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Military.com, 28 Nov 05
Navy looks to redirect funds to fleet expansion
By JO2(SW) Michael Wiss, Periscope Staff
Christine Cullen, Staff Writer, Ocean City Today, 25 November 2005
Congress rejects 'bunker busters' for more reliable arms
By James Sterngold, San Francisco Chronicle, November 28, 2005
By Jeremiah Marquez, Associated Press (Navy Times), 28 Nov 05
By Nita Bhalla, Reuters, 24 November 2005
The Day, 27 November 2005
The Navy Reshapes Its Specialists For The 21st Century
By Richard R. Burgess, Seapower, Dec. 2005
Dave Ahearn, Defense Today, 29 NOV 05
The Herald, 29 November 05
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Military.com, 28 Nov 05
ABOARD USS NASSAU - Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) 8 passed through the Suez Canal Nov. 26, entering the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations (AOO) to conduct maritime security operations (MSO) and support further tasking from the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).
ESG-8 left Norfolk, Va., Nov. 7 for a scheduled six-month deployment.
“We are finally to the AOR that we have been training to get to in our deployment in support of maritime security operations,” said Capt. Martin Allard, commander, ESG-8. “Our initial mission is to support the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) (MEU (SOC)), and we will conduct other maritime security operations as assigned by CENTCOM.”
ESG-8 will fully support MSO while operating in the 5th Fleet AOO.
Using a supported/supporting relationship between the Navy and Marine commanders, the ESG composition adds to the proven amphibious and Marine Expeditionary Unit capabilities with increased defenses, strike, power projection, and a range of unique combined capabilities. These capabilities provide the combatant commander a wide variety of options and enables sustained independent operations in dynamic environments.
“We are well prepared for any mission assigned to us by CENTCOM,” said Allard.
As the amphibious assault ship USS Nassau (LHA 4), flagship for ESG-8, passed through the Suez Canal, some Sailors and Marines were topside to observe the landscape.
“This is a very cool experience that I know many people would like to have the opportunity to see,” said Storekeeper Seaman Jason Aristizabal, aboard Nassau. “This is my third time through, and I am just looking to see if I recognize anything from last time. It does look a little bit different.”
ESG-8 includes 6,000 Sailors and Marines aboard six ships. In addition to Nassau, the strike group includes the guided-missile cruiser USS Cape St. George (CG 71), the amphibious transport dock USS Austin (LPD 4), the dock landing ship USS Carter Hall (LSD 50), the guided-missile destroyer USS Winston Churchill (DDG 81) and the attack submarine USS Norfolk (SSN 714). The 22nd MEU(SOC), embarked aboard the ships, is composed of its command element, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines; Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 261 (Reinforced), and the MEU Service Support Group 22.
MSO set the conditions for security and stability in the maritime environment as well as complement the counter-terrorism and security efforts of regional nations. MSO deny international terrorists use of the maritime environment as a venue for attack or to transport personnel, weapons, or other material.
Navy looks to redirect funds to fleet expansion
By JO2(SW) Michael Wiss, Periscope Staff
How many ships are needed for the United States Navy to keep the nation safe? The current number is 281, but the overall goal is a sea fighting force of 313.
According to a www.InsideDefense.com report, senior Navy officials are considering a new proposal for a 313-ship fleet, which would require greater investments in shipbuilding accounts and an accelerated pace of ship construction to build the fleet up from its current size.
Adm. Robert Willard, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, is spearheading a project to craft an ''alternative shipbuilding plan'' requested last summer by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Mullen. The new Navy chief has stated that he wants to advance a vision of a specific fleet size in order to provide predictable funding for new ship construction, which is at near historic lows, and provide stability to the shipbuilding industry.
''He has been briefed several times about where the effort is going,'' said Cmdr. John Kirby, Mullen's spokesman. ''He is content with the progress of the work, but he has not made any decisions about the future of the shipbuilding plan.''
To make this project a reality, Kings Bay and other naval installations throughout the world will need to reduce program costs across the board. The base has employed ingenuity from base personnel toward cost reductions or reworking certain projects to perform the right readiness at the right cost. Installation commander Capt. Mike McKinnon is challenging Kings Bay to find $3 million in savings, which will include energy costs, maintenance costs and operation costs, but still work to maintain the same high standards of service.
''As we shift our paradigm from 'deficiency' to 'sufficiency,' our biggest impact on supporting the budget cuts will be through our creativity and innovation,'' he said. ''Sea Enterprise is our way of building cost savings in how we do our shore infrastructure business in a more efficient way. Building partnerships with not only our tenant commands but our friends in the local community, is the key to the effort.''
Sea Enterprise was largely responsible for the $5.1 million savings generated by Kings Bay last fiscal year. There were two major cost reduction projects involving the Magnetic Silencing Facility and the commercial tug services at Port Operations that provided the bulk of the overall savings.
The MSF, a unit of the Trident Refit Facility, is a demagnetizing station that removes or changes a submarine's permanent magnetic field. The facility had three major areas of cost that included dredging for safe operations, treatment and replacement of cable needed for the demagnetizing and a new Y-Loop installation to handle fast attack submarines. Each of these jobs were contracted to three different organizations, but eventually were combined into one saving $3.8 million.
Another cost reduction program at Kings Bay was the Tri-Base Area Tug Consolidation. The Military Sealift Command provides seven tug boats to operate anywhere in the Southeast region. An analysis was conducted and the two contracts were consolidated saving the Navy $1.2 million. The base saved the Navy more money than any other base in the region last year. According to McKinnon, the challenge is there and he has the faith in the Kings Bay team to confront it head on.
''My challenge is, as we once again look hard at the way we do business, to challenge our processes and come up with the savings,'' he said. ''Teamwork is the concept that makes a group of individuals better and moves good teams to great teams. I think we are already great, imagine what all of us pulling together to meet this goal will do for us? Outstanding, unmatched and unparalleled are just a few words that come to mind.''
Christine Cullen, Staff Writer, Ocean City Today, 25 November 2005
The citizens of Ocean City are now the adoptive parents of 150 sailors and one big boat.
The Mayor and City Council voted unanimously Monday to sponsor the USS Hyman G. Rickover, a Los Angeles Class nuclear powered submarine carrying a crew of 150 sailors stationed at Norfolk, Va.
Navy Cdr. Robert Cosgriff was thrilled the city accepted his request to sponsor the submarine, and thanked the city for its support.
“What’s been missing is the city behind the ship,” Cosgriff said, adding that a great relationship always develops between a submarine and the city supporting it.
Mayor Jim Mathias echoed Cosgriff’s sentiments on the benefits of having Ocean City sponsor the submarine. The benefits will run both ways, he agreed, as the sailors will have a place to call home and the city will play a direct roll in supporting the defenders of the country.
“We’re very proud to be called home for the Hyman Rickover,” said Mathias. “For your 150 crew members to be able to call Ocean City home, that‘s a good thing for us.”
Named after “the father of the nuclear navy” Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, the 360-foot long submarine was launched on Aug. 27, 1983 and commissioned on July 21, 1984 in Groton, Conn.
Its principal missions are to conduct offensive strikes against land targets, operate against enemy submarines and ships, conduct mining operations, covert surveillance and to deploy naval special warfare teams.
Cosgriff said the crew, which includes two Eastern Shore natives, is what gives the ship its heart, and the sailors truly appreciate the show of support they will receive from the city.
“The sailors get to see their efforts are appreciated,” Cosgriff said.
Long known as the “silent service,” the submarine fleet is opening up and is becoming more accessible to the public, Cosgriff said. He invited the City Council members to Norfolk for a tour of the Rickover, adding that the city and the crew should have an open relationship.
The invitation was warmly accepted by the mayor and City Council members. Mathias extended the same invitation to the submarine’s crew.
“Always know the road runs north as well,“ he said. “God bless you, Godspeed and we appreciate your contribution to our safety.”
Congress rejects 'bunker busters' for more reliable arms
By James Sterngold, San Francisco Chronicle, November 28, 2005
After struggling in recent years to redefine U.S. nuclear policy, Congress turned the country in a new direction this month by giving millions of dollars for a program aimed at producing a smaller arsenal of more reliable warheads.
Lawmakers killed the widely criticized nuclear "bunker buster" concept, which critics regarded as too aggressive, and instead appropriated $25 million for research on what is called the reliable replacement warhead, or RRW. Though that initial sum is relatively modest, it signifies an important policy shift that could end up costing many billions of dollars.
Even some arms control advocates have applauded the decision, because many see the new program as a sharp scaling back of the Bush administration's once soaring nuclear ambitions.
Democrats as well as Republicans were so enthusiastic that they voted for almost three times the amount of money requested by the White House, in large part because the program is viewed as an exercise in restraint.
"This is about tinkering at the margins of the existing weapons systems, nothing more," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek, a member of the House Appropriations Committee's energy and water subcommittee, which controls the nuclear weapons budget "They (the White House) aren't getting what they wanted."
But while the vote was decisive, just what the nuclear future will look like is not. Some experts caution that more than tinkering may be involved.
"The answer to every question at this point is, 'It depends,' " said Philip Coyle, a senior Pentagon official in the Clinton administration and a nuclear scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for 33 years. "A new warhead can be new in a wide variety of different ways, and nobody knows what that will mean yet."
Indeed, the reliable replacement warhead is a strikingly elastic concept that, at this stage, each side can define as it likes. One of the few clear guidelines is that Congress has ordered that, whatever it is, it must be deployed without new underground testing, which President George H.W. Bush banned in 1992. But few agree on whether that is even feasible.
Beyond that, experts generally agree, the new program will mean spending billions of dollars to ensure that nuclear weapons remain a fundamental element of military planning, at a time when many other countries -- some friendly, some not -- are making similar calculations. The commitment is, in short, part of a global trend.
"It's not just that the Cold War is over, the post-Cold War period is over, too," said Nikolai Sokov, a senior research associate at the Monterey Institute for International Studies and a former Russian arms control negotiator. "What you're seeing now is a whole wave of policies of this kind being discussed in Russia and the United States and other places. There is an active process in a wide variety of countries. They are all exploring the option of nuclear weapons."
He added, "We're not talking about disarmament, we're talking about optimization. What you're doing is reducing the warheads to a more appropriate size." To those who believe in nuclear restraint, the program is a modest upgrading of existing weapons. For instance, optical fiber detonator cables would replace electrical wires and safer high explosives would be used to initiate the implosion of the radioactive core, which starts the nuclear chain reaction.
"This is not a sneaky way to get a whole new powerful warhead type of thing in the future," insisted Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's energy and water subcommittee, and the most influential voice for restraint. "We're not trying to do separate missions than those the warheads were designed for today."
Nuclear weapons proponents, however, see it in more expansive terms. Although the initial funding is just for research, and Congress will have to approve any further steps, nuclear proponents regard the program as an efficient new production platform for rapidly developing new warheads for specialized missions.
For some government officials, the code word is capability. When the talk turns to warheads with new capabilities, or of dealing with new threats, the implication is that whole new weapons designs will be required.
"Part of the transformation will be to retain the ability to provide new or different military capabilities in response to (the Department of Defense's) emerging needs," Linton Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which builds and maintains the stockpile, said at a Senate hearing earlier this year.
That increases the possibility, many experts say, that the warheads may need not only testing, but also the development of heavily modified missiles or new missiles to deliver them, adding billions of dollars more to the ultimate cost.
William Schneider Jr., chairman of the Defense Science Board, an influential advisory body to the Pentagon, said in a report last year that "the nature of the potential threat demands that we consider solutions that go beyond improvement on the margin," and that the country should build "weapons more relevant to the future threat environment," including nuclear warheads.
Cutting through the distrust and disagreements, there are critical areas of bipartisan agreement. First, the method of maintaining the Cold War-era stockpile -- the so-called life extension program -- cannot last indefinitely because the warheads are aging. Some experts dispute this, but Congress seems to have accepted the view that a new approach is required.
Second, the U.S. nuclear weapons manufacturing capability, all but halted after the Cold War, needs to be resuscitated. It could cost tens of billions of dollars over the coming decades and, as some envision it, could give the United States the capacity to produce more than a hundred warheads a year.
How the new warheads would be delivered to their targets has been little discussed, but expensive missile improvements are a prospect, even though Hobson and others insist this will not be called for. But making the new warheads more reliable and safer, weapons experts say, could make them heavier and bulkier. At the least, that would require extensive retesting of missiles.
The first warhead to be upgraded will be the W76, which is deployed on the submarine-based Trident missiles. But whether that missile will still work as designed with a new warhead, without substantial modifications, is yet to be proven.
"You can't just have a conversation about the warheads -- it has to be about the delivery systems and even the military's command and control," said John Browne, a weapons designer and former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. "These things are part of an interrelated system. That's what people forget."
The rethinking of the U.S. nuclear posture began after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Underground nuclear testing was banned, warhead production was stopped, and thousands of weapons were decommissioned.
Some demanded that the nuclear stockpile, with more than 10,000 warheads, be scrapped. Instead, the Clinton administration started increasing the budgets for the nuclear design labs, at Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratory, for what was called "science-based stockpile stewardship," a program of maintaining and refurbishing aging warheads.
While the nuclear weapons budget has more than doubled since the mid-1990s to about $6.5 billion, some now argue that the old warheads are growing less reliable with age and are not suited for deterring new types of enemies, such as North Korea or Iran, in part because they are too powerful.
In 2001, a conservative Washington think tank, the National Institute for Public Policy, called for the development of new types of specialized warheads, such as "bunker busters" -- warheads in super hard casings that would allow them to burrow deep into the earth before exploding -- to destroy deeply buried targets or caches of chemical and biological weapons.
That report became the backbone of the Bush administration's new nuclear strategy, the Nuclear Posture Review, issued in 2002. Half a dozen members of the group that drew up the 2001 study assumed senior positions in the Bush administration, including Brooks at the National Nuclear Security administration, Schneider at the Defense Science Board and Stephen Hadley, now the president's national security adviser.
In 2003, the White House won funding in Congress for the bunker buster study and research into other new types of warheads. But that is when Hobson, concerned that the weapons could spur a new arms race, surprised fellow Republicans by pushing back. He later slashed some of the funding and strongly criticized some of the White House plans. He wanted, he said, a more restrained policy, one that would survive pressure from nuclear hawks.
"My problem is I can only be chairman for six years," Hobson said. "That's why I'm trying to lock in place a footprint for the future. I'm trying to kill things so they don't come back."
But California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Senate's energy and water appropriations subcommittee, said she did not trust the administration and expected to fight the same battle again.
"This administration continues to try to reopen the nuclear door," she said. "So we must remain vigilant in ensuring that the reliable replacement warhead program does not lead to the development of new nuclear weapons and the resumption of nuclear testing."
Hobson and others say they fully expect the government to try at some point to expand the program, and they insist they are prepared to fight back. But some nuclear proponents are angry at what they see as a weakened Bush administration backing off at all.
"This 'modernization' is not a modernization of the weapons' capabilities," said Kathleen Bailey, a senior associate of the National Institute for Public Policy and a co-author of the 2001 nuclear study. "That's what is needed. But the administration has already shown it doesn't have the willingness to stand up and go to bat on this. So I can't imagine the Republicans or the Democrats in the future doing so."
Surprisingly, one of the few groups that seems not to have engaged directly in the debate is the military.
William Odom, a retired lieutenant general trained in nuclear warfare and former director of the National Security Agency, said one reason was that professional military leaders regarded the weapons as too dangerous and too difficult to protect and maintain, given the modest probability that they would ever be used, particularly as conventional bombs become more powerful and more accurate.
"Once you get through all the imponderables of using these things, you increasingly lose your enthusiasm for the desirable effects of the weapons," said Odom, who also helped put together the 2001 study but has a limited belief in the usefulness of nuclear weapons. "From a professional's perspective, it's damn hard to work up any excitement about them. Eventually, they'll go the way of chemical weapons."
By Jeremiah Marquez, Associated Press (Navy Times), 28 Nov 05
LOS ANGELES - The case against three alleged Chinese agents is set to return to court Monday with testimony from an FBI official that could help explain why the government has filed only one criminal charge despite making sweeping claims of conspiracy and theft.
Chinese-American engineer Chi Mak, his wife, Rebecca Laiwah Chiu, and brother Tai Wang Mak pleaded not guilty Nov. 22 to charges that they were unregistered agents for China. Each was indicted on a single count even though an affidavit submitted last month by FBI Special Agent James Gaylord alleged they had committed crimes ranging from stealing government property to conspiracy.
The initial accusations carried a maximum combined sentence of 25 years; the most recent counts could bring 10 years at most.
On Monday, Gaylord is expected to come under questioning from Tai Wang Mak’s defense attorney, who is challenging the government’s move to deny his client bond. Prosecutors also will argue their appeal against the court’s decision to set bond at $300,000 for Chi Mak, who remains in custody.
Investigators allege that Chi Mak, 65, took computer disks from Anaheim-based defense contractor Power Paragon, where he worked on a sensitive research project involving propulsion systems for Navy warships.
He and his wife allegedly copied the information to CDs, encrypted the files and delivered them to 56-year-old Tai Wang Mak, who was scheduled to fly to Hong Kong on Oct. 28 before heading to Guangzhou, China.
The younger Mak and his wife, Fuk Heung Li, were arrested at Los Angeles International Airport as they prepared to board a plane. The CD was found in Li’s luggage, authorities said. Prosecutors have held off on more serious charges - espionage, for example - partly because the military data in question were highly sensitive but not classified.
Gaylord, a counterintelligence agent, has stated in court documents that Chi Mak admitted feeding information on Navy research to China since 1983, fully aware that it was sensitive and subject to export laws. Mak hoped it would help the Chinese government develop similar technology, Gaylord claimed.
Mak’s attorney, Ronald Kaye, accused the government of mischaracterizing his client’s statements and compared the case to recent Chinese spy trials that eventually collapsed.
“Why should the public accept the government’s characterization of the evidence when it’s been shown they’ll prosecute these cases with any means necessary?” Kaye asked. He noted that Mak, who worked in Hong Kong for Hong Kong Electric before emigrating in 1978, has no criminal record.
Investigators have said they recovered restricted documents on the DD(X) destroyer, an advanced technology warship, that were marked “for official use only.” Officials also allegedly found two lists in Chinese asking Chi Mak for documents about submarine torpedoes and other technology.
According to Gaylord, Chi Mak told investigators that his brother was giving the information to a researcher at the Chinese Center for Asia Pacific Studies at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou.
Authorities say the center conducts operations research for and receives funding from the People’s Liberation Army. The researcher - Pu Pei-Liang, also known as David Pu - was believed to work for the government.
Mak also allegedly said that his brother, a legal resident who works for the Phoenix North American Chinese Channel, had voluntarily joined the PLA and served with a propaganda unit.
Tai Wang Mak’s attorney has denied that accusation.
By Nita Bhalla, Reuters, 24 November 2005
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Naval maneuvers and submarine sonars in oceans are a new factor among many threatening dolphins, whales and porpoises that depend on sound to survive, the United Nations and marine experts said on Wednesday.
A U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) report included underwater sonar and military maneuvers as the smallest factor on a list of major threats to some 71 types of small marine mammals, known as cetaceans, at risk.
"While we know about other threats such as over-fishing, hunting and pollution, a new and emerging threat to cetaceans is that of increased underwater sonars," said Mark Simmonds of the Whale and Dolphin Society, who contributed to the report.
"These low frequency sounds travel vast distances, hundreds if not thousands of kilometers from the source," he told Reuters.
UNEP said underwater sonar and military maneuvers threatened more than 4 percent of species, although Simmonds indicated all were affected.
Some 70 percent of cetaceans were at risk from entanglement in fishing nets, 66 percent from hunting, 56 percent from pollution, 24 percent from habitat degradation, 15 percent from lack of food due to over-fishing, and 13 percent from culling.
In October, a coalition of environmental groups sued the U.S. Navy over its use of sonar, saying the ear-splitting sounds violated environmental protection laws.
The navy said it was studying the problem but said sonar was necessary for national defense.
Animal protection groups have for years lobbied to restrict the use of sonar, saying the sound blasts disorient the sound-dependent creatures and cause bleeding from the eyes and ears.
Simmonds said in recent years, western governments have developed stealthier submarines the detection of which requires more powerful, low-frequency sonars.
The report by UNEP and the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) says species like the Beluga whale, Blanville's beaked whale and the Goosebeak whale are seriously at risk from noise pollution.
Researchers found that a stranding of 12 Goosebeak whales in the Ionian Sea in the 1990s coincided with NATO tests of an acoustic submarine detection system.
Other Goosebeaks were stranded off the Bahamas in 2000, and experts link that to military tests, the report said.
Tests on the bodies of seven whales that died near Gran Canaria in 2002 found hemorrhages and inner ear damage, which experts said was caused by high-intensity, low-frequency sonar used in the area, it added.
"This is a hugely serious concern as these animals need sound to navigate, to find their food, to communicate and to mate," said Simmonds.
There are no laws governing noise pollution in the world's oceans, but western governments, considered largely responsible with their increased military presence in the seas, say they need more research before taking action.
Charles Galbraith, a senior wildlife advisor to the British government, told Reuters the report highlighted a potential problem. "But the issue is still in a relatively gray area in terms of scientific proof and we need to do more research before the government can review its defense systems," he said.
Seismic exploration used in the hunt for undersea oil and gas and the increased movement of large ships may also cause problems for cetaceans, the report said.
The Day, 27 November 2005
Groton — STS1 (SS) Frank Zollars describes his assignment at Naval Submarine School as “the most rewarding and most challenging yet — an excellent choice for shore duty.”
The challenges have been daily for nearly the last three years.
The reward is more recent: Zollars is Naval Submarine School's 2005 Sailor of the Year.
A certified master training specialist, Zollars' duties include instructor for master sonar technician, master fire controlman, junior sonar technician submarine, fleet responsive training, and curriculum development specialist within Submarine School's Combat Skills Division.
Arriving from the USS San Francisco, Zollars has supported command-recognition programs, calling them “critical.”
“They recognize those who stand out and who go that extra mile,” he said.
Zollars' own selection, however, left him somewhat shaken, if not stirred.
“My first reaction was utter shock and almost disbelief,” he said.“It is an honor to be recognized, but just like on the boat, it's a team effort.”
The native of Fortuna, Calif., had clear reasons for choosing to accelerate his life.
“The desire to serve my country brought me into the Navy,” he said. “The training and daily challenges presented to me keep me in. When I chose to enlist, the Navy seemed to have the most to offer in terms of training with better advancement opportunities.
“I think it's still true.”
The Navy Reshapes Its Specialists For The 21st Century
By Richard R. Burgess, Seapower, Dec. 2005
When the Navy’s Bureau of Personnel recently conducted a study of two ratings — or job classifications — of its enlisted personnel, it determined there was an astounding 85 percent commonality in job tasks.
The Information Systems Technician (IT) and the Cryptologic Technician-Communications (CTO) basically performed the same job, the main difference being that CTOs were responsible for communicating special compartmented intelligence information over radio circuits.
As a result, the Bureau of Personnel recommended the CTO community be merged into the IT rating. The paperwork is on the desk of the chief of naval operations (CNO) for final approval, said Cmdr. William Kramer, the process action officer for the Navy’s Enlisted Community Manager. He expects a merger date of January 2006 will be approved.
The IT rating, formerly known as Radioman, is itself the product of a merger in 1997 of Radiomen with Data Processing Technicians, brought about by changing technology that blended digital computers with radio communications.
Rating changes are business as usual for the Navy as required job skills change with requirements and technology. For example, the Navy long ago cast off ratings such as blacksmith and bugler. The number of Navy ships powered by steam boilers has declined so much that the Boiler Technician rating was retired during the 1990s. But mergers seem almost counterintuitive with the ever-expanding complexity and specialization of new technologies that enter the pipeline.
The pace of mergers, however, is accelerating as the Navy implements its Human Capital Strategy, a plan to reshape the way the service mans its fleet and shore establishments by reducing the size of the work force and achieving efficiencies and streamlining training, thereby improving effectiveness at lower cost. Adm. Michael G. Mullen, in his CNO Guidance for 2006, calls for the Navy to “deliver a transformed, competency-based manpower and personnel system” for all segments of its work force. Rating mergers are one force-shaping tool being used to transform the Navy’s work force to meet the needs of the 21st century.
Under Vice Adm. Gerald Hoewing, chief of naval personnel, the Navy has been taking a “very granular view” of the work its sailors were doing, finding that sailors in different ratings were “doing similar or, in many cases, exactly the same work.
“We wanted to capture the opportunity to eliminate the duplication in training and in work, and merge [ratings] together to where it does good for the Navy because it makes us more efficient and effective in the delivery of our product,” he said. “It’s [also] good for the sailors because they have broader job opportunities, more choice, more opportunities to grow and develop.”
As an example, Hoewing pointed to the recently approved merger of the Dental Technician (DT) rating into the Hospital Corpsman (HM) rating. “A dental technician who would only have had DT sorts of jobs will now have a much broader opportunity in different areas and different types of work in order to be able to give them that additional choice and additional opportunity. They’ll be able to compete and apply for what were formerly HM jobs also.”
“We’ve found that a Dental Tech rating has a 70-percent commonality with the Hospital Corpsman rating, so the majority of functions were redundant with what corpsmen did,” said Cmdr. Ken Laube, medical enlisted community manager for the Navy.
One junior dental technician interviewed by Seapower expressed anxiety over having to take the hospital corpsman advancement exam. Hoewing responded by describing changes in the focus of the rating’s advancement exam.
“In years past, our advancement examinations were more administratively focused,” he said. “Today, because we have analyzed the work that the sailor is expected to accomplish in those jobs, we’ve been able to determine what knowledge and abilities those sailors need. So, he will not have to study for the administrative trivia behind the HM rate, he will literally be able to focus on the tasks and the level of knowledge that he should [have] to be able to perform. And that should narrow down and improve his opportunity to prepare for that exam.”
Hoewing also addressed the concern that merging rates requires people to be generalists required to master more than they can handle: “You could go too far and that’s why we put science into this process; literally taking a look at the work out there and analyzing the tasks. We partnered with industry, we used the same standards as the Department of Labor.” More generalists or “hybrid sailors” will be needed as the service staffs its future ships, he
said. For example, the Littoral Combat Ship will have a basic crew of 40 to 45 sailors. “We have to make them hybrid sailors [with] broader knowledge, broader understanding because the content of the jobs are going to be broader,” Hoewing said. “One of the key [positive] feedbacks we get toward rating mergers is that by increasing the scope and the content of the job, that makes the job more challenging and our sailors like that.”
Senior Chief Craig Burns, the Navy’s enlisted community manager for operations and surface combat systems atings, described an example of the hybrid sailor. “The Interior Communications Electrician who is the LAN (local-area network) tech is also going to be the LAN administrator for the whole ship, which is normally an IT job. It’s something that has always been a skill set of one rate; now he’s picking a skill set from another rate.”
Like change anywhere, rating mergers are generators of anxiety among the affected personnel that dissipates over time. The Navy is now three years into a merger of the Aviation Storekeepers (AKs) — supply clerks — into the Storekeeper (SK) rating.
“We now no longer really talk about AKs at all,” said Cmdr. Beth Howell, the Navy’s supply enlisted community manager. “They’re completely merged.” One merger approved earlier this year is that of the Personnelman and the isbursing Clerk into the Personnel Specialist rating, made possible by advances in shipboard pay and recordkeeping practices.
Commonality is a driving consideration for merging the Gunner’s Mate and Torpedoman ratings. “If ever there was a skill set that matched almost perfectly, it is those two rates,” said Burns.
“When they did a commonality study between those two they were almost identical.” The advent of new helicopters such as the MH-60 is behind the service’s decision to merge all helicopter crewmen — some of whom are mechanics from a variety of ratings, with additional aircrew qualification — into the Aviation Warfare Systems Operator rating, said Cmdr. Joel Schuster, the Air Crew enlisted community manager.
The Navy also is looking for efficiencies in its proposal to shape the engineers that operate and repair machinery in surface ships, combining eight ratings into three, a move already completed in the submarine community
Mergers are not the only trend in ratings. The Navy is in the process of creating four new ratings out of what currently are special qualifications in high demand in the global war on terrorism. New ratings for Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Diver were approved in October.
“We’re still in the decisional phase of the SEAL and SWCC (Special Warfare Combatantcraft Crewman),” said Cmdr. Dave Thorleitson, the enlisted community manager for those specialties.
Currently, sailors in those four communities are all source-rated. “We send these guys to ‘A’ (basic job skill) schools, and they never end up working in that rating again,” he said. Therefore, a sailor who is an HT (Hull Maintenance Technician) and a SEAL, “gets advanced in the HT world, yet he does all his work in the SEAL world.”
A SEAL rating would allow sailors to focus on rating-specific information. Sailors in training will study SEAL rating information rather than HT source-rating information. This would enable prospective SEALs to bypass other ‘A’ schools and go straight into the SEAL training pipeline,
Thorleitson said. The direction of the Navy today is to align like skill sets with as few ratings as possible, Kramer said. Therefore, each individual is eligible for a wider array of job opportunities. Hoewing predicts ratings mergers will bring about the demise of the Navy Enlisted Classification (NEC) system, an exhaustive series of job ubspecialties.
“The majority of those NECs has some training associated with them, so there’s an overhead cost in each one of those,” he said. “By driving toward the competency bases [that are part of the Human Capital Strategy], we should be able to drive some of those overhead costs out and it will simplify our management profile dramatically rather than having 1,000 stovepipes that you have to manage.”
Dave Ahearn, Defense Today, 29 NOV 05
Despite repeated studies showing that U.S. forces will require stealthy weapons platforms if they must counter Chinese forces wielding hundreds of missiles, ongoing Pentagon budget-cutting discussions are focused on trimming procurement of some of those stealthy assets.
Critics have said the current cadre of non-stealthy U.S. legacy ships and aircraft would be easy targets for radar-guided Chinese missiles, if China makes good on its threat to invade Taiwan unless the island nation capitulates peacefully and accepts rule from Beijing.
In that event, the United States is committed to defending Taiwan from attack by China. But any non-stealthy U.S. ship or aircraft entering the Taiwan Strait would be destroyed by radar-guided Chinese missiles, according to the critics.
Stealthy aircraft and ships would be required.
Yet those are among the very systems that are being considered for cuts or elimination in ongoing Pentagon discussions.
· The Air Force F/A-22 Raptor supersonic stealth fighter aircraft, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., is the preeminent fighter, besting any on the planet. But perhaps 170 may be built, instead of the 277 currently authorized or the 381 the Air Force says it requires at a minimum, or the 750 once envisioned. And that assumes some number less than 170 won't emerge from the ongoing discussions surrounding both the Quadrennial Defense Review of long-term Pentagon needs, and planning for the fiscal 2007 budget proposal.
· The future multi-service, multi-national F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, also by Lockheed Martin, will be a stealthy plane that is intended to cost much less than the Raptor. The largest procurement program in history involving thousands of planes costing $256 billion, proposals are focusing on cutting the number of planes that would be built for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps and several friendly nations. Also, costs might be cut by canceling the conventional Air Force version of the plane in favor of building Navy (aircraft carrier) versions of the plane.
· The next-generation Navy DD(X) destroyer would be a large (14,500 tons) ship that nonetheless would have a radar image as small as a fishing boat, on enemy missile-control screens. The DD(X) last week received somewhat of a reprieve when Kenneth Krieg, the Pentagon acquisitions leader, signed an acquisition decision memorandum. That meant the cutting-edge destroyer is cleared to continue development., but just how long-lasting that reprieve might be is unclear. (Please see Defense Today Instant Update, Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2005, 5:22 p.m. ET.) The move doesn't guarantee that the move toward low-rate production of eight destroyers will win approval at the White House, or if it does, in Congress. Some lawmakers have said perhaps just one or two of the destroyers should be purchased as technology demonstrators. And then maybe a smaller ship could be designed. General Dynamics Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. would produce the ship.
· The next-generation CG(X) cruiser is needed to help provide a missile shield for the United States against long-range missiles fired by, say, North Korea. But the future CG(X) depends on using technology to be developed for the DD(X) destroyer. The CG(X), too, would have a stealthy hull, so that it could enter waters near China with little chance of being locked on by Chinese radars and hit with missiles from the mainland. Again, GD and Northrop would produce the cruisers. With a purchase rate of just one destroyer or cruiser a year, either General Dynamics unit Bath Iron Works shipbuilding or Northrop Grumman unit Ship Systems could go out of the warships building business.
· Another future Navy vessel is the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), which would be a stealthy platform. For example, a version of the LCS to be provided by General Dynamics Corp. would have the radar and antenna farm enclosed in a faceted, radar-evading superstructure. At $220 million apiece for the basic ship, before buying interchangeable mission modules, the LCS would be relatively inexpensive (versus $3.3 billion each for the first DD(X) or two and $2.3 billion to $2.6 billion each for later destroyers.) The DD(X) would be built to military specifications, able to take a hit from enemy fire and survive, as the old-style USS Cole DDG 51 Class destroyer did in a terrorist attack. But the LCSs will be built to commercial specifications. And there are some in Congress who question the wisdom of the LCS, a small but fast and agile coastal fighter.
While these stealth platforms face an uncertain future in the budget cross-hairs, repeated studies have found that China increasingly is posing a threat to non-stealthy assets.
Studies Agree
In March, for example, the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank, warned of the threat posed by China against Taiwan, and against any U.S. ships or aircraft that might attempt to block a Chinese invasion of the island territory.
According to the AEI paper, "Taipei has a powerful case to make that the real threat to the status quo lies less in the twists and turns of the island's democratic self-governance, and more in China's aggressive posturing against the island, including its breakneck acquisition of offensive weapons systems and deployment of—at last count—approximately 700 missiles [aimed] across the Strait" of Taiwan.
Another report, provided to Congress, comes from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
"China is in the midst of an extensive military modernization program aimed at building its force projection capabilities to confront U.S. and allied forces in the region," the report warns. "A major goal is to be able to deter, delay, or complicate a timely U.S. and allied intervention in an armed conflict over Taiwan so China can overwhelm Taiwan and force a quick capitulation by Taiwan's government."
The report notes that not only is China now armed with sophisticated land-based missiles, it also has advanced missile systems on ships and the myriad new submarines it is building or obtaining from Russia.
"Many of these new boats will be armed with sophisticated torpedoes and [missiles] capable of being launched while submerged," the report notes.
In aircraft, China has obtained or is acquiring air power that not only would overwhelm, swiftly, any defenses that Taiwan might attempt, this new aviation muscle would pose a daunting challenge to existing U.S. air platforms, according to the report.
China could "sustain a relative superiority in numbers [of aircraft] over the [Taiwan] Strait and present a difficult challenge for U.S. air and naval forces that might be called on to respond," the report finds.
And even a report from the Department of Defense itself warned earlier this year that the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) and its navy and air force branches are developing the ability to counter U.S. and other forces, despite concerns that the report was rewritten to tone it down before it was issued.
"Over the long term, if current trends persist, PLA capabilities could pose a credible threat to other modern militaries operating in the region," the report states. Presumably U.S. forces operating in the region would be classified as modern militaries.
"The PLA is working toward these goals by acquiring new foreign and domestic weapon systems and military technologies, promulgating new doctrine for modern warfare, reforming military institutions, personnel development and professionalization, and improving exercise and training standards," the Pentagon report notes.
And this is clear from what is known about the immense Chinese military buildup. But the report notes that China may be spending vastly more on defense than it admits officially, meaning the threat could be greater than it appears.
While the reports imply that U.S. forces would be well to command stealthy platforms in any conflict with China, and imply that non-stealthy platforms would be at risk against Chinese missile systems, another issue is that even the old, non-stealthy U.S. platforms are declining in number.
For example, the American Shipbuilding Association (ASA), which has defense contractors building Navy ships among its members, notes that the Navy fleet has shriveled from almost 600 in the 1980s to roughly 280 ships and submarines now, with further significant declines yet to come.
"Though our naval fleet is the most technologically advanced power on the seas, the decreasing number of ships is placing the Navy in a vise, one that tightens as the number of ships steadily falls and deployments increase," the ASA asserts.
"While some may argue that the `new' enemies of today [such as terrorists and rogue states] are not ones that can be challenged by the naval fleets of the [past,] a very ominous potential threat is building on the horizon.
"China has been officially modernizing its military for two-and-a-half decades," the ASA notes. "By the year 2010, China's submarine force will be nearly double the size of the U.S. submarine fleet.
"The entire Chinese naval fleet is projected to surpass the size of the U.S. fleet by 2015. In short, the Chinese military is specifically being configured to rival America's" naval power.
The Herald, 29 November 05
THE makers of a TV documentary say new evidence has almost certainly revealed the resting place of a Japanese midget submarine that attacked Sydney during World War II.
The sub, known as M24, was one of three Japanese midget subs, each carrying two crew, that left their mother subs to reach Sydney Harbour on May 31, 1942.
The other subs were recovered from the bottom of Sydney Harbour, along with their dead crew.
Mystery has surrounded the whereabouts of M24 after it was tracked leaving the harbour, but failed to reach the mother sub waiting off Botany Bay.
The M24 had fired two torpedoes at the American cruiser USS Chicago -- one of which hit the converted Manly ferry HMAS Kuttabul, serving as a sailors' dormitory, killing 21 aboard.
One of the other two subs became stuck in netting and the crew blew themselves up.
The crew of the third sub shot themselves after being seen by patrol boats and subjected to a depth charge attack at Taylors Bay.
The documentary M24: The Last Sunrise, broadcast last night on Foxtel's History Channel, claims the M24 lies east of Lion Island in Broken Bay, near Pittwater, about 20km north of Sydney Harbour.
It says the results of sub-bottom profiling, magnometer readings and side-scan sonar tests show an object with the same dimensions as the M24 lying 20m under water east of Lion Island.