Vice Adm. Bill Galinis, commander, Naval Sea Systems Command, responded to questions about the Naval Sustainment System – Shipyard from Senior Editor Richard R. Burgess.

What is the Naval Sustainment System – Shipyard?

GALINIS: Naval Sustainment System – Shipyard (NSS-SY) is a Navy corporate initiative focused on meeting our on-time ship and submarine delivery commitments at all our naval shipyards. This Navy-wide approach is designed to address all functional areas affecting execution performance in our public shipyards to include planning, material procurement, engineering, waterfront execution, facilities, information technology and fleet partnership. For years, we have struggled to deliver submarines and aircraft carriers back to the fleet on-time from scheduled maintenance periods. Over the last decade, we’ve worked to increase productivity by growing the size of our workforce, improving our training processes to accelerate learning and get our newest hires to the waterfront as quickly as possible. In working to improve the on-time performance of the shipyards we realized that we needed to rethink how we approached both the way we plan and execute the work.

At the heart of NSS-SY is the “get real, get better” approach. The direction provided in the CNO’s [Chief of Naval Operations’] Charge of Command to self-assess, self-correct and learn is clear. For us, that means that we need to look at our processes and procedures, understand where there are barriers that hinder or slow production work and then permanently remove them. To do this, we follow a stair-step process that empowers everyone from the deckplate or shop floor all the way up to me to fix issues or elevate them up the chain of command until it reaches the right level where the issue can be addressed. We call this the “fix or elevate” process, and it allows us to identify issues that prevent our production workforce from getting their job complete on time. The issue could be that our mechanics do not have the right tools, drawings or material on hand and we work with all of the Navy’s stakeholders — across the shipyard enterprise, NAVSEA, other Navy system commands, the fleet or Navy leadership as required — to ensure that our people have what they need, when they need it, so they can do their job.

Two additional important elements of the NSS-SY effort are the requirement to standardize practices across our naval shipyard enterprise. This includes starting with how we train our workforce, our business practices, materi­al procurement efforts and work execution processes. There is tremendous opportunity in this area.

During this era of strategic competition, and when you consider the average cost of about $1 million per day to keep a submarine in a shipyard, every day matters when it comes to our availabilities. Every day of maintenance delay costs the Navy steaming days, training days, and forces other ships and crews to stay out longer. With NSS-SY, we are working to ensure that we maximize our skilled workforce so we can continue to deter ag­gression and win in a fight.

How and when did NSS-SY originate?

GALINIS: NSS-SY has its roots in Naval Sustainment System – Aviation when Naval Air Systems Command [NAVAIR] took on the challenge to have 80% of our F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers mission capable. NAVAIR not only met but exceeded its requirement, and we in NAVSEA saw the goodness inherent in the NSS process and started applying it to our naval shipyards.

The level of complexity in maintaining a nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier is enormous, so we had to not just scale up what NSS-Aviation did, but really elevate the whole process to a new level. We worked diligently within NAVSEA headquarters and the naval shipyard enterprise to start the process. Initially leveraging the Navy’s Performance to Plan initiative focusing on data and data analytics to identify key deficiency areas, we learned pretty quickly that we needed to take a much more holistic approach that brought senior leaders from multiple NAVSEA equities, other Navy Systems Commands, the fleet and Navy leadership.

This process led to the establishment of the NAVSEA Transformation Office led by NAVSEA’s executive director Giao Phan and is comprised of nine pillars, each lead by a one- or two-star admiral:

• Engineering: Rear Adm. Jason Lloyd (NAVSEA 05)
• Planning: Rear Adm. Jim Downey (PEO CVN) and Rear Adm. Dave Goggins (PEO SSN)
• Materials: Rear Adm. Ken Epps (NAVSUP WSS)
• Inside Shops: Rear Adm. Scott Brown (NAVSEA 04)
• Waterfront Production: Rear Adm. Scott Brown (NAVSEA 04)
• Fleet Operations: Rear Adm. William Green (USFFC N43)
• Shipyard Resourcing: Rear Adm. Scott Brown (NAVSEA 04)
• Infrastructure: Rear Adm. Troy McClelland (PEO SIOP)
• Information Technology: Rear Adm. Huan Nguyen (NAVSEA 03).

Additionally, within each shipyard, aligned to the waterfront production pillar, we have established execution teams lead by “champions.” Our champions are senior, experienced shipyard personnel recognized as experts by leadership and their peers in the areas they are leading. This is really where the proverbial “rubber meets the road” and this team is driving the change we need inside our shipyards.

This team is working to ensure that we are aligned and working together, from NAVSEA headquarters to the shipyard waterfront to provide our skilled mechanics and trades with the material, training, equipment, technology and facilities required to execute their mission on time. These leaders are responsible for solving issues at their level and elevating issues as needed to improve the output of the naval shipyards.

Why the need for a change?

GALINIS: As CNO [Adm. Mike Gilday] wrote in his NAVPLAN, “There is no time to waste — our actions in this decade will set the maritime balance of power for the rest of the century.”

We are in an era of strategic competition with China and Russia. Both those countries are making significant investments in their navies and air forces to try and disrupt global dynamics and stability for their own economic benefit. Our Navy serves as the stabilizing force across the globe, and that is true because we are forward deployed and have the greatest Sailors and ships of any nation. Fleet readiness is top priority and foundational to executing our sea control and power projection missions. The work to provide our Navy and our country with materially ready submarines and aircraft carriers starts in our four public shipyards. Our naval shipyards are critical in ensuring that our submarines and aircraft carriers are materially ready to fight and win. NSS-SY is working to ensure that these front-line assets are delivered on time, every time so the fleet can meet its mission to preserve peace and win wars.

How is it an improvement on the way ship sustainment was done in the past?

GALINIS: The primary difference between NSS-SY and other efforts to improve naval shipyards’ performance is the whole-Navy approach we’re taking. No longer are we putting the onus on the individual shipyards to figure out how to improve. Instead, we are using metrics, data analytics, and workforce input to drive the procedural changes and business rule updates needed to ensure that we provide the production and engineering workforce with the full scope of what they need to be successful and make every day of a maintenance availability matter.

As I said earlier, we’re taking a holistic approach to how the naval shipyards are supported from across the entire Navy. Under Fleet Maintenance Officers Rear Adm. Greene and Capt. [Daniel] Ettlich, both former naval shipyard commanders, we are working with the fleets to improve our productive capacity within each shipyard by adjusting targets for our wage grade, or trade, personnel while also building a path to become a “master mechanic,” essentially providing a career in the trades with the appropriate level of training and compensation. 

No availability can be completed on time if the planning and engineering isn’t done right, so Rear Admirals Downy and Goggins are working to improve our planning efforts by refocusing of planning milestone adherence and the quality and completeness of the planning products delivered to the shipyards. Rear Adm. Jason Lloyd has developed a team to address non-value-added requirements and “engineer work out” of availabilities to improve our on-time performance. Where the on-time procurement and delivery of material has proven to be one of our bigger challenges, and tied to our planning and engineering efforts, Rear Adm. Epps has implemented Material Planning Conferences tied to our availability planning efforts as well as rebuilding our rotatable pool processes.

On the infrastructure front, under Rear Adm. Nguyen, we’re working to improve our IT infrastructure to improve connectivity and information sharing while also working to upgrade computers at the four shipyards to improve productively and reduce unproductive time.

Adm. McClellan is executing the required physical infrastructure upgrades needed to execute maintenance in as efficient manner possible, with active projects in progress at Portsmouth and Norfolk and soon in Pearl Harbor and Puget Sound.

It all comes together on the waterfront and in our shops, and that is where Rear Adm. Brown is focused on a really, “back to basics” effort.  As mentioned earlier, there are strong teams within each shipyard, led by our champions, working to implement the required change in this pillar. The focus here is to essentially rebuild our management and execution processes for executing complex ship maintenance and modernization efforts. Additionally, he has a strong effort in place to improve production shop performance, ensuring the production shop workforce has what they need to execute their mission.

What are some of the lessons learned from the first four submarine pilot projects? Did they emerge from the shipyard on time?

GALINIS: Each shipyard has executed a number of initiatives we call sprints that are designed to quickly test ideas. During the first phase of NSS-SY, we focused on the waterfront production system and piloted OCC [Operations Control Center] and Start of Shift initiatives across four submarine CNO availabilities — USS Mississippi (SSN 782), USS Louisiana (SSBN 743), USS Virginia (SSN 774) and USS Pasadena (SSN 752).

Not every sprint resulted in positive outcomes. One example was our testing a new way to record work time for the production workforce. We thought we could remove some work hours at the supervisory level but, when we evaluated the pilot, we did not see the return on investment so we ended the pilot pretty quickly so we could put our efforts elsewhere. Although we don’t like to see our effort not pan out, it’s better that we fail fast so we spend more time in areas that may result in real time or energy savings.

A consistent theme in what we learned with the early efforts was a need to scale successful pilots quickly — the crew boards for example. Our approach here will be to implement pilot efforts where we see the need for improvement, quickly assess the impact of these pilots, and, if they work, scale them quickly across the four naval shipyards.

Our near-term efforts are really focused on the waterfront pillar to rebuild and reinforce the importance of our project management fundamentals. Improving our waterfront execution efforts, combined with near-term wins in material, engineering and IT, is where I believe we will have the most impact on avails in progress.

Looking a little further out, improving our planning efforts, getting this planning done on time with the requisite level of quality, combined with improved on time material procurement and delivery will be impactful. This will also improve our ability to manage the production work during a submarine or aircraft carrier availability.

Have you started any follow-on (post-pilot) availabilities using NSS-SY? Have you expanded beyond applying it to submarines?

GALINIS: Yes, we have. For example, we’ve established operational control centers that have been fully implemented for all CNO availabilities in progress and even into some of our shops.

The operational control centers are integral to our fix or elevate approach as issues identified at the waterfront or shop floor are sent there for evaluation and are either fixed or moved up the chain of command. It allows the project teams and trades a single place to send issues they cannot address themselves and serves as a way to bring subject matter experts together into a single space to investigate and address productivity barriers. This effort has driven down work stoppages in terms of numbers and durations on the waterfront and shown some improvement in getting decisions to the waterfront faster.

We’ve also continued to mature the use of crew boards across our availabilities, incorporating feedback from the waterfront. These crew boards lay out what specific work teams should accomplish that day. In establishing this daily goal, our tradespeople can better understand what they need to do and make every day matter. It also helps to track the status of ongoing work and help identify barriers to completion.

Additionally, the work being done within the waterfront pillar to improve and strengthen work execution principles, what we refer to as “project management fundamentals,” or PMF, has been very important. PMF is the tactical process used by our project teams to manage work execution during ship maintenance availability. The team is taking a back-to-basics approach to strengthen the training and understanding of these fundamentals, reinstill consistency of implementation and adherence, measuring throughput and incorporating commercial best practices where appropriate. This is one of our top focus areas to improve availability execution in the near term. 

What metrics do you use to assess the success of availabilities under NSS-SY?

GALINIS: Ultimately, the only metric that counts is the number of days of maintenance delays. Our goal is to deliver all availabilities on time by 2023. 

We have identified a number of metrics that we know will lead to a decrease in the number of days of maintenance delays. For example, we are looking at on-time task completion, how much production work is accomplished each day as compared to a daily schedule, and how much we are reducing unplanned work, or work that is not identified prior to the start of the availability. We are constantly reassessing how we measure ourselves to ensure we stay focused on the right measurements and tasks.

We also have tangential information about our work­force’s buy-in to the program. When we first started rolling out crew boards, they did not go to every shop on every availability. Instead, we tested the concept with a couple shops on a couple availabilities. One day, a supervisor walked past a crew board, saw the goodness and value in sharing that information, and on his own built his crew their own crew board. When you have that type of buy in to a concept, you know you’re on to something good.

What new technology, if any, has been introduced as part of NSS-SY?

GALINIS: While NSS-SY is principally focused on improving our business and production practices, and I discussed the importance of standardizing of our practices, equally important is our ability to innovate and improve our processes as well as bring in new technology. We have consistently encouraged and challenged our shipyard to look for improvement opportunities.

A good example of driving innovation into our work practices is the current friendly competition between Portsmouth and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyards on Virginia-class work practices to drive time and cost out of these availabilities.

On the technology front, we stood up an Engineering Intervention Board to more efficiently and quickly evaluate new technologies as part of its effort to remove schedule and cost from availabilities. And many of these new ideas come from the waterfront.

Examples of technologies the EIB is currently evaluating include an automated condenser cleaning system that cleans condenser tubes while saving substantial time. We are also looking into an autonomous grit-blasting system that also reduces the workforce requirements. Same for a phased array ultrasonic non-destructive testing technique and laser ablation that removes rust and other materials with a laser beam and not a wire brush or wire wheel.

What are the cost advantages, if any, demonstrated by the NSS-SY projects?

GALINIS: NSS-SY is focused on improving business practices within the shipyards and maximizing the productive time of our artisan and engineering workforce. It’s about on-time work completion that results in on-time deliveries and therefore on-cost deliveries as well. From a shipyard perspective, providing our waterfront mechanics/trades the right material at the right time, the right tools, technical information, etc., will allow them to be more efficient. The more effective we make our skilled tradespeople, the quicker they can complete a job and then move to the next one, which reduces the number of work hours and days in an availability, and the quicker we can buy back idle time for the ships and their crews.

That said, there is a cost component to delivering ships on time. For every day a submarine is delayed in an availability, the Navy expends about $1 million. That includes all the operational costs for the boat. For aircraft carriers, that figure doubles to $2 million. When the ship and its crew is in the shipyard, the Navy is not getting productive capacity from its investment.

Similarly, there is a readiness deficit that we run when we do not deliver on time. For the delayed ship and its crew, that’s less time working together as a team, at sea, where they need to be to gain true warfighting proficiency. It also causes us to run deployed crews and their ships longer and harder than we want and that has an impact on our people and warships.

Ultimately, NSS-SY is about delivering ships on time, every time but ensuring our workforce has what they need, when they need it, to get the job done. 

What feedback are you getting from the shipyard workers on NSS-SY?

GALINIS: The feedback has been positive. As with every new concept it takes a while for people to really understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. We are really starting to see the momentum build for the NSS-SY efforts. We need to drive the credibility and ownership of this effort to the waterfront. The credibility piece will be built by demonstrating how these initiatives make the job easier for our tradespeople by ensuring they have the right material when they need, they have the right work sequence, correct technical drawings and the ownership element. We are seeing now where the shipyards are using the NSS-SY efforts to drive im­provements in the shipyards. 

Frankly, our shipyard personnel were a little guarded about NSS-SY to start. They have seen other attempts to improve productivity that have had limited success. Additionally, there was some who thought NSS-SY was going to add an already high workload. While there is some investment/work upfront required, the bottom line here is that the improvements we are making need to make it easier for our naval shipyard waterfront teams to meet their commitments. NSS-SY is about making these teams successful. The focus here is to remove barriers and provide the resources required to enable them to do their job safely and on-time.

Our naval shipyards are national assets, and our people are the heart and soul of this enterprise. We have a leadership team aligned on the imperative to improve — to get real and get better. The shipyard team is committed to meeting our commitments to the fleet in terms of on time delivery. Through the NSS-SY effort, we have developed a process to improve our execution performance, measure our improvements and correct where required and hold ourselves accountable for sustaining this performance across our naval shipyards.

How does NSS-SY relate to the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program?

GALINIS: NSS-SY and SIOP share the same goal of setting our public shipyards up for long-term success with success being measured in the on-time delivery of submarines and aircraft carriers out of mainte­nance availabilities.

SIOP is focused on recapitalizing the physical infra­structure — upgrading the dry docks and the shipyard infrastructure to include our shop facilities, and then the industrial plant equipment, all required to execute maintenance on new classes of submarines and aircraft carriers.

NSS-SY, on the other hand, is about updating our business practices, work execution processes and procedures to support the on-time execution of ship availabilities and ensure our mechanics and engineers have the tools and material they need to safely execute their work on time and with minimal or no delays.

Separately, NSS-SY and SIOP will result in substantial positive changes within the naval shipyards. When you combine NSS-SY and SIOP together, you have the truly fundamental and unprecedented investment that our shipyards require to execute maintenance on time, every time for generations to come.

Do you foresee expansion of NSS-SY concepts to private shipyards for Navy ship availabilities?

GALINIS: Yes, I do, and in fact we are sharing best practices and lessons learned from our NSS-SY efforts with our counterparts in the private sector. A component of NSS-SY is the Navy adopting industry best practices in order to become more efficient. That said, it will only benefit the Navy to share our best practices with our ship maintainers and builders.

Vice Adm. Roy Kitchener assumed command of Naval Surface Forces and Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet in August 2020, and as a type commander he has guided the forces as he continues to man, train and equip the forces for duty in the fleet and service to the U.S. combatant commands. A native of Trumbull, Connecticut, and a 1984 graduate of Unity College with a Bachelor of Arts in political science, he attended the Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, and received his commission in 1985. He also attended the Naval Post Graduate School where he specialized in Western Hemisphere studies and earned a Master of Arts in national security affairs.

As a surface warfare officer, he deployed around the world and commanded destroyers, cruisers and an expeditionary strike group. At sea he served as a division officer aboard USS Dewey (DDG 45); operations and training officer for Special Boat Unit 26, Republic of Panama; combat systems and weapons officer aboard USS San Jacinto (CG 56); executive officer aboard USS Cowpens (CG 63); and operations officer and chief of staff for Commander, Carrier Strike Group 11. He commanded USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53) and USS Higgins (DDG 76) during the Navy’s Sea Swap Initiative, and also commanded USS Princeton (CG59) and Expeditionary Strike Group 2.

Ashore, Kitchener served as the Surface Warfare Directorate’s Naval Surface Fire Support program officer on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations; combat systems instructor at Surface Warfare Officers School; ballistic missile defense operations chief at the Cheyenne Mountain directorate at Commander, U.S. Northern Command; and vice commander of Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command. He served as the chief of staff at numerous commands, to include commander, U.S. 3rd Fleet; commander, Naval Surface Forces; commander, Naval Striking and Support Forces North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); and U.S. deputy military representative to the NATO Military Committee. Most recently, he was commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet.

Kitchener responded to questions about the surface Navy fleet from Senior Editor Richard R. Burgess.

The surface Navy is better armed today than it was decades ago, when it was primarily an anti-air and antisubmarine escort force. How has that improvement affected the morale and professionalism of surface warriors?

KITCHENER: No doubt, we have seen tremendous improvements in our network and sensors that give our ever-improving weapons better speed, range and precision. However, I would propose it is our training investments that have had the most impact on the professionalism of the force. The surface force develops leaders, warriors, mariners and managers, and each of these roles requires training, education and mentoring. A well-trained Sailor is a confident Sailor. That is why we have dedicated more than $5 billion to the Surface Training Advanced Virtual Environment for Surface Force training. Approximately 200 STAVE projects are supporting training in all areas of individual and waterfront training, including navigation and seamanship, engineering, damage control and combat systems. Furthermore, nearly 66% of all afloat billets benefit from STAVE. This training and the human factor programs that we have in place directly contribute to improving our Sailors’ professionalism and morale.

The surface Navy has had few combat actions at sea since World War II. How confident are you that today’s surface warriors are trained and conditioned to maneuver and fight as well as execute damage control should they fight a peer competitor?

KITCHENER: We are highly confident in the training and professionalism of our surface force. As previously stated, we have dedicated a significant amount of resources to ensure our force is trained and ready to meet today’s operational challenges. In addition to investing in STAVE, we are also building the physical and digital infrastructure to support this vast amount of training we are providing to our force.

Most notably, the Mayport [Florida] and Sasebo [Japan] Shiphandling Trainers opened for business in 2021, bringing the number of learning sites to 10 overall and ensuring a site in nearly every fleet concentration area. The Mariner Skills Training Centers in San Diego and Norfolk began hosting a two-phase Officer of the Deck [OOD] course, which shifted from a JOOD [Junior OOD] course to a two-phase OOD curriculum. The change freed up the Advanced Division Officer Course to expand its focus on maritime warfare. ADOC is now providing junior officers with three weeks of maritime warfare training instead of one, allowing us to lay the warfighting foundation earlier in an officer’s career.

Regarding specific warfighting training, we are installing virtual operator trainers, or VOTs, in all homeports to provide Sailors with training for the AV-15 sonar system and Aegis Baselines 9 and above. In Yokosuka, Pearl Harbor and San Diego, the sonar trainers are up and running and the Aegis VOTs in Yokosuka and Pascagoula are soon to follow.

Finally, we have worked with the numbered fleet commanders to retool and enhance the high end, at-sea training ships receive prior to deploying to ensure they are ready to defeat current day threats. Never before has our force possessed this quality of warfighting training systems in our homeports, and they are available to commanding officers to build their teams’ skills.

Has the seamanship of the force been improving to meet your expectations in the five years since the McCain and Fitzgerald incidents?

KITCHENER: Yes. We have made significant investments to increase the amount and depth of training that junior surface warfare officers receive before they report to their ship. 

We introduced and implemented a revised SWO training and assessment continuum that employs navigation, seamanship and ship handling assessments across all career milestones.

We also implemented NSS/go/no-go assessments with four no-go criteria established for a SWO career path, which means that no one gets a pass simply due to experience. We assessed all officers at every level, from brand new ensign to major commander. Those who do not pass their proficiency tests do not assume command of ships at sea. Our standard: To be a professional mariner is more rigorous now than ever.

For our younger officers, the two-phased OOD course provides advanced practical instruction in navigation, seamanship, and ship handling in high-end simulators, emphasizing rules of the road, high-density shipping, in-extremis maneuvering and watch team management.

How are simulators making better surface warriors?

KITCHENER: With the number and complexity of systems and platforms planned to join the fleet in the next decade, the requirement for clear and innovative operational concepts is critical. Simulators provide our surface warriors with a controlled environment to develop and refine their mariner skills. By perfecting these skills in a teachable setting, Sailors can enter the fleet with the most ad­vanced knowledge.

What are the chief challenges to improving force readiness?

KITCHENER: The completion of depot level maintenance on time continues to be a significant challenge. We have invested in analytics to help us improve in this area.

As I said at SNA [Surface Navy Association convention] earlier this year, we have seen improvements in two key metrics that we are using to gauge our progress: days of maintenance delay and on-time completion rates. Since 2019, we have reduced our days of maintenance delay by 41%. Our on-time completion is steadily increasing, from 34% in fiscal year 2019 to a projected 59% for all 2021 avails, including those ongoing that began in fiscal year 2021. We still have more to do, but it has been satisfying to see that the process is working.

Overcoming this challenge is even more important as we deliver modernization upgrades to the fleet, capability that is essential to maintaining our warfighting ad­vantage. The SPY-6 radar and AN/SLQ-32(V)7 electronic warfare suite are a couple of examples of the extensive modernization programs that we will introduce to the fleet. The effective and timely execution of our maintenance and modernization packages during depot avails will be even more important to force readiness as we install this vital capability.

You have spoken about reimagining fleet introduction. What do you mean by that?

KITCHENER: Historically, NAVSEA’s [Naval Sea Sys­tems Command’s] fleet introduction team provided oversight on the acquisition process and integrated the various program offices in the delivery of a new ship. Independently, the type commander’s fleet introduc­tion team would be responsible for actually integrating the ship into the fleet. We feel that a good look at this process will provide us a better process. Reimagining means thinking differently about this process so that the type commander is more engaged in the acquisition process overall, and that the program offices can deliver new ships and capabilities that integrate with the fleet more effectively and efficiently. We anticipate that this review should have significant positive impact and therefore I’ve asked Rear Adm. Brendan McLane at CNSP [commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet] to take on this task.

We are introducing at least 10 new or modernized platforms to the force in the next decade, and believe that effective fleet introduction is critical to maintaining a competitive advantage.

What is the role of Task Force LCS that stood up last spring?

KITCHENER: We stood up Task Force LCS to consolidate efforts and drive actions across the LCS [littoral combat ship] program. Experts across the Navy are working together to analyze, develop and rapidly implement improvements to LCS platform reliability, sustainability, lethality and operational employment. The task force, led by Rear Adm. Robert Nowakowski, continues to provide databased recommendations and solutions to improve the reliability and sustainability of the LCS program.

What will be the role of the unmanned surface vessel division standing up this summer? How has Surface Development Squadron One been pushing the envelope in unmanned systems?

KITCHENER: This summer, USV Division One will stand up and grow to 103 Sailors in 2022 to provide dedicated support to USV operations. The command will be led by an O5 SWO commander and will report to SURFDEVRON [Surface Development Squadron] One and operate out of Port Hueneme, California. USVDIV 1 will be focused exclusively on USV experimentation and fleet advocacy with our program offices. The division will be a cornerstone in building the foundational knowledge required for Sailors to operate and maintain the USV fleet and spearhead the development of the processes required for USV operations and sustainment.

With the Zumwalt class to be armed for hypersonic weapons, do you expect them to deploy before their conversion? When do you expect the first conversion to start and what is the planned IOC year for them with conventional prompt strike?

KITCHENER: The Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike Program is developing a non-nuclear hypersonic weap­ons system that will enable precise and timely strike capability in contested environments. Fielding hypersonic weapons is a top technical research and engineering priority and the Navy continues to accelerate the development of hypersonic capabilities. The Navy is on track to field the CPS on Zumwalt-class destroyers in fiscal 2025.

In support of the Zumwalt class, being the first platform to deliver CPS capability, the Navy commenced engineering design planning that will allow for integration of CPS during a planned fiscal 2024 dry-docking selected restricted availability. The ship’s relatively large volume and timing of her already scheduled dry docking availability are key enablers to rapidly field CPS capability in USS Zumwalt.

Looking on the success of the DDG 51 class, what capa­bilities do you want to see in DDG(X)?

KITCHENER: The DDG(X) class will capitalize on the success of the DDG 51 class by improving an already exceptional craft. DDG(X) will utilize a variant of the DDG-51 FLT III combat system integrated into a new hull form with flexibility for upgrades, an efficient in­tegrated power system and greater endurance, reducing the fleet logistics burden.

DAHLGREN, Va. — The U.S. Navy has been researching and perfecting directed energy weapons to include railguns, high-powered microwaves and lasers, along with hypervelocity projectiles — to make futuristic weapons a reality on ships today.

The Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division in Dahlgren, Virginia, has been leading the way in creating capabilities to give warfighters a high-tech advantage at sea, to include directed energy weapons.

“We take great pride in being a hands-on research, development, test and evaluation institution, where we possess and practice the organic technical knowledge for the Department of the Navy with respect to surface warfare,” said Dale Sisson, NSWC Dahlgren Division’s technical director. “That ends up being a fairly broad ranging mission, for sure. Having the opportunity to design, develop, test and integrate warfighting systems through the confluence of a physical range infrastructure, and a digital architecture such as our digital proving ground, is fundamentally who we are.

“We’re also in the threat engineering business, which means we understand those threats well, and that knowledge translates back into understanding how to develop the weapons to counter that on a defensive standpoint, as well as create the offensive advantage that puts us ahead of the game,” said Sisson.

While the Navy’s railgun efforts are currently on hold, laser systems are installed or in the process of being integrated into ship combat systems today. In fact, much of Dahlgren’s work on railguns is being leveraged today for new capabilities such as hypervelocity projectiles. 

Today, lasers are a reality in the fleet. A prototype Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy, or ODIN system, designed and built by Dahlgren, is being evaluated aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers USS Dewey (DDG 105), and other Burke-class ships. The Lockheed Martin High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance system is being tested aboard another Burke-class ship, USS Preble (DDG 88). The Solid-State Laser Technology Maturation (SSL-TM) program is developing an integrated Laser Weapons System Demonstrator, built by Northrop Grumman, which is installed and being tested aboard landing ship dock USS Portland (LPD 21). 

All of them can thank Dahlgren for vital concept development, design and testing. Dahlgren’s Laser Lethality Laboratory and Laser Firing Range have provided knowledge, expertise and experience to mature the technologies and integrate the capabilities into the combat systems on the Navy’s warships.

“Our laser firing range allows us to fire across Upper Machodoc Creek so we can examine how the maritime boundary layer between the water and the atmosphere affects laser performance. We have a two-story building within our explosive experimental area we use as a backstop for laser beams,” Sisson said. “We can shoot up to about four kilometers, depending on where we position lasers on the range from the backstop.” 

Dr. Chris Lloyd, distinguished scientist for laser weapon system lethality, leads the Navy’s laser lethality efforts.

“NSWCDD has extensive experience in integration of Navy laser weapon systems, from subcomponents up to full systems. The Navy laser lethality team supports development, assessment and deployment of laser weapons and conducts rigorous testing, modeling and simulation to drive requirements for advanced laser weapon system development for the Navy. Lethality is more than simply damaging materials, but understanding how threats are going to respond. We have to understand threat response, based on the damage we inflict, and apply that data, along with weapon system parameters and propagation information to tell the complete weapon effectiveness story,” he said.

“Our industry partners team closely with the government directed energy workforce to integrate and test laser weapon systems at Dahlgren test ranges as well as other DoD test locations in the country,” said Lloyd. “If they have a system that’s ready to be tested in preparation for deployment, we can use actual system performance test data in our lethality and effectiveness analyses to validate models and assess overall lethality.”

Working Together

Lloyd said the Dahlgren team has been part of technical area working groups that have been together for the better part of 20 years, and, as a result of that, have become very proficient at working together and sharing data.

“We collaborate closely with the Army, Air Force, Missile Defense Agency and the Joint Directed Energy Transition Office,” he said. “We also work with the FFRDCs [Federally Funded Research and Development Centers] and academia to advance key S and T [science and technology] areas.”

Dahlgren’s lethality lab has several key features, including a repurposed World War II tunnel for longer range propagation studies. It’s environmentally controlled, and can introduce moisture and aerosols to see how they affect not only propagation but lethality.

“We can look at battlefield contaminants, atmospheric conditions, and understand lethality through those conditions,” said Lloyd.

“We’re in the business of putting holes in targets and damaging components. That’s the ‘target vulnerability’ piece of it,” he said. “But we’re interested in the overall weapon lethality. We have to understand the weapon system performance specifications, as well as the atmospheric conditions and the impact on overall effectiveness. We work very closely with the atmospheric community to grasp those principles and pull them into the modeling. We also collect vulnerability data on different materials all the way up to subsystem components and full systems.”

Another aspect of Dahlgren’s laser lethality efforts involves the modeling and simulation analysis team.  “Fundamental properties for the materials we test against are fed into those models, along with all the basic parameters like conductivity,” said Lloyd. “It all has to be well understood.”

Sisson said the science and technology is important, but Dahlgren’s staff knows how to put that knowledge into practical systems.

“We have the technical knowledge to build a system. But that’s not enough. We have that true subject matter expertise that knows how to design, develop, deliver and field systems. When we’re working on a tactical laser system, our engineers also understand systems integration and what it takes to go acquire things. We have to be able to install and operate that system on a ship reliably and effectively,” Sisson said. “We need a system to target the beam and conduct battle damage assessment, and it has to integrate with the ship’s combat management system. We have to be able to make it fit and work on a ship in a challenging maritime environment.” 

Not Just A Laser

“Dahlgren has been instrumental in the continued technology maturation for high energy lasers and the success of LWSD,” said Donna Howland, acting general manager of Northrop Grumman’s Directed Energy operating unit. “We learned from their expertise on how to operationalize high energy lasers.”

“It’s not just a laser. We want to integrate the laser — as both a sensor and weapon — as a full participant in the combat system,” said Capt. Casey Plew, NSWC Dahlgren Division’s commanding officer. “We’re building a weapon that includes the mount, power, thermal management, command and control, tracking and doctrine, all done in coordination with government, industry and academia partners.

“Lasers are a great piece of the mission we perform, but they are only one part of the complex puzzle. And the awesome women and men of NSWC Dahlgren Division have been helping to solve our surface navy warfighting puzzles — for almost 104 years. It is in our DNA. It is what we do,” said Plew.  

Recent initiatives by the Department of Defense to foster rapid innovation and modernization have involved conducting prize competitions among existing and would-be defense contractors to develop technology for military use. The competitions enable small businesses to put forth and demonstrate their ideas in realistic scenarios and can, in time, lead to production contracts.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning is one area receiving intensive attention from the Defense Department because of the increasing challenges of managing overwhelming amounts of data and making decisions in a timely manner. The challenge is made even more acute because of the present sophisticated peer competition with China and Russia. The current politico-military situations in Ukraine, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea are scenarios in which AI/ML potentially can help decisionmakers. AI can have applications at the national level all the way down to the tactical level. The technology can help not only with situational awareness but also with predictions — indications and warning. 

In a recent prize competition sponsored by the Department of Defense, a small company named BigBear.ai, headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, won the prize. The competition between 12 teams was a Project Overmatch AI Advanced Naval Technology Exercise, or ANTX. 

Brian Frutchey, chief technology officer for BigBear.ai, said the company adapted for the Navy a program developed for the U.S Army, which was “dealing with hybrid warfare, the gray zone conflict out in Eastern Europe and wanting to find tools that could automate the sense-making of all of the different data that they need to look at for the hybrid warfare environment.”

It was not just “counting the planes and tanks and soldiers anymore,” Frutchey said. “They have to look at the economies, political relationships, migration of people, cyber activity, all these new domains that the strategic analyst needs to be cognizant of and needs to model into their anticipatory intelligence.”

BigBear.ai built the Virtual Anticipation Network (VANE) — the weathervane — to point to where the winds of war were blowing. Now the dominant product at Big Bear.ai, VANE, funded by the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations in Low Intensity Conflicts, was used by the company to win the $75,000 prize in the ANTX. BigBear.ai was one of 12 companies selected to participate in the competition, which was conducted during the last half of 2021.

Frutchey said in the ANTX the VANE was looking for telemetry for maritime vessels and aircraft, as well as weather, the information environment, among other domains “that we brought together so that we could inform when these things are happening with airplanes flying through the Taiwanese air defense zone [ADIZ],” including events leading up to and during the events of interest, such as Chinese aircraft entry into the ADIZ; rerouting of air traffic; even press releases. As the observation of the indicators is automated, human analysts are able to handle more data “and with a significant amount of agility be able to pivot to new situations faster than they could before.”

He says what sets BigBear.ai apart “is that we have built machine learning that expects data to not be the whole story. I think that’s key because especially for our defense and intelligence partners, you don’t always have control of the data that you’re trying to analyze. There’s always this uncertainty in the data where you have gaps and holes and inaccuracies and because of that we have to use machine learning that assumes that you’re going to be having those errors, those issues and, even further, you don’t always get to measure the stuff you want to measure.”

VANE presents its analysis on a dashboard on a monitor for analysts to observe. A “heat map or density chart” shows areas with a lot of activity in a given period.

“We also look at baseline behaviors,” Frutchey said. “The analysts get concerned when that level raises above some threshold. In the first week of October, it went to 56 [Chinese] sorties in a day at one point and they were using strategic bombers in some of those sorties. Those kinds of things are a normal low-level buzz, but I want to be alerted when the models predicting that a week from a now, a month from now, there is going to be above some threshold, or the rate of change is going to be significant. … We give them those alerts, and the user can, of course, then drill into the alert and explore the forecast data. … So, we were looking at aggressive activities in the South China Sea for the AI ANTX exercise.

“We also have scenario forecasts [that] allow you to assess courses of action,” he said. “What if Russia invades Ukraine? What will that do to the price of Bitcoin? Or what if, in the AI ANTX example, we asked the question, what if we ran a naval exercise in the Luzon Strait? What would that do to Chinese behaviors in the South China Sea? If we were to go with a carrier striker to the Luzon Strait and run a little naval exercise, what would that do to behaviors? And so, we can run those simulations and we can then show the user, here’s how the world would change a month from now if we were to run that exercise next week.”

VANE is scalable, Frutchey said. “Vane is built to elastically scale in the cloud as large as it needs to go. It’s actually one of the big powers on our platform is that it is completely serverless, which means it’s not like it’s a monolithic app that’s a bunch of servers chewing up resources all day long. It’s a collection of functions and, as the customers need those functions, the system is built to grab resources in the cloud, spin those up to do the work that’s needed and then turn them off when the work is done. Our systems churn through terabytes of data to build these models at global scales.”

Frutchey said the Overmatch ANTX win shows the company’s prescriptive analytics are appropriate for operational as well as strategic purposes.

“We are beginning to talk to the program offices for major command-and-control systems, [such as] the Global Command-and-Control System-Maritime,” he said.

Matching Best of Breed

AI is also being applied on a tactical level. Draper, a company known for building ballistic-missile guidance systems, entered a competition last summer conducted by the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division in Crane, Indiana. The prize challenge was to determine the feasibility of taking autonomy software and implementing it on another organization’s hardware.

“I think what the government was trying to learn is how difficult is it to separate those two [software and hardware],” said Drew Mitchell, Defense Systems associate director at Draper and general manager of Draper’s Tampa, Florida, office. “That way I can match best of breed software up with best of breed hardware. Generally, those aren’t the same when the company delivers that end product to the government. And it’s also very expensive. So, they’re trying to figure out a way to reduce costs on some of these autonomous platforms.”

The prize challenge was split into three phases. In Phase 1, Draper, which had a lot of experience developing platform-agnostic software, submitted a white paper that was accepted along with those of 20 other companies. Phase 2 was a simulated exercise which involved loading autonomy algorithms into a small quadrotor unmanned aerial system and navigating it inside a building, mapping the interior and identifying objects in the building, all without the aid of GPS.

Five contestants made it to Phase 3, which involved an actual demonstration of the scenario of Phase 2 using a Hydronalix quadrotor drone into which their respective software was loaded.

“It was completely autonomous, so you give the drone some sort of basic instruction, basically, fly forward and then it takes it over from there,” Mitchell said. “It senses the environment, and it does that through cameras, and it uses the same camera to do the navigation algorithm using a vision-based navigation system. It uses the same camera to collect a map of the environment or generate a map of the environment. A lot of that is very processor intensive. In a small package, like a small drone quadcopter not much bigger than a book, there’s not a whole lot of processor available on there to do all that stuff.”

Draper used vision-aided navigation algorithms it has used in its other programs.

“We used what’s called a visual inertial odometry,” Mitchell said. “It’s a lot like how the human eye and brain work in terms of referencing objects as you see them and then as you move, your brain is still calculating, oh, I saw this point and now the point is three feet from me as I move closer to it, from that point it’s now two feet from me, and from that, you can infer a lot of direction. It’s not highly accurate but it’s enough accuracy to help the IMU [inertial measuring unit] on board. It aids the IMU, so the IMU doesn’t drift off widely.

“The predominant systems today use GPS to aid that inertial unit,” Mitchell explained. “GPS gives it a position, so it knows, okay, I see that point, and then I move again, I see that point, I know where I am. But if you’re indoors, GPS doesn’t work and the big push within the Department of Defense is to do things without GPS because they know in a future conflict it’s probably going to be one of the first things our adversaries take out. Using these vision-based techniques, you’re able to get clearly decent navigation accuracy in a very small package and do this completely autonomously.

“We were able to show with very little time and resources and a very rudimentary hardware platform that the government provided us, we were able to navigate inside of a building with no GPS,” he said. “We were able to identify objects. We were able to map certain parts of an environment. Of course, it wasn’t optimal. The places that we did on our own were way better than what we’d developed through that process, but we did help the government understand that it is possible to do it.”

Draper came in second in the prize competition, with EPISCI coming in first.

Mark Vandroff, a retired Navy captain and engineering duty officer, was installed last summer as CEO of Fincantieri Marinette Marine, shipbuilder of the U.S. Navy’s Freedom-class littoral combat ship and now the Constellation-class frigate. A former ship program manager, he brings extensive customer experience to his company.

Vandroff was interviewed by Senior Editor Richard R. Burgess. Excerpts follow.

With some experience now as a shipyard official, what has surprised or impressed you about being on this side of the shipbuilding equation?

VANDROFF: Surprised would be a strong word, but I’m impressed by the dedication and hard work of the men and women who build ships. And by “building ships” I mean a very wide range of activity.

One of my mentors, teachers and former bosses, Sean Stackley — the former LPD 17 program manager, former ASN RDA [assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition] and now senior executive with L3Harris — used to tell us when he was coaching shipbuilding program managers that if you can build a ship, you can do anything because nothing is harder or more complicated than building a ship, the most complex of all human undertakings. What the government program managers deal with is certainly a complicated process on the government side, but now, with a few months as the head of the yard here in Marinette, it’s an even renewed appreciation for just how complicated and just how many things have to go right to get a ship built, everything from the industrial trades, welding, cable pulling, painting to all of the planning and industrial methods, to the engineering design to the purchasing to the contracting, a myriad of legal compliance for us, and all the finance and economics of a business of that size.

It’s not just running a complicated business, but it’s running a complicated business with a very complicated product and a series of complicated relations both with customers and with sub-suppliers.

What insight has your experience as a Navy ship pro­curement official given you that can help improve the shipbuilding industrial base?

VANDROFF: When you take someone with program management leadership on the government side and put them into industry you certainly bring an intimate knowledge and understanding of what the customer wants.

Early on in my tenure, some of the folks on my leadership team seemed puzzled during a meeting by something that our primary government partner on the frigate program had asked us to do. Everyone was scratching their heads and were like ‘Why would they want us to do that?’ I said, back in my days in the DDG 51 program, if I were the government PM, I would want us to do exactly what Capt. Smith had just said even though it didn’t necessarily make sense to someone who didn’t have the background of the kind of dynamics that play in at NAVSEA [Naval Sea Systems Command] and within the OPNAV [Office of the Chief of Naval Operations] and Pentagon staff. I immediately understood what the government customer was looking for and I could translate that to my industry colleagues.

This will sound odd as the head of the Mariette Marine shipyard: One of the things about our current shipbuilding industrial base is that it’s very highly specialized. My yard is highly specialized, given the fact that I’m constrained by the St. Lawrence seaway into the size of ships that I can build. Huntington Ingalls Newport News Shipyard really wouldn’t ever build something small because given the overhead of maintaining facilities to build aircraft carriers. The economics constrain them to build big and for other yards each have their niche. While niches are very efficient and people can get very good at doing their special thing, I worry that the future will require a great deal more flexibility of yards that can do lots of things because the future is always uncertain. This is one of the reasons Fincantieri Marine Group is creating a system of yards across our Wisconsin sites, to continue supporting our customers’ future requirements and missions.

What kind of supply-chain issues currently are of concern to Marinette Marine?

VANDROFF: Supply chain is a hot topic across the shipbuilding industry. Certainly, COVID had a major impact on a lot of our sub-suppliers, mostly in their ability to hold schedule. We’ve seen that across both commodities and finished products especially electronics and anything that has a microchip as a component, but we’ve also seen it in things like switch gear and transformers. Most shipbuilders today rely on a just-in-time delivery system because you want to avoid the warehousing costs of keeping large amounts of material warehoused. One of my top concerns right now is the supply chain impacts we’re seeing.

What capital improvements are in work to get ready for the frigate program?

VANDROFF: We’re making four extensive capital improvement investments in Marinette Marine in order to be able to build the frigate.

Investment No. 1 is in a shiplift. Currently, we build the LCS on land and then introduce it to the water via the time-honored system of a side-launch. We’re not going to be able to stern-launch or side-launch a frigate. It’s too big and we would have to install certain equipment — vertical launch systems, for example — after we side-launched it because of alignment issues. That’s not a very economically efficient way to build a ship.

I would urge you and your readers to Google ‘shiplift’ and look at YouTube, there’s some great videos from around the world. It’s really cutting-edge shipbuilding technology. There’s a transfer platform held in place by, in our case, a set of 58 winches that run attached, 29 on each side, to the platform. You can translate the ship from the land onto the platform, and the winches take tension as the ship rolls onto the platform in order to keep the platform level. And then when you’re ready to put the ship into the water, the winches lower the platform until you get to the point where the ship is then floating from its own buoyancy.

For someone who’s building a ship on the Great Lakes here in the Menominee River floating out into Lake Michigan, the ability to do that with a shiplift is very attractive. The shiplift construction is ongoing and we expect it to complete by the end of 2022.

Right now, we build the littoral combat ships and multi-mission surface combatants in a two-bay erection facility. We can assemble an entire LCS indoors. Building indoors is very important in the Wisconsin winters. That erection bay is not big enough for a frigate. The frigate-size erection bay, Building 34, is nearing completion for May. It will have two bays, each big enough to hold an entire erected Constellation-class frigate.

A new state-of-the-art panel line will be done in a few weeks. This will take steel, cut it into panels, stiffen it up, and then weld it together into modules and sub-assemblies all in one covered area.

We do also have plans sometime early in the frigate process to add to our blast-and-paint capability. When we go to two frigates a year, we will need more blast-and-paint capability and we have a plan to repurpose an old building.

Do you have any plans to increase the size of your force?

VANDROFF: My No. 1 area of effort is the workforce. I will need to increase the workforce in order to fully man the Navy’s plan for the frigate program. Between now and the end of 2023, we’ll need another 400 workers: about 300 in the trades — welders, painters, shipfitters, electricians — and another 100 engineers and other white-collar workers.

We have a unique concern in the Marinette Menominee area: a missing middle in housing. We pay a nice living wage to our workforce such that they’re thankfully making too much to qualify for low-cost government-subsidized housing and yet there’s high-end housing, especially along the lake and the river and other places where you would see nice homes. What we really could use is more middle-class apartments in the area of Menominee and Marinette. We’ve talked to both states about that and they’re thinking of creative ways of helping the natural market forces respond to that. Right now, we’ve got a lot of folks who commute a fairly long way to get to the yard. What I would really like is the available housing to keep the workforce close to the shipyard so that it’s convenient for the workers to get to the yard. If we provide a convenient place to work, we will be able to attract the workforce we need.

We still have not received formal requirements from the federal government that would cause us to have to mandate that our workforce be vaccinated against COVID-19. We’ve taken steps to provide vaccinations very conveniently and at no expense or time to the employee. We’ve had a reasonably good turnout, but I fear that there is some percentage as yet unknown of my workforce that would just not feel comfortable being told to take a COVID vaccine. We’ll do everything we can to continue to make it convenient for employees to get vaccinated. But if the government lays that mandate upon me, I am very concerned that would have a negative impact on my ability to maintain a sufficiently sized workforce to execute all the work that the yard currently has under contract.

Some shipyards — like Huntington Ingalls for example — have an apprentice training program. Do you have anything similar?

VANDROFF: We do have an equivalent that I’m very excited about that will serve us well in the future and can easily be expanded via the Northeast Wisconsin Technical College [NWTC], a system of technical community colleges in northeast Wisconsin. We have a fabulous relationship with them, and they have gone so far as to hire retired Marinette employees to their faculty. The provide technical training in a variety of shipyard-related skills at their campus, which is within walking distance of the shipyard. They’re teaching welding with our welding procedures, using our welding equipment, so a graduate of NWTC, whether it’s in welding or ship-fitting or electrical work, cable-pulling or journeyman electrician or entry-level electrician, comes out of NWTC work-ready and we can hire them. As we recruit, those students know that they’ve got a guaranteed path to a job with us and a career in shipbuilding. We’ve also reached out to local high schools and their shop programs to encourage the kind of skills set that is useful to us in the shipbuilding industry.

At the white-collar level, the University of Wisconsin Green Bay has reached out to my head of engineering for discussions. They’ve allowed us to shape their engineering curriculum. Someone coming out with a mechanical engineering degree has got an academic background and a skillset that is well-matched to our needs for entry-level engineers.

What is the status of the Constellation-class frigate?

VANDROFF: We’re in the detail design phase. The next big milestone of that phase is the critical design review scheduled for February 2022. I have great teammates on the Constellation team: L3Harris, Gibbs & Cox and Trident Maritime Systems. The Navy has been great. I could not ask for a better partner than the current leadership in PMS-515, and so, that’s a big milestone for us. It’s not the end of detail design but it basically marks the completion of the functional design and shows that we have established the right technical baseline to move forward.

After that, we’ll have a production readiness review in March as we continue to achieve a level of production maturity so that we can confidently start building the ship in April of 2022. That review will show that we have the level of design maturity such that we can start building the ship with the right expectation of ‘measure twice, cut once.’ We don’t want to build a ship to an immature state and then have a significant level of rework because it’s not good enough for either us or the Navy. We’re driving for a very high level of maturity so that we have an efficient start of production in April.

From that point on, we’ll go through all the normal milestones that a ship would have after it starts production — the laid keel, eventual float off, trials — and we’re looking forward to a delivery to the Navy of the first ship in 2026.

Are there challenges to using a foreign-designed hull?

VANDROFF: When you take a design that is not U.S. and translate it to the United States to build, you do run into the U.S. Navy technical standards of performance, which are different than a lot of our partner navies, especially in the area of damage control. That induces modifications to the design. The U.S. Navy’s philosophy and standards are more steel and more frequent water-tight bulkheads for different compartmentation.

We now have the Buy American Act and whenever you take perhaps a piece of equipment that would be sourced from a European supplier and sourced out to a U.S. supplier, there will be design changes with that and that’s, again, something that we’ve accounted for and are executing.

What can the Navy and Congress do to make it easier for you to deliver ships on time and on cost?

VANDROFF: Shipbuilding is really hard. There’s nothing that the Navy or Congress can do to make it less hard. I will say the Navy always helps when they really under­stand their requirements and that they have stability in those requirements.

I am fortunate in Marinette in my relationship with my Navy supervisor of shipbuilding partner — the organization that does oversight — has been entirely reasonable. They have been very responsible partners. They’re clearly representing the Navy’s interest, but they’re not doing it in a way that is at all punitive or looking to impact my progress. They’re just looking to make sure that the Navy is getting the quality product that they want. For that, I’m very grateful.

If you look at big trends broadly — cost and schedule, but especially cost — a good chunk of our overhead goes to paying the employee healthcare costs. That is getting worse, not better. And that overhead cost gets passed right on to the customer in terms of cost on a contract.

The government has shown some flexibility in the ability for us to have a favorable cash flow. Certainly, COVID helped that, but it helps our financing costs from a business standpoint to have a quicker flow of cash to have a higher percentage of the ultimate cost of a vessel in available progress payments which were done in order to keep the defense industrial base healthy during COVID. Some of those should probably be made permanent, and for a company like mine you would see lower financing costs. Because financing costs make their way into overhead rates, that would then allow us to deliver product more effectively and more cost-effectively to the ultimate customer.

The 122-year-old U.S. Coast Guard Shipyard at Curtis Bay in Baltimore is a full-service shipyard and an integral part of the Coast Guard’s Surface Forces Logistics Center.

Known simply as the yard, it has a growing workload as new classes of cutters and boats come into the service. However, its experienced workers are retiring, creating a potential gap in skilled tradespeople. Although yard in­ternship programs have existed for decades, growing the workforce organically has increasingly become a priority over the past several years.

New workers with high-tech skills are needed to replace the generation that is retiring, but the available pool of qualified shipyard workers near the Curtis Bay yard has decreased dramatically in recent years.

There are challenges to attracting employees. While workers at the yard are government employees with significant benefits and career potential, the salaries for entry-level engineers and naval architects are not always competitive with industry, making it a challenge to attract young professionals. 

And although the yard used to be able to hire experienced workers from local shipyards — there were 40,000 ship­yard jobs in Baltimore 20 years ago — today, apart from the Coast Guard yard, there are only a handful.

So, as the Coast Guard is recapitalizing its fleet, the yard is retooling its workforce.

“A lot of our older generation workers, our experienced personnel, are gone,” said John Bragaw, production manager for the Coast Guard yard. “We’re trying to fill in the gap and create that workforce for the future.”

Bragaw said the yard is intensifying its outreach efforts to acquaint the local area with what it does and the availability of quality employment opportunities. The yard has been very proactive in working with schools, arranging class visits and tours, mentorships and par­ticipation in job fairs. Through partnerships with local vocational schools and community colleges, the Coast Guard has created innovative internship programs that permit students attending classes to also work as government employees.

“We want to be part of the community,” he said. “We have good partnerships with the local vocational-technical schools. Our employees have visited schools, mentored students and shared their excitement of working on boats. We donated old engines to the school so students could take them apart and reassemble them. We want to get the talent out of those schools and get the people who want to be the future supervisors and leaders of our shipyard.”

The yard has a diverse workforce of about 679 personnel in 12 trade shops, with 465 production craftsmen, 120 managers, engineers and support personnel and 80 military personnel.

Elijah Dorsey, 20, started as a painter and is now also a sandblaster. He has been promoted from helper to worker and will soon be a leader. That’s why Bragaw said the yard is also providing leadership training to help those workers who rise into supervisory positions.

“In the military, you get leadership training from day one, but we can have workers who do essentially the same job for years, and suddenly they get promoted to supervisor, and they don’t have the knowledge or skills,” said Bragaw. “We have to fill that gap. Right now, we train leaders once they get into that supervisory role. But we are beginning to start that leadership training process before they become a supervisor.”

Dorsey is a product of the City of Baltimore’s summer “pathways” internship with the yard.

“The interns spend nine weeks working in different departments to get an overview of what the shipyard does,” said Lamont McCloud, supervisor of the sand­blasting and paint shop. “And they get paid. If they decide to enroll in college, or community college, they can continue in that pathways program. Or they can start working full time here when they graduate.”

McCloud said the internships help young people mature.

“When you become an intern and then an employee, you earn trust and can take on assignments that require you to travel,” McCloud said. “You have to know what you’re doing, because there’s limited supervision when you are on the road.”

Although several generations apart in age, McCloud and Dorsey share a lot in common. McCloud said about three quarters of the yard’s employees live within about 7 miles of the gate. McCloud comes from the same inner-city Baltimore neighborhood as Dorsey and went to the same high school. Then, as now, opportunities were limited.

“We’re part of the community. We, as men, have taken advantage of the opportunity to learn and benefit from a good job. And people see that we have good jobs and are taking care of ourselves and our families,” he said. “The Coast Guard benefits, too, because it needs a stable, trained, skilled and motivated workforce.”

And, he said they are making a difference. “Every one of these boats and ships that we’ve worked on has gone back out and is saving lives and stopping bad guys.”

Starting Young

Much of the yard’s outreach effort is aimed at young people in elementary, middle and high school, to make them aware of the types of careers available to them and acquaint them with the Coast Guard and how the yard supports the service and its mission. In fact, many of the yard’s workers started when they were in high school.

Adam Cole grew up right down the road from the yard in Pasadena, Maryland, but wasn’t familiar with it until he started attending the Center of Applied Technology North (CAT North) in Anne Arundel County. “I didn’t know much about the Coast Guard Yard. I knew they had boats. But representatives from the yard came to CAT North and interviewed a few of us and told us about what they offered.”

At age 16, he began in an internship program within the structural shop.

“When I began working, the average age in the structural shop was about 60 years old. I began as a WG1, going to classes and then working here after school. I started as a full-time employee when I graduated at age 18. Today I’m 36, and I’m the shop foreman.” 

For Olivia Wells, working at the yard helped her decide to get her four-year degree. Like Cole, she attended CAT North, and like him, she didn’t know much about the yard beforehand.

“They came to my class, explained what they do and the jobs that were available. They helped us with some mock interviews, and then I did an actual interview. I got accepted, started the process in my junior year of high school, and began working here during the summer before my senior year. I went to school during the day and then came to the yard and worked after classes. Now I’m planning to enter the University of Delaware to get a B.S. in construction engineering and management.”

“We’d like her to come back and work here after she gets her degree,” Cole said.

Tate Stott, Trent Craig and Jack Williams are former interns from CAT. Brandon Mack participated in the summer intern program for three summers with the New Era Academy partnership youthworks In Baltimore. They came into the electrical program but are being taught electronics out of necessity.

“It’s hard for us to find qualified electronics candidates, so we take people who come in as electricians and train them, so they’re learning both the electrician and elec­tronics skills and they have greater promotion poten­tial,” said Ron Viands, supervisor of the electrical and electronics shop. “We’re going to be stretched with the OPC [offshore patrol vessel] post-delivery availability, which includes the installation of the GFE [government furnished equipment], including classified systems that the contractor won’t be installing. Some of those may be done here, or we may send teams to do it at their home­ports. Either way it’s going to be a huge workload.

“These young gentlemen are here to pick up knowledge, display skills and move up. They’re already thinking about their future,” Viands said. “They’re very motivated. They’re here for careers.”

Viands said there are a lot of motivators for people coming to work at the yard.

“When we interview new people, we show them the ships and all the work we’re doing on them, and how the men and women that go out on those ships absolutely depend on the work they will be doing here. We tell them, ‘Crews depend on the work you will do on those ships, the mission support provided here at the yard is vital to operation mission capability.’ They’re either interested in working here right away or not.”

Although they are young, they are already being entrusted with traveling to support work at remote sites. One of Viands’ youngest employees, 20-year-old Tate Stott, recently returned from Alaska where he serviced Rescue 21 system transponder upgrades on remote towers that could only be reached by helicopter. Sometimes the team had to camp for several days, with the ever-present danger of grizzly bears.

Mutually Beneficial

Anne Arundel County’s two career technical schools, CAT North in Severn and CAT South in Edgewater, have a close partnership with the yard.

According to Adam Sheinhorn, the principal at CAT South, the Coast Guard yard provides opportunities for a multitude of students in a number of programs CAT offers.

“Many of our business partners have a very narrow industry that they work in,” he said. “But with the Coast Guard yard, we’re able to involve students in a variety of our construction trades.”

Sheinhorn said CAT has program advisory committees — made up of people from industry, higher education and the community — for each of the curriculum programs, to make sure what the schools are offering the students is up to date and consistent with what the industries need.

“We don’t want to deliver an outdated education for kids,” he said.

The program advisory committees serve as a great connection point to connect students with industry representatives. “The Coast Guard yard is always sending representatives to those meetings that align with their needs,” Sheinhorn said.

CAT North Principal Joe Rose said he agrees.

“The Coast Guard bring our graduates back here to talk to our classes about how our school prepared them for their jobs, and what they’re doing — the work, training and travel — and the professional development opportunities the Coast Guard makes available to them. They have a lot of credibility, because those workers are not much older than the students here, and the kids can relate to them.”

Tom Dickinson, who manages internships and work study programs at both schools, said the teachers at CAT North and South do an amazing job preparing students.

“The young people that the Coast Guard are selecting are qualified to do the job and have the right attitude and work habits,” he said. Dickinson said the relationship is mutually beneficial.

“They participate as guest speakers, come to our open house events, and serve on our program advisory committee. When they have openings, they visit the classrooms and work with the students on getting their profile set up and applying for the position. They come in multiple times during the year. They set up field trips. They help teach classes. During COVID, they created a video featuring many of our former students giving our current students a virtual tour of the yard and the opportunities there,” he said. “They give a lot back.”

Last week I was pleased to christen the Navy League of the United States’ new platform for naval thought and advocacy, the Center for Maritime Strategy. As first dean and plank owner, our voyage for sound maritime strategy begins with the commissioning crew and our institutional sea trials into 2022.

From the maritime logistics crisis to adversaries embracing Mahanian lessons forgotten by America, the urgency of a public embrace of sound maritime thought and is at a 30-year high. For that reason, Navy League National President David Reilly notes, “Policy development and advocacy are the main reasons for the Navy League’s existence, and we are stepping up our activity in these areas to meet the requirements of 21^st century maritime power.”

Dave and I are shoulder-to-shoulder in the center’s role reinvigorating the league’s position as Theodore Roosevelt’s own flagship for bringing critical maritime issues to the forefront. I am reminded of author Robert Kaplan’s assertion in his book, “Asia’s Cauldron,” that we are living in “a naval century.” The term naval implies not merely a conventional Navy’s importance, but sea power’s far greater military and commercial measure the Navy enables and protects. For this reason, the Center for Maritime Strategy will serve as an advocate for the full scope of American sea power: the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Military Sealift Command, Merchant Marine, our shipping industry at sea and ashore, our shipbuilders, and the industrial base that produces and maintains our ships across the military and commercial spectrum.

As Mahan notes, sea power is as much a measure of “the number following the sea” as those upon it plying and protecting 90% of our trade. To that end, the center will be focused on policy research and advocacy efforts across a broad spectrum of issues that impact the United States’ position as a maritime nation. Although not all encompassing, the long-term goals of the Center will be to Listen, Learn, Educate and Lead by:

• Cultivating understanding of the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine as contributors to American security and prosperity. This effort will be led by the Center for Maritime Strategy’s new cadre of full-time maritime policy experts and part-time adjuncts dedicated to policy research.
• Educating and engaging congressional and executive branch officials on the insights and recommendations derived from that research.
• Providing expert congressional testimony on relevant aspects of American maritime power. Actively participate in national security symposia, forums, and conversations.
• Creating and distributing general purpose summaries of research projects and other products for the education and support of Navy League members nationwide.
• Leveraging existing and emerging media channels to disseminate expertise and policy information in real-time, including expert commentary and advocacy on podcasts, television, radio, and the internet.

Our National Vice President and former CNO, Admiral John Richardson, hailed, “The Navy League’s Center for Maritime Strategy will be the go-to place for maritime strategic thought, policy recommendations and informed advocacy. I’m excited about this initiative to boost the Navy League’s citizen voice and help strengthen the United States as a maritime nation.”

I welcome the Navy League’s citizen voices to assist the center in navigating the way forward.  We look forward to collaboration and partnership with other like-minded think tanks and institutions that support our national security objectives and maritime commerce. Recounting the words of John Paul Jones, I invite you:

Sign on… and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me. 

To those who are not yet members of the Navy League, this invitation extends as well. Members receive an insider’s perspective on the Center for Maritime Strategy and up-to-the-moment information on our next Sea-Air-Space Exposition in April 2022. Last August’s Sea-Air-Space brought over 170 speakers and a record 17,000 participants to National Harbor, Maryland, for three days of seminars and discussions with active-duty members of the sea services, retirees, and members of the industrial base.

Speakers, moderators and participants tackled the tough issues we face in the maritime domain in order to identify problems, share information and find solutions. Next year’s exposition will be even better and the Center for Maritime Strategy will be at the forefront of the discussions. I hope to see you on the stage or in the audience — and together, we can regain our sea legs for this “naval century.”

The Northern Indian Ocean region hosts some of the world’s most critical maritime trade routes. Sea lines of communication (SLOCs) crisscross the region, connecting East and West and linking key energy supplies from the Persian Gulf.

The SLOCs pass through two vital maritime choke points: the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, and the Strait of Hormuz, which connect the Northern Arabian Sea to the Persian Gulf via the Gulf of Oman. Currently, an average of 17,000 ships per year pass through the Bab-el-Mandeb, with 42,000 transiting the Strait of Hormuz. While international focus returns to high-end, great power rivalry, these two choke points — and the SLOCs connecting them — have continued to face emerging and enduring low-end asymmetric maritime security threats, posed by both non-state and state actors.

In and around the Bab-el-Mandeb and Gulf of Aden region, the piracy threat of the early 2000s has been replaced by maritime security risks spilling over from the civil war ashore in Yemen. Naval and merchant ships have been attacked with missiles and improvised explosive devices. In and around the Strait of Hormuz, the state-based threat to commercial shipping has persisted for some time, with malign activity continuing today. For example, on Aug. 4 the Panama-flagged MV Asphalt Princess was boarded, reportedly by armed men, in what was believed to have been an attempted hijacking.

The persistent maritime security risks across the region have prompted the establishment of several navy-led maritime security constructs, designed to secure the maritime choke points and waters across the region from the Gulf to the southern Red Sea. The Combined Maritime Forces, led by the U.S. Navy and based in Bahrain, runs three combined task forces (CTFs) that tackle various regional risks. The U.K. Royal Navy’s Bahrain-based U.K. Maritime Component Command (UKMCC) supports U.K. maritime interests in the region, including providing Royal Navy ships for maritime security presence.

Both the U.S. and U.K. also have long-established constructs set up to provide primary points of contact with the merchant shipping community — the Naval Cooperation and Guidance for Shipping (NCAGS) for the U.S. and the U.K. Maritime Trade Organisation (UKMTO) for the U.K.

Following a spate of attacks on merchant shipping in and around the Strait of Hormuz in mid-2019, the U.S. Navy moved to establish a multinational organization to provide a security link between the naval and merchant communities. The International Maritime Security Construct (IMSC) is the strategic-level organization; its at-sea operational task force is CTF Sentinel.

“The phrase ‘international solution to an international problem’ is quite a good one because it does involve a lot of countries,” Chief Lynn Cook, a Royal Navy chief petty officer posted to UKMTO but also sitting on IMSC’s watchfloor, told Seapower.

Primary Purpose

A primary purpose of NCAGS, UKMTO, IMSC and other maritime security organizations is to connect merchant shipping transiting the region with multinational security forces that can provide assistance if needed. This communications link between the military and merchant marine stakeholders has always been vital. However, as threats to commercial shipping security endure and increase — challenging the ability to keep the SLOCs open, ensure freedom of navigation and maintain international law at sea — so the importance of improving such communication and enhancing the strategic relationship between these two stakeholders endures and increases as well.

“The crux of commercial shipping is ‘time is money’ and getting from point A to point B,” Lt. Cmdr. Adena Grundy, a merchant mariner and former subject-matter expert and maritime domain analyst with NCAGS, told Seapower. “Any time there’s a [security] concern that could delay the shipping, it’s … a concern for the companies. It goes back to ensuring freedom of navigation, and that commerce can keep moving back and forth.”

The 2019 attacks — which prompted not only the establishment of IMSC/CTF Sentinel, but also a significant international crisis (even in a region where tensions traditionally run high) — underlined the importance of maintaining regional maritime security for both global maritime trade and wider international stability.

For IMSC/CTF Sentinel, which currently numbers eight member countries, its mission has three main pillars, Lt. j.g. Jennifer Bowman, the U.S. Navy public affairs officer for IMSC/CTF Sentinel, told Seapower. These pillars are reassurance, deterrence and partnership. “Our mission is ever vital in this region — to help reassure and stabilize the global economy,” Bowman said.

“Our main mission on the operational side is being able to deter and expose malign activities, both state and state-sponsored,” said Lt. George Gagnon, a U.S. Navy warfare officer posted to IMSC/CTF Sentinel as a lead watchstander and responsible for military staffs/task force coordination.

“We’ve also got the other side, where we want to reassure the shipping community that we’re here, we’re visible, and we’re going to do what we can both to provide that deterrence and try and expose the malign activities to the world, so we can keep the waterways safer,” Gagnon said. “We do that in a lot of different ways. We are maintaining contact, through the ships that work for us, via maritime safety calls on bridge-to-bridge, and by sharing maritime domain awareness [MDA] information.”

“As we’ve seen, incidents have happened recently,” Bowman said. “It’s about being vigilant, it’s about making sure we are out there watching, taking calls, communicating, picking up the phone, [being] available via email and chat, so [the shipping community] knows we’re here.”

As regards understanding what the com­mercial stakeholders need from their military counterparts, “I think the reassurance piece of the mission is so paramount,” Grundy said.

As a business, the shipping community faces multiple pressures.

“If you’re delayed for the port, that delays the next guy. … It’s like a domino effect. It really is just A to B, in-out.”

While the shipping community wants to retain its autonomy to maximize efficiency in moving between points A and B, it also retains anxiety over whether help will be there if needed, Grundy said.

“It’s like a policeman,” Grundy said. “You don’t necessarily want the officer living in your house or hanging out in the yard, but you want to know they’re going to show up if somebody is breaking into the house. … The shipping community just want that reassurance that they can operate freely.”

Presence and Partnership

There are several strands to how the naval community offers such reassurance.

There is simple presence at sea and communicating that presence to both the shipping community and any would-be malign actor.

“Our mission at IMSC is providing overwatch, providing detection. We want to try to de-escalate and deter,” Gagnon said. “Being able to have that transparent messaging and exposure on our side and having our ships out there so the merchant community sees them and hears them, so they can have that reassurance, means we can say, ‘Hey, we’re here, we’re doing our job, and you can continue to navigate these waters safely and freely to get to wherever your point of destination is.’”

As to building communication, reassurance and wid­er partnerships, organizations like IMSC and UKMTO act broadly as middlemen between the military and shipping communities, said Cook. “[IMSC’s] job is to monitor the traffic and keep an eye on the shipping. [We] advise and guide and reassure so they are more likely to follow what we’re asking them to do.

“We give them reasons, ‘don’t go there because,’ rather than just a direct order to not go somewhere,” Cook said.

UKMTO also acts as an initial contact hub for ships with security concerns. “If an incident does happen, first point of contact for a merchantman is UKMTO,” Cook said. UKMTO’s contact telephone number can be found on every ship’s bridge.

“UKMTO tends to act like a directory inquiries service,” Cook said. “UKMTO will get calls for every type of incident — an attack, a medical emergency or just a general breakdown. It then decides who to direct the call to. For instance, if it’s a U.S. ship it will go to NCAGS, if it’s a U.K. ship it will go to UKMCC.”

From NCAGS’ perspective, “We’re keeping constant communication on a daily level with the ships. We keep that line of communication open; we also extend it to company security officers. … It’s a reassurance piece,” Grundy said. “It’s a mutual relationship because they can benefit from that constant update. They know a watchstander answers that phone.”

Information Sharing

A central element of this effective communication is information sharing between the military and merchant marine stakeholders. This is a two-way, mutually beneficial process, Gagnon said.

“It’s being able to connect the dots on the information sharing … understanding what avenues we can utilize right now.”

He pointed to Sea Vision, a Navy-designed, ship automatic identification system (AIS)-based software product NCAGS uses to monitor shipping. “Sea Vision displays AIS and that’s about as up-to-date as we can get on where merchant shipping is,” he said.

“From an IMSC/CTF Sentinel perspective, we have a 24/7 watchfloor, we’re constantly monitoring systems, but we really are only as good as the communication we get from the ships,” Gagnon said. “Ships being able to do the little things like keeping their AIS up to date and communicating with UKMTO, NCAGS, or whomever if they’re seeing things, and being able to continue to build that trust between the merchant industry and us, is going to be crucial as we move forward.”

The military community also continually looks at new ways of getting messages out to the shipping community. One route, Gagnon said, is “staying up to date on how we can utilize open-source information opportunities to expose malign activity when it happens,” for example, via social media channels like Twitter. “As technology changes, as the avenues of communication change, being able to stay on top of that, which we are, and being aware of how we can get the word out is really important,” Gagnon said.

Broadening the Base

While the IMSC, NCAGS and UKMTO representatives all viewed the military-merchant marine stakeholder partnership as strong and effective, they said there are ways to make it stronger still: broadening the stakeholder base to include port owners and others, and improving communications between stakeholders.

“At the end of the day, we’re all trying to achieve the same endgame,” Cook said. “What we’re trying to do is increase MDA and ensure the shipping lanes stay open and the merchantmen have the freedom of navigation that they’re entitled to.”

The NATO Naval Mine Warfare Centre of Excellence (NMW COE) in Ostend, Belgium, is NATO’s main source of expertise regarding all aspects of NMW, leveraging the collective knowledge and expertise from the entire NMW community in support of the alliance.

Like the 26 other COEs accredited by NATO, the NMW COE focuses four main pillars: education, training, exercise and evaluation; analysis and lessons learned; doctrine development and stan­dardization; and concept development and experimentation.

The center brings mine warfare experts together for an annual symposium. Although its two previous conferences were canceled for COVID-19 and other reasons, the 2021 conference was held virtually in June.

“Our focus was how we can learn from each other — not only from military, but also from civilians, and how we can work together in the future,” said Cmdr. Herman Lammers of the Royal Netherlands Navy, director of the NMW COE.

In addition to holding its own conference, the NMW COE participates in a long list of working groups, training courses, conferences and exercises.

“We’re part of NATO’s naval armament, standardization and defense planning working groups, as well as any conference where Naval Mine Warfare is on the agenda. Those meetings are paramount to ensure efficient networking and exchange of expertise and knowledge,” Lammers said. “If we want to be a hub, we need to be present at all those meetings.”

The NMW COE is collocated with EGUERMIN (Ecole de Guerre des Mines), the Belgian-Netherlands Naval Mine Warfare School at Ostend, and assists with their national and international courses when required. Belgium and the Netherlands are founding “framework nations,” with Poland and Italy joining the COE as sponsoring nations. Germany participates via EGUERMIN, through a memorandum of understanding. Lammers said other nations are welcome, too. 

Lammers said the center serves as a “hub of knowledge.” The Lessons Learned and Analysis (LL&A) branch is actively involved in collecting and analyzing lessons learned and lessons identified that are forwarded through the NATO Lessons Learned portal, the NATO Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM) at Northwood, United Kingdom, or directly to the NMW COE. After analyzing the problem, a remedial action is proposed and sometimes even tested, so necessary improvements can be made. Lammers said the NMW COE shares this knowledge with MARCOM, The NATO Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre in Lisbon, Portugal, and among the other maritime COEs.

“It’s important to identify what works, as well as understand what doesn’t work and learn from our mistakes,” said Belgian Navy Cmdr. Ward De Grieve, the center’s chief of staff. “It’s the only way to improve.”

As a COE, Lammers said his team is constantly monitoring and evaluating the future trends and technologies.

“Staying on top of all the new developments in a continuous task. By enabling the exchange of information and experience throughout the maritime community, we can help identify synergies,” Lammers said. “I refer to maritime instead of naval because mines and unexploded ordnance in the maritime domain are no longer exclusively a military issue.”

The COE actively contributes to and participates in exercises like BALTOPS and Bold Move by providing advice and scenario inputs. They develop and evaluate new operating concepts and adapt existing doctrine, as well as establish experimentation with new technologies.

The center conducted experiments during BALTOPS 50 to test and validate experimental tactics involving the use of unmanned underwater and surface vehicles and implemented them into the existing naval mine countermeasures planning and evaluation software tool MCM EXPERT.

The center helps to achieve interoperability among NATO navies through understanding and promoting standardization proposals and updates.

“We are actively participating and contributing to the various working groups and syndicates within NATO to provide balanced advice and proposals to adapt, improve and update existing doctrine,” Lammers said.

Lammers said the NMW COE’s team of seven subject matter experts and small support staff has extensive NMW knowledge and expertise, and can use its relationships, partnerships and connections to assist in many ways.

“If we don’t have an answer to a question, we can rely on our extensive network to provide the necessary answers,” he said. “The NATO NMW COE is the hub of knowledge within NMW. Our focus is not only on the long term, assisting NATO in transformation, but also on real-time practical support to the units at sea.”

Italian army Gen. Paolo Ruggiero, the deputy supreme allied commander transformation, said, “the alliance has been successful because it has constantly adapted and transformed into what was needed to be relevant.”

He credits part of that success to the 27 accredited NATO COEs, including the NMW COE, and the work they do on the four pillars.

According to Ruggiero, the COEs belong to the participating nations, not NATO per se, but are accredited by NATO. There are a set of prerequisites and a rigorous process for a center to be accredited and periodic assessments are required for a COE to maintain its status.

The COEs provide all of the nations a venue to share what they do best. “Each one of them has unique exper­tise,” Ruggiero said. “They can cover similar areas of interest in terms of domain — for instance, maritime, land, air — but they’re specific in one specific military area and expertise.”

The COEs may not involve every NATO nation, but most represent more than one country, and in some cases, they are joined by partner nations such as Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Austria.

“Our partners benefit from this sharing of information, and we benefit from them,” Ruggiero said.

Contributing to the Alliance

Ruggiero said the COEs have provided a way for NATO’s post-Cold War member nations to visibly contribute to the alliance.

“A new country could contribute to NATO by hosting a center of excellence, while at the same time raising the flag of NATO in their country,” he said, adding that COEs are an extraordinary force multiplier for NATO.

“The COEs provide the alliance with a community of nearly 1,000 military and civilian experts that provide their knowledge and experience,” Ruggiero said.

Capt. Robert A. Baughman, USN, mine warfare division director at the U.S. Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center (SMWDC), presented at the recent conference. He said the NATO NMW COE is analogous to SMWDC as a warfighting development center working on tactics, doctrine development, experimentation and integration of new technologies.

“NATO officers can truly specialize as career mine warfare experts,” Baughman said. “The NATO NMW COE provides a unique opportunity for us to leverage all that institutional knowledge and expertise. They’re also co-located with EGUERMIN, their schoolhouse, and we’re plugged in with both of those organizations.

“We leverage their courses of instruction — specifically the staff officer and principal warfare officer courses, for our warfare tactics instructors training pipeline, and take part in their exercises for staff training. We also participate in the NATO Naval Mine Warfare battle rhythm, conferences and in their working groups,” he said. “Mine warfare is a team sport, so it’s critical for us to understand how our allied and partner mine counter­measures systems work, and to integrate into combined operations to build interoperability.”

U.S. shipyards are busy building the next generation of Navy ships and Coast Guard cutters. As the current workforce is retiring, and taking their skills and knowledge with them, the next generation of naval architects, naval engineers, tradesmen and technicians are needed.

The Navy is building guided missile destroyers, amphibious ships, attack submarines, littoral combat ships, and replenishment oilers and embarking on a new guided missile frigate, large surface combatant and ballistic missile submarine programs, not to mention a number of new, smaller ships. The Coast Guard is introducing the national security cutter and fast response cutter and starting the offshore patrol cutter, polar security cutter and waterway commerce cutter programs.

Formal apprenticeship and internship programs are delivering long-lasting results. Many graduates of these programs stay with their organizations for a full career and rise to leadership positions.

The Apprentice School, located at Huntington Ingalls Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Virginia, was founded in 1919 and has delivered more than 10,000 graduates since its founding.

“We’re considered as the leadership factory of the company,” said Latitia McCane, The school’s director of education. The program is in high demand. “We have 4,000 applications for 200 slots,” McCane said.

The company has a pre-apprentice program that gives high school students an early start with a job at the shipyard and preparatory courses to get them ready for school. The Apprentice School and its leadership are structured within Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries.

The school’s facilities range from traditional classrooms to waterfront production facilities.

“We have more than 70 craft instructors who are apprentice graduates,” McCane said. 

Retired Rear Adm. Brad Williamson, executive director of the Hampton Roads Maritime Industrial Base Eco­system (MIBE), said senior-level workers are retiring faster than new ones can be hired.

“The senior workers have a wealth of practical experience that they are taking with them into retirement,” he said, adding that shipyards and other marine industry employers are all looking for talent. “When it comes to these challenges, we’re not alone in shipbuilding. It’s all of the trades, in every industry.”

Williamson called for cooperation instead of competition to help everyone obtain the workforce they need.

“It’s better to come together and to think as a team instead of individual companies,” he said.

Craig Savage, director of communications and external affairs at Mobile, Alabama-based Austal USA, said the workforce development programs benefit everyone.

“Apprenticeship programs not only benefit our industry, but they also provide opportunities for our local communities to learn a valuable trade and apply that skill to either our industry of defense and maritime manufacturing, or other industries in our region,” he said. “These programs are a win-win all the way around.”

Austal currently builds the all-aluminum Independence-class variant of the littoral combat ship and expeditionary fast transport for the Navy. As those programs wind down, the company is transitioning to a capability to build steel ships for the Navy.

AIDT Maritime Training Center, a subsidiary of Alabama Industrial Development Training (AIDT), provides company-specific job training in welding, pipe­fitting, design, structural fitter, safety and leadership to support Alabama’s shipbuilding industry. The center is co-located with the Austal USA shipyard and trains workers to Austal’s methods, tools and standards, and will be vital to training the existing and new workers on steel ship fabrication.

Starting Young

Fincantieri Marinette Marine (FMM) in Wisconsin is building the Freedom-class variant of LCS and multi-mission surface combatant for Saudi Arabia. It has also been selected to build the Navy’s new Constellation-class guided missile frigate, which requires reconfiguring the yard and upgrading facilities to build the larger ships — and hiring more workers.

“We’re working very closely with community partners to help us to find the majority of those positions locally,” said Bethany Skorik, senior manager of public affairs and government relations with FMM. “We’re working with our local school systems, from elementary to middle to high school, on how we can get students interested in shipbuilding. They can start thinking about the really satisfying careers in manufacturing and being able to make something complex like a ship from start to finish.”

Skorik said the shipyard is the largest employer in the region, but occasionally has to remind people the yard is growing and hiring.

“We’re working closely with the area technical colleges. The students come to learn about what we’re doing, tour the shipyard and talk to our employees. We help the schools build curriculum, so that students have a direct path to a job. They can get a two-year degree and an actual job, and we have programs where students can start working towards a tech degree while they’re in high school. And we can hire them right out of high school.”

Skorik said FMM partners with the Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, which built an impressive facility a block away from the shipyard.

“They have welding booths and a ship mock-up to teach electrical work, for example. They not only train people who can come work for us, but we send our employees there to get specific marine electrical training, conduct research or expand their knowledge,” she said.

While some shipyards have grown, a number have also downsized or failed, leaving skilled workers without jobs. In those communities where naval ship construction and repair work has dwindled, public-private partnerships have strived to keep good paying maritime jobs in their regions. When the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and commercial shipyards building ships for the Navy closed, a consortium of educators, the Collegiate Consortium for Workforce and Economic Development (CCWED), came together to help displaced civilian workers retrain, retool and find other jobs. 

Karen Kozachyn, vice president of workforce and economic development at Delaware County Community College in Media, Pennsylvania, and a member of the Business Development Team for CCWED, said the local community colleges have worked together to provide skilled employees.

“If a company asks for training in advanced welding, the consortium team evaluates the need, develops a training plan, locates a training site and then assigns the training to whoever has the capacity,” Kozachyn said. “The curriculum and competencies of the training are established by the employer, so it aligns to the company’s need — it’s never hit or miss.”

Those opportunities exist along a broad spectrum. The Maritime Administration recognizes this and is supporting 27 community colleges, training academies and organizations as Centers of Excellence. 

“We are no longer focused only on mariners who go to sea on big ships, but coastal and inland mariners, as well as the shore jobs and trades related to the maritime industry,” said Shashi Kumar, MARAD national coordinator for maritime education and training.

“These smaller institutions, many of which are near ports or waterways, understand the local need.  They’re more agile, and can create new programs and accomplish things faster,” he said.

Submarine construction is growing at the General Dynamics Electric Boat submarine construction yards at Quonset, Rhode Island, and Groton, Connecticut, as are new state-of-the art facilities to fabricate and assemble them. Electric Boat expects to hire 2,400 engineers, tradesmen and support personnel this year alone, but finding enough trained and qualified workers continues to be elusive.

The Southeastern New England Defense Industry Alliance (SENEDIA) is a next-generation industry partnership supported by workforce development stakeholders. SENEDIA membership include 130 companies, mostly in southeastern new England, but beyond as well supporting submarine construction and undersea technology. It has an $18.6 million DoD contract to develop the Next Generation Submarine Shipbuilding Supply Chain Partnership in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The partnership is comprised of state workforce agencies, academic institutions, training providers, and Manufacturing Extension Partnerships and Procurement Technical Assistance Centers in the region.

According to SENEDIA Executive Director Molly Magee, the partner organizations are teaching basic trade skills to make new shipyard workers immediately productive.

“One of our key goals at SENEDIA is to help engage the next generation workforce so that they see and consider the many high-wage, high-demand, high-growth opportunities, whether STEM or trade/industrial skill related, there are through defense-related career path­ways,” Magee said.

Complex Skillsets

Building complex warships can take place far from the waterfront, for equipment such as sensors, propulsion plants and integrated combat systems. 

James Birge, president of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA), located in North Adams, sees a mutually beneficial relationship between his school and the largest engineering and manufacturing employer in the region, General Dynamics Mission Systems in Pittsfield.

“The company’s business of developing and building complex combat management systems is growing, and there is a need for electrical engineering skill sets — that’s just one discipline — that we could be responsive to. And we want to offer good jobs to our graduates.”

Birge said MCLA is looking at its course offerings as “future-based,” in that “some of the jobs our students will have don’t exist today.”

Ellen Kennedy, president of Berkshire Community College, said her school works with employers and industry sectors in her service area in western Massachusetts to develop a stable and prepared workforce.

“We and MCLA meet with General Dynamics on a regular basis to make sure that our programming aligns with their needs,” she said.

Students from both MCLA and Berkshire, along with other schools, can have internships at General Dynamics.

“Interns are an incredible pipeline to our future workforce,” said Brenda Burdick, director of marketing and public relations for General Dynamics Mission Systems. “We typically see a 65-75% conversion rate from interns to full-time employee.”

General Dynamics Mission Systems invests in its employees and their education and professional development. Employees can be assigned mentors and allow them to participate in rotational assignments that allow them to explore their areas of interest and learn about each facet of the company. It also funds graduate education to develop leaders, business managers and executives, and technical experts.

Government Yards

Like industry, the four government-owned yards have had a large workload coming into shipyard and have been hiring a lot of people. According to John Snell, director for Training and Workforce Development Program Manager for the naval shipyards at Naval Sea Systems Command, there has been a seismic shift in demographics at the yards.

“We used to train our young mechanics said under a few experienced master mechanics, but those senior people have or are now retiring. As these young people have been coming aboard, we’ve needed to get them up to speed quickly.”

Snell said in the not too distant past the Navy was delivering the training in brick-and-mortar schoolhouses, with PowerPoint presentations and a little bit on hands-on training with displays in the back of the classrooms.

“We realized that this was not the path we needed to take to get us into the future,” he said.

That’s why the Navy is updating its training systems to provide more relevant learning that is appropriate for today’s workforce.

“We believe a mechanic needs to touch things — turn a valve, turn a wrench, strike an arc. It’s not the kind of training people can do remotely from home. Most of the online, on-demand training is leadership and supervisory training,” Snell said. “But we are always looking for new simulation capabilities and online tools that can improve and accelerate learning.”

While someone can get a good direct-hire job at one of the naval shipyards, he said the yards’ apprentice programs are a pathway to rewarding, life-long careers.

“The apprenticeship program teaches a lot of things about shipbuilding and repair besides the more-narrow technical skills for a particular trade, and it provides the associate’s degree from one of our community college partners,” he said.

The Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility (PHNSY & IMF) Apprenticeship Training Program is certified by the U.S. Department of Labor and administered through a contract between Honolulu Community College and PHNSY & IMF. The program offers 7,200 hours or more of on-the-job training, trade theory and academic study, culminating in an applied science degree in applied trades and a journeyman job in the shipyard.

Classes are taught in a Honolulu Community College facility on the yard. Jobs are available in structural, mechanical, electrical/electronic engineering, piping, air conditioning and refrigeration and other trades.  Qualified and motivated apprentice program graduates can pursue a four-year degree through the Apprentice to Engineer program.

Lauryn-Mae Pang was working several jobs when she found out about the PHNSY & IMF apprentice program. She wanted more than assorted jobs: She wanted a career. She applied, was accepted and completed the apprentice program, becoming a diesel mechanic in the shipyard’s crane shop. Pang took advantage of the Apprentice to Engineer program and went on to receive a Bachelor of Science from the University of Hawaii. She is now serving as a nuclear mechanical engineer at the shipyard.

“Some of the people coming into the apprenticeship programs are looking for structure. We give them an educational program with academic standards and teach them a trade with performance standards they have to adhere to,” Snell said. “They grow in that environment. And the next thing you know, they’re leaders in the shipyard.”