ARLINGTON,
Va. — The new commandant of the Marine Corps has made force design as his top
priority as he moves to shape the Marine Corps for the future.

The “Commandant’s Planning Guidance” (CPG), issued by Gen. David H. Berger July 16, lists his five top priority focus areas: force design, warfighting, education and training, core values, and command and leadership.

Berger said
that changes will be based on “where we want the Marine Corps to be in the next
5-15 years. … We cannot afford to retain outdated policies, doctrine,
organizations or force development strategies.”

The CPG
affirms that the Corps is preparing for operations in the event of a high-end
fight.

“The Marine
Corps will be trained and equipped as a naval expeditionary force-in-readiness
and prepared to operate inside actively contested maritime spaces in support of
fleet operations,” the CPG said. “In crisis prevention and crisis response, the
Fleet Marine Force — acting as an extension of the fleet — will be first on the
scene, first to help, first to contain a brewing crisis and first to fight if
required to do so.”

Berger said
the Corps “should take pride in our force and recent operational successes, but
the current force is not organized, trained or equipped to support the naval
force — operating in contested maritime spaces, facilitating sea control or
executing distributed maritime operations. We must change. We must divest of
legacy capabilities that do not meet our future requirements, regardless of
their past operational efficacy.”

He said that
there is “no piece of equipment or major defense acquisition program that
defines us. … Likewise, we are not defined by any particular organizing
construct — the Marine Air-Ground Task Force cannot be our only solution for
all crises. Instead, we are defined by our collective character as Marines and
by fulfilling our service roles and functions prescribed by Congress.”

Berger said
he has “already initiated, and am personally leading, a future force design
effort. Going forward, CD&I [Capabilities Development and Integration] will be the only organization authorized to publish force
development guidance on my behalf. We will divest of legacy defense programs
and force structure that support legacy capabilities. If provided the
opportunity to secure additional modernization dollars in exchange for force
structure, I am prepared to do so.”

The
commandant emphasized the need to improve integration with the Navy. He pointed
out that the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act removed the preponderance of the FMF
[Fleet Marine Force] from fleet operational control and disrupted the
long-standing Navy-Marine Corps relationship by creating separate Navy and Marine
Corps components within joint forces. Furthermore, Navy and Marine Corps
officers developed a tendency to view their operational responsibilities as
separate and distinct, rather than intertwined. With the rise of both land- and
sea-based threats to the global commons, there is a need to reestablish a more
integrated approach to operations in the maritime domain. Reinvigorating the
FMF can be accomplished by assigning more Marine Corps forces to the fleet;
putting Marine Corps experts in the fleet Maritime Operations Centers; and also
by shifting emphasis in our training, education and supporting establishment
activities.”

He said that the
Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) will remain the Corps’ principal warfighting
organization but that the three MEFs need not be identical.

“III MEF will
become our main focus-of-effort, designed to provide U.S. Indo-Pacific Command
(U.S. INDOPACOM) and the commander, 7th Fleet with a fight-tonight, standing
force capability to persist inside an adversary’s weapon systems threat range,
create a mutually contested space and facilitate the larger naval campaign,”
the CPG said. “When modernized in a manner consistent with the vision above,
III MEF will be a credible deterrent to adversary aggression in the Pacific.”

“I MEF will
also be focused on supporting the commander, USINDOPACOM and the commander, 3rd
Fleet,” Berger said. “I MEF will continue to provide forces to USINDOPACOM to
build partner capacity and reinforce deterrence efforts and must be prepared to
impose costs on a potential adversary, globally. We will increasingly accept
risk with I MEF’s habitual relationship with CENTCOM [U.S. Central Command];
however, 7th Marines is at present purpose-built to support CENTCOM
requirements; thus, I MEF will continue to support CENTCOM requirements within
the capacity of 7th Marines.

“II MEF will
undergo substantial changes to better align with the needs of commanders of 2nd
and 6th Fleets,” he said. “During a major contingency operation or sustained
campaign ashore, necessary combat power will be provided to the committed MEF
through global sourcing by the total force.

Berger said
the Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) is “no longer has the same relevance as it
once had to the fleet; however, this will change. We will consider employment
models of the Amphibious Ready Group (ARG)/MEU other than the traditional
three-ship model. We will accept and prepare for fleet commander employment of
LHA/Ds [amphibious assault ships] as part of three-ship ESGs [Expeditionary
Strike Groups] as desired. I see potential in the “Lightning Carrier” concept,
based on an LHA / LHD; however, do not support a new-build CVL [light aircraft
carrier]. Partnering a big-deck amphib with surface combatants is the right
warfighting capability for many of the challenges confronting the joint force,
and provides substantial naval and Joint operational flexibility, lethality and
survivability.”

WASHINGTON
— The Navy has issued its Request for Proposals (RFP) to the defense industry
for the Medium Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MUSV), a vessel planned to be part of
its Future Fleet concept.

The RFP, posted
on the FedBizOps.gov website July 16 by Naval Sea Systems
Command, calls for proposals for the MUSV, which “will be a pier-launched,
self-deploying modular, open architecture, surface vessel capable of autonomous
safe navigation and mission execution.”

The Navy
is expected to field the MUSV along with a Large USV as adjuncts to its Future
Surface fleet that will include the Future Surface Combatant and the new FFG(X)
guided-missile frigate as well as Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers
and the Independence- and Freedom-class littoral combat ships.

The Navy is experimenting
with the San Diego-bases Sea Hunter medium-displacement trimaran USV, built by
Leidos, testing its autonomous navigation capabilities and its effectiveness
with various sensor and other mission systems. A second Sea Hunter is being
built by Leidos for the Navy.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s nominee for secretary
of defense said he supports modernization of the nation’s strategic nuclear
deterrent.

“Clearly, modernization of the [strategic nuclear] triad is top priority,” Mark T. Esper said June 16 during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, listing his top modernization priorities.

Nuclear deterrence “has kept the peace
with regard to deterring nuclear war for 70 years now,” Esper said during his
testimony. “The important part is to ensure that we have a modern, effective,
credible, safe and reliable deterrent.”

Each leg of the triad [bombers,
intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles]
“provides certain capabilities to complement one another,” he added. “Continuing
to modernize that triad is important our safety and security.”

Esper said that each leg is in a
different status.

“We need to certainly modernize the GBSD [Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent],” he said. “Obviously, we have plans to recapitalize
the Ohio-class [ballistic-missile] submarines, and there is a program underway to [recapitalize] our long-range stealth bombers.”

recapitalize

Esper said that two parts of deterrence
are “having a capability and the will to use it.”

He stressed that the strategic
deterrent force needed to be cyber-protected.

There was no daylight between the
priorities between Esper and the nominee for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley.

Milley, testifying June 11 in his confirmation
hearing before the same committee, listed the nation’s strategic nuclear
deterrent as his top modernization priority, the others being space
capabilities, artificial intelligence and hypersonic weapons.

He supports modernization of all three legs of the
U.S. strategic deterrent triad.

“The triad has worked,” Milley said. “There are many
reasons why there hasn’t been a great power war since 1945. Clearly one of them
is nuclear deterrence and part of that is the capability of the triad. Each leg
of the triad gives you different capability.”

“I think we need to develop the domain
of space as a warfighting domain,” Esper said. “We need to improve our
capabilities and policies with regard to cyberspace. And then of course there
is a wide range of conventional capabilities we need to improve.”

Space
is no longer “a place from which we support combat operations,” he said. “It is
now a warfighting domain. Not because we made it that way, but because the
Russians and Chinese are making it that way. To make sure we are sufficiently
robust in the space warfighting domain is to have unity of command and unity of
effort.”

ARLINGTON,
Va. — The U.S. State Department has approved the possible sale of MH-60R
helicopters to the Hellenic navy at the request of the Greek government, the
Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said in a July 12 release. The sale,
if ultimately approved, would be made through the Foreign Military Sales
program and could total $600 million.

“The government
of Greece has requested to buy up to seven MH-60Rs Multi-Mission Helicopters,”
the release said.

The sale also
would include aircraft systems and spares, including T700 GE-401 C Engines; APS-l
53(V) radars; Airborne Low Frequency Sonar systems; AAS-44C(V) Multi-Spectral
Targeting Systems; and Embedded Global Positioning System/Inertial Navigation
Systems with Selective Availability/Anti-Spoofing Module.

Also included
in the possible sale are ARC-210 APX-1990A(C) radios; AVS-9 Night Vision
Devices; and APX-123 Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) transponders.

The deal also
would include “spare engine containers; facilities study, design, and
construction; spare and repair parts; support and test equipment; communication
equipment; ferry support; publications and technical documentation; personnel
training and training equipment; U.S. government and contractor engineering,
technical and logistics support services; and other related elements of
logistical and program support,” the release said.

Along with
the helicopters, the sale would include 1,000 SSQ-36/53/62 sonobuoys; two
AGM-114 M36-E9 Captive Air Training Missiles; four AGM-114Q Hellfire Training
Missiles; 100 Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System (APKWS) rockets; 30 Mk54
Torpedoes; 12 M-240 crew-served guns; and 12 GAU-21 crew-served guns. 

“This
proposed sale will support U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives
by helping to improve the security of a NATO ally, which is an important
partner for political stability and economic progress in Europe,” the release
said. “The MH-60R helicopters will bolster the Hellenic navy’s ability to support
NATO and remain interoperable with the U.S. and the NATO alliance.”

In addition to the U.S.
Navy, the MH-60R, built by Lockheed Martin, is operated by the Royal Australian
Navy, the Royal Danish Navy and the Royal Saudi Naval Forces. In April, the
State Department approved the possible sale of 24 MH-60Rs to the Indian navy.

WASHINGTON —
The president’s nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that he
supports development and deployment of a low-yield nuclear warhead as part of
the nations’ strategic deterrent.

“I think it
is an important capability to have in our arsenal in order to deal with any
potential adversaries or contingency operations,” Army Gen. Mark Milley said as
he testified June 11 on Capitol Hill at his confirmation hearing before the
Senate Armed Services Committee.

The
deployment of a low-yield warhead, the W76-2, is called for in the 2018 Nuclear
Posture Review. Production of the warhead has begun for the Trident D5LE
submarine-launched ballistic missiles to be deployed on board Ohio-class
ballistic-missile submarines.

The future of
the W76-2 is clouded because of opposition of key Democratic members of the
House of Representatives and is one of the contentious issues of the National
Defense Authorization bill currently in work.

Milley listed
the nation’s strategic nuclear deterrent as his top modernization priority, the
others being space capabilities, artificial intelligence and hypersonic
weapons.

He supports
modernization of all three legs of the U.S. strategic deterrent triad: bombers,
ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched
ballistic missiles.

“The triad has worked,”
Milley said. “There are many reasons why there hasn’t been a great power war
since 1945. Clearly one of them is nuclear deterrence and part of that is the
capability of the triad. Each leg of the triad gives you different capability.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated as of July 18, 2019, to reflect Gilday’s formal nomination.

ARLINGTON,
Va. — For the first time since the 1970s, a three-star admiral is the nominee for
chief of naval operations.

Vice Adm. Michael Gilday, who earlier this year became director of the Joint Staff, has been nominated by President Trump for promotion to admiral and to become CNO, according to a July 18 announcement from Acting Defense Secretary Richard. V. Spencer.

Gilday was selected to succeed Adm. John M.
Richardson after Adm. Bill Moran’s announcement that he would retire amid
questions about his ongoing professional relationship with a disgraced former
aide, sources confirmed.

Richardson had been scheduled to leave Aug. 1 and
retire in September but will stay on until the U.S. Senate confirmation process
for Gilday is complete.

The
nominee for the Navy’s next chief typically comes from a small pool of
four-star commanders. Gilday is the first three-star admiral to be chosen since
Vice Adm. Elmo Zumwalt was nominated by President Nixon in April 1970.

In a statement, Moran said he made the decision to retire “based on an open investigation into the nature of some of my personal email correspondence over the past couple of years and for continuing to maintain a professional relationship with a former staff officer, now retired, who had while in uniform been investigated and held accountable over allegations of inappropriate behavior.”

Press
reports identified the staff officer as Chris Servello, former public affairs
officer for Richardson.

Moran
added that he did not condone the staff officer’s conduct, but said he
understands how “toxic it can be to any team when inappropriate behavior goes
unrecognized and unchecked.”

“Every Sailor is entitled to serve in an environment free of harassment or intimidation,” Moran said. “As painful as it is to submit my request to retire, I will not be an impediment whatsoever to the important service that you and your families continue to render the nation every day.”

Spencer
said he admired Moran’s Navy service, but his decision to maintain the
relationship with the staff officer “has caused me to call his judgment into
question.”

Moran
called his 38 years of Navy service a “high honor and privilege” and said he
deeply regrets “any inconvenience” his decision causes Trump and Spencer. 

Gilday, a
native of Lowell, Massachusetts, is the son of a Navy Sailor, according to his
official biography. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and holds master’s
degrees from the Harvard Kennedy School and the National War College.

As a
surface warfare officer, Gilday deployed on two cruisers and a destroyer before
rising to command two more destroyers. Subsequently, he commanded Destroyer
Squadron 7, serving as sea combat commander for the Ronald Reagan Carrier
Strike Group.

As a flag
officer, he served as commander, Carrier Strike Group 8, embarked aboard USS
Dwight D. Eisenhower, and as commander, U.S. Fleet Cyber Command and U.S 10th
Fleet. Ashore, as a flag officer, he served in joint positions as director of
operations for NATO’s Joint Force Command Lisbon; as chief of staff for Naval
Striking and Support Forces NATO; director of operations for U.S. Cyber
Command; and as director of operations for the Joint Staff. 

His earlier staff assignments include the Bureau of Naval Personnel, the staff of the chief of naval operations, and the staff of the vice chief of naval operations. Joint assignments include executive assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and naval aide to the president.

Additional reporting by Megan Scully.

ARLINGTON,
Va. — One might be surprised that one of the most well-known companies in
defense work does not manufacture any systems or equipment, but it has a wide portfolio
of systems for which it serves as an integrator. SAIC focuses of a lot of its
Navy business on service-life extension of systems.

“We’re the second largest independent technology integrator in government services right now,” Rick Sabol, senior vice president, operations, NAVSEA and NAVAIR Operations, at SAIC, said in a July 8 interview with Seapower.

“What sets us
apart: we don’t build anything. We are always working on the government side as
an agnostic partner with them using whatever technologies they choose. We
facilitate the integration thereof, be it on platform or systems or what have
you.”

SAIC, which
is headquartered in Reston, Virginia, has 23,000 employees and an annual
revenue of $6.5 billion. Sabol oversees the company’s work for Naval Air
Systems Command and Naval Sea Systems Command.

Sabol said SAIC
has three main areas for its business: engineering and platform integration;
enterprise information technology; and logistics readiness and supply.

“We
think we are in a particular niche where we excel,” Sabol said. “We’re in that
niche in the middle where we can provide the engineering development support. We
can sustain systems and platforms throughout their life cycle for the customer.”

“We
think we are successful because some of [original equipment manufacturers] are
focused on selling the new shiny toy that costs a lot of money,” he said. “But
we know that the Navy right now with its budget constraint has issues in
service-life extension [which] we are focusing on in that middle area to help
the Navy and the warfighter extend the life of existing systems at a much more
economical cost.”

A recent
example of SAIC’s integration work is its offering in the competition for an
amphibious combat vehicle for the Marine Corps. SAIC did not build any of the proposed
vehicle or its systems and subsystems but subcontracted that work and brought
all the components and integrated them into the full-up vehicle.

SAIC also has
a role in the restart of production of the Mark 48 submarine-launched torpedo.
The company is integrating all the components of the afterbody and tailcone of the
weapon, including the propulsion system, which are being built by other
companies. The integration involves 26 major subassemblies made up of 500 piece
parts.

The
integration occurs at one of SAIC’s product support centers, in this case the
one near the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane in Bedford, Indiana. 

At Lakehurst,
New Jersey, home of the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division Lakehurst,
the SAIC depot modernizes and refurbishes aircraft racks for bombs and other
stores.

The company also integrates
upgrades into surface and land-based radars for the Navy and Marine Corps; C4I
(command, control, communications, computer, and intelligence) systems. The
ground-based observation system towers built for the Army were integrated by
SAIC.

ARLINGTON,
Va. — The Navy has awarded a contract for Blackjack and ScanEagle unmanned
aerial vehicles for the Navy and Marine Corps and several foreign nations.

Insitu Inc.
of Bingen, Washington, was awarded by the Naval Air Systems Command a $390.1
million firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for
up to 63 RQ-21A [Blackjack] attrition air vehicles for the U.S. Marine Corps
and U.S. Navy,” a June 28 Defense Department announcement said. “In addition,
this contract provides for up to six RQ-21A unmanned aircraft systems and up to
17 RQ-21A air vehicles for foreign military sales customers, including the
governments of Canada, Poland and Oman.”

Insitu also will
also provide up to 93 ScanEagle UASs in various configurations, the
announcement said. “In addition, this contract provides for associated
services, including training, test and engineering, development of engineering
change proposals, operations support, organizational level maintenance, field
service representatives, land and ship surveys, hardware site activations,
hardware installs, repairs, and data.”

The RQ-21A
Blackjack has seen service as a surveillance platform with the Marine Corps in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya. Contractor-owned and operated ScanEagles
have operated in support of U.S. and partner nations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The ScanEagle also has be operated by U.S. Special Operations command and by
several foreign nations. 

The orders
are expected to be completed by June 2022.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy has deployed a littoral combat
ship to the Western Pacific for the first time in 18 months, the first of three
LCSs the service plans to deploy this year.

The first LCS deployment this year apparently was kept
quiet by the Navy until the service published a July 1 web article by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Greg
Johnson of commander, Logistics Force, Western Pacific/CTF 73 Public Affairs,
of the Independence-class USS Montgomery (LCS 8) making a port call in Davao,
Philippines, on June 29.

The last LCS to deploy, USS Coronado (LCS 4), returned from the
Western Pacific on Dec. 5, 2017. It had been preceded by the USS Freedom (LCS
1) and its Freedom-class sister ship, USS Fort Worth (LCS 3), in 2015 and 2016,
respectively.

The commander of Naval Surface Forces told reporters in a
Jan. 11 teleconference that LCS deployments would resume in 2019, saying that
the Independence-class LCSs USS Montgomery and USS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS 10) would
deploy from the West Coast and that the first LCS deployments from the East
Coast, departing from Naval Station Mayport, Florida, would be undertaken by
the Freedom-variant LCS USS Detroit (LCS 7), followed by sister ship USS Little
Rock (LCS 9) in 2020.

For all of these deployments, the ships will carry the
full surface warfare mission package, Brown said.

“It’s happening,” Brown said during the teleconference,
noting that from then on “there will always be LCS forward-deployed.”

WASHINGTON —
Alaska’s junior senator, a member of the Armed Services Committee, is critical
of the Pentagon’s lack of support for a strategic Arctic port but is pleased
that the nation has a Secretary of the Navy who understands the need for the
Navy to have the infrastructure to sustain a presence in the Arctic region.

“The good
news is having a Secretary of the Navy who gets it and is an advocate,” said
Sen. Dan Sullivan, chairman of the Subcommittee on Readiness and Management
Support on the Senate Armed Services Committee, speaking June 26 on Arctic
defense issues to an audience at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, a Washington think tank, noting that Congress, not the Defense
Department, is usually driving the efforts to strengthen U.S. strategic presence
in the Arctic.

Sullivan,
also a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, said he was concerned about Russian
hegemony in the Arctic, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin said that
the Arctic is “the new Suez Canal that Russia will control,” and that Russia is
devoting four of six new brigade combat teams to the Arctic region.  

He noted that
Russia fields 40 icebreakers and is building 13 more, while the Coast Guard has
only one heavy icebreaker. He is pleased that the Congress has authorized six
icebreakers, including three polar security cutters (PSCs), and has funded the
first PSC and made a down payment of a second.

Sullivan said
the Navy will be sending one or two guided-missile destroyers along with Coast
Guard assets to the Arctic this summer and in September will be conducting
exercises from the former naval air station on Adak, an Aleutian island, as
well as operating P-8 maritime patrol aircraft from Adak for part of the year.

The Arm Corps
of Engineers is studying the challenges of building a strategic port at Nome,
Alaska, he said. 

He pointed
out that the Navy currently does not have the capability to conduct freedom of
navigation operations in the Arctic, noting that submarines, being covert under
the ice, do not count as a ‘presence.’ 

Sullivan also
said the Navy needs to consider ice-hardening some future ships.  

“I’m very
supportive of a 355-ship Navy, but we need to look at the Navy and we’ve had
this in the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] for the Secretary of the
Navy to look, the ice-hardening capabilities of some of that new fleet that
we’re building, so we have a lot of work to do and we’re way behind with regard
to capabilities, particularly on the Navy side, the strategic Arctic port side,”
he said.