Since 12-16-05
SS News Daily
for 16DEC05
Since 12-16-05
The Daily Internal Information Source for the U.S. Navy Submarine Force
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Photo: Holiday Lights Spark Submariners Creativity
Vern Clark Elected to Raytheon Board of Directors
Press Release (Yahoo.com),
15 Dec 05
Surge Exercise Planned for Next Year
(NAVY TIMES 15 DEC
05)…Andrew Scutro
$7B Shortfall In 2007 DoD Budget Fixes
By Gopal Ratnam, DefenseNews.com, December 15, 2005
From KUTV.com, 15 Dec 05
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Photo: Holiday Lights Spark Submariners Creativity
NORFOLK, Va.(Dec. 14, 2005)—Holiday lights on USS Montpelier mark the festive season on the Naval Station Waterfront. Montpelier and other submarines participated in Operation Decorama, an annual base tradition for afloat and shore commands. A judging committee which included Santa and the Grinch who Stole Christmas toured the base to select those with the best imagination and decorating skills. U.S. Navy Photo By: JO1 Christina M. Shaw (RELEASED)
Vern Clark Elected
to Raytheon Board of Directors
Press Release (Yahoo.com),
15 Dec 05
WALTHAM, Mass., Dec. 15, 2005 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The Raytheon Company board of directors has elected Admiral Vern Clark, U.S. Navy (Ret.), 61, to the board. With the election of Clark, the Raytheon board is comprised of 12 directors.
Clark joins the Raytheon board following 37 years of distinguished military service, culminating with his appointment in July 2000 as the 27th Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). Upon his retirement in September 2005, Clark became the second longest serving CNO in history.
Clark's Navy experience includes having served more than half his career in command starting with a patrol gunboat as a lieutenant and concluding as the Chief of Naval Operations and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In between he served in increasingly senior assignments with two destroyer squadrons, the Atlantic Fleet's Anti-Submarine Warfare Training Center, a carrier battle group, the Second Fleet -- NATO's striking fleet, and the Atlantic Fleet.
Clark has received numerous military decorations for his service, including four Defense Distinguished Service Medals, three Navy Distinguished Service Medals, and three awards of the Legion of Merit. He has also been honored with two Distinguished Service Medals received from the Army and Air Force, as well as recognition from a number of international allied countries.
Clark earned his undergraduate degree from Evangel College in Springfield, Missouri, and an MBA from the University of Arkansas. He holds an Honorary Doctorate in Public Service from the University of Toledo and an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Old Dominion University.
Raytheon Company, with 2004 sales of $20.2 billion, is an industry leader in defense and government electronics, space, information technology, technical services, and business and special mission aircraft. With headquarters in Waltham, Mass., Raytheon employs 80,000 people worldwide.
Surge Exercise Planned for
Next Year
(NAVY TIMES 15 DEC
05)…Andrew Scutro
Prepare to launch. In the early 2006, selected ships will rapidly deploy in another test of surge capability, according to Navy sources.
No details on which ships or sailors will participate in the exercise are available. Navy officials would only confirm that a winter surge exercise for 2006 is in the works.
Under the Fleet Response Plan (FRP), the Navy must be able to “surge” six carrier strike groups within 30 days and follow with two more within 60 days.
In the first big test of the plan, called Summer Pulse 2004, seven carrier strike groups and more than 45,000 sailors took part in the force surge. In May, amphibious assault ship Saipan, frigate Nicholas and transport dock Nashville surged from Norfolk on a three month deployment under FRP.
A recent government audit of FRP criticized the effort as ill-defined, untested and misunderstood in the fleet.
Although the FRP began as a way to more rapidly deploy multiple carrier strike groups (CSG), the Navy plans to widen the program.
On Oct. 5, during a speech in Virginia Beach, head of Fleet Forces Command, Vice Adm. John Nathman said the operational availability demonstrated by FRP will go beyond large carrier forces.
“We really believe the [FRP] should be applied across the submarine force, the surface force, the Seabee force, the carrier force, the air force and in large measure,” Nathman said.
$7B Shortfall In 2007 DoD Budget Fixes
By Gopal Ratnam, DefenseNews.com, December 15, 2005
A $7 billion shortfall in the Pentagon’s 2007 budget is likely to be covered by cuts in operations, maintenance and personnel accounts.
The decision was taken at a Dec. 13 meeting of the Pentagon’s Senior Leadership Review Group, whose members include Pentagon comptroller Tina Jonas, who identified the $7 billion shortfall, sources said.
Defense Department spokeswoman Lt. Col Rose-Ann Lynch said the Pentagon would not comment on the meeting.
“No decisions have been made on the contents of the FY 2007 budget. All services and OSD components have been asked to think about potential capability and resource alternatives to current plans and all options are on the table,” Lynch said.
In keeping with the broad theme of the Quadrennial Defense Review, which has largely blessed major weapons programs once considered to be in danger of being canceled, the 2007 budget shortfall will be covered without affecting weapons.
Military service officials are said to be strongly opposed to taking away from weapons programs that have been in the pipeline for the last decade, arguing that it would lead to a “hollow force.”
Though the White House Office of Management and Budget has signaled that it will allow the Pentagon to propose a $443 billion defense spending plan in February - which is what the Pentagon expected to ask for - the $7 billion difference is due to an internal mismatch between available funds and needed expenditure, sources said.
The move to cut operations and maintenance expenditure and particularly force structure is seen as an unintended consequence of the budget and QDR exercises. Early in the year the debate largely focused on canceling big-ticket weapons programs to save money that would be used to boost investment in non-traditional warfare areas and in some cases officials even expected to increase force strength.
But the military services decided to sacrifice force structure to pay for weapons, which could, according to some sources, lead to a renewed debate about the need for a draft or compulsory military service. But the White House and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have categorically rejected the need for a draft.
Preserving the weapons budget is also the main theme of a special panel headed by retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, whose recommendations were made public Dec. 14. The panel called the Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment advocated separating the weapons budget from the main defense budget as a way to preserve procurement, research and development plans.
KITTERY, Maine
After
21 years of service, the attack submarine USS Salt Lake City arrived Thursday at
the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard - its last stop before the scrap heap.
A deactivation ceremony for the 360-foot-long sub was held in October in San
Diego. The Salt Lake City and its 127-member crew last month surfaced through
the ice cap in the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole before heading on to the
base in Kittery.
The sub will spend about a year there, undergoing defueling and other steps in
the inactivation process. After that, it will be towed back to the West Coast -
to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington - where it will be recycled.
Northrop Grumman Newport
News' recent effort to get back into the submarine-maintenance business might
end up being short-lived.
After 2008, sub repair work can be handled by Navy-owned shipyards instead of
private yards such as Newport News and General Dynamics Electric Boat, the
Navy's top uniformed officer says.
"The public shipyards will once again have the capacity to perform all scheduled
maintenance," said Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chief of Naval Operations, in a
recent letter to New England lawmakers.
The Navy's move came after the Base Realignment and Closure commission, or BRAC,
voted to keep open the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, in Kittery, Maine - a public
submarine repair yard the Navy had sought to shut down.
Keeping the Maine operation active means one more place for the subs to be fixed
instead of coming to the private yards.
Electric Boat, based in Groton, Conn., cited the Navy's shift as a major factor
in its recent announcement that it would lay off as many as 2,400 workers.
In the past few years, the Newport News shipyard began a concerted effort to get
back into the submarine-repair business after an eight-year hiatus, handling
three repair contracts for Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered submersibles since
2003.
The yard declined to say how much work it expects to lose as a result of the
Navy's new policy.
But as a producer and repairer of aircraft carriers as well as subs, the
shipyard is better able than its New England counterpart to withstand the impact
of such a decision.
"While we have not received any correspondence regarding changes to the
submarine repair business, we do know that the decision to keep Portsmouth Naval
Shipyard open does change the dynamics of the business," said shipyard
spokeswoman Jerri Fuller Dickseski.
"However, we have performed very well in the submarine repair arena, and we
expect our performance to be a factor in any decisions for future work."
In the last few years, the Newport News yard streamlined the process for
negotiating sub repair contracts with the Navy.
It named a vice president of technology development and fleet support, Irwin F.
Edenzon - whose oversight responsibilities include, among other things, sub
maintenance jobs. And it's gotten at least some sub repair work.
Since 2003, the Newport News yard has performed three jobs on Los Angeles-class
submarines - the USS Minneapolis-St. Paul; the USS Hyman G. Rickover; and the
USS Minneapolis St. Paul a second time. The jobs ranged in cost from $23 million
to $40 million, the Department of Defense said, with each lasting about six
months. More than 200 workers were employed on each project.
The USS Oklahoma City still is expected to come to the yard next spring,
Dickseski said.
It was unclear if any other boats are scheduled to come in after that.
New England lawmakers got wind of the Navy's policy shift in early November, and
complained to Mullen about it.
He later laid out the initiative in a letter, saying that although the private
yards were needed in the past few years, there will be fewer such jobs to go
around after 2008.
And the public yards - which also include Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth -
get first dibs on the repairs, he said.
"Public shipyards are level-loaded first, consistent with their capacity, and
any remaining work is then competed in the private sector," Mullen said.