NATO and U.S. forces in Europe are seeing increased Russian
naval activities in all the seas around Europe. But following a meeting with
Russia’s military chief they have seen no unprofessional or unsafe incidents at
sea or in the air in at least 90 days, the top allied and U.S. commander in
Europe said Dec. 10.

“I see Russian activity in the Arctic, see it in the Baltic, see it in the Black Sea, the Mediterranean,” Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, NATO’s supreme allied commander and commander of U.S. European Command, told a Defense Writers’ breakfast.

“I see Russia doing everything they can to expand their
coverage, to see as much of the space as they possibly can, and it’s something
we will continue to dialogue about so that our sailors and their sailors are
appropriately deconflicted, and we don’t have any future incidents of
unprofessional actions at sea and in the sky.”

In recent years, allied commanders have complained
repeatedly about dangerously close maneuvers by Russia aircraft near alliance
planes or ships and aggressive conduct, including near collisions, by Russian
warships, particularly in the Black Sea.

“Since my last face-to-face with Gen. Gerasimov we have seen
zero unprofessional incidents at sea, zero in the sky,” Wolters said, referring
to Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of staff, who he met in the fall.

Asked what the alliance is doing in response to the growing
presence of Russian submarines, Wolters said, “we’re always looking at
exercises and investments to improve our view of the maritime environment.
We’re heavily engaged in the Arctic, we’re heavily engaged in the central
Atlantic, in the western Med, the eastern Med. Every single day we’re looking
to see what we can possibly do to improve our ability to see the maritime
environment, to command and control the maritime and we do so comprehensively,
360 degrees, all around the European continent.”

Wolters said the Standing NATO Maritime Force is “focused on
both” anti-submarine and counter-surface capabilities. NATO has two surface standing
groups and two mine countermeasure groups, made up of rotating ships from
alliance members.

Asked about his biggest technology needs, Wolters cited
resources that allow commanders to act faster, that allow them “to see the
entire battlespace, so they could better defend” resources to command and
control. He noted NATO’s decision to buy Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk
long-endurance “remotely piloted aircraft,” as the Air Force calls UAVs, with
five in the initial order.

Wolters spoke extensively about the upcoming Defender Europe
20 exercise, which will involve moving 20,000 U.S. troops from the United
States to join with more than 8.000 American and a similar number of allied
troops forces in Europe. It would be the largest movement of U.S. forces from
the states to Europe since the Cold War Reforger Exercises.

“It would be a huge benefit to show we can deploy from
anywhere on earth” to deter a potential adversary, he said. Asked about the
challenge of moving forces and supplies across the Atlantic in the face of the
growing Russian submarine threat, Wolters said: “I’m always concerned about
that. And the reason we’re doing Defender is to improve our ability to shift
and maneuver those forces over long distances. When we’re done, we’ll critique
it and get better in the future.”

The two senior officers who are leading the drive to design
the future naval forces said they are directing a closely integrated Navy and
Marine Corps force structure assessment and plan to review the initial findings
on a rolling basis in future years.

Vice Adm. James Kilby, Deputy Chief
of Naval Operations for Warfighting Requirements and Capabilities, and Lt. Gen.
Eric Smith, Deputy Marine Corps Commandant for Combat Development and
Integration, said they have been directed by their service chiefs to scrape the
traditional separated force structure design process and develop a single
integrated naval force.

A key element in that cooperative effort is the sweeping
changes in the numbers and type of ships in the amphibious forces proposed in
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger’s planning guidance. Ronald O’Rourke,
the veteran naval forces analyst at Congressional Research Service, said, “If
much of this is implemented, it would result in a once-in-a-generation change
in Navy force structure.” The scope of the potential changes also is shaped by Chief
of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday’s revision of his predecessor’s “Design
for Maritime Superiority,” which emphasizes offensive capabilities, extensively
promotes unmanned systems and demands affordability.

Those three and Michael Petters, CEO at Huntington Ingalls
Industries – the Navy’s biggest shipbuilder — appeared in a panel at a Dec. 5
U.S. Naval Institute forum asking the question: “Are we building the naval
power the nation needs?”

Kilby said the Navy’s force structure assessments in the past
“were done pretty much in isolation” by the Navy staff. But the CNO and Berger said,
”Turn that on its head,” and he and Smith “are creating that integrated piece,”
which will be given to the systems requirements officials to flesh out. He said
the first iteration would be finished by the end of this month and they will
continue from there. The joint assessment team would remain and continue the
process in a “rolling assessment, an ongoing analysis.”

Smith said, “We don’t have all the answers, but what we know
is we’re a joint naval force. …  I’m in
support of the fleet.” That would mean as the Marines develop new longer-range
precision weapons, “I’m assuming my missiles should be able to shoot a ship,”
he said. Kilby said they had to learn from the joint assessments whether “this
force mix allow us to do things differently.” For example, he said, “If what
the Marines do influences what happens at sea, I can change my plans.”

Petters and O’Rourke said the drive for a significantly
different force and the need to field new systems faster to keep pace with
their peer competitors’ rapid development could change the way the Navy designs
and tests new ships, using more prototyping and accepting the risk of failure.

A senior defense official reaffirmed the importance of the
nuclear deterrent triad and the need for new sea-based, low-yield nuclear
weapons to counter increased nuclear arsenals by Russia and China and Russia’s
professed doctrine of early use of low-yield weapons to prevent a U.S. nuclear
response.

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood noted the
findings by last year’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that “the United States
was reducing our reliance on nuclear weapons, reducing the size of our nuclear
stockpile, while at the same time Russia and China are moving in the opposition
direction, increasing their reliance on nuclear weapons … and increasing the
numbers and types of nuclear weapons.”

While the NPR endorsed the need to recapitalize the existing
nuclear triad of land-based Minuteman III and submarine-launched Trident D-5
ballistic missiles and nuclear-capable U.S. Air Force bombers, it also “recommended
pursue of some complementary capabilities,” Rood told a Defense Writers’
breakfast Dec. 4. President Trump then supported development of “a sea-launched
cruise missile and a submarine-launched ballistic missile” with low-yield
nuclear capability, he added.

“The ballistic missile is more advanced, utilizing the
existing submarine-launched ballistic missile, the D-5, with a modified warhead
for low yield. That program, we think, is going well. But for the [ship-launched]
cruise missile, we are not as advanced,” and were still going through an
analysis of alternatives, Rood said.

Rood said the need for the new low-yield weapons came from
intelligence reports of Russian emphasis on use of nuclear weapons earlier in a
conflict, “and the mistaken belief that they have the ability to use a
low-yield nuclear weapon earlier in the conflict in a way to deter response.”
He cited Russian President Vladimir Putin’s public statements advocating the
early use of low-yield nuclear weapons “as a way of deterring an adversary.”

“We saw the need of aggressive action to restore deterrence,
which had gotten weaker than we would like … with these supplemental
capabilities” that would show “we had a variety of capabilities that were more
survivable than the existing low-yield weapons” that are aircraft delivered.
“We see this as very stabilizing” and in no way supporting the concept of early
use of low-yield nuclear weapons, Rood said, countering the warnings from
arms-control advocates.

Rood also supported the administration’s withdrawal from the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Missile Treaty because Russia fielded land-based
missiles with a range beyond the INF limits, and the subsequent U.S. work to
develop similar weapons. He said there has been some testing of a possible
medium-range cruise missile but none for a ballistic missile. He avoided
answering a question about whether any European ally has indicated willingness
to host such a weapon by saying there had been no decision yet on developing
any specific system.       

And he restated the administration’s adamant position that
Turkey’s possession of the Russian-built S-400 air- and missile-defense system
“could never be compatible” with NATO, but added that Turkey remains an ally
and member of the alliance. He did not answer a question of what Turkey could
do to regain access to the F-35 program, for which it had been a component
producer and intended buyer.

The
growing military capabilities and escalating belligerence of China, Russia and
Iran are increasing the possibility that the U.S. Navy’s unarmed and
thin-skinned support and supply ships — and even U.S. commercial cargo vessels
— could face hostile action for the first time since World War II.

The potential that these ships and their crews of civilian mariners could be exposed to deadly weapons was strengthened when the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps said he might need these and other unconventional vessels to augment or replace traditional amphibious warships to transport and sustain his Marines during expeditionary operations in heavily contested littoral waters.

Check out the digital edition of December’s Seapower magazine here.

This
emerging danger and the need for a broader concept of expeditionary vessels was
bluntly stated by Gen. David H. Berger in his “Commandant’s Planning Guidance,”
released July 17, in which he said:

“Our
nation’s ability to project power and influence beyond its shores is
increasingly challenged by long-range precision fires; expanding air, surface
and subsurface threats; and the continued degradation of our amphibious and
auxiliary ship readiness. The ability to project and maneuver from strategic
distances will likely be detected and contested from the point of embarkation
during a major contingency. Our naval expeditionary forces must possess a
variety of deployment options, including L-class and E-class ships, but also
increasingly look to other available options such as unmanned platforms, stern
landing vessels, other ocean-going connectors, and smaller more lethal and more
risk-worthy platforms. We must continue to seek the affordable and plentiful at
the expense of the exquisite and few when conceiving of the future amphibious
portion of our fleet.”

L-class
ships are the traditional amphibious platforms, such as amphibious assault
ships (LHA) and amphibious transport docks (LPD), which are built to military
standards and crewed by uniformed Sailors. E-class ships are newer types of
auxiliary or support vessels, such as the expeditionary transport dock (ESD) ships
and expeditionary fast transports (EPF), which are operated by the Military
Sealift Command (MSC), are built to commercial classification and crewed mainly
by civilian mariners.

Berger Suggests More ‘Black-Bottom’ Ships

In his guidance, Berger also suggests using
“commercially available ships and craft that are smaller and less expensive”
and “a wider array of smaller ‘black-bottom’ ships” that “might supplement the
maritime preposition and amphibious fleets.” Black-bottom ships usually refer
to commercial vessels.

In
March, Dakota Wood, a retired Marine officer and
defense analyst at The Heritage Foundation, released the Marine Corps edition
of the foundation’s “Rebuilding America’s Military” series. In that report,
Wood said, “The supporting amphibious fleet is limited to a small number of
ships and only a portion of those would be available for an operation in one
part of the world.” He recommended the naval services “redefine amphibious
shipping and support capability requirements to account for combat operations
in a contested littoral environment in support of a naval campaign.” The
Marines, Wood said, “must work with the Navy to develop smaller, lower cost
ships that are better suited to the type of dispersed operational posture
implied by LOCE [Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment],” which is a
new Marine concept for expeditionary operations.

Earlier this year, the Center of
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments released a detailed report focused on the
maritime logistic forces, calling them “inadequate to support” the national
defense strategy and “major military operations against China or Russia.” Echoing
Berger’s views, CSBA said the logistic fleet was too small and had the wrong
types of ships to transport and sustain U.S. forces in waters defended by enemy
missiles, submarines and aircraft. Failing to remedy those shortcomings, the
report said, “could cause the United States to lose a war and fail its allies
and partners in their hour of need.”

Fortunately,
MSC and other defense organizations have recognized this growing danger and are
taking steps to better prepare those ships and crews for possibly going into
harm’s way. And the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps have joined in developing an
Integrated Naval Force Structure Assessment for next year that could address
Berger’s need for a larger and more diverse expeditionary support fleet and the
associated risk to the logistical and sealift ships if they have to operate in
contested waters.

The
threat to those support forces was recognized in 2017 by the MSC commander at
the time, Rear Adm. Dee Mewbourne, who told Seapower, “The debate over
whether we’re in contested waters is over. We are sailing in contested waters,”
and the threat could get worse. With the “adversaries’ rapid improvements” in
military capabilities while his command has remained relatively static, “the
capability of an adversary will exceed our capability. We need to bend the
curve” and to change directions to be able “to operate in all the changing
environments from peace to full combat.”

Mewbourne
said what worried him was the Navy’s slow response to the German submarine
threat during the World War II cost America at least 600 merchant ships and
more than 1,000 mariners. And in the Pacific, the Navy had to fight for sea
control to be able to support the campaign against Japan. Now he sees growing
threats from China’s rapidly improving military capabilities, a resurgent Russia
and even from violent extremists in the Middle East, indicated by missile
attacks on unarmed ships.

In
response, Mewbourne said, MSC established a training division “to prepare our
mariners to sail in contested water,” to ensure they are aware that the decades
of uncontested seas are gone, and they know how to avoid enemy detection and to
survive if attacked. He is now deputy commander of the U.S. Transportation
Command (TRANSCOM), which oversees MSC and the other logistical ships operated
by the Maritime Administration (MARAD), led by retired Rear Adm. Mark Buzby,
who strongly endorsed CSBA’s findings.

TACAD
Trains Mariners to Operate in Contested Waters

In
2017, MSC also created the Tactical Advisor (TACAD) program, which uses Navy
Reserve officers, who are licensed mariners in their civilian jobs, to provide
training and guidance to the officers of MSC vessels on how to operate in a
hostile environment. That new capability was tested during a short-notice “turbo
activation” of 33 MSC and MARAD ships in September, in which five sealift
vessels conducted convoy operations against simulated enemy threats, with the
support of TACAD officers.

“When
our ships are sailing in a contested environment, the threats they could face
are evolving all the time,” said Navy Capt. Hans Lynch, MSC’s Atlantic
Commodore and who directed the East Coast activation. “The biggest threats we
face include hostile submarines and mines, and these are the threats we were
training for during the turbo activation.” They trained the crews to “sail
their ships as quietly as possible” to prevent detection of their
electromagnetic signatures “because our ships also could face anti-ship
ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, fighter aircraft and enemy bombers,” Lynch
said in a TRANSCOM release.

Each
of those MSC ships sailed with a TACAD, who in addition to providing training
served as liaison between the Navy and the civilian crews. “The TACAD program
is a relatively new concept but is based on years of experience and past
lessons learned,” said Cmdr. Vincent D’Eusanio, the TACAD on one of the convoy
ships and MSC’s TACAD program manager. “During World War II, we lost lots of
merchant ships and mariners. Some of this was a result of not knowing how to
sail a merchant ship in a hostile environment. When the Navy began to train
mariners to counter threats, like the German U-boats, our losses dwindled.”

“We
really need to continue to apply energy to the TACAD program,” Lynch said. “I
think we need to expand what they are being exposed to” beyond the MSC sealift
fleet “to other platforms and the combatant ships and aircraft to better
understand what they bring to the table and broaden their experience.”

The
Navy announced Oct. 31 that Marines and Sailors from the Fleet Anti-Terrorist
Security Team Central Command embarked on the MSC chartered commercial vessel
Arc Liberty from Oct. 21 to Oct. 24 during a transit of the Strait of Hormuz,
where Iran has seized two commercial ships and shot down a Navy RQ-4 Triton
unmanned aircraft.

Rear
Adm. Michael A. Wettlaufer, the current MSC commander, said he did not think
the threat to his ships was anything new. “It was always a possibility that our
ships could go into harm’s way.” What may be new “is the expanded
acknowledgement of ‘Great Power Competition’ — sort of noncombat at this time
but potentially some level of conflict,” Wettlaufer said in an interview with Seapower.

“What
are we doing? We’re training like crazy, because that’s what we do. We’re the
military,” he said.

Because
most of the military’s maritime logistics and support ships are leased or on
contract with commercial firms or are in MARAD’s reserve fleet, and MSC does
not get access to them until they are activated, Wettlaufer said, “We rely on
some of that training to occur at the [mariners] union level.” MSC provides an
unclassified basic operation course and has started an advanced course for
senior mariners.

“At
the MSC level, our own sealift folks have the same process. And, with the MSC
force that is operating all the time … in a continuing contested environment — physical, kinetic, information and cyber — our folks are
training all the time,” he said.

Turbo
Activation ‘Great for the Mariners’

Wettlaufer
said the convoy operation during the turbo activation was “great for the
mariners because they don’t often get a change to steam in formation. … Those
are skill sets that need to be mastered.” The TACADs assigned to those ships
brought Navy communications equipment on board, which is necessary because “you
can’t do anything if you can’t communicate as the Navy and the joint force
needs us to do.”

For
the activation, the admiral said he deployed the MSC commodores for the
Atlantic and Pacific, who are active Navy captains on his staff. And his flag
aide at Norfolk headquarters is a strategic sealift officer (SSO), a licensed
mariner who helps him understand how the commercial fleets work. MSC has more
than 2,000 TACADs and SSOs it can deploy to advise and assist civilian mariners
during missions. They are mainly Navy Reserve officers and in some cases are graduates
of one of the federally supported maritime academies who have a reserve
commitment, which they fulfill when activated as TACADs.

Wettlaufer noted that after the Cold War ended “the maritime academies stopped teaching some of the military things that we used to teach … and that created a hole in knowledge. That’s one of the reasons the TACAD program is there, to try to bridge that gap on what the Navy might need and how we operate between a master and the captain of a Navy ship.

“We are looking at a holistic approach to the problem. But the real point here is warfighting effectiveness. That is our job. We support the warfighter. We support the joint force, and if we can’t do that, then we’re not contributing to warfighting and effectiveness.”

Senior leaders from the four armed services said they have
multibillion-dollar, long-term plans to modernize their aged maintenance
facilities, but the chairman of a key House subcommittee rejected their “happy
talk” and demanded evidence that the services are committed to funding the
expensive programs to update their depots, shipyards and arsenals.

The need to modernize and improve badly outdated major
maintenance facilities dominated the Nov. 21 hearing before the House Armed
Services Committee’s readiness subcommittee on the status of the Defense
Department organic industrial base.

Subcommittee Chairman John Garamendi (D-Calif.) was joined
by ranking member Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) in demanding that the services commit
to funding their plans to upgrade those facilities. The need for major
improvements to the rework and repair facilities is elevated by the
historically high average age of the services’ legacy aircraft, ships, tanks
and other weapon systems — many of which have obsolete parts that are no longer
being produced.

“It is widely known that the facilities and equipment in our
organic industrial base [are] aging and, in certain locations, [are] in poor or
failing condition,” Garamendi said in opening the hearing.

“This situation does not help maintainers if they are
required to work in dilapidated buildings with equipment made decades ago. We
must have a plan to modernize the facilities [and] sustainment, restoration and
modernization accounts that support” them. He urged the witnesses to explain
their plans to modernize their infrastructure and capital equipment.

In his opening statement, Lamborn, citing a Government
Accountability Office report rating the condition of most of the depots as
“poor,” said: “It is not enough for our depots to meet today’s requirements. We
must also posture them to remain relevant for future demand. This raises a
major concern about the state of our aging infrastructure.”

The leaders of the services’ construction and repair
organizations acknowledge the deteriorated condition of their facilities and
said they are executing long-range plans to update them.

Navy Vice Adm. Thomas Moore, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command, cited NAVSEA’s $21 billion, 20-year program to dramatically modernize public shipyards. Vice Adm. G. Dean Peters, commander of Naval Air Systems Command, mentioned a $1.9 billion, multiyear plan to update his plants. And Maj. Gen. Joseph Shrader, chief of Marine Corps Logistics Command, said he was following a $1.9 billion, 25-year updating plan. Lt. Gen. Duane Gamble, deputy Army chief of staff for logistics, and Lt. Gen. Donald Kirkland, commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center, cited similar multibillion-dollar extended plans to modernize their facilities.

Garamendi said the committee had seen their plans, which he denounced as “happy talk,” and demanded that the leaders state their commitment to fully fund those plans. For their part, the uniformed leaders said their services were committed to the modernization programs, but that withheld assurance, citing the need for Congress to fund their long-term plans.

Greater use of digital technology in developing, testing and acquiring new weapons and systems can produce the new capabilities the sea services need to match emerging peer competitors and do so “faster and cheaper,” two senior U.S. Navy officials said Nov. 20.

Digital modeling and simulation, virtual testing and combined live tests at sea or in the field can more quickly evaluate the capabilities of proposed systems while gaining valuable feedback from the warfighters, said William Bray, deputy assistant Navy secretary for research, development, test and evaluation.

A “digital transformation” to substitute computers for stacks of paper documents could reduce the time needed to take a proposed new capability from conception to full operational capability by at least half, added Garry Newton, the civilian deputy commander at Naval Air System Command.

The two officials were among a host of program officials,
engineers and other procurement experts who attended a conference on model-based
systems engineering staged by the American Society of Naval Engineers and described
the increasing use of digitized information and processes in weapons
development and sustainment.

Bray said the new National Security Strategy made it
clear that “we are facing peer competitors and we have to focus on technology …
and how to deliver that capability,” he said.

Part of the drive to field weapons “faster and cheaper” involves “digitizing all facets of the work” and developing a “digital blueprint” for proposed systems that can be shared among defense acquisition officials and industry, Bray said. Greater use of modeling and simulation and virtual testing, combined with live testing of prototypes, also “will drive down [the] cost” of new weapons, he said.

Newton showed a video contrasting engineers and acquisition officials struggling through huge stacks of paper documents to process a proposed system with a similar group using only computer-generated information. The old system takes 15 to 20 years to produce a new weapon system, while “our competitors are doing it in five,” he said. Doing more of the system engineering digitally could cut the developmental process by 50% and, possibly, by 75%, “if we go at it really hard,” Newton said.

He cited a recent program to update F/A-18 Super Hornets in which NAVAIR put the proposal to a contractor digitally, told the contractor what the Navy was willing to pay and signed the contract — all without using a single piece of paper.

Efforts to adapt digitally are “past the technology problems” but now must overcome the “cultural problems, helping our people use the new tools,” Newton said.

ARLINGTON, Va. — With the emergence of peer military competitors, the missile threat is evolving toward the use of maneuverable ballistic and cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons — all of which “drives you into the world of high speed,” Vice Adm. Jon A. Hill, director of the Defense Department’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA), told a gathering of naval engineers on Nov. 20.

“Speed is a big deal. We are driven by the threat, and it is amazing what we’re up against. … It is stunning. What also is stunning is how the threat is changing,” Hill added during the American Society of Naval Engineers symposium here in Arlington.

Hill noted that, when he took over MDA, the agency was
focused on ballistic missiles. But new threats are emerging from air-launched
ballistic and cruise missiles that can maneuver in different phases of their
flight and “are capable of higher and higher speeds,” he said. “It’s a different
world, and the agency will have to adjust.”

And regarding another emerging threat from hypersonic
weapons, he added: “We’re working very diligently to understand everything” needed
to counter these weapons.

Although MDA is responsible for defending the nation from
missile threats, Hill emphasized that “everything we’re doing for the fleet
today is incredibly important. … Our mission is providing a defensive
capability, taking care of our forward deployed forces, our friends and
allies.”

And, he added, “defense itself is deterrence … as a
cost-imposing measure on the adversary.” He said adversaries are spending so
much on developing cruise missiles “because we have incredible capability”
against ballistic missiles. Hill emphasized that missile defense is a joint
effort across multiple U.S. military branches, citing the extensive work to
integrate U.S. Air Force land and space sensors and the Army’s THAAD and
Patriot missile defense programs with the Navy’s Aegis-based defenses.

Hill said his top priority is “sustainment, taking care of what we have now,” and maintaining readiness, which consumes 60% of MDA’s budget. The second priority is building missile defense capacity, citing the expansion of the ground-based interceptors in California and Alaska, new space-based and land-based sensors, including those in Japan and Korea, and future Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

With the new missile threats, including hypersonics, Hill emphasized the need for designing and engineering space capabilities for missile defense. “There are things you can only see from space.”

The Navy Department is
aggressively pushing its new “Education for Seapower” initiative because it
will need Sailors and Marines who will have the mental flexibility and critical
thinking skills to compete and win in an era of “great power competition” and
rapidly changing technology, naval leaders of the effort said Nov. 14.

Educating its leaders is
more important now because of “the new strategic environment we’re in” and the
rapid changes in technology, said Undersecretary Thomas Modly, who has been
tasked to drive the initiative. Looking at the future, “it’s going to be
unpredictable” and the naval services “will need intellectual flexibility,
Sailors and Marines able to respond to the changing conditions,” he said.

America’s strategic competitors, who Modly prefers to call “adversaries,” are overtaking U.S. technological advantages, so success will be determined by how America can use the technology, Modly said at a forum sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute and hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

When a skeptical member of
the audience asked what problem the program is trying to solve, Modly said it
was trying to answer the question “is the naval education system really able to
provide the officers we will need to solve” the strategic problems the new era
will bring.

John Kroger, a former
enlisted Marine and experienced educator, said he took the newly created job as
the Navy Department’s Chief Learning Officer because “better education in the
Navy and Marine Corps is fundamentally important to competing.” Because the
great technological and economic advantages America had in the 1980s and 1990s
have been eroded by the great power competitors, “we’re not going to be a
credible force unless we educate,” Kroger said.

Navy Secretary Richard
Spencer launched Education for Seapower, referred to as E4S, on Feb. 12 saying:
“I am convinced, now more than ever
before, that the intellectual development of our naval leaders is the most
critical warfighting capability for our national security.”

E4S was advocated by a panel
of former senior Navy, Marine and diplomatic leaders who looked critically at
the Department’s top educational institutions, including the Naval Academy, Naval Postgraduate School, Naval
War College and Marine Corps University, and key civilian academic
institutions. It envisioned establishing a Naval Community College, with
residential and online course and universal transcripts so “enlisted Sailors
and Marines could earn accredited associate’s degrees in technology-rich fields,
and a new Naval University System that retains the strengths of current
educational institutions, while aligning strategic intent in order to provide
increased agility,” according to the Navy’s announcement.

Modly and Kroger said formation of those institutions is still in process.
Kroger said he hoped to be able to name the community college officials soon.
His top immediate priority, he said, was “developing the first-ever
comprehensive Navy educational strategy” that would guide the program going forward.

Those two officials and a later panel of the leaders of the Naval Academy, Postgraduate School and Marine Corps University, wrestled with unresolved issues of how the educational progress of officers and enlisted leaders would be considered in the annual fitness reports and evaluations, how civilian educational institutions would collaborate with the new naval educational structures and how the increased emphasis on education would mesh with the current intensive focus on military training, given the pressure on naval personnel’s time.

Kroger said he did not see military training and education being separate efforts but as a needed blend. With the increased technical levels of warfighting, “training is going to become even more complex going forward. The fundamental thing you get from education is how to learn,” he said. The officials said the education programs they were creating would include cultural aspects as well as technical fields to better prepare naval personnel to engage with foreign allies and partners and confront the adversaries.

NATO has seen the effects of a modernized Russia’s navy and
its increased activities in all the waters around Europe, and the alliance is
responding with multinational exercises and new organizations, including a
command focused on ensuring the flow of forces and supplies across the Atlantic
during a conflict, a senior NATO commander said.

“We see the consequence of modernization of Russian naval
forces. We’ve seen increased activity” in the Mediterranean, Black Sea, Baltic
Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, said British Air Chief Marshall Peach Stuart, chairman
of the NATO Military Committee. “NATO takes its maritime security very
seriously. The way we make that real is through a series of patrols, and multinational
groupings of ships, in standing naval groups,” Stuart told a Defense Writers’
breakfast on Nov. 13.

“We have to take a balanced approach to that presence and to
reassure our allies. And the way we conduct our naval operations is, of course,
coordinated with allies and partners” and conducting international exercises,
Stuart said. He cited Trident Juncture, a massive exercise involving nearly
50,000 personnel from 31 nations in and around Norway in October and November
2018. Stuart called that
“a very impressive grouping of capabilities, including maritime.”

Asked about the concerns expressed by U.S. commanders of the
potential challenge to getting reinforcements and supplies across the Atlantic
due to the updated and expanded Russian submarine fleet, Stuart said: “Our role
is to deter. All our naval operations I just described are part of that
deterrent posture. Of course, the Atlantic Ocean is vital to the economic
well-being of the whole of Europe as well as North America. Therefore, we
continue to take everything that might affect that very seriously.”

“The exact response is to create a new headquarters, called
Joint Forces Command in Norfolk,” which is co-located with the headquarters of
the recently re-established U.S. Navy 2nd Fleet, both of which are commanded by
U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Andrew Lewis, he said. Disbanded after the end of the Cold
War, the 2nd Fleet was reactivated in August 2018 by then Chief of Naval
Operations Adm. John Richardson, who cited the increased tensions between
Russia and NATO. Joint Forces “is forming actively as a NATO headquarters as we
speak,” Stuart said.

“Yes, we do observe the increased [Russian] activity, and we
are responding to that increased activity with the formation of an additional
headquarters, which its primarily focus would be, should it be necessary to
provide the ability to reinforce across the Atlantic Ocean.”

Stuart also noted there was “more tension” in the eastern
Mediterranean, where Russia has deployed some of its newest ships and
demonstrated the capabilities of its latest ship-launched land-attack missiles
in support of the Syrian regime. “NATO continues to operate in accordance with
international law,” he said, adding that “freedom of navigation is important
everywhere, not just in Asia.”

Despite Russia’s increasingly aggressive behavior, Stuart
said the alliance has continued its dialog with Moscow through the NATO-Russia
Council based at NATO headquarters in Brussels. “That dialog is an important
structure, but it is not business as usual. NATO does not recognize [Russian]

 occupation of
Crimea.”

Asked about the status of Turkey in NATO after
its increased ties with Russia, including buying the S-400 advanced air defense
system, Stuart said: “Turkey has been an important ally since the 1950s. That
has not changed. … The capabilities Turkey brings to the alliance are very
important,” and NATO’s relations with the Turkish military “continues very
close.” As for the S-400, he said, “procurement is a sovereign issue.” But, he
added, “interoperability is important to the alliance.” U.S. officials have
said the S-400 cannot be interoperable with NATO systems.

The
Marine Corps has narrowed the list of requirements for its proposed large
unmanned aerial system (UAS) and is teaming with Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR)
on an unusual program to accelerate development of the technologies the UAS
would need.

Although
the Marines operate a variety of small and midsize UAS — primarily for short-
and medium-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) services —
the Corps has long wanted a large pilotless aircraft that could provide a wide
scope of missions at extended range and longer endurance for its expeditionary
Marine Air Group Task Forces (MAGTF).

The
program, called the MAGTF Unmanned Aerial System Expeditionary (MUX), initially
was expected to provide extensive capabilities such as strike and armed escort
for MV-22 tilt-rotor troop transports. To give it the desired speed and range
and the ability to operate from amphibious ships or austere land bases, MUX was
expected to be a tilt-rotor. But research and feedback from the aerospace
industry indicated that all the desired attributes would require an aircraft
that could be too large to operate from amphibs and would be too expensive for
the Marines to buy in sufficient numbers.

As
a result, the Marines have narrowed the requirements for MUX to “four critical, Tier 1 capabilities” — early warning; ISR; electronic warfare; and communications relay, Capt.
Christopher Harrison, spokesman for Marine Aviation, said in an e-mail. That
same information was provided by 1st Lt. Sam Stephenson, a media officer at the
Marine Corps Combat Development Command, who said: “MUX will be multi-sensor
and will provide early warning, electronic warfare, a C4 bridge and ISR as
primary functions.”

“The potential to conduct strike capability and logistics
at ranges complementary

to those of MV-22 and F-35 will be explored as secondary
functions. MUX

will give Naval Expeditionary Forces flexible, persistent
and lethal reach,” Stephenson said. “The Marine Corps owns two Kaman KMAX CQ-24
UAS — currently assigned to VMX-1 — to expand the cargo UAS envelope, refine
MUX experimentation, reduce risk and capitalize on lessons learned from the
AACUS program,” he added, referring to an autonomous cargo aircraft project.

Harrison noted that the Marines are working with NAVAIR “as they prepare to announce the prize
challenge winners as part of the first phase of the MUX development strategy.
The six prize challenges were announced on July 11 at a MUX Industry Day; four
of the prize challenges are for individual mission payloads, one for payload
adapter designs, and one for system architecture designs.”

“The prize challenge is an innovative solution to get
this capability to the Marines faster and get the best performance per dollar of
investment,” Capt. Eric Soderberg, the Navy’s Multi-Mission Tactical UAS
(PMA-266) program manager, said in a NAVAIR release. “This approach will
hopefully prompt industry to use nontraditional ways to develop their
concepts.”

NAVAIR said it would award prize challenges in two phases. “The first phase will seek design concepts for payloads and modularity, emphasizing minimal size and weight while maximizing performance. The challenge submissions will be scored and evaluated by a panel of judges. Vendors will receive $700,000 for first place; $200,000 for second place; and $100,000 for third place. The results of the first phase will inform a second prize challenge for airframe and power plants.

The Navy expects to award a series of up to eight prize challenge awards for MUX.” A NAVAIR spokeswoman said the first phase awards were expected before the end of the calendar year. The Marines hope to field MUX in 2026, NAVAIR said.