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By Team Submarine Public Affairs, NAVSEA Newswire, 5 Jan 06
By Andrew Koch, Jane's Defence Weekly, January 11, 2006
"It is my view that there is not much of a place for diesel submarines in our navy... The tyranny of distance and sustainability is something that nuclear power has solved for us in a very positive way." -- CNO
Newsbytes News Network, 5 January 2006
generaldynamics.com, 6 January 2006
By Journalist 1st Class Paul Cage, Fleet Public Affairs Center Pacific
By John Kay, The Sun, 5 Jan 06
By Team Submarine Public Affairs, NAVSEA Newswire, 5 Jan 06
WASHINGTON - The Navy successfully conducted a research and development (R&D) land based test at an Army range in New Mexico, leveraging the Sidewinder AIM-9X missile, an air to air missile used on tactical fighter aircraft, to proof out critical missile adaptation features for submarine use.
Among the test objectives achieved in November 2005 were the ability to vertically launch the missile from zero velocity, and to lock-on after launch. The test was a collaborative effort between the Joint Program Office for Air to Air Missiles, Raytheon Missile Systems and Team Submarine Advanced Research. Capt. Mark Bock, program manager for Team Submarine's Undersea Defensive Systems Program Office, led this effort.
The land launched test involved detecting, tracking and destroying an unmanned helicopter drone. The target was not visible to the missile at launch. The missile turned and acquired the target several miles down range, remaining locked on until intercept.
Many “firsts” were achieved during this demonstration. Aside from the zero air speed vertical launch, this test was also the first AIM-9X launched from an Army Chaparral trailer, the first AIM-9X to engage a target below 3,000 feet, or 300 knots, and the first launch using a commercial off the shelf fire control system.
Because the AIM-9X missile is a good choice for research and development (R&D) of small missile payloads for the guided missile submarines (SSGNs) and attack submarines (SSNs), the results can be extended to other missile payloads and different platforms such as the Littoral Combat Ship.
The next step in this R&D process is to analyze the vertical launch thrust characteristics of gas production and temperature in support of encapsulation for an underwater test.
According to Capt. Bock, planning for in-water testing of the capability is currently underway.
“The ‘encapsulation’ technique will be the forerunner for deploying air breathing payloads like unmanned aerial vehicles from submarines in the future,” he said.
The most mature of these encapsulation technologies, the Stealthy Affordable Capsule System or SACS, will be leveraged for the next phase of risk reduction testing. This effort, led by the Northrop Grumman Corporation, will demonstrate the capability to encapsulate and perform submerged launch of the AIM-9X from a launch fixture representative of a submarine Vertical Launch System that is currently used for Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The long-range research goal is to be able to field any existing Department of Defense missile payload onboard submarines rapidly and at low cost.
By Andrew Koch, Jane's Defence Weekly, January 11, 2006
New US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Mullen sees the naval services playing important roles in the coming years, especially with the concept of sea basing for all the armed services.
With the availability of bases from which US troops can operate around the world "drying up" and the amount of time they can stay at the remaining ones being limited, Adm Mullen says the ability to use ship-based forces will play an increasingly vital role.
Building a navy with the right force structure, size and composition to meet tomorrow's needs such as sea-basing "is my biggest challenge", he notes. "The centrepiece of that future is a stable shipbuilding account. The fact that we had four ships in the [Fiscal Year] 2006 budget was the bottom of the heap as far as I am concerned. We have continued to get a smaller and smaller navy and, in my view, from a risk standpoint it is as small as we can get," Adm Mullen said.
The navy has been working on formulating an architecture for the future fleet that incorporates warfighting requirements, affordability concerns and industrial base issues and that plan is being incorporated into the forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, he explains. A common problem, he says, is the practice of cutting available funding for a given shipbuilding programme by 30 per cent or more from the time it enters the five-year Future Years Defense Budget to the time the programme is actually executed. "Everybody in the business likes to pay for other things [with the shipbuilding funding account]. That has got to stop." Once stability is achieved, "the expectation is for industry to start reducing costs" through better planning.
To reach the new force structure architecture, the navy is also going to be forced to cut shipbuilding costs in ways it has not been able to do in years. Adm Mullen notes that the service has already chopped an estimated USD300 million off the cost of each DD-X destroyer through reducing operational requirements. "DD-X is a very strong programme technically and in risk reduction. I recognise that it is not inexpensive and that we have got to take some of the requirements out to make it affordable," he said.
He added: "I am going to do the same thing with the CVN-21, with the LHA-R and with every single ship we are building," including submarines. "I cannot afford to build all of my systems to 'objective' [requirement specifications]. My very steady approach on this will be [to buy] to 'threshold' because there is clearly not enough money."
According to Adm Mullen, the navy will also seek to save future shipbuilding funds by extending the lives of existing ships and through the greater use of existing designs. "We need to modernise, to get full service life out of our fleet and we often have not done that," he noted. For example, he says that "we lost our way on sea-basing because it became heavily programmatic, based on the MPF-F [ship]" that was originally looking at new designs. Now he says MPF-F will "leverage current hulls".
Likewise, the navy has been struggling with the costs of keeping its submarine force structure and needs to start building two boats per year or see that number drop. However, Adm Mullen said: "If we do not get them down to USD2 billion per submarine, it is not affordable." Still, he rejects the notion that the navy move away from a pure nuclear-powered submarine fleet. "It is my view that there is not much of a place for diesel submarines in our navy... The tyranny of distance and sustainability is something that nuclear power has solved for us in a very positive way."
After solving force structure plans for ships, Adm Mullen says he will turn his attention to similar efforts in other parts of the service. "Step one was to do this for ships. Step two is to do it for aircraft," the navy chief noted. The navy is also looking at its personnel force levels, which according to Adm Mullen constitute 60 per cent to 70 per cent of all navy investment.
"People are my most important resource and my most expensive resource," he said, noting that formulating a personnel strategy is his next big body of work. "I have got to understand the right end-strength for us on the military side and I have to answer that question on the civilian side."
Creating tomorrow's US Navy will involve "more interoperability requirements across joint and coalition nations", including greater international co-operation, Adm Mullen says. He has talked about the need for extending co-operation to allies so that together these partners can achieve "the 1,000-ship navy". In discussions with such partners about co-operation on global maritime security, Adm Mullen says he "found their appetite for this to be very high", noting particular interest in regional initiatives. To make such initiatives effective, he notes, "our investment needs to be such that for operations, doctrine, training and exercises we are able to leverage that capability".
To enable that coalition interoperability, Adm Mullen says the allies "need to exchange information in key areas or on key systems, not every system. CENTRIX [the Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System] is an example of that ... We are now pressing hard on this". He cites plans to put automatic identification systems on all US Navy ships as one example of how this information sharing can be achieved. "What that provides is an opportunity for a pretty good wide-area shipping picture that was difficult to get before. This is an international requirement and it will be an international technology." Adm Mullen says, this co-operation should include a continued close relationship with the US Coast Guard. Noting that he is a big supporter of the National Fleet Policy, he said: "We have to work together from the operational concepts that we have to the training that we do and the ships that we buy."
Newsbytes News Network, 5 January 2006
United States, 2006 Jan 05 (NB). President Bush used the congressional recess on Wednesday to appoint Gordon England as deputy secretary of Defense.
Bush nominated England last spring to the post after Paul Wolfowitz left, but the nomination was stalled in the Senate allegedly because of pension issues with England's former employer, General Dynamics Corp.
Until last week, England served as both Navy secretary and acting deputy Defense secretary. On Jan. 3, Donald C. Winter, the former president of Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Mission Systems sector, was sworn in as the new Navy secretary.
England also worked briefly as the first deputy secretary of Homeland Security. He graduated from the University of Maryland and earned a master's degree from the M.J. School of Business at Texas Christian University.
“Since joining President Bush’s administration in 2001, it has been a profound honor to serve our nation, the magnificent men and women of the United States Navy and Marine Corps and those of the Department of Homeland Security,” England said in a press release. “I am grateful to the president for asking me to continue serving our armed forces as the deputy to [Defense] secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld.”
The constitution gives the president the authority to make appointments while the Senate is in recess, although those appointees can serve only until the next Congress is installed.
Yesterday, Bush also used a recess appointment for J. Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of Defense for public affairs.
generaldynamics.com, 6 January 2006
PUGET SOUND NAVAL SHIPYARD, Wash. - General Dynamics Electric Boat has completed its conversion of USS Ohio (SSGN-726), the first of four Trident submarines to be reconfigured as multimission vessels optimized for covert tactical strike and special operations support. Electric Boat is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics (NYSE: GD).
Ohio’s conversion, undertaken in conjunction with the ship’s midlife refueling, provides the Navy with its first truly transformational platform. Ohio will be joined by three additional Tridents undergoing conversion to SSGNs - USS Michigan at the shipyard here, and USS Florida and USS Georgia at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia. The conversions are being performed under a $1.4 billion contract awarded to Electric Boat in 2002; work is scheduled for completion in 2007.
Each SSGN will carry up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles and support up to 66 Special Operations Forces for an extended time. General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems in Pittsfield, Mass., is the system integrator for the missile-control system. SSGNs will also serve as platforms to develop and test new weapons systems, sensors and operational concepts that could further transform naval warfare. These payloads will include large unmanned undersea vehicles and off-board sensors.
“The on-time conversion of USS Ohio from a strategic-missile submarine to a guided-missile and special warfare platform is a tribute to the collective efforts of the men and women of Electric Boat, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, the Navy’s Strategic Systems Program and the Naval Sea Systems Command SSGN program office,” said EB President John Casey. “Their contributions have provided the Navy with a powerful warship that embodies unparalleled capabilities as well as the opportunity to integrate new technologies and payloads in the future.”
Casey noted that the conversion - comprising design, manufacturing, installation and at-sea testing - was completed only three years after the Navy decided to move forward with the program. “That’s a remarkable achievement,” he said.
Referring to the overall SSGN conversion program, Casey said, “Work on USS Florida is proceeding smartly - in fact, its sea trial is on track to follow the lead-ship trial by only three months. This will enable us to provide the U.S. Navy with a second transformational platform over a shorter-than-normal time frame, and at a conversion cost still lower than the lead ship’s.”
General Dynamics, headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, employs approximately 71,900 people worldwide and had 2004 revenue of $19.2 billion. The company is a market leader in mission-critical information systems and technologies; land and expeditionary combat systems, armaments and munitions; shipbuilding and marine systems; and business aviation. More information about the company can be found at www.generaldynamics.com.
By Journalist 1st Class Paul Cage, Fleet Public Affairs Center Pacific
ABOARD MV KELLIE CHOUEST, At Sea (NNS) -- A Russian Federation Navy Delegation visited the Deep Submergence Unit (DSU) aboard MV Kellie Chouest Dec. 14 to observe Deep Submergence Recovery Vehicle (DSRV) Mystic conduct recovery training exercises off the coast of California.
Kellie Chouest is a submarine support vessel homeported at Naval Air Station North Island, Calif.
This was the second bilateral meeting this year between the Russian and American navies to work on general guidelines for a proposed memorandum of agreement on submarine search and rescue. The first meeting was held in September in Moscow.
“We are discussing the standardization and technical certification of their recovery vehicle, which is a long process,” said Capt. Chris Murray, deputy director, Deep Submergence Systems. “We are trying to build their confidence in our recovery system by showing them how we conduct recovery operations. Taking them down with Mystic, showing them firsthand the equipment we would be using is a major step in building that mutual understanding and confidence.”
This was the first time the Russians dived with Mystic. They were taken to a depth of 2,000 feet, where Mystic conducted a video sweep and mounted onto a platform. The platform is used to simulate a submarine hatch. One of the Russian delegates was also allowed to take control of Mystic and steer for a while.
“I was surprised at how pleasant and professional the pilots of Mystic were,” said Capt. 1st Rank Andrey Zvyagintsev, commander of the Russian Expeditionary Search and Rescue Detachment. “They are the right people for the job. If we join our rescue forces, I know we will be able to do effective recovery work.”
Immediate response is considered key to submarine rescue.
“Immediate response is the key for sub rescues,” said Bill Orr, International Submarine Escape and Rescue Liaison Office coordinator and submarine rescue officer for Commander, Naval Submarine Forces. “If you don’t know who your neighbors are, you're not going to [even] ask them for a cup of sugar. If we can foster confidence and understanding in our system and vice versa, we will be able to ask each other, like good neighbors, for assistance and not make a situation worse.”
Building on this interaction, the two navies hope to conduct a future visit to Russia, where representatives from the United States will be able to observe Russian personnel perform rescue operation exercises.
“This was a great opportunity to foster good will between our two countries,” said Cmdr. Kent Van Horn, commander of DSU. “Any chance we get to show our capabilities, like we did today, will only improve our understanding between our navies.”
By John Kay, The Sun, 5 Jan 06
A SENIOR Royal Navy sailor turned up DRUNK to take charge of a nuclear submarine, it emerged yesterday.
The boozed-up chief petty officer reported for duty aboard HMS Talent on Christmas Day after driving to a dockyard.
He got past two high-security checkpoints before reaching the control room of the 5,200-tonne sub, which can fire Tomahawk missiles.
The watchman he was relieving noticed he stank of drink and called in MoD cops.
The chief was escorted off the Trafalgar-class sub which is being refitted at Devonport in Plymouth.
A senior Navy source said: “This is appalling. The fact that it was Christmas is no excuse for such a gross security lapse.”
Senior officers insisted there had been no security threat because the sub’s nuclear reactor was shut down.
The MoD said: “The incident is under investigation.”
Mike Critchley, publisher of Warship World magazine, said: “This could be the end of someone’s career - and perhaps the closure of the bar facilities.”