JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Southeast awarded a $191.9 million fixed-price award-fee contract March 20 to Alberici-Mortenson, Joint Venture out of St. Louis, Missouri, the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southeast Public Affairs said in a March 23 release. The first phase of the design-bid-build contract is for the recapitalization of the dry dock at Naval Submarine Base (NSB) Kings Bay, Georgia. 

“The overhaul and restoration of the Kings Bay Dry Dock is the most important strategic deterrence enterprise modernization effort outside of the construction of the new Columbia-class SSBN, a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine,” said Trident Refit Facility Commanding Officer Capt. Paul Dinius. 

The Navy’s submarines serve as the nation’s sea-based deterrent strategies. The Dry Dock Recapitalization Project at NSB Kings Bay is in direct support of the future of submarine warfare. The new Columbia-class submarine is replacing the Ohio-class submarine. 

“There have been several dedicated teams brought to bear for this effort,’ said NAVFAC Southeast Deputy Construction Management Officer Travis Baker. “So many have worked tirelessly to ensure the project would be ready for award and of high quality.” 

Dinius explained, “This will be the hardest single effort executed in this region since the construction of the dry dock more than 30 years ago, but I’m confident that Team Kings Bay is ready for the challenge.” 

The work to be performed includes concrete and steel repairs, overhaul and repair of the steel caisson and upgrades to power distribution, chilled water and fire detection and alarm systems. The entire superstructure will be re-coated, along with replacement of the roof, wall panels, and other plumbing and piping. The control system, electronic components and the auxiliary seawater system will also be upgraded. 

All existing training and maintenance facilities will be retrofitted and some new facilities will be constructed to support the next generation of submarines. 

“The window of opportunity to perform the majority of the work is limited,” said Baker. “The sheer magnitude of the work to be accomplished combined with the limited time to accomplish everything is almost overwhelming.” 

In order to meet this tight deadline, NAVFAC Southeast has established a Construction Management Office on site at NSB Kings Bay with dedicated resources capable of supporting 24-hour-a-day activities. 

“We have been successful in pulling several dedicated teams together to prepare for this effort,” said Baker. “Our team has worked tirelessly to ensure the project would be ready for award and be of high quality.” 

Baker explained that this is the most significant project he has ever seen in his career both in terms of importance and scale. “The amount of senior-level leadership and supported command focus and support has been unparalleled.” 

The contract also contains unexercised options, which if exercised, would increase the cumulative contract value to $592.3 million. The work is expected to be complete by July 2023. 

ARLINGTON, Virginia  — The secretary of defense said the Military Sealift Command’s hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH 19) is deploying to Los Angeles to relieve the city’s hospitals of some of their non-COVID-19 patient burden as they deal with the virus pandemic. 

During a March 23 news conference at the Pentagon, Secretary Mark Esper said the Mercy was departing its layberth in San Diego the same day for Los Angeles. The sister ship USNS Comfort would deploy at a later date for New York City for the same mission. The two ships will not be caring for COVID-19 patients but will treat acute care and surgery patients with other needs to relieve local hospitals that are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Esper said that some field hospitals are being readied for similar missions and that some hotels and college dormitories may be put in service as well for patient care. 

He said that to date 137 Defense Department personnel had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and that one department civilian had died. 

During a separate Pentagon news conference on the same date, Rear Adm. Timothy H. Weber, commander, Navy Medical Forces Pacific, said that 800 medical personnel were being embarked on the Mercy and were being drawn from eight military treatment facilities, primarily from naval hospitals and clinics in San Diego, Camp Pendleton, California, Twentynine Palms, California, Bremerton, Washington, and Oak Harbor, Washington. A total of 58 Navy Reserve medical personnel — all volunteers — also are being embarked. Weber said that none had been involved in treatment of COVID-19 patients. 

Also at the news conference, Capt. John R. Rotruck, commanding officer of the Mercy’s Medical Treatment Facility, said the ship would dock at Los Angeles “within the week” and will start care of the local population the following day. He said the ship will operate under the control commander, Destroyer Squadron 21, and operate for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 

Rotruck said the Mercy will embark a total of 1,128 personnel, including the ship’s civilian crew, the military medical treatment team and a few civilian contractors. The Mercy has 1,000 hospital beds and will be operating nine of the 12 operating rooms on the ship. He said the embarked crew will be screened for COVID-19 but not tested unless needed. 

Rotruck said the Mercy will offer a broad range of medical services but will not be staffed to handle obstetric or pediatric cases. The ship has a fully capable blood bank on board. 

“The Mercy is ready to go,” said the Mercy’s master, Capt. Jonathan Olmsted, also in the conference. He said the Mercy will be underway for about two days to runs some tests of its systems before docking pierside in the Port of Los Angeles.  

Rotruck said the time underway at sea will be used to train the medical team. 

“Our Mercy team is ready to deploy and support FEMA and local relief agencies against the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said. “I have an amazing team, and we are truly honored to answer the nations’ call to protect the health of the American people.” 

CHICAGO — Boeing has temporarily suspended production operations at its Puget Sound-area facilities in light of the state of emergency in Washington state and the company’s continuous assessment of the accelerating spread of the coronavirus in the region, the company said in a release. 

These actions are being taken to ensure the well-being of employees, their families and the local community and will include an orderly shutdown consistent with the requirements of its customers, the Boeing release said. 

Boeing planned to begin reducing production activity on March 23 and projects the suspension of such operations to begin on March 25 at sites across the Puget Sound area. The suspension of production operations is set to last 14 days, during which Boeing will continue to monitor government guidance and actions on COVID-19 and its associated impacts on all company operations. During this time, Boeing will deep-clean at impacted sites and establish rigorous criteria for return to work. 

“This necessary step protects our employees and the communities where they work and live,” Boeing President and CEO Dave Calhoun said. 

“We continue to work closely with public health officials, and we’re in contact with our customers, suppliers and other stakeholders who are affected by this temporary suspension. We regret the difficulty this will cause them, as well as our employees, but it’s vital to maintain health and safety for all those who support our products and services and to assist in the national effort to combat the spread of COVID-19.” 

Puget Sound area-based employees who can work from home will continue to do so. Those who can’t work remotely will receive paid leave for the initial 10 working days of the suspension — double the company policy — which will provide coverage for the 14-calendar-day suspension period. 

When the suspension is lifted, Boeing will take an orderly approach to restarting production with a focus on safety, quality and meeting customer commitments. This will be a key step to enabling the aerospace sector to bridge to recovery. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Defense Department successfully tested a hypersonic glide body in a flight experiment conducted from the Pacific Missile Range at Kauai, Hawaii, on March 19, the Pentagon said in a release. 

The U.S. Navy and U.S. Army jointly executed the launch of a common hypersonic glide body (C-HGB), which flew at hypersonic speed to a designated impact point. 

Concurrently, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) monitored and gathered tracking data from the flight experiment that will inform its ongoing development of systems designed to defend against adversary hypersonic weapons. 

Information gathered from this and future experiments will further inform the Pentagon’s hypersonic technology development, and this event is a major milestone towards the department’s goal of fielding hypersonic warfighting capabilities in the early- to mid-2020s. 

“This test builds on the success we had with Flight Experiment 1 in October 2017, in which our C-HGB achieved sustained hypersonic glide at our target distances,” said Vice Adm. Johnny R. Wolfe, director of the Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs, which is the lead designer for the C-HGB. 

“In this test we put additional stresses on the system and it was able to handle them all, due to the phenomenal expertise of our top-notch team of individuals from across government, industry and academia. Today, we validated our design and are now ready to move to the next phase towards fielding a hypersonic strike capability.” 

Hypersonic weapons, capable of flying at speeds greater than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5), are highly maneuverable and operate at varying altitudes. This provides the warfighter with an ability to strike targets hundreds and even thousands of miles away, in a matter of minutes, to defeat a wide range of high-value targets. Delivering hypersonic weapons is one of the department’s highest technical research and engineering priorities. 

“This test was a critical step in rapidly delivering operational hypersonic capabilities to our warfighters in support of the National Defense Strategy,” said U.S. Army Lt. Gen. L. Neil Thurgood, director of hypersonics, directed energy, space and rapid acquisition, whose office is leading the Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon program and joint C-HGB production. 

“We successfully executed a mission consistent with how we can apply this capability in the future. The joint team did a tremendous job in executing this test, and we will continue to move aggressively to get prototypes to the field.” 

The C-HGB — when fully fielded — will comprise the weapon’s conventional warhead, guidance system, cabling and thermal protection shield. The Navy and Army are working with industry to develop the C-HGB with Navy as the lead designer and Army as the lead for production. Each service will use the C-HGB, while developing individual weapon systems and launchers tailored for launch from sea or land. 

“Hypersonic systems deliver transformational warfighting capability,” said Mike White, assistant director of hypersonics, OUSD research and engineering (modernization). “The glide body tested today is now ready for transition to Army and Navy weapon system development efforts and is one of several applications of hypersonic technology underway across the [Defense Department]. These capabilities help ensure that our warfighters will maintain the battlefield dominance necessary to deter, and if necessary, defeat any future adversary.” 

Additionally, MDA is working with Army and Navy in sharing data that will inform their development of enhanced capabilities for a layered hypersonic defense to support warfighter need and outpace the adversary threat. 

ARLINGTON, Va — The U.S. Navy’s top medical officer said that no COVID-19 cases have been detected on board Navy ships at sea. 

“Because of those enhanced measures that were undertaken weeks ago, we have not seen active transmission,” Rear Adm. Bruce Gillingham, surgeon general of the Navy said, during a March 19 virtual news conference at the Pentagon. “We believe [those ships] are essentially self-quarantined in place as units.”  

“The small handful of cases that we have had have been in ships that are in port, Gillingham said. “Those individuals have been immediately identified, isolated and, if requiring treatment, they have been provided appropriate treatment for their condition.” 

The admiral affirmed that social distancing is being observed to the maximum extent possible on the ships. Analysis of COVID tests is not yet available on ships; the tests are sent ashore for analysis. 

He said that everyone boarding Navy ships is being screened for the virus. As a ship leaves port, it is not allowed to make a port call until it has been at sea for at least 14 days, the incubation period for the virus. 

The Military Sealift Command is activating the hospital ships USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy to relieve the burden of acute-care patients in some hospitals of patients without the COVID-19 virus so that the hospitals can concentrate on virus victims. The ships are being prepared for a 1,000-bed mission. The Comfort is being sent to New York City.  

Gillingham said that the critical core crew for the USNS Mercy is reporting aboard and is being screened for the virus before being allowed on board. A decision of where to send the Mercy on the U.S. West Coast has not yet been made. The Mercy is scheduled to sail next week.  

“We will be very careful in the development of our concept of operation of how to care for a community of patients [on the hospital ships],” Gillingham said. “Screening will be an essential part of that guidance.” 

WILMINGTON, N.C. — The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Diligence and crew returned to Wilmington on March 13 following a 39-day patrol in the North Atlantic that included living marine resources enforcement and a three-week training and evaluation period, the Coast Guard 5th District said in a release. 

The Diligence, a 210-foot medium-endurance cutter, will change homeports to Pensacola, Florida, this summer.  

This patrol began in Mayport, Florida, where the crew took part in the biennial operational readiness and training assessment called Tailored Ship’s Training Availability. The crew conducted a total of 109 drills and exercises. The training focused on evaluating the crew’s ability to repair shipboard casualties, respond to medical emergencies and proficiency in navigation and seamanship. 

They shifted roles from training to enforcement of offshore fishery and vessel safety regulations aboard commercial fishing vessels off the coast of the Carolinas. In this role, the Diligence crew ensured compliance with fisheries management measures, promoted a level playing field for commercial fishermen, helped preserve seafood stock sustainability for future generations and protected the safety of life at sea. 

While patrolling off Little River Inlet on the North Carolina coast, Diligence encountered two Northern Atlantic right whales. Right whales are endangered, and there are estimated to be less than 400 remaining. Because of their endangered status, right whale conservation zones with speed restrictions have been established along the eastern seaboard, and all mariners are required to maintain a distance of at least 500 feet from any such whale. 

“It was a great honor to witness such a majestic creature in its natural habitat, especially considering its status as an endangered species,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Daniel Smith, a boatswain’s mate aboard the cutter. “It was also an excellent training opportunity for the crew, as we are always on the lookout for this species. However, few have had the opportunity to see one in person.” 

“Diligence performed exceptionally during our biennial operational readiness assessment, which was a testament to the crew’s outstanding preparations, steadfast commitment, and exceptional proficiency,” said Cmdr. Luke Slivinski, the cutter’s commanding officer. 

“We closed out our deployment by patrolling off the Coast of North Carolina, following in the footsteps of our namesake, Revenue Cutter Diligence, that patrolled the same waters back in the early to mid-1790s. This patrol marked a fitting end to Diligence’s last patrol while homeported in Wilmington, North Carolina, as we depart later this summer for our new homeport of Pensacola, Florida.” 

WASHINGTON — The congressional push for reinstatement of a second Virginia-class submarine in the 2021 defense budget has attracted the support of 112 congressmen. 

A letter from three congressmen on the Seapower subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee — sent to the House Appropriations Committee in support of the additional Virginia SSN as well as for the Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarine (SSBN) — was endorsed by an additional list of 109 congressmen. 

The letter to Defense Appropriations Chairman Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.) and ranking member Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) was drafted by Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), the Seapower subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), ranking member, and another member, Rep. James R. Langevin (D-R.I.). All three represent districts in states that host submarine builders. The 112 signers include 72 Democrats and 40 Republicans. 

“The 112 members that have joined this request represent 32 states, over 14,000 suppliers and over $10 billion in manufacturing and support activity in the submarine supply chain,” Neil McKiernan, a staffer for Courtney, said in a March 18 release. 

During recent hearings, the three drafters were critical of the Navy’s budget proposal that limited sub construction starting in fiscal 2021 to one Virginia SSN, together with the long-planned Columbia SSBN. 

The objections included the apparent retrogression regarding a 355-ship Navy and attaining a submarine force large enough to support the National Security Strategy, a force level currently set at 66 SSNs. Under current shipbuilding plans and planned retirements, the SSN force level will decline to 42 boats by 2027. 

The Navy has put the second Virginia SSN at the top of its 2021 unfunded priorities list. The service and its two sub builders, General Dynamics Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding, succeeded in recent years in reducing the cost of a Virginia SSN to allow the Navy to afford two per year.   

The letter notes that then-Chief of Naval Operations John M. Richardson told Congress in 2019 that “with respect to the greatest gap between the warfighting requirement and current inventory, there’s no greater need than the attack submarine fleet. … It’s a wide gap and it’s getting wider. So, every submarine counts against closing that gap.” 

“The proposal to request one attack submarine is contrary to the National Defense Strategy, the needs of our combatant commanders, and a decade of congressional action in support of a steady two-a-year build rate,” the letter said. “Of note, the Navy recently ranked the restoration of the second 2021 Virginia-class submarine as its top unfunded requirement. To that end, we respectfully request your strong support for two Virginia-class submarines in [fiscal] 2021.” 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The secretary of defense said March 18 that he has ordered the U.S. Navy to prepare its two hospital ships for activation to take pressure off the nation’s hospitals battling the COVID-19 virus pandemic. 

At a Pentagon news conference, Secretary Mark T. Esper referred to the two hospital ships — USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy, based at Norfolk, Virginia, and San Diego, respectively — operated by the Military Sealift Command. 

“The Comfort is undergoing maintenance and the Mercy is at port,” Esper said.  “We’ve already given orders to the Navy a few days ago to lean forward, in terms of getting them ready to deploy.” 

Esper said the capabilities of the two ships, like military field hospitals, are focused on trauma. 

“They don’t have necessarily the segregated spaces you need to deal with infectious diseases,” he explained. “And so one of the ways by which you could use either field hospitals, the hospital ships or things in between is to take the pressure off of civilian hospitals when it comes to trauma cases [and] open up civilian hospital rooms for infectious diseases.” 

Esper said that a bigger challenge that activating the hospital ships is staffing the ships with medical professionals. 

“All those doctors and nurses either come from our medical treatment facilities or they come from the Reserves, which means civilians,” he said. “And, so what we’ve got to be very conscious of and careful of as we call up these units and use them to support the states, [is] that we aren’t robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak. So, what I don’t want to do is take Reservists from a hospital where they are needed just to put them on a ship to take them somewhere else where they are needed.  So, we’ve got to be very conscious of that. As I’ve spoken to a couple governors today, we talked a little bit about that, and I think people are beginning understand what that trade-off means.”

SILVER SPRING, Md. — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released the first annual report on the progress made in mapping U.S. ocean, coastal and Great Lakes waters, the agency said in a release.  

Knowledge of the depth, shape and composition of the seafloor is foundational data necessary to explore, sustainably develop, understand, conserve and manage our coastal and offshore natural resources. The 2019 Presidential Memorandum on Ocean Mapping of the United States Exclusive Economic Zone and the Shoreline and Nearshore of Alaska and the global Seabed 2030 initiative make comprehensive ocean mapping a priority for the coming decade. The Unmapped U.S. Waters report tracks progress toward these important goals. 

“The progress made in mapping U.S. waters through 2019 represents the cumulative work of federal and state agencies, nongovernmental organizations, private contracting partners and crowdsourced contributions,” said Rear Adm. Shepard Smith, director of NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey. “Partnerships and advances in technology are key to making significant progress toward our common goal of completely mapping U.S. waters.” 

Pulling from an analysis of publicly available bathymetry, the report presents the percentage of unmapped U.S. waters by region and shows our progress towards filling these basic bathymetry data gaps with each passing year. At the end of 2019, the latest analysis yielded the following results: 

Percent of U.S. waters that remain unmapped in 2019: 

• U.S. total — 54% of 3,592,000 square nautical miles (snm) 
• Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico — 43% of 472,200 snm 
• Great Lakes — 95% of 46,600 snm 
• Caribbean — 42% of 61,600 snm 
• Alaska — 72% of 1,080,200 snm 
• Pacific (California, Oregon, Washington) — 24% of 239,700 snm 
• Pacific Remote Islands and Hawaii — 50% of 1,691,700 snm 

Multibeam and lidar surveys are the two primary sources of bathymetry needed to fill these gaps. In support of the integrated ocean and coastal mapping goal to “map once, use many times,” all the data collected in this effort are publicly available to benefit numerous user communities. For the latest status on these efforts and how you can contribute, click here.

ASTORIA, Ore. — The Coast Guard Cutter Alert returned home to Astoria on March 15 following a 69-day eastern Pacific Ocean counter-drug deployment, the Coast Guard Pacific Area said in a release. The crew patrolled international waters off the coast of Mexico to disrupt the flow of narcotics and illegal migrants. 

Alert’s crew also participated in the North American Maritime Security Initiative (NAMSI) Pacific Exercise in and around Puerto Chiapas, Mexico. 

NAMSI is a trinational effort by forces of the United States, Canada and Mexico to improve mutual capacity for operational coordination. The three-day exercise focused on enhancing information-sharing and integrating capabilities of Canadian, U.S. and Mexican maritime forces during at-sea counter-drug interdiction operations. 

“It was a great experience to participate in and be a part of such a culturally diverse operational exercise,” said Petty Officer 2nd Class Cristina Hickey, a Spanish translator and Alert crewmember. “I thoroughly enjoyed conversing in Spanish with my foreign counterparts and learning more about their missions.” 

Crews from the Coast Guard Air Station Sacramento, Coast Guard Cutter Benjamin Bottoms, Pacific Strike Team, Pacific Tactical Law Enforcement Team, Pacific Area/D11 command center and Joint Interagency Task Force South also participated in the exercise alongside Canadian and Mexican maritime participants. 

“I’m proud of the hard work that our crew put into our Eastern Pacific patrol,” said Cdr. Tyson Scofield, Alert’s commanding officer.

“I am especially proud of the professionalism that the crew showed during our joint exercises with the Canadian and Mexican navies.  They displayed a high level of skill while demonstrating counter narcotics interdiction techniques and during the shipboard launch and recovering of a Mexican helicopter for the first time. Most importantly, our crew created personal and professional relationships with their North American peers which will help to counter the flow of illegal narcotics into all of our countries.”