BAHRAIN — The crewmembers of Cyclone-class coastal patrol ship USS Firebolt (PC 10) marked the end of the ship’s U.S. Navy service during a decommissioning ceremony Feb. 23 at Naval Support Activity Bahrain. 
 
The nearly 27-year-old ship was one of 10 patrol craft currently forward-deployed to the Middle East in support of regional maritime security operations. Firebolt commissioned in June 1995 and began conducting routine coastal patrol operations under U.S. 5th Fleet in 2003. 
 
“The crew is what makes Firebolt special to me,” said Senior Chief Engineman Paul Dixon, who completed two tours aboard Firebolt. “The history behind Firebolt makes everything we do more meaningful.” 
 
Prior to operating from Bahrain, the ship helped secure New York City’s harbor immediately following the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Months later, Firebolt conducted coastal patrols in the Arabian Gulf during Operation Iraqi Freedom. 
 
In 2004, two Firebolt Sailors and a Coast Guardsman were killed as Firebolt provided security for the Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal in the Northern Arabian Gulf. After spotting a suspicious vessel, Firebolt deployed a rigid-hull inflatable boat and the suspicious vessel exploded in an apparent suicide attack. 
 
“We thank the hundreds who served on this great ship and honor the brave Sailors and Coast Guardsman killed in the 2004 terrorist attack at sea. Their sacrifice will never be forgotten,” said Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, U.S. 5th Fleet and Combined Maritime Forces. 
 
Firebolt has conducted several major rescue operations during its storied service. In 2005, the ship’s crew rescued 89 people off the coast of Somalia after their boat sank. Additionally, Firebolt rescued an Iranian mariner from a capsized fishing vessel in 2012. 
 
“We have so many memories here,” said Machinist’s Mate 3rd Class Pedro Benitez. “We would be here working late hours in engineering, but still smiling and joking. It’s stuff like that that’s irreplaceable.” 
 
During the decommissioning ceremony, Lt. Cmdr. Raymond W. Miller, Firebolt’s commanding officer, expressed appreciation for his team. 
 
“They’ve proven their dedication to mission success over and over again,” said Miller. “They’ve never let me or each other down.” 

ARLINGTON, Va. — Addressing the topic of future force structure after it submerged again into the depths of analysis, the Navy’s top officer laid out his views for a “bigger, more capable Navy” in the future informed by a series of exercises over the last year, estimating a requirement for a fleet of more than 500 manned and unmanned ships, including 12 aircraft carriers. 

“We’re going through another force-structure assessment right now, based on the hard work we’ve done over the last five or years in really thinking about how we would fight differently in terms of in a distributed fashion, across a wide, vast ocean like the Pacific, in terms of integrating all domains simultaneously,” said Adm. Michael Gilday, speaking Feb. 18 at the West 2022 Symposium sponsored in San Diego by the U.S. Naval Institute and the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. 

“In thinking about what the future fleet looks like, we spent time taking a look at a couple of different force structures assessments in 2019 and 2020,” the CNO said. “The one that I base my best advice on is the one that we finished up in 2020 that we did along with the Marine Corps, but it was actually led by OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense]. I found that to be an important stakeholder in that process because this wasn’t just Marine Corps-speak or Navy speak or Department of the Navy-speak, but it was more broadly supported by OSD. 

“Based on that [and] large-scale exercises like we did last summer — leveraging live virtual construct [LVC]— based on the integrated battle problem we just did over in 5th Fleet with some 100 unmanned platforms over the past few weeks, I’ve concluded, constant with the analysis, we need a naval force of over 500 ships,” he said. 

Gilday said his view on carrier aviation “remains unchanged. I think we need 12 carriers.”  

The CNO also said “we need a strong amphibious force to include probably nine big-deck amphibs and another 19-20 [medium amphibious warfare ships] to support them [and] perhaps 30 or more smaller amphibious ships to leverage maritime littoral regiments — and the punch that they’re going to provide in places close inside the fight — to 60 destroyers and probably 50 frigates; 70 attack submarines; a dozen ballistic-missile submarines; to about 100 support ships. And probably, looking to the future, 150 unmanned [vessels]. 

“We’re doing a lot of work inside the FYDP [future years defense plan] now. I think it speaks out to the vulnerabilities that we hear called out by the Joint Staff and the chairman in his risk assessment,” Gilday said. “So, in the long term, I’m sighted on a bigger, more capable Navy. We’re working our way through that with respect to budgets but certainly not taking our eye off the ball with respect to requirements. We do think differently because the future is now in terms of bringing more capability out of the force that we have.” 

NORFOLK — The U.S. Navy reestablished Commander, Submarine Squadron (COMSUBRON) 8 during an official ceremony at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, on Friday, Feb. 18, commander, Submarine Force Atlantic said in a release. 
 
COMSUBRON 8’s reestablishment is intended to distribute and align the responsibility for command and control of submarines assigned to Commander, Submarine Squadron 6, also based in Norfolk, during the submarines’ sustainment phase and maintenance shipyard periods. 
 
COMSUBRON 8 was initially disestablished in a ceremony on April 28, 2011, and the squadron’s original roles and responsibilities were merged with COMSUBRON 6. 
 
This move returns the control of new submarine construction and ongoing submarine operating maintenance schedules of Los Angeles-class attack submarines and Virginia-class submarines homeported in Norfolk to COMSUBRON 8. 
 
COMSUBRON 6 retains the operational responsibility of preparing Norfolk-based submarine crews in all facets of operations, to include tactical and operational readiness for war, inspection and monitoring duties, nuclear and radiological safety, and the development and control of submarine operating schedules and logistical support coordination of all submarine operations in the Virginia Capes operating areas. 
 
Vice Adm. William Houston, commander, Submarine Forces, was the keynote speaker for the establishment ceremony. 
 
“Normally we have a change of command which can be upsetting as it means someone is moving on, but this ceremony is nothing but good news as we are reestablishing a squadron,” said Houston. “The reestablishment will give us a squadron that can concentrate on maintenance and new construction and that skillset, while we have another squadron that is focused on operational units.” 
 
Capt. Brian Hogan took command of submarines previously under COMSUBRON 6, relieving Capt. Jason Pittman, commodore, COMSUBRON 6, of responsibility of new submarine construction and ongoing submarine operating maintenance schedules. 
 
“I would first like to congratulate Brian on assuming command of Submarine Squadron 8,” said Pittman. “He brings to the team a wealth of invaluable experience and I cannot think of anyone more right for the job than him. It is an important day for the entire submarine force and the entire Navy. We are building a dedicated team that will lean in and learn new and innovative ways to build and repair our submarines.” 
 
After assuming command of COMSUBRON 8, Hogan gave remarks on reestablishing the squadron. 
 
“Submarine Squadron 8 was established back in the 1940s, so we are simply restoring Submarine Force normalcy by reestablishing it here today,” said Hogan. “This time around, Squadron 8 is focused on shipyard readiness. It is difficult to transition a submarine and its crew into the shipyard and back out as the boat and crew both transform themselves for operational readiness. It is important we get these transitions right, and it is now our job to do it successfully.” 
 
COMSUBRON 8 will step in to provide administrative, manning, logistical, training, operational planning and readiness support for Los Angeles-class attack and Virginia-class fast attack submarine during periods of maintenance and improvement. 
 
Fast-attack submarines are multi-mission platforms enabling five of the six Navy maritime strategy core capabilities — sea control, power projection, forward presence, maritime security and deterrence. They are designed to excel in anti-submarine warfare, anti-ship warfare, strike warfare, special operations, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, irregular warfare and mine warfare. Fast-attack submarines project power ashore with special operations forces and Tomahawk cruise missiles in the prevention or preparation of regional crises. 
 
 
 

LONDON — The United Kingdom and France have confirmed the launch of the preparation works for the Future Cruise/Anti-Ship Weapon (FC/ASW) program, after the signature today of a government agreement and associated contracts by the French Direction générale de l’armement and the British Defence Equipment & Support, MBDA said in Feb. 21. 

“The FC/ASW program is an example of the value of the ‘One MBDA’ integrated model,” said Eric Beranger, CEO of MBDA. “By combining technology, industrial capacity and funding across borders, we can deliver unique and advanced sovereign capabilities. Following the conclusion of the FC/ASW Concept Phase, the confirmation of the launch of these preparation works testifies the renewed confidence of our two countries towards MBDA. The project will take advantage from our sustained French/U.K. Centers of Excellence. This reinforcement of MBDA’s portfolio of deep strike and anti-ship systems will allow MBDA to offer to our armed forces, whose satisfaction is our priority, a cutting-edge solution fitted to their requirements and adapted to all existing or future operational needs.” 

These preparation works will focus on the coordinated development of a program of next-generation deep strike and heavy anti-ship weapons. It will assess two complementary missile concepts, expected to be fielded at the end of the decade: a subsonic low observable concept and a supersonic, highly maneuverable concept. These concepts are to meet the requirements of France and the United Kingdom and will provide a game changing capability to overcome land-based and maritime threats, hardened targets and air defense systems, at very long ranges and in increasingly contested battlespace environments. 

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, and Representatives Steven Palazzo and Trent Kelly, all Republicans from Mississippi, joined lawmakers from the Maine congressional delegation in a letter urging Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro to include funding for three Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in the fiscal 2023 budget, Wicker’s office said in a release.  

“As you work to finalize the Department of the Navy’s [fiscal] 2023 budget, we write to respectfully request support for a robust shipbuilding budget, and to include the procurement of three Arleigh Burke-class destroyers,” began the lawmakers. “We urge the Navy to develop a multi-year procurement program of 15 destroyers which maximizes the procured number of ships under the contract, with the understanding that if adequately funded, the industrial base can support at least three ships per year.”  

The lawmakers highlighted the importance of Arleigh Burke-class ships to national defense — including their value in countering the growing threat of China — and the impact of the shipbuilding efforts on Mississippi and Maine communities. These ships are currently built at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi and Bath Iron Works in Maine. 

“Furthermore, to address the growing threat of China and its increasing fleet size, hedge against a belligerent Russia and assure allies, we urge you to mature and submit the department’s acquisition plan for the next large surface combatant,” continued the lawmakers. “A strategy closely tied to the industrial base and with extensive oversight will help prevent the issues of cost increases, program delays and end-product reliability issues seen in other ship classes.

“These issues are imperative to maintaining our National Defense Strategy and advantage in the maritime commons, and sustaining our military-industrial base,” the lawmakers concluded. 

In addition to the Mississippi lawmakers, the letter was signed by U.S. Sens. Angus King (I-Maine), and Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Representatives Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, both Democrats. 

The Mississippi and Maine congressional delegations have long championed funding for both Ingalls Shipbuilding and Bath Iron Works. In the recent 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, the lawmakers secured authorization of $3 billion for the procurement of two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers at Ingalls Shipbuilding. Last month, Wicker, Hyde-Smith and Palazzo joined Del Toro at Ingalls Shipbuilding, where the secretary toured the facilities and saw the importance of the work being done at the shipyard. 

PENSACOLA, Fla. — The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Reliance (WMEC-615) returned to homeport in Pensacola, Florida, Feb. 18, following a 52-day patrol in the Caribbean Sea in support of the Coast Guard 7th District. 

The Reliance crew supported the U.S. Coast Guard 7th District throughout their patrol, aiding in missions to interdict and disrupt the flow of illegal drugs and migrant trafficking while supporting national security and strengthening relationships with regional partners throughout the Caribbean. 

During the patrol, the crew traveled over approximately 8,631 miles, assisted in the transference of more than 12,564 pounds of narcotics with an estimated combined street value of $250 million and intercepted 157 undocumented migrants. The cutter’s crew also transferred eight suspected narcotics smugglers from other U.S. Coast Guard cutters operating in the region. 

Working jointly with the crew of U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Kathleen Moore (WPC-1109), the Reliance’s crew also rescued 191 Haitian nationals from an unseaworthy vessel off the coast of Cuba. 

The patrol was critical in enhancing operational readiness through shipboard training and qualifications, resulting in the successful completion of a five day major shipboard inspection and exercise, which tested the crew’s readiness in all aspects of aviation training, equipment and capabilities.  

The Reliance is a 210-foot medium-endurance cutter homeported in Pensacola with a crew of 74 personnel. The cutter’s primary missions include counter drug operations, migrant interdiction, enforcing federal fishery laws and search and rescue in support of U.S. Coast Guard operations throughout the Western Hemisphere. 

MEDITERRANEAN SEA — While the NATO maritime forces have had to navigate around the rocks and shoals of the global pandemic, it has not stopped them from exercising and raising their game in looking for adversary submarines in the Mediterranean.

The annual Dynamic Manta antisubmarine warfare exercises are conducted in the central Mediterranean, usually around Sicily, and takes advantage of the maritime patrol air bases at Sigonella and Catania in Italy. This year is no exception.

Ships, submarines, aircraft and personnel from nine allied nations will take part in the antisubmarine warfare and anti-surface warfare training exercises from Feb. 21 to March 4.

Submarines from France, Greece, and Italy have been joined by surface combatants from Canada, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the U.S. for the exercise. Maritime patrol aircraft from Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, U.K. and the U.S. are supporting the simulated, multi-threat environment during the exercise.

The task group is joining up in Catania harbor. The nearby Italian naval helicopter base in Catania and U.S. Naval Air Station at Sigonella are supporting Dynamic Manta 22 operations. Logistical support is being provided from the Italian naval base at Augusta Bay.

Dynamic Manta is one of the two major antisubmarine warfare exercises led every year by NATO Maritime Command. Dynamic Manta involves NATO Standing Maritime Group Two in the Mediterranean. The other, Dynamic Mongoose, takes place in the North Atlantic in the summer, involving NATO Standing Maritime Group One.

“NATO’s maritime power lies in the ability of the standing forces to rapidly join with high readiness, high-capacity national forces to deliver effects when and where needed,” said U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Stephen Mack, commander, Submarines NATO, who is commanding Dynamic Manta 22. “Exercises like this, along with regular training between allied navy units and our multinational standing naval forces, is a force multiplier that provides a collectively trained and interoperable force, ready to work together as the maritime portion of the VJTF [Very High Joint Readiness Task Force].”

Mack added, “This exercise is a visible demonstration of the alliance’s ability to cooperate and effectively integrate. Alliance unit, solidarity, and cohesion are the core of NATO.”

Recent initiatives by the Department of Defense to foster rapid innovation and modernization have involved conducting prize competitions among existing and would-be defense contractors to develop technology for military use. The competitions enable small businesses to put forth and demonstrate their ideas in realistic scenarios and can, in time, lead to production contracts.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning is one area receiving intensive attention from the Defense Department because of the increasing challenges of managing overwhelming amounts of data and making decisions in a timely manner. The challenge is made even more acute because of the present sophisticated peer competition with China and Russia. The current politico-military situations in Ukraine, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea are scenarios in which AI/ML potentially can help decisionmakers. AI can have applications at the national level all the way down to the tactical level. The technology can help not only with situational awareness but also with predictions — indications and warning. 

In a recent prize competition sponsored by the Department of Defense, a small company named BigBear.ai, headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, won the prize. The competition between 12 teams was a Project Overmatch AI Advanced Naval Technology Exercise, or ANTX. 

Brian Frutchey, chief technology officer for BigBear.ai, said the company adapted for the Navy a program developed for the U.S Army, which was “dealing with hybrid warfare, the gray zone conflict out in Eastern Europe and wanting to find tools that could automate the sense-making of all of the different data that they need to look at for the hybrid warfare environment.”

It was not just “counting the planes and tanks and soldiers anymore,” Frutchey said. “They have to look at the economies, political relationships, migration of people, cyber activity, all these new domains that the strategic analyst needs to be cognizant of and needs to model into their anticipatory intelligence.”

BigBear.ai built the Virtual Anticipation Network (VANE) — the weathervane — to point to where the winds of war were blowing. Now the dominant product at Big Bear.ai, VANE, funded by the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations in Low Intensity Conflicts, was used by the company to win the $75,000 prize in the ANTX. BigBear.ai was one of 12 companies selected to participate in the competition, which was conducted during the last half of 2021.

Frutchey said in the ANTX the VANE was looking for telemetry for maritime vessels and aircraft, as well as weather, the information environment, among other domains “that we brought together so that we could inform when these things are happening with airplanes flying through the Taiwanese air defense zone [ADIZ],” including events leading up to and during the events of interest, such as Chinese aircraft entry into the ADIZ; rerouting of air traffic; even press releases. As the observation of the indicators is automated, human analysts are able to handle more data “and with a significant amount of agility be able to pivot to new situations faster than they could before.”

He says what sets BigBear.ai apart “is that we have built machine learning that expects data to not be the whole story. I think that’s key because especially for our defense and intelligence partners, you don’t always have control of the data that you’re trying to analyze. There’s always this uncertainty in the data where you have gaps and holes and inaccuracies and because of that we have to use machine learning that assumes that you’re going to be having those errors, those issues and, even further, you don’t always get to measure the stuff you want to measure.”

VANE presents its analysis on a dashboard on a monitor for analysts to observe. A “heat map or density chart” shows areas with a lot of activity in a given period.

“We also look at baseline behaviors,” Frutchey said. “The analysts get concerned when that level raises above some threshold. In the first week of October, it went to 56 [Chinese] sorties in a day at one point and they were using strategic bombers in some of those sorties. Those kinds of things are a normal low-level buzz, but I want to be alerted when the models predicting that a week from a now, a month from now, there is going to be above some threshold, or the rate of change is going to be significant. … We give them those alerts, and the user can, of course, then drill into the alert and explore the forecast data. … So, we were looking at aggressive activities in the South China Sea for the AI ANTX exercise.

“We also have scenario forecasts [that] allow you to assess courses of action,” he said. “What if Russia invades Ukraine? What will that do to the price of Bitcoin? Or what if, in the AI ANTX example, we asked the question, what if we ran a naval exercise in the Luzon Strait? What would that do to Chinese behaviors in the South China Sea? If we were to go with a carrier striker to the Luzon Strait and run a little naval exercise, what would that do to behaviors? And so, we can run those simulations and we can then show the user, here’s how the world would change a month from now if we were to run that exercise next week.”

VANE is scalable, Frutchey said. “Vane is built to elastically scale in the cloud as large as it needs to go. It’s actually one of the big powers on our platform is that it is completely serverless, which means it’s not like it’s a monolithic app that’s a bunch of servers chewing up resources all day long. It’s a collection of functions and, as the customers need those functions, the system is built to grab resources in the cloud, spin those up to do the work that’s needed and then turn them off when the work is done. Our systems churn through terabytes of data to build these models at global scales.”

Frutchey said the Overmatch ANTX win shows the company’s prescriptive analytics are appropriate for operational as well as strategic purposes.

“We are beginning to talk to the program offices for major command-and-control systems, [such as] the Global Command-and-Control System-Maritime,” he said.

Matching Best of Breed

AI is also being applied on a tactical level. Draper, a company known for building ballistic-missile guidance systems, entered a competition last summer conducted by the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division in Crane, Indiana. The prize challenge was to determine the feasibility of taking autonomy software and implementing it on another organization’s hardware.

“I think what the government was trying to learn is how difficult is it to separate those two [software and hardware],” said Drew Mitchell, Defense Systems associate director at Draper and general manager of Draper’s Tampa, Florida, office. “That way I can match best of breed software up with best of breed hardware. Generally, those aren’t the same when the company delivers that end product to the government. And it’s also very expensive. So, they’re trying to figure out a way to reduce costs on some of these autonomous platforms.”

The prize challenge was split into three phases. In Phase 1, Draper, which had a lot of experience developing platform-agnostic software, submitted a white paper that was accepted along with those of 20 other companies. Phase 2 was a simulated exercise which involved loading autonomy algorithms into a small quadrotor unmanned aerial system and navigating it inside a building, mapping the interior and identifying objects in the building, all without the aid of GPS.

Five contestants made it to Phase 3, which involved an actual demonstration of the scenario of Phase 2 using a Hydronalix quadrotor drone into which their respective software was loaded.

“It was completely autonomous, so you give the drone some sort of basic instruction, basically, fly forward and then it takes it over from there,” Mitchell said. “It senses the environment, and it does that through cameras, and it uses the same camera to do the navigation algorithm using a vision-based navigation system. It uses the same camera to collect a map of the environment or generate a map of the environment. A lot of that is very processor intensive. In a small package, like a small drone quadcopter not much bigger than a book, there’s not a whole lot of processor available on there to do all that stuff.”

Draper used vision-aided navigation algorithms it has used in its other programs.

“We used what’s called a visual inertial odometry,” Mitchell said. “It’s a lot like how the human eye and brain work in terms of referencing objects as you see them and then as you move, your brain is still calculating, oh, I saw this point and now the point is three feet from me as I move closer to it, from that point it’s now two feet from me, and from that, you can infer a lot of direction. It’s not highly accurate but it’s enough accuracy to help the IMU [inertial measuring unit] on board. It aids the IMU, so the IMU doesn’t drift off widely.

“The predominant systems today use GPS to aid that inertial unit,” Mitchell explained. “GPS gives it a position, so it knows, okay, I see that point, and then I move again, I see that point, I know where I am. But if you’re indoors, GPS doesn’t work and the big push within the Department of Defense is to do things without GPS because they know in a future conflict it’s probably going to be one of the first things our adversaries take out. Using these vision-based techniques, you’re able to get clearly decent navigation accuracy in a very small package and do this completely autonomously.

“We were able to show with very little time and resources and a very rudimentary hardware platform that the government provided us, we were able to navigate inside of a building with no GPS,” he said. “We were able to identify objects. We were able to map certain parts of an environment. Of course, it wasn’t optimal. The places that we did on our own were way better than what we’d developed through that process, but we did help the government understand that it is possible to do it.”

Draper came in second in the prize competition, with EPISCI coming in first.

The Navy announced initial operational capability for the CMV-22B Osprey, confirming the platform’s operational readiness following the successful completion of its first deployment on Feb. 17, Naval Air Systems Command said Feb. 18.

The aircraft was formally declared IOC on Dec. 14, 2021, aligning with the scheduled first-quarter fiscal year requirement.

“The CMV-22’s maiden deployment with Carrier Air Wing [CVW] Two and the [USS Carl] Vinson [CVN 70] team is an operational success, giving me the confidence necessary to make the declaration,” said Rear Adm. Andrew Loiselle, director, Air Warfare Division, N98, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. “As we continue to deliver the advanced platforms that will make up the Air Wing of the Future, the CMV-22B provides the necessary support and more to carry our future force.”

Loiselle’s designation marks a key milestone in the design, development, acquisition and testing of the CMV-22B and confirms its relevance and readiness to meet the needs of the Navy’s carrier onboard delivery mission. The aircraft transports personnel, mail, supplies and cargo from shore bases to aircraft carriers at sea, and will eventually replace the C-2A Greyhound.

“IOC designation is more than a stamp of approval,” said U.S. Marine Corps Col. Brian Taylor, V-22 Joint program manager. “It is a vote of confidence from top Navy leadership that the design, testing and production of this aircraft meet the logistical needs of the carrier air wings designated to fly the CMV-22B.”

This past summer marked the first deployment for the CMV-22B. Fleet Logistics Multi-Mission Squadron (VRM) 30 embarked on the USS Carl Vinson alongside the F-35C Lightning II and E-2D Advanced Hawkeye squadrons. The first deployed detachment has executed a mission completion rate of 98% and a mission-capable rate of 75%. The CMV-22B is a crucial element of future carrier airwings due to the cargo capacity needed to transport F-35 power modules and additional logistics support for future carrier air wing deployments with next-generation platforms.

“This aircraft went from first flight to first deployment in 19 months, a feat possible through the dedication of the Navy’s acquisition, engineering, test and operational communities, as well as industry, all working in tandem, toward a common goal,” said Taylor.

With 50% more internal fuel than the Marine Corps’ Osprey variant, CMV-22B can transport up to 6,000 pounds of cargo and personnel over a 1,150 nautical mile range. The Navy redesigned the forward sponson fuel tanks and added two wing fuel tanks to add capacity and extend the flight range.

“As our fighter/attack and surveillance aircraft expand in both capability and size to extend the range of the carrier air wing, we must also evolve our support aircraft, in tandem, to supply those platforms. The CMV-22B will transport cargo and personnel to outfit the most advanced aircraft carrier strike groups as we continue to meet the needs of our missions worldwide,” said Taylor.

The program will continue to refine and test capabilities on the aircraft, addressing the agile needs of the fleet. To date, Bell Boeing has delivered 14 aircraft with 44 on contract and full operational capability expected in 2023.

MIAMI — Coast Guard Cutter James’ crew offloaded approximately 54,500 pounds of cocaine and 15,800 pounds of marijuana worth approximately $1.06 billion on Feb. 17 at Port Everglades, Florida, the Coast Guard 7th District said in a release. 

The ship’s crew set new records during their 90-day patrol for the largest single cocaine interdiction at 10,915 pounds, worth $206.4 million, and the largest single marijuana interdiction at 3,962 pounds, worth $3.59 million, the greatest amount of contraband interdicted during an Eastern Pacific patrol.  

The Coast Guard’s strong international relationships, specialized capabilities and unmatched authorities, allowed for a unity of effort to disrupt transnational criminal organizations. 

The drugs were interdicted in international waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea by crews from: 

• Coast Guard Station San Juan 
• Coast Guard Cutter James 
• His Netherlands Majesty’s Ship Holland 
• Coast Guard Cutter Stone 
• Coast Guard Cutter Griesser 
• USS Milwaukee 
• Coast Guard Cutter Northland 
• Coast Guard Cutter Diligence 
• Coast Guard Cutter Margaret Norvell 

“The best part of my job is being able to stand here at the end of a patrol and provide visibility on the incredible efforts from crewmembers who have volunteered for the challenging and dangerous duties to keep our shores safe,” said Capt. Todd Vance, the commanding officer of the Coast Guard Cutter James. “Each interdiction is a complex evolution and no two interdictions are the same. In fact, the James’ crew conducted simultaneous interdictions of two go-fast vessels 55 miles apart this patrol, showcasing their dedication and professional execution of the counter-drug mission.” 

Numerous U.S. agencies from the departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security cooperated in the effort to combat transnational organized crime. The Coast Guard, Navy, Customs and Border Protection, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with allied and international partner agencies, play a role in counter-drug operations.  

The fight against drug cartels in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea requires unity of effort in all phases from detection, monitoring and interdictions, to criminal prosecutions by international partners and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in districts across the nation. The law enforcement phase of counter-smuggling operations in the Eastern Pacific Ocean is conducted under the authority of the Coast Guard 11th District, headquartered in Alameda, California, and the law enforcement phase of operations in the Caribbean is conducted under the authority of the Coast Guard 7th District, headquartered in Miami. The interdictions, including the actual boardings, are led and conducted by members of the U.S. Coast Guard.  

The Coast Guard Cutter James is a 418-foot national security cutter homeported in Charleston, South Carolina.