too fast. By PAUL MCLEARYon July 13, 2020 at 5:37 PM WASHINGTON: Despite deep and bipartisan skepticism from Capitol Hill over its plans to build three new classes of unmanned warships, the Navy went ahead today with its plans to begin building as many as 40 Medium Unmanned Surface Vessels. The service awarded L3 Technologies Inc. a $34.9 million contract for a prototype MUSV, along with an option for up to eight additional ships. If the company builds those eight unmanned ships, the contract will be worth $281 million through June 2027. Overall, the Navy wants to build about 40 MUSVs in coming years, which will clock in at between 45 to 190 feet long, with displacements of roughly 500 tons. The medium ships are thought to skew more toward mission modules revolving around intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance payloads and electronic warfare systems. In their versions of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, however, both the House and Senate told the Navy to slow down on its acquisition of some unmanned ships, specifically the Large Unmanned Surface Vessel. Both documents boost Congressional oversight over the LUSV, an ambitious new ship the Navy hoped to begin building in 2023. While the MUSV will focus on gathering intelligence, the LUSV will act as a forward-deployed missile launcher, bristling with missile tubes and other weapons, Navy planners have said. Lawmakers are looking to ensure the Navy finalizes its design and operational plans before building the larger ship, something the service has struggled with as it built other classes such as the Littoral Combat Ship, the Ford class of aircraft carriers, and the Zumwalt destroyers, all of which fell behind schedule, went over budget and struggled with new technologies. “USVs are one of the centerpieces of distributed maritime operations,” Rear Adm. Casey Moton, head of the Unmanned and Small Combatants office, said last month at a U.S. Naval Institute event. The ships will act as platforms to enable the fleet to spread out and counter China's ambitions in the Pacific either as a forward screen for a carrier strike group or as vessels pressed forward with an acceptable risk of attrition. The Navy hasn't yet fully prepared to deploy or sustain a new fleet of unmanned vessels, Capt. Pete Small, program manager for unmanned maritime systems said in May. “Our infrastructure right now is optimized around manned warships,” Small said. “We're gonna have to shift that infrastructure for how we prepare, deploy, and transit” over large bodies of water before the navy begins churning out unmanned ships in greater numbers, he added. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/navy-inks-deal-for-new-unmanned-fleet
24 novembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial

Airbus keen to play key role in ‘European answer’ to new NATO rotorcraft program
BY OLIVER JOHNSON | NOVEMBER 23, 2020 Airbus Helicopters CEO Bruno Even says the OEM “should play a key role” in a recently-announced program to develop Next-Generation Rotorcraft Capabilities signed by five NATO member countries. France, Germany, Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom announced the launch of the program on Nov. 19. One of NATO's “high visibility projects,” it seeks to develop a replacement for medium multirole helicopters currently in operation that are expected to reach the end of their lifecycle around 2035 to 2040. “I'm convinced that there should be a European answer,” Even told journalists during a recent conference call. “I'm convinced that we have the competencies, the capability in Europe, to answer to the requirement and the need of our European customers.” The program echoes the origin of the NHIndustries NH90, which was developed collaboratively by Airbus Helicopters, Leonardo Helicopters, and Fokker Aerostructures in response to a NATO requirement for a medium multi-role helicopter. “We like to come at open level, which means that as we did with NH90, Airbus Helicopters should play a key role, but should also be ready to partner, and to cooperate for such a future European program,” said Even. “I think it's fair to consider that there should be a European answer, not only because we have the competence and the capability . . . but it's also a question of [the] strategic autonomy of Europe.” Over 420 NH90s have been delivered to 18 customers in 13 countries — including France, Germany, Greece and Italy. However, Even said he did not see the newly-announced program necessarily providing a replacement to the NH90 itself. “The need could be also to complement some of the [customer fleets'] existing capability — the NH90, Tiger and so on — which will continue to fly through 2040/2050,” he said. “The need could be to complement these platforms/programs with a new type of architecture in order to bring a new capability, either in terms of autonomy, connectivity, speed, [or] range.” Experts from the five participant nations are to meet to define a statements of requirements and a multi-phase cooperation plan, beginning a multi-year program of work. “I think it's good to see that reflection not only for short- or medium-, but also for long-term requirements,” said Even. “As an industry, you need this long-term view on the evolution of the requirement in order to have time not only to mature technologies, but also to mature [the] architecture, and to be in position to launch the program when the need will be there.” https://verticalmag.com/news/airbus-keen-to-play-key-role-in-european-answer-to-new-nato-rotorcraft-program/
19 août 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

When the challenge of coronavirus becomes a catalyst to change
By: Mike Gruss One way to understand how the United States' largest defense companies are responding to the coronavirus pandemic is to listen to what their leaders said on the most recent round of earnings calls. Consider this anecdote from General Dynamics. Phebe Novakovic, the company's chief executive, told analysts in late July that when COVID-19 struck, “our classified customers closed their sites to all but mission-essential employees. This impacted revenue and earnings and will continue to do so. Some of IT services' highest-margin programs have come to a hard stop because of COVID-19.” Novakovic described the pandemic as a time of “significant uncertainty.” That story was not unusual. David Calhoun, Boeing's CEO, described this as “a historically dynamic and challenging time.” Greg Hayes, Raytheon Technologies' top executive, opened his second-quarter call by stating: “As everyone knows, these last several months have been incredibly challenging.” And Bill Brown, the CEO of L3Harris, said: “The pandemic has challenged us all to find new ways of working effectively.” To be clear, defense contractors have lost roughly 20 percent of their value in the last six months, by tracking exchange-traded funds. That's the worst run for publicly traded companies in at least a decade. So what to make of this? James Taiclet, Lockheed Martin's new leader, said his philosophy is that there may be “an opportunity for us if there is a downturn, we're going to look at the silver linings that may be there.” He was talking about mergers and acquisitions. But defense companies of all sizes should look for another opportunity: a reason to operate differently, not an excuse to get back to basics. Leaders should reexamine how to embrace new talent, how to effectively telework, and how to add new equipment or partnerships with unexpected sources. Military leaders for years have said they value agility. Now they will get to watch firsthand who changes, who is prepared for the long term, who adapts and who merely talks about adapting. These “challenges” can give acquisition officials a reason to reward agility. But back to the earnings calls. Officials hinted about what may happen next, before we — fingers crossed — enter a post-pandemic world. Lockheed's Kenneth Possenriede, the company's chief financial officer, said that while solicitations may be slower getting out the door, final deadlines have not changed. Brown at L3Harris said: “We believe that the heightened threat environment will drive the trajectory of U.S military spending regardless of the election.” Novakovic seconded that notion. “There's a general consensus that the threat has not dissipated,” she said. “In fact, arguably some of our potential adversaries have raised additional questions. ... We'll see going forward, but [I'm] not hearing a lot at the grassroots level on ... any pending defense cuts.” The threat may not have changed. Nor may the business of defense. Yet. But it's impossible to ignore that almost everything else has. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/2020/08/17/when-the-challenge-of-coronavirus-becomes-a-catalyst-to-change/

Toutes les nouvelles