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.” 

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.” 

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.”

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy’s top officer said the high-altitude, high-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is providing support to the fleet on its first deployment that was not available before. 

“We’re still committed to the [MQ-4C Triton],” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said, responding to a question from Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) during a March 11 hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Defense subcommittee.  

“We just accelerated the deployment of our first two out to Guam, so they are on station and on mission right now,” Gilday said. “The capabilities that the MQ-4 brings are game-changing in terms of long-range ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] at altitude, with sensors that we haven’t had supporting the fleet before.”   

Gilday took the opportunity to mention the Navy’s future unmanned, carrier-based aerial refueling aircraft, the MQ-25A Stingray, which is now in testing. He pointed out the aircraft’s potential ISR sensing capability as well as its primary aerial refueling role.  

Also testifying was Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David H. Berger, who said ISR unmanned assets “would become even more important. It does complement the manned ISR platforms like an F-35, which is a flying sensor platform. Especially critical for the forward force, the Navy-Marine Corps expeditionary team that’s up forward, as a stand-in forward force. That’s your eyes and ears. The joint force has to have a picture of what’s in front of them. I would expect, four or five years from now, much more unmanned ISR and [in] 10 years exponentially more than that.” 

Berger added that a family of all sizes of UAVs is needed. 

“We have the means for a sergeant to launch, recover, control a hand-held unmanned platform. He also has to be linked to medium, high-altitude, longer endurance as well, either kinetically to engage something for a target or just to collect information.”  

“Unmanned is going to be a huge part of our future,” acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said. “Unmanned is a critical element — not just aerial but unmanned ships as well.” 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy is working to manage its strike fighter inventory by focusing on restoring grounded fighters while curtailing future procurement of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet after 2021, Navy officials said. 

The Navy is requesting 24 Super Hornets in the fiscal 2021 budget but has cancelled plans to procure 36 more beyond 2021.  

In a March 10 hearing of the Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Hartzler (R-Mo.) said the Navy has a shortfall of 49 strike fighters — more than the 44 strike fighter complement of a carrier air wing — and that the Navy’s decision to curtail Super Hornet procurement “is creating too much operational risk in the near term.” 

Rear Adm. Gregory N. Harris, director of air warfare in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, said that ensuring enough fighters are coming out of depot-level maintenance while others are inducted into service-life modification (SLM) program is “a balanced risk that we are taking right now based on the current budget.”   

Commenting on the large amount of corrosion found on the first two Super Hornets inducted into the SLM program, James F. Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said the Navy has added to the program “so that we deliver a fully mission-capable airplane out of SLM,” including phase maintenance checks, “so when we hand it back to the wing and the squadron, it’s ready to go. Previous service-life extension programs have just done things to the airplane but not taken advantage of the fact we had the airplane all pulled apart.” 

Geurts said that the Navy is working closely with Boeing “to productionize the service-life extension — not getting every airplane its own custom artisan activity. We need to get that in the production flow. So, some of the risk of shoving the F/A-18 down after [fiscal] ’21 will be taking advantage of that line to productionize to get to our goal of 40 airplanes a year through that SLEP line.”  

Geurts also said the improved mission-capable rate of the current Super Hornet fleet “gives us additional ‘up’ aircraft to help balance that shortfall.” 

He said it takes 18 months to get a Super Hornet through SLM, but his goal is to reduce that to 12 months. 

He predicted that by 2029 the Navy would reach its full fighter inventory. 

The U.S. Marine Corps, having inherited many of the Navy’s divested F/A-18C Hornets, has 275 Hornets on hand to meet an inventory requirement of 143, said Lt. Gen. Steven R. Rudder, deputy commandant for aviation. 

“We have enough Hornets, we have enough [AV-8B] Harriers,” Rudder said. “The challenge for us is the transition [to the F-35] … to maintain a 20 F-35 buy a year — at least — so we can stand up at least two squadrons a year as we go forward.” 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Coast Guard plans to celebrate the keel-laying of the first Heritage-class offshore patrol cutter (OPC) next month in Panama City, Florida. 

Testifying March 10 before the House Homeland Security Committee, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl L. Schultz said the keel of the Argus, the first OPC hull, would be laid in April at the Eastern Shipbuilding Group Inc. shipyard. 

The OPC is designed to replace the current fleet of medium-endurance cutters, which are between 30 and 50 years old. OPCs will provide a capability bridge between the national security cutter and the fast-response cutter. Each OPC will feature a flight deck and advanced C4ISR (command, control, computers, communications, intelligence and reconnaissance) capabilities.  

Delivery of the first OPC is expected in fiscal 2022. The Coast Guard plans to acquire 25 OPCs. The damage inflicted on the Eastern Shipbuilding facilities by Hurricane Michael in October 2018 resulted in the sea service granting relief to the shipbuilder, reducing its planned construction to four OPCs instead on nine and deciding to recompete the remainder of the OPC program.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy still needs a large fleet of guided-missile destroyers (DDGs) to replace the guided-missile cruisers (CGs) being retired, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) said. 

Speaking March 9 at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), the ranking member of the Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee of the HASC, expressed concern over the Navy’s announcement that it would not extend the service life of the older Arleigh Burke-class (DDG 51) DDGs, some of which reach their maximum life in the mid-2020s. 

“Our DDG 51s are incredibly important, and doing the upgrades, especially on the Flight IIs, are important,” Wittman said. “There is still a lot of utility and life left in Flight I — there are some upgrades they can do … and bring the Aegis baseline systems up, put some more capable radars on those ships — I think that those things need to stay on track.”  

Noting the Navy’s 2021 budget plan to slow the rate of production on the new Flight III DDGs, Wittman said the plan “doesn’t get us to where we need to be, especially in light of retiring four CGs. If you’re going to take those cruisers out — remember, those cruisers are either part of the carrier strike group or the ballistic-missile defense mission — my counter to that is, what are you going to do to then replace them at some fairly fast pace with DDG 51s?” 

Wittman noted that “going south” on upfitting older DDGs, retiring CGs and not building the Flight III DDGs at a quick enough pace, a 355-ship Navy gets more distant. 

Asked by moderator Seth Cropsey about increasing the number of small combatants and unmanned surface vessels (USVs) instead of DDGs, Wittman said integration of USVs raises questions that have not yet been answered. 

“The only way you know that is to implement that, put it in place, and figure out what does it do well, what doesn’t it do well, and then you can ramp up production,” he said. “My concern is that if you replace a DDG 51 Flight III — that we know is an extraordinarily capable ship, even a modernization of a Flight I or you replace that with a unmanned platform — you have no idea at this particular point how useful that is going to be integrating these missions into the fleet. 

“Let’s build a number of [USVs], let’s integrate them in, let’s figure out what works and what doesn’t work, and then at some future date you can ramp up production and get a significant amount of capability and capacity,” he said. “But don’t do it too soon, where you waste resources and say, well these ships hadn’t worked out so well and we’re going to retire these. We see this with [littoral combat ships] and it really takes away from the effort necessary to build the fleet that we need for the future.” 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy has ordered long-lead materials and activity to support production of eight P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft for its patrol squadrons plus 10 more for foreign military sales.  

Naval Air Systems Command has awarded an $800 million contract modification for long-lead materials and activities for Lot 11 production of 18 P-8As, including eight for the U.S. Navy, six for the Republic of Korea Navy and four for the Royal New Zealand Air Force, according to a Pentagon contract announcement. 

The funds for the work were appropriated in the fiscal 2020 budget.  

The Navy was authorized to procure nine P-8As in the 2020 budget, but one was targeted to be delayed or cancelled as part of a reprogramming request to shift some Defense Department funds to construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

WASHINGTON — The Navy will commission its newest Expeditionary Sea Base, USS Hershel “Woody” Williams (ESB 4), during a 10 a.m. EST ceremony Saturday, March 7, in Norfolk, Virginia, the Navy’s Office on Information announced in a March 6 release. 

The future Hershel “Woody” Williams is the first ship to bear the name of Marine Corps Chief Warrant Officer Four Hershel Woodrow Williams, the last surviving Medal of Honor recipient recognized for heroism at the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II. 

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia will deliver the commissioning ceremony’s principal address. The ceremony will be highlighted by a time-honored Navy tradition when Ms. Tracie Jean Ross and Ms. Travie Jane Ross, ship sponsors and daughters of Hershel “Woody” Williams, will give the first order to “man our ship and bring her to life!” 

“This ship honors a man who dedicated his life to service — heroic service as a Marine, and continued service to his fellow veterans,” said Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly. “This dedication will live on in USS Hershel ‘Woody’ Williams as the ship is deployed around the world bringing additional capability to our growing fleet. The ceremony on Saturday will also represent the dedication to service demonstrated by the men and women who worked tirelessly to build this ship and their commitment to quality and innovation.” 

The future Hershel “Woody” Williams is optimized to support a variety of maritime-based missions and designed around four core capabilities: aviation facilities, berthing, equipment staging support, and command and control assets. ESBs can be enhanced to meet special operations force missions through increased communications, aviation and unmanned aircraft system support. 

Built by General Dynamics NASSCO, the Montford Point-class is comprised of five ships across two variants: Expeditionary Transfer Docks and Expeditionary Sea Bases. Acting as a mobile sea base, ESBs are part of the critical access infrastructure that supports the deployment of forces and supplies to provide prepositioned equipment and sustainment with flexible distribution. 

The platform has an aviation hangar and flight deck that include four operating spots capable of landing V-22 and MH-53E equivalent helicopters, accommodations, work spaces, and ordnance storage for an embarked force. The platform will also provide unmanned aviation vehicle operations, enhanced command and control, communications, computers, and intelligence capabilities to support embarked force mission planning and execution. The reconfigurable mission deck area can store embarked force equipment including mine sleds and rigid hull inflatable boats.