ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy’s plan to deploy Marine Corps fighter-attack squadrons (VMFAs) on its aircraft carriers is very much in force as the two services continue to equip some of their tactical jet squadrons with F-35C Lightning II strike fighters. 

“TACAIR Integration is alive and well,” said Vice Adm. Kenneth R. Whitesell, commander, Naval Air Forces, answering a question during a June 29 webinar of the West 21 symposium of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association and the U.S. Naval Institute. 

He noted that VMFA-314, the Marine Corp’s first F-35C squadron, is beginning workups this summer with Carrier Air Wing 9 on board USS Abraham Lincoln for a deployment in 2022. It will be the second deployment of the F-35C on a carrier.  

The USS Carl Vinson is deploying this summer with the Navy’s first fleet F-35C squadron, Strike Fighter Squadron 147 (VFA-147). VFA-97 has been in transition to the F-35C since April to become the fleet’s second F-35C squadron.  

Whereas Marine Corps VMFA squadrons have deployed on carriers with some frequency for decades, the practice was institutionalized two decades ago with the implementation of the TACAIR Integration plan, which originally planned for four VMFA squadrons embedded in carrier air wings, with some Navy VFA squadrons serving in sequence with a Marine aircraft group in Japan under the Unit Deployment Plan. 

Whitesell said that the TACAIR Integration Plan was modified four or five months ago to provide a total of two VMFA squadrons to embed in the Navy’s carrier air wings. 

“It’s critical for us as we keep that naval warfighting concept alive and well,” Whitesell said.  

The latest deployment of a VMFA squadron ended Feb. 25 when VMFA-323 returned to its home base after a deployment with Carrier Air Wing 17 on board USS Nimitz. It was the last deployment of the legacy F/A-18C Hornet on an aircraft carrier.   

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Marine Corps has retired its two UC-35C operational support airlift (OSA) jets. 

Last month, the two UC-35Cs — military versions of the Cessna Citation V Ultra business jet — were sent to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base to be placed in storage. 

The UC-35Cs, were based at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans, Louisiana, and were “responsible for the transport of high-priority passengers and cargo with time, place or mission sensitive requirements,” according to the Naval Air Systems Command said. 

The first UC-35C was delivered on Nov. 22, 1999. The aircraft replaced Beech UC-12B Huron turboprop aircraft in the OSA role. 

Ten of 11 UC-35D Citation Encore versions continue in service with the Marine Corps in the operational support airlift role. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Coast Guard’s top officer said the service has taken steps to increase its integration with allies and partners in the Western Pacific Ocean area to provide more effective cooperation and provide more presence. 

In a June 28 webinar discussion with the Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon, Adm. Karl Schultz, commandant of the Coast Guard, detailed some of the ways in which the Coast Guard is reaching out to promote international cooperation. 

Schultz said the Coast Guard assigned an attaché to Australia in 2020 who will represent the service in that nation plus New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. Australia has new patrol boats, some of which will operate in Oceania, and the U.S. Coast Guard could provide training on law enforcement on the high seas. New Zealand has a new auxiliary ship that could provide opportunities for cooperation.   

Next summer the Coast Guard will assign an attaché to Singapore. It already has an adviser in Vietnam, to which the Coast Guard has or will transfer three Secretary-class high-endurance cutters. 

The service also has transferred three Secretary-class cutters to the Philippines, which is growing its own coast guard from 5,000 personnel to 40,000 personnel. 

The Coast Guard also is helping Indonesia set up a new training center. 

Schultz also has assigned a captain to the operations/plans directorate of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and a captain and a commander to the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. 

“We’ve got mobile training teams that operate through the region,” the admiral said. “We bring Indo-Pacific partners into our schoolhouses here [to the United States], to the International Maritime Officers Course.” 

The Coast Guard also has been backing up the U.S. Pacific Fleet, providing two national security cutters in 2019 and one in 2020 to help fill a void left while the USS John McCain and USS Fitzgerald were being repaired following their collisions. These cutters performed sanction work against the North Koreans. The USCGC Kimball also conducted a patrol of the South Pacific this year, calling in Fiji. In the future, the USCGC Kimball will patrol in the Western Pacific on patrol against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.  

The three fast response cutters [FRCs] assigned or slated for Guam, combined with the ocean-going buoy tender assigned there, will give the Coast Guard an increased reach and presence in the Western Pacific. 

“I anticipate our being throughout the Oceania region with those patrol boats [FRCs], [and] a periodic national security cutter,” Schultz said.  

The commandant stressed the value of the Coast Guard presence in providing “human-to-human partnership to counter Chinese checkbook diplomacy. 

“The Chinese Coast Guard is antagonistic, running down Philippine, Indonesian, Malaysian fishermen in dispute,” he said, also noting the abusive maritime actions of the Chinese Peoples Armed Militia. 

“We don’t use our Coast Guard as an arm of the government to press in coercively over disputed regions,” he said. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Marine Corps’ top officer told Congress that the Corps requires three key capabilities to bring to pass the expeditionary force needed to counter threats of the future and support the naval and joint force. Those capabilities and modernizations and others can be paid for with internal budget reallocations, he said. 

“First is long-range precision fires for sea denial and sea control,” said Gen. David Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps, testifying 24 June before the Defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. “For several years we’ve proven that our existing HIMARS [High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System] vehicles can hold naval vessels at risk with ground-based anti-ship missiles. Through aggressive experimentation, we have further enhanced that capability. 

“This year, we have successfully launched the [RGM-184] Naval Strike Missile from a modified Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, hitting a target at sea underway,” Berger said. “This system, which we call the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System — or NMESIS — is exactly the capability the combatant commanders are calling for to enhance their deterrence posture.” 

Unmanned intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) is the second of the key capabilities. 

“In 2020, we began a transition to a mixed capability of long-range ship and ground-based unmanned aerial systems to include the MQ-9 Reaper,” Berger said. “The Reaper is a proven capability that will significantly expand our organic ISR and enable us to better support fleet and joint operations, including anti-submarine operations. 

“We’ve also initiated a partnership with industry to develop a future, autonomous, long-range unmanned surface vessel,” he said. “That is going to significantly improve the reconnaissance capability of our Marine expeditionary units, or MEUs.” 

The Corps also is investing in loitering munitions.  

“These swarming aerial munitions, which employ automatic target recognition, have proven exceptionally lethal in recent global conflicts, most recently in Europe,” Berger said. “Our own tests have also demonstrated this technology to be effective, with five of five successful shots during testing. We plan to equip our infantry and reconnaissance Marines with this loitering capability, mounting those munitions on both ground vehicles and long-range unmanned surface vessels. We will make a final decision on vendors this year.” 

Berger added that in the current budget climate, the Corps will pay for its Force Design 2030 initiatives by retiring some legacy systems and shifting the savings to new programs. 

“We will self-fund our modernization,” he said. “To ensure the success of this approach, I will ask for your support in reducing the total procurement of some platforms commensurate with the recent reductions in our end-strength.  

“The fact is, our Marine Corps is significantly smaller than it was a decade ago, about 24,000 Marines smaller,” he said. “That means we won’t need as many ground vehicles; we won’t need as many aircraft as we thought we did when initial procurement decisions were made decades ago. With the reductions outlined in our Force Design report, I believe we will have sufficient resources to create the modern capabilities required for competition, deterrence and crisis response without a further reduction in our end-strength. 

“That approach, however, relies 100 percent on this committee’s confidence on allowing the Marine Corps to retain and reallocate the internal resources we generate through end-strength reductions, cutting legacy platforms and right-sizing programs of record for new capabilities like the F-35 [strike fighter], the CH-53K [heavy-lift helicopter] and the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle,” he said.  

ARLINGTON, Va. – The Coast Guard’s senior admiral made his case before Congress for an increased presence in the Arctic and Antarctic and reaffirmed the need for more heavy icebreakers. 

“We absolutely need to be up in the Arctic and down in the Antarctic on a more persistent basis than we are today,” said Adm. Karl Schultz, commandant of the Coast Guard, testifying June 23 before the House Committee on Homeland Security. “The great power competition is alive and well there [in the Arctic]. China had operated off the Alaskan Arctic for six of the last nine to 12 years. Russia is building an increasingly large fleet of icebreakers that intends to use the Northern Sea Route, potentially as a toll route. 

“There will be freedom-of-navigation issues in the future, and we will have the organic domestic capability to press into that and project our sovereign interests,” Schultz said. 

He said the Coast Guard is sending the medium icebreaker USCGC Healy to the Arctic this summer for some scientific research for about 30 days, followed by a transit of the Northwest Passage over the north coast of Canada. Some Canadian researchers, British sailors and others will be on board the Healy for the voyage. Current plans call for a port call in Greenland and then return to Seattle via the Panama Canal. 

Shultz also pointed out that Coast Guard medium-endurance cutters have exercised with Dutch and French forces in the Arctic region. 

The Coast Guard has assigned an attaché to Copenhagen, Denmark, the country with sovereignty over Greenland. 

“We’re trying to make sure we’re touching the entire Arctic Council membership,” he said.  

The Coast Guard has only one operational heavy icebreaker, USCGC Polar Star. Congress has provided funding for the first two Polar Security Cutters (PSCs), which will be heavy icebreakers. A contract was awarded to VT Halter in 2019 for the first PSC. 

“We are woefully underinvested in high-latitude capability and capacity in terms of icebreakers,” Schultz said. “We haven’t built a heavy icebreaker in more than 45 years. … Four to six heavy icebreakers are what we really need, and we need some medium breakers. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — Senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee zeroed in on two aspects of the Navy’s 2022 shipbuilding plans that would cost the nation more than $1 billion in contract penalties and lost savings because of reduced shipbuilding. 

The Navy’s 2022 budget calls for the procurement of only one Flight II Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer (DDG) instead of the two planned for that year under the class multi-year procurement plan with Huntington Ingalls Industries and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works. With the cut of one destroyer, the Navy would incur a $33 million penalty for the contract breach.   

Testifying before SASC June 22, Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Harker confirmed to Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, that the $33 million penalty would in fact be a result of building only one DDG in 2022. The second DDG is the top item on the Navy’s 2022 Unfunded Priority List and would stand a chance for funding if Congress decides to add funds to the Navy’s budget. 

King also pointed out the “chilling effect on investment” that contract breach would have on the shipbuilding industry, part of which, Bath Iron Works, is located in his home state, Maine.  

“The point I want to make about this is not only the lack of a destroyer but the impact that this decision has on the industrial base, not only in the immediate future in terms of how many people do you need to build the ships but also the principle of breaking a multi-year, I would argue, sends a shudder through the industrial base in terms of their investment,” King said. “If they’re going to make major hundred-million-dollar investments is shipbuilding capacity, and also in training of new shipbuilders, they have to have some confidence that there’s a stream of demand coming.” 

Adm. Mike Gilday, chief of naval operations, concurred. 

“It’s not lost on me the significant impact on the industrial base with decisions like this,” Gilday said.  

“The problem with this is you can’t turn the industrial base off and on,” King said. “If it goes down, you’re taking about welders going somewhere else, and in this economy, they’re going to go somewhere else.” 

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, in whose state is Ingalls Shipbuilding, which builds the Navy’s amphibious warfare ships, criticized Navy’s 2022 shipbuilding plan in failing to plan for a build up to a force of a required 31-ship amphibious ship force — including 10 amphibious assault ships and 21 amphibious platform dock ships (LPDs) — and that the number LPDs would only each 15 of the required 21 by 2027.  

Section 124 of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act “provided the Navy with a mechanism to procure two more LPDs [under a multiple ship procurement] to fill this gap. If OSD executes this authority, it would save the taxpayers over $700 million,” Wicker said, addressing Marine Corps Commandant Gen David Berger. “General Berger, you have a need for more LPDs,” Wicker said. “Does the amphibious ship authority provided for you in Section 124 help you meet your warfighting requirement?” 

“It would do both parts of what you mentioned, senator, the warfighting requirement and it would save an estimated $722 million,” Berger said.   

“The fact is, we couldn’t afford it because somebody in the Office of Management and Budget sent word to the Pentagon that they weren’t going to give you enough money,” Wicker said.  

Wicker repeated Gilday’s statement at the hearing that “if we’re going to meet the challenge [of great power competition], we’re going to need a bigger Navy. 

“’Tis is a crying need that we’re going to have to meet,” Wicker said.   

Cmdr. Heather H. Quilenderino is the director, U.S. National Ice Center, and commander, U.S. Naval Ice Center.

She qualified as a surface warfare officer on a guided-missile cruiser before laterally transferring to the naval oceanography community. She graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution joint program in oceanography, earning a Master of Science in oceanographic engineering, and earned her Ph.D. in meteorology from the Naval Postgraduate School.

She served as staff oceanographer for Naval Special Warfare Group 10, and for commander, Carrier Strike Group 10. Prior to assuming command of the Naval Ice Center, she served as the Operations Officer, Fleet Weather Center Norfolk. In 2016, she was awarded the Oceanographer of the Navy Commander Mary Sears Award.

Quilenderino discussed the operations of the National Ice Center with Senior Richard. R. Burgess. Excerpts follow:

What is the mission of the U. S. National Ice Center and the Naval Ice Center? What is the difference between the two?

QUILENDERINO: There is a slight difference, but we do have a mission that is one and the same, and our mission is to provide global-to-tactical scale snow and ice products, ice forecasting, and other environmental intelligence services to the U.S. government. The U.S. National Ice Center [USNIC] is made up of three agency components, so the Naval Ice Center [NIC] is the core component and the largest — the contribution from the U.S. Navy — and we are our own command. And so, I serve as the commanding officer of the Naval Ice Center as well as the director of the U.S. National Ice Center.

Our NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] component is the Ice Services Branch of the Ocean Prediction Center, which is under National Weather Service, our newest realignment in May 2020. We also have a small Coast Guard component, which aligns under the Office of Waterways and Ocean Policy at Coast Guard Headquarters.

How is the USNIC funded?

QUILENDERINO: It’s a combination of funding from the Defense, Commerce and Homeland Security departments. This year [2021], our budget is approximately $13 million.

What types of analysis or mapping does the USNIC do?

QUILENDERINO: We don’t necessarily do ice mapping, but we do ice analysis, and I use that distinction between because, particularly, in my mind, ice mapping would be more of something that you would do when you are actively in reconnaissance mode. In general, our day-to-day analysis is a wider area analysis that we then fine-tune to a higher resolution. We do that with, really, any data that are available, because the Arctic is a very data-sparse region. We are looking for anything from satellite data to buoys and models, anything that’s available within the region that can provide us with information on the ice conditions, with satellites being our primary, models being our additional input and then, if buoys are available in our region of interest, we use them to validate the overhead sensing to provide additional information.

We do have some specific examples of ice mapping. What comes to mind is ICEX [Ice Exercise] conducted by the Arctic Submarine Lab [ASL]. When they are selecting the ice floe for the ice camp for that exercise every two years, they do aerial reconnaissance flights to select the floe generally with our analysts on board. We send one of our analysts as well as one of our Navy lieutenants, who leads the mobile environmental team, and they will be part of the pioneering flights to locate potential floes. The pilots will conduct the virgin landings on the floes and do coring samples or tow a sled to do more rigorously map the ice to get the conditions. These are collaborative projects that we do with University of Fairbanks. These are things that we will add in with our partners when doing specific mission operations like that with ASL that we wouldn’t normally do.

What sensors and platforms does the USNIC use for ice data?

QUILENDERINO: Of our newest, exciting tools, one is operational, and one is still in development. The Earth System Prediction Capability is a new operational ensemble at FNMOC [Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center] in Monterey, California. It provides us with a 45-day ensemble of sea ice forecasts and is the first medium-range ensemble forecast that we have for sea ice. We began testing it two years ago with the Naval Research Lab, and it has shown extremely positive results in several of our tailored missions, as well as ICEX 2020 in predicting long-term location and concentration of sea ice and multi-year ice.

The second project that we are working on in collaboration with NGA [National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency] Research Division is called Snowfox. It’s an AI/ML [artificial intelligence/machine learning] project where they’re working on an automated sea ice classification algorithm to help us manage the large quantity of synthetic aperture radar imagery that’s coming in from satellites. It will be able to automate some of the routine ice analysis that we do, so that our analysts can focus on areas where tailored mission support is going on. So, we provide one of our master ice analysts with their skills set to the project in collaboration with NGA, and that has shown some exciting results. We look forward to bringing that into operations in the next two years at the USNIC.

Does USNIC have dedicated satellites, or does it piggyback on those of other agencies? 

QUILENDERINO: We don’t have dedicated satellites for us and for ice reconnaissance. So, all of the satellite resources we use are usually multipurpose satellites, but, really, any satellite that has visible, IR [infrared], microwave or synthetic aperture radar [SAR] can provide data that will be of use to us in our ice analysis. We use a variety of U.S. and foreign satellites. For example, we use a significant number of NOAA satellites where we’re using a multitude of visible, IR and microwave sensors. Our two primary SAR satellites are RadarSat 2 and Sentinel. SAR is our No. 1 choice for ice analysis, because it is an all-weather capability and does not have any daylight requirement as there is with visible, which is very important in the polar regions.

ICESAT-2, a NASA satellite for ice reconnaissance, is more applicable to science and research applications, because it has too much time latency to be applicable for operational use. And, so, we rely on RADARSAT-2, the Canadian satellite and a Sentinel, which is operated by the European Space Agency. We receive data from Sentinel through an agreement where NOAA is able to access that in near-real time.

The Northern View Agreement, which is a U.S./Canadian agreement that we benefit from through NGA, provides a significant amount of funding for our RADARSAT-2 imagery and supports almost all of the tailored support imagery ordering that we provide to U.S. government customers in the Arctic.

Now, we do not provide tailored support for foreign entities unless they are in cooperation with a U.S. government project. For example, just this past year, the Norwegian vessel Svalbard picked up an ONR [Office of Naval Research] mission to transit the Arctic and retrieve some ONR buoys. This was supposed to be part of the Coast Guard icebreaker Healy’s mission and needed to be reassigned after the Healy’s casualty last summer, so the Svalbard was assigned on relatively short notice, and we were able to provide direct support to Svalbard because of their support of the ONR mission. And we had a collaboration with the Norwegian Meteorological Office.

Is the USNIC able to draw upon foreign data and observations to some degree?

QUILENDERINO: We do. We have a few critical international partnerships, the first being the North American Ice Service [NAIS], a partnership between the Canadian Ice Service, USNIC and the U.S. Coast Guard. It is a critical partnership both for working through the data-sharing of the new RADARSAT Constellation Mission that will replace RADARSAT-2, but also, we share responsibility with things like the Great Lakes ice season as well. USCG International Ice Patrol is the USCG core member of NAIS, and Canadian Ice Service is the Canadian core member, along with USNIC, [they] share responsibility for the North Atlantic iceberg season. This partnership is incredibly beneficial throughout the Arctic because of our overlapping areas of interest and partnership.

The second partnership is the International Ice Charting Working Group [IICWG], a collaboration of all of the world’s ice services in either hemisphere. Our goal is to create a collaborative environment where we can maintain the same standards and training throughout the globe. If you are a mariner receiving support in one area and you are transiting around the world and need to receive publicly available ice services from another country’s ice service, you could be familiar with their products, because we’re all meeting the same WMO [World Meteorological Organization] standards. We also are able to develop decision support products for mariners that can be useful regardless of country of origin when we’re talking about protecting safety of navigation. So, through IICWG, one way that we are able to leverage this partnership is we actually use their local area expertise for ice analysis in the Baltic Sea region. We use ice analysis from the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute as part of our global analysis, because they are the experts in their area of the world.

Finally, the final partnership I wanted to mention is the International Arctic Buoy Program. This directly ties to foreign observations. There are 12 nations that contribute to the International Arctic Buoy Program, and our goal is to maintain a network of buoys that are reporting throughout the Arctic. All of those buoys contributed through this program are publicly available data that are transmitted over the Global Telecommunications System, and into model data worldwide. So, all atmospheric models from any country can pull this data and use it in their weather models to improve forecasts.

What agencies are your customers?

QUILENDERINO: Primarily the Navy. Our No. 1 Navy customer always has been and still is the submarine force as they have been in the Arctic for decades. We continue to support them on a daily basis. We have seen an increase in naval surface forces requesting our support primarily through individual ships that are doing high-north deployments. In the past few years, we’ve seen a significant increase in support of planning products for Fleet, OPNAV [Office of the Chief of Naval Operations] and SECNAV [Secretary of the Navy] staffs.

On the NOAA side, we do provide tailored support to NOAA ships in their research missions to include things like fisheries missions, some of their autonomous vehicle operations, and their weather forecasting offices in areas where sea and lake ice can impact the local communities. And this linkage was also one of the reasons for the realignment to National Weather Service within NOAA in 2020.

For the Coast Guard, we directly support icebreakers and any other Coast Guard ships that are in or near ice-infested waters and we provide support to various Coast Guard staffs.

So, any U.S. government entity or government-funded entity can request tailored support. For example, an ONR- or NSF [National Science Foundation]-funded scientific mission may reach out and request tailored support from us. And then, as part of NOAA’s weather-ready nation, much of what we do is on our publicly available website, which is also a mobile enhanced site to make it easy for some of our low-bandwidth customers to be able to access that data as they need it.

How do your customers get access to your products?

QUILENDERINO: The majority is through the website. We also use the Navy’s CTG [Commander Task Group] 80.7 portals on the various Navy networks, as well as standard Navy message traffic, email for some of our shipboard customers because then we can tailor products down to meet the bandwidth requirements that they may have. So, you have a single JPEG or very, very small bandwidth or even a text ice bulletin if that’s what they need. And we can also provide just a simple overlay that they can bring into Google Earth or their navigation system or any sort of GIS-enabled visualization system.

The Arctic has been a focus of attention with the thinning and the melting of the icecap. Has that increased demand for your services?

QUILENDERINO: It certainly has. Over the past three to four years we’ve seen over a 20% increase annually in the number of products that have been requested, particularly our tailored support products and especially our climatology and long-range planning products.

One of the things that we have found is that, as we’ve seen the changes in sea ice, that the 30-year climatology is not providing an accurate planning assessment for long-range planning from an operational standpoint because of the significant changes.

We have a product that we call our Trivariate Climatology, which is available on our website. It’s a simple product that provides open water, the marginal ice zone and pack ice from 2007 to present, so a more recent two-week averaged time period over those years. We think that it provides a more accurate assessment when it comes to operational planning than looking at a 30-year record that begins in 1980, due to the more recent changes that we’ve seen in sea ice extent in particular. We’re also looking into updating climatology so that we can provide the best planning products for our operational planners.

What has been the most dramatic change in ice coverage that you’ve observed?

QUILENDERINO: 2020 was the second lowest year on record in the satellite record for minimum sea ice extent during the summer melt season, and during the summer of 2020 we provided a weekly analysis of all the Arctic Sea routes. Normally we provide this for the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage. What most people will refer to as the Transpolar Route is not included in these products because it is generally ice covered. So, for the first time ever, we actually published a product that included all three routes as open. And we produced this product four times between the Sept. 4 and Oct. 2, when all three routes were open. That was very significant from our perspective.

The second is from Project MOASiC, when the [German] icebreaker Polar Stern wintered over in the pack ice for the yearlong project. We did not have anybody on board but we were supporting MOSAiC from our watch floor. They were expecting to see significantly thicker multi-year ice than they found. This is a rather anecdotal example, but I think that this is the other significant change that we’ve seen. Most people focus on the decrease in extent of sea ice, but the thickness of the multi-year ice is also rapidly decreasing which is, of course, decreasing the overall volume of ice in the Arctic and will have implications as we continue to see a reduction in sea ice.

The third thing is the thinner first-year ice that has formed over the winter and is more susceptible to easy breakup and melt faster as the melt season begins. What I have seen in just my short time as director is that we’ve seen these very significant fast breakup events in areas where we haven’t necessarily seen them before. Strong storms may come through either early in the melt season or very late in the melt season and cause a significant change in the amount of sea ice simply because that sea ice along the edge of the extent is very fragile. And so, it’s very easy to break it up and cause a large significant change in a rapid period of time. My analysts observe that these significant events are happening more frequently.

In addition to support of ICEX, what are some other examples of operations the USNIC supports?

QUILENDERINO: The Coast Guard icebreaker Healy is planning their Northwest Passage transit for this upcoming summer — both their primary and secondary routes — off of our planning products and the expected ice conditions. NOAA recently had a Saildrone mission to map the north slope of Alaska, which was the first time full North Slope operations were mapped with autonomous vehicles. Using our products, they were able to safely navigate all the way to the Canadian border and back avoiding all ice and ensuring their vehicles were safe.

And finally, we impact operations by enabling things like fuel- and time-savings when we are able to provide a “easier ice channel” when the [Coast Guard heavy icebreaker] Polar Star is breaking and maintaining an ice channel down at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica for the annual resupply mission called Operation Deep Freeze. We know that they’re going to break the ice channel to get the ships in. If we can find a channel through first-year ice versus multi-year ice, there is a significant fuel, time and, obviously, cost savings to the Coast Guard and to the U.S. government to be able to break and maintain that channel while they conduct their resupply.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Five sealift ships are now in various stages of recycling now that they have been retired from the Ready Reserve Force (RRF), which provides sealift ships when mobilized in support of the Navy’s Military Sealift Command, a component of U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM). 

The RRF, administered by the Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD), now keeps 41 ships — down from 46 — in a reduced operating status available for activation within five days for national emergencies or other mission assignments.  

“Five ships have been removed from the RRF, following a determination from DoD/USTRANSCOM/Navy that there no longer existed a requirement for these ships,” said a DoT Spokesperson. “This is a fairly common occurrence. For example, in 1993 we had 102 ships in the RRF, today there are 41. As to the vessel disposition, they will all eventually be relocated to one of MARAD’s reserve fleet sites and later recycled. 

Two auxiliary crane ships — SS Flickertail State on the East Coast and SS Grand Canyon State on the West Coast — have been withdrawn from service, leaving two crane ships available on each coast. 

The RRF’s only two heavy lift ships — SS Cape May on the East Coast and SS Cape Mohican on the West Coast — have been retired. 

Also retired on the West Coast was the SS Petersburg, an offshore petroleum distribution system tanker. 

ARLINGON, Va.— A senior Navy admiral defended the 2022 budget proposal to decommission seven guided-missile cruisers (CGs) and noted their missile cells numerically could be replaced by those on the future Large Unmanned Surface Vessel (LUSV).  

The Navy is proposing to retire seven Ticonderoga-class CGs during fiscal 2022, including two — USS Hue City and USS Anzio — which were not previously planned for retirement. The material condition of the cruisers’ hull and mechanical systems has attracted considerable concern while the cost of keeping the cruisers in service has risen.  

Vice Adm. Jim Kilby, deputy chief of naval operations for Warfighting Requirements and Capabilities, testified June 17 before the Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. He recounted that when he was a carrier strike group commander in 2017, his air-and missile-defense ship, USS Lake Champlain, missed one third of its deployment because of maintenance issues such as tank-top cracking. He also cited USS Vela Gulf, which missed a month of its previous deployment and 2.5 months of its current deployment. 

“All of that in my mind has to go into the mix when we factor the availability and reliability of those ships,” Kilby said. “Those missile tubes will only count if they’re underway alongside the carrier.” 

“The seven cruisers alone have more missile capacity than the entire British fleet,” said Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Virginia, the ranking member of the subcommittee, in his opening statement. “We’ve already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on ensuring these cruisers are returned to the fleet. Yet now we find that we’re going to retire them. While this administration is fiddling, the administration indicates they cannot afford a second destroyer [in the 2022 budget], a critical platform to deter maritime conflict. While we’re retiring other surface combatants, we’re saying we’re going to exacerbate that by now not building an additional destroyer.”  

The seven cruisers deploy a total of 910 missile cells. The Navy plans to use LUSVs as missile arsenals, with each carrying 64 cells, Kilby said. A total of 14 LUSVs would be required to match the missile load of the seven cruisers.  

“I don’t want to dismiss the value of 122 missile cells [on a CG] or an Aegis cruiser,” Kilby said. “[The] average age of our cruisers in 32 years. They were built for 30 years. Four of four [CGs] are over 34 years. So, I’m really trying to look at the most valuable ship that we can fund, the most valuable program within our budget, to make our force equal across all functions — air, surface and subsurface — to align to the threats as we see them.” 

Kilby said retaining the seven CGs would cost roughly $5 billion across the Future Years Defense Plan. Retaining the ships for two years would cost more than $2.87 billion. He said the cost to modernize Hue City and Anzio alone would cost approximately $1.5 billion. 

Extending the service lives of the cruisers “is costing more than we thought it would be,” he said. “Initially it was $2.4 billion, but we’re adding a lot of money to do that.”  

Kilby said the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers (DDGs) will replace the CGs as platforms for the strike group’s air- and missile-defense commanders and will be commanded by skippers with the rank of captain. The Flight IIA and earlier DDGs are commanded by officers with the rank of commander.  

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy’s 2022 budget includes funds for a cruise missile that will be new to the Navy but has been in production for the U.S. Air Force.  

The 2022 budget proposes a procurement of 25 AGM-158B Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range (JASSM-ER) cruise missiles. 

“The Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range (JASSM-ER)/AGM-158B will initially deploy on the F/A-18E/F. It will eventually be integrated on F-35C and future Navy strike fighter aircraft,” said Lt. Cmdr. Stephanie Turo, a Navy spokeswoman. 

The Navy’s budget overview book said the JASSM-ER is being procured “to enhance long-range strike and offensive anti-surface warfare (OASuW) capability. In FY 2022 the JASSM program will award the 20th production lot in which the U.S. Navy, along with the U.S Air Force, will procure 25 assets for the first time.” 

The Navy, along with the Air Force, both already operate the AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), which is a derivative of the JASSM. The Navy’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet strike fighter is armed with the LRASM, which also is programmed to be deployed on the Navy’s P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol reconnaissance aircraft. In April, the Navy awarded Boeing a contract to integrate the LRASM on the P-8A. 

Both the JASSM-ER and LRASM are built by Lockheed Martin.