2 novembre 2020 | International, Naval

American shipbuilding: An anchor for economic and national security

By: Peter Navarro

“Don't give up the ship!” These were Capt. James Lawrence's dying words defending the USS Chesapeake during the War of 1812. Over 200 years later, the United States Navy and America's critical shipbuilding industry are issuing the same cry from shipyards across our nation.

Here is a simple truth: A true renaissance of America's shipbuilding industry will require a large-scale overhaul and new strategy before it can churn out the ships we urgently need to maintain our status as the greatest maritime power in world history.

In the first year of his “Peace through Strength” administration, President Donald Trump made a 355-ship Navy the official national policy by signing the 2018 Defense Authorization Act. Currently, however, we are asking too few ships to do too much while many vessels are decades old and severely backlogged for critical repairs. This egregiously long queue is an open invitation to foreign adversaries, who are displaying increasingly aggressive postures and rapidly expanding their own naval capabilities.

Today, only seven shipyards across the country are capable of constructing large or deep-draft Navy vessels. More subtly, each yard has become specialized to build a specific warship, whether it be a nuclear-powered Virginia-class submarine or an Independence-class littoral combat ship. This specialization, while optimal for workforce training and infrastructure investments at specific yards, makes them remarkably vulnerable when there is a downturn in government contracts or the private market contracts.

Foreign competitors such as China anchor their shipyards in tens of billions of mercantilist and predatory government subsidies every year. Unable to compete with such foreign subsidization, the American shipbuilding industry has lost 75,000 jobs — a decline of over 40 percent. For every shipbuilding job in America, three indirect jobs are supported. We have therefore allowed predatory foreign markets to steal approximately 300,000 good-paying American jobs — the population of St. Louis, Missouri.

Our strategic and economic adversaries know the importance of shipbuilding. To understand the dangers, consider this: From 2010 to 2018, the Chinese Communist Party has provided over $130 billion in shipping and shipbuilding subsidies. Now, it controls the world's second-largest commercial fleet by gross tons, and constructs one-third of the world's ships.

If Pax Americana is to continue, we must live up to the maxim of former Assistant Secretary of the Navy and 26th President Teddy Roosevelt: “A good Navy is not a provocation to war. It is the surest guarantee of peace.”

Restoring investment in shipbuilding will leave a wake of prosperity for our economic security and send waves of strength for our national security. Expansion in capacity and capabilities of our shipyards will again incentivize commercial shipbuilding, increasing industry efficiency and creating competition, eventually lowering the overall cost of production. This must be our policy goal.

If we commit to a revitalization of our shipyards, in just a few years, scores of vessels could again make maiden voyages from American yards built at the hands of thousands of American steelworkers, pipefitters, welders and electricians — a renaissance of one of our nation's most integral industries. This would mean thousands of new jobs in Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and throughout the Gulf Coast. This means secure waters around Greenland, the Bering Strait and the South China Sea as well as the straits of Bab el-Mandeb, Malacca and Hormuz.

While the 296-ship fleet of the U.S. Navy is still the most powerful in the world, Communist China's People's Liberation Army Navy is now sailing approximately 350 warships and counting. Some estimates say Communist China's Navy could be as large as 450 ships by 2030 — and it's not just China that is a cause for concern.

While the Chinese Communist Party militarizes the South China Sea, Russia — which will assume chairmanship of the Arctic Council in May 2021 — has been quietly rebuilding its Arctic fleet. This is a region that will be of critical importance in the years to come as northern shipping lanes open and natural resources make themselves available. As it stands now, the U.S. Navy can't effectively access these waters, as it lacks the ice-hardened warships to do so.

Our shipbuilding industry was once a bulwark of American manufacturing, but decades of neglect, ambivalence to predatory foreign markets and sequestration have caused it to take on water. If we don't begin patching the holes now, it won't be just an industry that sinks. It may well be our economic and national security, as we will be unable to protect the world's sea lanes — the arteries of commerce and veins of national defense.

While our enemies argue American manufacturing and might is on the decline, we repeat the battle cry of Capt. John Paul Jones: “I have not yet begun to fight!”

Peter Navarro is the assistant to the president and director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy within the White House.

https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/10/30/american-shipbuilding-an-anchor-for-economic-and-national-security/

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2 novembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - November 1, 2018
ARMY American Mechanical Inc.,* Fairbanks, Alaska (W911KB-19-D-0001); Osborne Construction Co.,* Kirkland, Washington (W911KB-19-D-0002); and Patrick Mechanical LLC,* Fairbanks, Alaska (W911KB-19-D-0003), will compete for each order of the $48,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract for design, construction and repair of various utilidor systems in military family housing on Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. Bids were solicited via the internet with six received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of Oct. 31, 2023. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Anchorage, Alaska, is the contracting activity. DynCorp International LLC, Fort Worth, Texas, was awarded an $18,153,589 modification (P00199) to contract W58RGZ-13-C-0040 for aviation field maintenance services. Work will be performed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Germany, with an estimated completion date of Dec. 31, 2018. Fiscal 2019 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $18,153,589 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, is the contracting activity. U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND Boeing Co., Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, has been awarded a $42,835,847 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract modification under delivery order H92241-18-F-0022-P00002 for four new build MH-47G rotary wing aircrafts. The contract modification satisfies an urgent need to sustain U.S. Special Operations Forces heavy assault, rotary wing aircrafts. The contract modification is funded with fiscal 2018 procurement; and aircraft procurement, Army funds. The majority of the work will be performed in Ridley Park. This contract modification is a non-competitive award and is in accordance with Fair Acquisition Regulation 6.302.1. U.S. Special Operations Command, Tampa, Florida, is the contracting activity. AIR FORCE The Boeing Co., St. Louis, Missouri, has been awarded a $14,592,654 firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-fixed-fee, time-and-material contract for the F-15 Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) Aircraft Maintenance Debrief System (AMDS). This contract provides administration and support to the RSAF F-15C, D, S and SA aircraft sustainment program at up to six locations throughout the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Services acquired under this effort include, but are not limited to, providing fully-trained AMDS personnel to operate, maintain AMDS equipment and to provide AMDS familiarization training to RSAF members that will enable them to safely and efficiently operate all AMDS equipment. Work will be performed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and is expected to be completed Nov. 4, 2023. Foreign military sales in the amount of $8,744,949 are being obligated at the time of award. This award is the result of a sole-source acquisition. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, is the contracting activity (FA8505-19-C-0001). (Awarded Oct. 31, 2018) NAVY Detyen's Shipyards Inc.,* North Charleston, South Carolina, is awarded an $8,175,517 firm-fixed-price contract for a 59-calendar day shipyard availability for the mid-term availability of USNS Arctic (T-AOE 8). Work will include furnishing general services for the ship, collection holding tank, piping repairs, 4 overhead steel replacement, tank top steel replacements, main switch board cleaning, refurbish unrep saddles, winches, and drive chains, vent systems cleaning, underwater propellers cleaning and generator cleaning. The contract includes options which, if exercised, would bring the total contract value to $8,175,517. Work will be performed in Charleston, South Carolina, is expected to be completed by Jan. 23, 2019. Navy working capital funds in the amount of $8,175,517 are obligated and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal. This contract was a small business set-aside with companies solicited via the Federal Business Opportunities website, with one offer received. The Navy's Military Sealift Command, Norfolk, Virginia, is the contracting activity (N3220519C6001). Raytheon Co., Space and Airborne Systems, McKinney, Texas, is being awarded a $7,676,741 cost-plus-fixed-fee delivery order (N0001919F0270) against a previously issued basic ordering agreement (N00019-15-G-0003). This order provides for completion of Engineering Change Proposal (ECP) 0043 for the Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared Processor and Video Obsolescence Avoidance system upgrade. This ECP productionizes the Input Image Processor Version 2 (I2P2) Circuit Card Assembly (CCA); updates associated support test equipment; and performance of I2P2 CCA qualification to enable future growth and mitigate potential obsolescence issues. Work will be performed in McKinney, Texas, and is expected to be completed in November 2019. Fiscal 2018 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $7,676,741 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. *Small Business https://dod.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/1679376/source/GovDelivery/
18 février 2019 | International, C4ISR

DARPA: Five Teams of Researchers Will Help DARPA Detect Undersea Activity by Analyzing Behaviors of Marine Organisms
Goliath grouper, black sea bass, and snapping shrimp, along with bioluminescent plankton and other microorganisms, are set to be the unlikely heroes of DARPA's Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors (PALS) program. Five teams of researchers are developing new types of sensor systems that detect and record the behaviors of these marine organisms and interpret them to identify, characterize, and report on the presence of manned and unmanned underwater vehicles operating in strategic waters. This new, bio-centric PALS technology will augment the Department of Defense's existing, hardware-based maritime monitoring systems and greatly extend the range, sensitivity, and lifetime of the military's undersea surveillance capabilities. DARPA first announced the PALS program in February 2018 with the goal of incorporating biology into new solutions for monitoring adversary movements across the seemingly endless spaces of the world's oceans and seas. Ubiquitous, self-replicating, self-sustaining sea life is adaptable and highly responsive to its environment, whereas maritime hardware is resource intensive, costly to deploy, and relatively limited in its sensing modalities. According to PALS program manager Lori Adornato, “Tapping into the exquisite sensing capabilities of marine organisms could yield a discreet, persistent, and highly scalable solution to maintaining awareness in the challenging underwater environment.” The DARPA-funded PALS teams must develop or apply technologies to record stimulus responses from observed organisms, and develop combined hardware and software systems that interpret those responses, screen out false positives, and transmit analyzed results to remote end users. The teams' solutions will incorporate technologies such as hydrophones, sonar, cameras, and magnetic, acoustic, and kinetic sensors. The team led by Northrop Grumman Corporation, under principal investigator Robert Siegel, will record and analyze acoustics from snapping shrimp and optical activity by bioluminescent organisms. The team led by the Naval Research Laboratory, under principal investigator Lenny Tender, will integrate microbial organisms into a sensing platform to detect and characterize biological signals from natural microorganisms that respond to the magnetic signatures of underwater vehicles. The team led by Florida Atlantic University, under principal investigator Laurent Cherubin, will record and analyze vocalization cues from goliath grouper in tropical and subtropical environments. The team led by Raytheon BBN Technologies, under principal investigator Alison Laferriere, will use snapping shrimp as sources of opportunity for long-range detection, classification, and tracking of underwater vehicles. The team led by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, under principal investigator David Secor, will tag black sea bass with sensors to track the depth and acceleration behaviors of schools of fish that are perturbed by underwater vehicles. DARPA is also funding the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Division Newport, under principal investigator Lauren Freeman, to develop a seafloor system that uses a hydrophone array and acoustic vector sensor to continuously monitor ambient biological sound in a reef environment for anomalies. The system will analyze changes in the acoustic signals radiated by the natural predator-avoidance response of coral reef ecosystem biota, which could offer an indirect mechanism to detect and classify underwater vehicles in near-real time. DARPA conceived of PALS as a four-year research program with the expectation that researchers will be able to publish results for review by the broader scientific community. However, if DARPA identifies any of the data, results, or technical specifications as controlled unclassified information, DARPA will require the PALS researchers to protect them to prevent proliferation outside of official channels. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-02-15
18 février 2019 | International, Aérospatial

US Air Force Could Struggle to Grow Its Fleet
By Jon Harper The Air Force hopes to ramp up to 386 squadrons by 2030, but it could face challenges just to maintain its current size. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the service would need significantly more funding annually than it has received in recent decades simply to replace aging airframes. The Air Force has about 5,600 aircraft, many of which are nearing the end of their service life, the nonpartisan research group noted in a recent report, “The Cost of Replacing Today's Air Force Fleet.” CBO estimates that replacing the planes in the current fleet one-for-one would cost an average of $15 billion a year (in fiscal year 2018 dollars) in the 2020s. That figure would rise to $23 billion in the 2030s and then drop back down to $15 billion in the 2040s. In comparison, appropriations for procuring new aircraft averaged about $12 billion per year between 1980 and 2017, and just $9 billion between 2010 and 2017, the report noted. “In CBO's projection, the procurement costs of new aircraft ... would rise to and remain at levels considerably above historical averages,” it said. Fred Bartels, a defense budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation's Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, said the Air Force is at risk of shrinking due to fiscal constraints, especially as other services such as the Navy seek to beef up their own force structures in the coming years. Even if the Air Force doesn't decline in size, modernization and force level increases could be delayed, he noted. “I can see the growth being slowed down a little bit here and there.” To maintain force structure, the Air Force might have to resort to life-extension efforts, he said. But that creates its own set of problems. “Your aircraft cost even more to operate because you're ... [holding] together a 50-year-old airplane,” Bartels said. “You're just creating different challenges all the time and you're increasing your [operation and maintenance] costs, which in turn decreases the availability of resources that you have to procure a new platform. So you end up in that vicious cycle.” Delaying modernization also puts the U.S. military at risk of falling behind the technological curve as it faces advanced adversaries. “You can't expect the same aircraft to still represent air superiority 30 years from when it's first released,” he said. The Air Force has been conducting an assessment to determine its force structure and modernization needs for the 2020s. Officials have concluded that the service would need 386 squadrons by 2030 to fulfill the requirements of the latest national defense strategy, which was released last year. It currently has 312 squadrons. The final results of the study are expected to be delivered to Congress in March. Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Stephen “Seve” Wilson said the service will present a strategy-driven assessment, not a “budget-driven strategy.” “The force that we think we need for the war fight that we think we need to be prepared for, is that 386 [squadrons],” he said during an interview with National Defense at the Reagan National Defense Forum in December. “We're going to continue to ... have that dialogue with both the House and the Senate.” http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/2/14/air-force-could-struggle-to-grow-its-fleet

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