When the Perseverance rover landed on Mars on Feb. 18, cheers and applause filled mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In the crowd celebrating was Matt Wallace, who as a young naval submarine officer plied the depths of the seas before journeying into a long career exploring space and the vast unknowns of the Red Planet.

Wallace had faced similar stress the day Perseverance was launched atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas Rocket V that blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 30, 2020. As the Mars 2020 deputy project manager and then project manager, he helped guide the rover’s mission to further explore Mars. He knew the planet well, starting as a power systems engineer on the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner vehicle and later working on the Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rover missions.

But landing Perseverance was just as exciting and nerve wracking.

“That’s the thing you worry the most about. It’s so complex, and Mars always throws a surprise at you,” he said. “It was a big moment for everybody. Having been in this program as long as anybody, it was a particularly proud moment for me.”

The project team includes 2,000 people in Pasadena at JPL, a research and development center funded by NASA and managed by Caltech and more than 1,000 contractors around the country. “It’s been exciting and gratifying, both for me and for the team to understand that what they do is important,” Wallace said, adding, “I’m very, very proud.”

The team includes about 20 military veterans. “They really come to the table with a lot of great skills and great focus,” he said. “They tend to fit in very well. A lot of what we do requires teamwork.”

Wallace is particularly heartened by the broad public support and global interest in the Mars mission.

“The level of public excitement is off the charts,” he said, compared to Sojourner, the first to land and capture images of Mars’ dry, rock-strewn red landscape. “I think people are coming out of this year of COVID, and they’re looking for something that everyone can cheer for.” They include his former academy classmates.

“I heard from every single one of my 19th Company classmates,” Wallace, a 1984 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, said with a chuckle. “It had been on the news here and there, and people caught that.” He also appeared in a May 2020 CBS “60 Minutes” segment about the Mars launch and in the academy’s magazine.

Naval Interests

Wallace was just a toddler when the first U.S. attempts to reach Mars succeeded when the spacecraft Mariner 4 took grainy photographs of craters on its surface. As a young boy, he watched the televised Apollo missions to the moon and read books by Ray Bradbury, whose collection of science fiction writings includes “The Martian Chronicles” series about Mars and Martian life.

His father served in the U.S. Air Force, and while growing up around the Washington, D.C., area, Wallace listened to stories about the military, including one about a successful submerged trek under the North Pole by the nuclear-powered submarine USS Nautilus (SSN-571). “It intrigued me,” he recalled, and considerations about military service led to the Naval Academy.

“I just kind of fit into the Navy’s nuclear power program,” he said. At the academy, he got involved in telerobotics, which furthered his interest in space and is key to NASA’s space programs, including Mars.

Wallace graduated with a degree in systems engineering and, after initial training, reported to the Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Albuquerque (SSN 706) at Naval Submarine Base New London, Connecticut.

The nuclear-powered submarine was relatively new, having commissioned into the fleet in 1983. But it was the Cold War, and the crew and boat stayed busy training and operating at sea. “It didn’t feel like training a lot of the time,” he said. “It felt like preparation. We had a very high op tempo … 75% op tempo.”

Still, he said, “I loved it. I really enjoyed it. I was single, and I could spend 75% of my time at sea and one of three days on ship when we were in port.”

Wallace was drawn to the boat’s engineering and mechanics. “The submarine is a very complex system,” he said, “and you have to learn all the engineering and reactor systems and qualify” in areas including weapons, communications, navigation and sensors. “I really enjoyed that multidiscipline.”

He learned about leadership, starting off with a small radar team, and the need for people with technical expertise who can operate well under pressure and as a team. “You absolutely have to figure out how to stay calm [and] make good decisions when everything is falling apart,” he said.

It also taught him how to work with a diversity of people. “Your crew comes from all different backgrounds across the country,” he said. “I had to understand that really quickly as a JO [junior officer] on a submarine and figure out how to make that connection.

“That part of my career was so informative and so important to me,” he said of his five years in the Navy, which provided him “a lot of skills that I still use today.”

From Sub to Space

Wallace received a master’s degree in electrical engineering from California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and was attracted to the challenge of space missions that demand people skilled in problem-solving, innovation and out-of-the-box thinking, so he landed work at JPL. He joined engineers and scientists tackling the problems and challenges of space flight to Mars and found similarities from his time undersea.

“The ocean is not always a friendly environment. There’s danger lurking in the ocean, especially when you are training to be in a highly unsafe environment,” he said. “Space is very much the same,” with dangers from radiation, cold temperatures, dust and loss of communications, and “they both require very highly reliable engineering systems.”

After Sojourner, Wallace led the assembly and test team for the twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity missions that landed on Mars in 2004, and was a flight system manager for the 2012 Curiosity mission. Much like the military, the Mars project “feels like another way to serve,” he said. “It’s something bigger than just doing the job, to be doing something with a lasting influence … for the future. And that’s what exploration is about. It’s about learning things you don’t know.

“It’s a hard business,’ he added. “It’s a very challenging domain to work in, like the military. This is not a 9-to-5 job. There is no textbook you can get to tell you know to land on Mars.”

Ancient Life

Discovery and science — specifically astrobiology — are at the heart of the Mars mission to search for ancient microbial life that may have existed 3 billion years ago. “I was intrigued by the challenge …  and the notion of looking for ancient life on Mars,” Wallace said. “At first, it seemed like a very unlikely technical rationale for going to the planet.”

But Curiosity found evidence of liquid water on Mars, with a neutral pH pointing to a once-habitable environment. “We are very seriously looking for evidence that life evolved on Mars at the same time that life was evolving on Earth. To me, that is just such a fundamental, transformational, scientific conclusion to learn that life could have evolved somewhere other than Earth.”

Perseverance landed in the Jezero Crater, which NASA scientists think was once a river delta, for a planned two-year exploration. With the autonomous helicopter Ingenuity, the rover on June 9 began its scientific work exploring and collecting dust, dirt and rocks that might contain microbes. Those samples, placed into 43 titanium tubes, are the reason for the next big mission to bring them to Earth for analysis and research.

NASA and the European Space Agency are working on that return mission, launching a spacecraft to Mars in 2026 at the earliest. “There’s an interesting crossover coming up. In order to get the samples off the surface of Mars, we have to essentially launch a small rocket into orbit, and it looks a lot like a surface-to-air missile,” Wallace said. For the development of that rocket, already underway, “we’ve been talking about which aspects of the industrial community and the military community could help with that.”

New Posting

On June 7, Wallace ended his tour as Mars 2020 project manager and became JPL’s deputy director for planetary science.

“From Sojourner to Spirit and Opportunity to Curiosity to Perseverance, Matt has played key roles in the design, construction and operations of every Mars rover NASA has ever built,” Jennifer Trosper, the new project manager, said in a June 9 NASA news article. “And while the project is losing a great leader and trusted friend, we know Matt will continue making great things happen for the planetary science community.”

Wallace is particularly excited about one mission, the Europa Clipper, an orbital spacecraft under development that will travel to Jupiter and study its mysterious, icy moon to look for signs of life. Clipper, expected to launch in 2024, could help identify ice and water, according to NASA. It’s no easy mission as the planet’s high radiation levels will require armored equipment and systems.

Another mission is the August 2022 launch of a spacecraft to the asteroid Psyche in the belt between Mars and Jupiter in the hope of new insights into how Earth and other planets formed. It’s expected to begin circling the asteroid and begin sending imagery and scientific data sometime in 2026.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Wallace said of his new role. “There’s a lot of great staff in the planetary sciences directorate … and a lot of research and development.”

Sailors and Marines worked together with unmanned technologies, never used before to conduct expeditionary mine countermeasures operations, during the recent Baltic Operations (BALTOPS) 2021 exercise in Germany.

Tony Brescia, a systems engineer with the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division at Patuxent River, Maryland, brought new and innovative technologies to BALTOPS 2021 to let warfighters experiment with the systems during a major exercise.

Brescia has been working with Arizona-based Hydronalix on developing its unmanned systems platforms and technologies through investments from the Navy’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. Brescia has worked with the company to successfully transition its Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard (EMILY) USV, which is used for lifesaving, and the sonar-equipped version used for underwater surveys.

That work has evolved into two new platforms — the Amy and Nix USVs and a small unmanned aerial vehicle called Adapt, capable of carrying small payloads such as water bottles, food or medicine.

“It’s scalable. By upscaling the propeller and motor combination, it can carry a bigger payload,” Brescia said of Adapt. “It’s a short-range, one-way disposable UAS. You tell it where to go on your smart device and the autopilot will take it there.”

EMILY, Amy, Nix and Adapt

The Marines took advantage of BALTOPS to evaluate the new technologies and the characteristics of the different systems, such as weight, range, payload and power. 

“End-user feedback goes long way to set priorities,” Brescia said, “and to help us be sure we’re investing in the right technologies.”

According to Master Sgt. Matt Jackson, an explosive ordnance disposal technician with the Camp Pendleton-based USMC 4th Platoon Littoral Explosive Ord­nance Neutralization (LEON) team at BALTOPS, the exercise gave the Marines the chance to use unmanned systems designed for explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) to detect explosive hazards in the littorals, but they can also provide commanders with information using unmanned systems.

“There’s a lot of things these sensors collect that can be federated up to higher echelons,” he said.

Jackson said the Marines used EMILY with the side-scan sonar to detect anomalies in very shallow water. But, while EMILY may be too small for Marine Corps EOD, Jackson said the larger Amy has the size and form factor to load up with sensors and acoustic, satellite and radio frequency communications gear to link divers and unmanned systems to the greater mesh network.

“We want to be able to tie that all together, from the undersea node all the way to space and to the command and operations control,” he said.

Jackson envisions using a second Amy to tow a magnetometer in the surf zone to “search the sea bottom to give a heat map of metallic signatures, so I know where to avoid, as well as a side-scan sonar towed under the surface to get bathymetric data such as depth and water temperature. That’s valuable information.”

When it comes to mines, on the beach or in the water approaching the beach, the Marines are a breaching force, not a mine clearance force. “We want to avoid any mines while our small units are trying to get ashore,” Jackson said.

Nix is a relatively small USV that can carry a large volume.

“It has the capability to float an amount of weight. You can autonomously send it somewhere with gear, food, batteries, medical supplies or sensors,” Jackson said. “For LEON, it’s a little bit on the large size, because we have to operate from small boats. But we can tow it behind a boat, and then send it off when we get near its destination.” 

While many navies use USVs for environmental sensing and mine hunting, few navies have general-purpose USVs that can be used for general tasks. EOD is a just one niche in the Marine Corps. According to Jackson, there could be many uses for these vehicles.

“By demonstrating these systems for the Marine Corps, there may be other Marines out there who will say, ‘Amy can work for us, too.’ It could be for signals, recording, jamming or whatever. The same goes for Nix. Marines will find things to put in and move around in something like Nix.”

Brescia described Nix as a “mini-connector” to haul 80 to 100 pounds of critical repair parts, food, water or ammo. “It’s large enough to have a hybrid power supply, not just batteries, so it can stay out there for a long period of time.”

Cheap Sensors Needed

Marines have been brought into a distributed maritime environment where they will be operating under a composite warfare command, with their own connectors and working as a stand-in force within a weap­ons engagement zone. That means below the threshold of conflict, the Marine Corps will be a persistent sensor for the Navy to deter or curb maligned behavior.

“We need to understand the underwater domain, and we need tools to sense things in it,” Jackson said. “We want to support our Marines organically to survey those waters in the littorals, and also feed the Navy with intelligence to paint a better picture for the overall fleet. It’s a capacity problem. To really conduct Distributed Maritime Operations, we need more sensors.” 

That means the need to have effective and affordable systems that can be acquired and deployed in large numbers, which fits systems such as EMILY, Amy, Nix and Adapt.

Hydronalix CEO Tony Mulligan said the company’s unmanned systems are easy to use. Sailors or Marines only require a few minutes of training to be able to send off an Adapt drone using a smart phone app from a ship offshore, for example, to an exact spot on the beach or a person in need.

“There’s no pilot. There’s no ground station. There’s not even a radio. If a Corpsman needs to send plasma or morphine to a unit ashore three miles away, he loads the drone, clicks on where he wants it to land and it flies right to that location. If an area has been devastated by an earthquake or a storm, and there are not safe places for helicopters to land, these drones could be used to deliver water or food to isolated or damaged areas,” Mulligan said.

“You can be helping people before the helicopters get there, or for those victims in smaller numbers that might not be the top priority for the relief teams.”

While they are reusable, and could be recovered, reloaded and sent off again, Mulligan said they are cheap enough so that it doesn’t matter if they don’t come back.

The Port of Virginia is something of a little-understood region on the nation’s vast maritime map, and yet is one of the busiest, most strategically important ports in the nation.

Located at Hampton Roads, it ranks seventh among North America’s largest ports, with five major terminals (compared to 25 at the Port of Los Angeles, the largest, and probably best-known port). It’s a neighbor to the world’s largest naval base, Naval Station Norfolk.

Like much of the nation’s maritime infrastructure, the general public often doesn’t see the mighty industrial lifting done at a port like the Port of Virginia, which employs nearly 400,000 people directly and indirectly and contributes about $92 billion annually to Virginia’s economy. 

Its public profile could increase over time, not least due to the ever-expanding economy in the Mid-Atlantic region that has resulted in a 2.6% compounded annual growth rate since 2015, according to data from the Port of Virginia’s 2020 Annual Report. The primary drivers of Virginia’s transformative growth — which translates into more cargo, new jobs and bigger regional investments — is the arrival or expansion of multinational companies like Amazon, engineering giant Navien and Acesur, which specializes in IT and enterprise security.

Coast Guard Oversight

The 5th District of the U.S. Coast Guard, which has four sectors stretching from New Jersey to South Carolina, advises on how to accommodate this economic growth while making sure the waterways are also safe for traditional maritime uses.

Rear Adm. Laura M. Dickey, 5th District commander, says there have been a host of changes in Virginia and the rest of the region, from adapting to massive container ships to dealing with renewable energy needs and climate-related initiatives.

“There is a tremendous amount going on across the district,” Dickey told Seapower. “In addition to our normal Coast Guard missions, we are really seeing an explosion of growth in the maritime transportation system, in the ports and in trying to keep up with that, making sure that the traditional uses of the waterways, and these new uses — or these growing uses — will work in concert with each other.

“And then where is our role in that? [We are] making sure that we’re prepared for these changes that we’re seeing, and doing our part to evaluate them, and doing so in a holistic way that integrates all the different aspects of what happens in a port, or the approaches to our ports from offshore.”

Dickey said the Coast Guard team in the 5th District is adapting much like their maritime partners to new uses of the waterways, including offshore renewable energy initiatives — mainly wind farms — and, to a lesser extent, preparations for sea level rise.

With new construction in the region, for example, the Coast Guard is tasked with examining these projects and their parameters. It’s more of an advisory role rather than a regulatory or law enforcement capacity, an important distinction given the cross-section of different interest groups and government agencies.   

“The Port of Virginia is going through some amazing expansion, [and] there is a tremendous amount of activity going on,” Dickey said. “We have our traditional [missions] but we also have some unchartered territory and this explosive growth that all has to be harmonized … so that these activities in these ports happen safely and are done in a way that supports the economy but also takes into consideration all of the other traditional uses of our waterways.”

Dickey said wind farms are at the center of new development throughout the 5th District. There are at least eight projects in development potentially in the Mid-Atlantic region. In Virginia, the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is in its initial phase. Located about 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, the pilot project consists of two 12-megawatt turbines that cost about $300 million and are expected to generate enough electricity to power 3,000 homes. It is the second off­shore wind farm operation in the United States after Block Island Wind Farm in Rhode Island.

“Wind farms are huge,” Dickey said. “It is an emerging area, and it is one where the Coast Guard is not responsible for signing off on the permit, but we do play a role in advising the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and others. Our role is to review the projects and see how they fit with traditional uses of the waterways to make sure that we are able to do our own missions.”

The Coast Guard works with multiple partners, interest groups and fellow federal agencies on wind farm programs, having done so in the Northeast for more than two decades to support the construction of wind farms in Block Island and Nantucket Sound (the latter was rejected by local interest groups in 2017). Communication, transparency and sharing knowledge are the key to successfully executing such projects.

“If you have wind farms that are too close together, can you still do search and rescue properly in there, or do they run into traditional fisheries grounds, or are they in the way of traditional or necessary fairways so that commerce can come in and out?” Dickey said.

“There are an awful lot of these projects. It is the wave of the future, and it is something that we are having to rapidly adjust to make sure that we’re looking at things in a holistic way. We are working with headquarters and everybody to make sure that we come up with a process that is repeatable and standardized in a sense but is also flexible to adjust to the particulars of each project.”

Dickey cited several port deepening projects, among them the Ports of Wilmington, North Carolina and Delaware Bay, where ongoing deepening and dredging of ports and harbors is essential for handling the increasingly larger container vessels coming daily through the port to one of the area terminals.

Dickey described a constant cycle of challenges in keeping up with growing trade volume at the Port of Virginia, which is the No. 1 exporter of vegetables and soybean products, and a leader in recycled wastepaper and animal feed exports.

Fewer, but Larger, Ships

In late May of this year, the CMA CGM Marco Polo, the largest container ship to call on a U.S. East Coast port, arrived at Virginia International Gateway, marking a milestone for the Port of Virginia. The vessel is nearly 1,300 feet long and can carry 16,022 20-foot equivalent units.

“[Trade] is such a huge part of our economy and globalization and the Coast Guard has got to make sure that it happens safely, and how do we do that,” said Dickey. “The Coast Guard is agnostic on all of this. Our job is to make sure that maritime activity occurs safely and is deconflicted.” 

Also underway are tunnel and road expansions at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and with the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel (HRBT) Expansion Project. In a ground­breaking ceremony in October 2020, officials kicked off the $3.8 billion HRBT Expansion Project, which will add twin, two-lane bored tunnels and widen portions of Virginia’s Interstate 64 to reduce congestion and ease access to the Port of Virginia and Naval Station Norfolk. The project, which gets underway in 2022, is the largest infrastructure project in the commonwealth’s history. 

“The [projects] are going on across the Mid-Atlantic region as these ports all try to remain competitive,” Dickey said. “It is an interesting thing where the volume of ships goes down because [the vessels] are able to carry so much more. But you need to accommodate these large ships, and what does that do for the safety of ships as they try to pass each other in channels? Does it shut down things?”

Dickey said her team in the 5th District is doing is Port Access Route Studies, or PARS, which ensure, in part, that new projects and construction are integrated with the potential future uses of areas.

“How do we make sure that the waterways and approaches to our ports are deconflicted with all the different types of things that people want to do?” Dickey said.

“We are reviewing the access to ports. How do we get ships moving in and out of our ports and navigating here in the safest manner, and then what is the impact of a wind farm? Where can those even be permitted to be leased, [and] does that fit with access to the ports? That entails outreach to all the stakeholders, whether that is private industry, the DoD, recreational users, commercial fishing users and environmental groups,” she said.

“We are well postured, because we are very tightly [linked with] our port partners in each location. We have area maritime steering committees and consulta­tive groups where we know most of the folks, so we get a sense of what’s going on and what the impact might be, and then we take a look at these projects.”

MIAMI — Coast Guard and partner agency aircrews continue to respond to critically injured Haitian citizens by transporting them to a higher level of care in Port au Prince, Haiti, the Coast Guard 7th District said in an Aug. 19 release. 

After several days of responding to a magnitude 7.2 earthquake in Haiti, Coast Guard aircrews returned home to Clearwater, Florida, Thursday, and more Coast Guard aircrews are returning to the response. 

“We are proud, but we are also a little heartbroken,” said Petty Officer 3rd Class Michael Diglio, a rescue swimmer deployed to Haiti. “The Haitian citizens are strong, as they would ride in the helicopter calm and composed throughout the one-hour ride to the Port au Prince hospital.” 

In the past 24 hours, Coast Guard men and women deployed to Haiti have flown 37 evolutions, saved more than 33 people, assisted more than 58 people, transported 49 urban disaster and relief personnel, and transported 1,700 pounds of disaster and relief supplies. 

Since Sunday, Coast Guard men and women deployed to Haiti have flown 137 evolutions, saved 116 people, assisted 177 people, transported 234 urban disaster and relief personnel, and transported 8,500 pounds of disaster and relief supplies. 

Navies that operate frigate-sized ships and larger will generally need to provide for a replenishment-at-sea capability, but many of those navies do not have large replenishment ships that can operate on extended missions to sustain their ships while deployed, or one may not be present where their warships are operating.

They can, however, be supported by oilers and replenishment ships from other navies, as long as both the combatants and logistics ships are built and operated to the international standard. When navies that follow that standard, there is a much large force of replenishment vessels for everyone.

According to Cmdr. J.H. “Han” van Huizen, NATO Maritime Command Branch head for Logistic Operations & Exercises, both NATO and the nations have collective responsibility for the logistic support of alliance opera­tions and missions (AOM).

“The nations are responsible for ensuring that maritime units and formations assigned to NATO are properly supported by an effective and efficient tailored logistics structure for AOM, including a proportional contribution to theater-level support capabilities,” he said.

“From the NATO perspective, logistics is a national responsibility, but the nations and NATO authorities have a collective responsibility for logistic support of NATO’s multinational operations. Logistics support must be sufficient to sustain maritime operations and is required in theater to support forward deployed maritime forces,” van Huizen said. “When operating in a task group, for example, the ships will coordinate efforts like replenishment at sea [RAS] with designated fleet logistic coordinators and a group logistic coordinator. Cooperation among the nations and NATO authorities is essential.”

Interoperability is achieved because the navies have agreed-upon standards. They use the same rigs, procedures, terminology and documentation. Interoperability starts with design standards and includes the concepts of operations and operational procedures. NATO and partner nations can do this because they have agreed to follow the same standards and the same manual.

The U.S. Navy’s manual for underway replenishment is essentially the same as the NATO manual, which provides conceptual interoperability from the start.

“ATP-16 is the NATO document that has the parts to procedures on how things are going to happen. This is the document to make sure all those countries that are listed in the manual can interact easily with each other,” said Richard Hadley, an underway replenishment (UNREP) engineer with Naval Surface Warfare Center Port Hueneme Division in California.

To achieve interoperability, the visual signals have to be the same on both the delivering and receiving ships. The sound-powered phones have to connect the same way. Emergency breakaway procedures have to be the same.

Interoperability has to be designed in from the beginning, not done as an afterthought. “There’s a device on a cargo receiving station called the NATO Long Link, and the pelican hook on all of the delivering ships will connect with that. It’s the same on all of the ships,” Hadley said. 

“We’re the engineers who design and support the UN­REP system, not the people who are out there every day conducting these evolutions, but we take our work very seriously,” Hadley said. “It has to be safe. It has to be effective and reliable. You don’t want the fleet to have logistics problems, because your system goes down. If the system doesn’t work, the fleet won’t be able to do what they need to do. We always have to be aware of that.”

Singapore-based Commander, Logistics Group Western Pacific (COMLOG WESTPAC)/Task Force 73 (CTF 73), is the U.S. 7th Fleet’s provider of combat-ready logistics, operating government owned and contracted ships to keep those ships armed, fueled and fed.

“Reliable and responsive sustainment enable ships to remain at sea — ships at sea are key to the global presence that underpins regional security and stability,” said Cmdr. Rob Paul, deputy assistant chief of staff for Logistics, COMLOG WESTPAC/CTF 73. “Replenishments at sea are one way we enhance our interchangeability with friends, partners and allies in the region. This is true whether we are resupplying other nations, or they are resupplying us, because our partners and allies are able to supply us with fresh food, stores and fuel, and we can do the same for them. We can sustain nearly any partner or ally in this region and vice versa. That is at the core of interchangeability and interoperability.”

According to Paul, the U.S. has conducted replenishment operations with Australia, France, India, Japan, Republic of Korea and Singapore. The U.S has received cargo and/or fuel from Australia, Japan and Republic of Korea in the past year.

Safety First

Because replenishments and refueling at sea are inherently dangerous, Paul said the most important attribute allied and partner navies share are basic safety features.

“Prior coordination before any RAS helps ensure safe and efficient operations. While there are standard operating guidelines we publish in an unclassified manual, before each replenishment operation we transmit an official message that reiterates agreed upon procedures and guidance regarding many factors from ship speed to acceptable weather,” he said.

After safety, it becomes a matter of efficiency, such as the standard NATO fittings that can provide the optimal fuel transfer rates.

“It’s also important to ensure you are delivering the right cargo,” Paul said. “We coordinate that at the fleet logistics level. Our CLF fleet replenishment oilers and dry goods and ammunition ships can receive cargo, stow it and transfer it using the same general process as any partner or allied cargo vessel.”

The U.S. and allied and partner navies follow the same protocols or procedures to seamlessly deliver or receive fuel, ammunition and stores at sea. 

Paul said great advances are being made in the areas of authorities and legal considerations as well. “We are making strides is at higher levels of engagement, specifically, navigating through the complex accounting process,” he said. “Both we and our partners are committed to strengthening and simplifying these channels to ensure the comprehensive process — from ordering, scheduling, paying and delivery — moves at the speed of combat.”

“At the tactical level, we routinely prove that our procedures really are very similar,” Paul said. “What’s important is that we continue working and exercising together, because through those exchanges we continue building a shared confidence in our interchangeability and interoperability during the sustainment process.”

One example of enhanced interoperability is the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) assigning an officer to the CTF 73 staff to serve as a liaison regarding replenishment at sea with their respective ships. The liaison officer works with the CTF 73 logistics officer in planning and executing combined replenishment operations to ensure the efficiency of combined logistics operations between the JMSDF, U.S. Navy and Military Sealift Command.

Tactical Edge

U.S., Japanese and French ships demonstrated the ability for allied and partner navies to successfully replenish each other’s ships this in May in the Philippine Sea when fleet replenishment oiler USNS Big Horn (T-AO 198) conducted a replenishment-at-sea with the French navy amphibious assault ship FS Tonnerre (L 9014), and JMSDF Replenishment Ship JS Masyuu (AOE 425)replenished the French Navy frigate FS Surcouf (F 711).

“Replenishment-at-sea is a maneuver of special interest for our Navy assets operating in the Indo-Pacific,” said French navy Rear Adm. Jean-Mathieu Rey, joint commander of French armed forces, in Asia-Pacific. “First, it highlights the excellent level of tactical interoperability between partners, as RAS is a complex maritime operation, requiring perfect seamanship training and technical coordination. Then, it allows our respective naval forces to operate durably at sea without the constraint of replenishment port visits. Today, in the specific context of the current pandemic, whereas access to some harbor is denied to our navy ship, this capacity is of first importance.”

Because of the interoperability and standard procedures, crewmembers involved with underway replenishment, either the delivering or receiving ship, know what to expect from the ship alongside.

“Coordinating operations throughout 7th fleet with our allies and partners ashore and afloat is made simple through the use of standardized publications and instructions and operations are conducted safely and professionally IAW standardized procedures,” said Ryan Snow, a cargo mate aboard USNS Charles Drew (T-AKE 10), currently operating in the Indo-Pacific AOR.

“We apply common skills, together with a number of international navies in support of operations at sea,” said Charles Drew’s 2nd Officer Brian Knudson. It is by these common procedures and safety protocols, that we are able to sustain joint operations.”

While it may appear to become routine, it isn’t.

Underway replenishment “happens all the time, every day, somewhere in the world, but it’s inherently dangerous,” said Hadley. “All sorts of bad things can happen if you don’t have professionals that know what they’re doing.”

Dr. Charles “C.J.” Johnson-Bey is a leader in electro­magnetic technology solutions for Booz Allen Hamilton’s commercial and defense clients. Based out of the company’s Belcamp, Maryland, office, he develops and executes innovative technology strategies that reflect evolving markets and technology dynamics.

Johnson-Bey has more than 25 years of engineering experience spanning cyber resilience, signal pro­cessing, system architecture, advanced prototyping and hardware. In leading Booz Allen’s engineering and science community, he inspires leaders and promotes innovation, collaboration and sharing of intellectual capital across the firm.

Prior to joining Booz Allen, he was a research engineer at Motorola Corporate Research Labs and Corning Inc. In addition, he taught electrical engineering at Morgan State University. He also worked at Lockheed Martin Corp. for 17 years, where he galvanized the company’s cyber resources and led research and development activities with organizations including Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Microsoft Research and the GE Global Research Center.

Johnson-Bey is a co-principal Investigator of the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Visioning Alliance, which identifies bold and societally impactful engineering research directions that will place the U.S. in a leading position to realize a better future for all. He serves on the Whiting School of Engineering Advisory Board at Johns Hopkins University and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Advisory Board at the University of Delaware. He is also on the Cybersecurity Institute Advisory Board for the Community College of Baltimore County.

Johnson-Bey received both an M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Delaware and a B.S. in electrical and computer engineering from Johns Hopkins University. 

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As a cybersecurity leader focused on Navy-Marine Corps clients and cross-market research and development, Jandria Alexander guides the implementation of innovative, technology solutions that drive transformational business growth. She’s a subject matter expert on cybersecurity engineering and assessments, resilient platforms and space systems, infrastructure, and multidomain mission systems.

A nationally recognized cybersecurity expert, Alexander has participated in several National Academy of Sciences studies related to cybersecurity research and new aviation technologies. In 2014, she was appointed by former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe to serve on the bipartisan Virginia Cyber Security Commission to expand the state’s economic footprint in cyber technology and protect critical infrastructure from cyber threats. She led the effort’s unmanned systems cyber­security industry, government and academia consortium.  

Over the length of her career, Alexander has provided cybersecurity and digital transformation leadership, market strategy and solution development for the Department of Defense and the intelligence community as well as many civil and commercial organizations. Prior to joining Booz Allen, she was a cybersecurity leader in engineering and technology at a federally funded research and development corporation.

She holds a B.S. in computer science from Brandeis University and an M.S. in information systems from American University.

Johnson-Bey and Alexander discussed unmanned systems’ technical and operational challenges with Senior Editor Richard R. Burgess.

With the Navy’s Project Overmatch in progress and having released its Unmanned Campaign Plan, what is the nature of some of the technical challenges the service is trying to overcome?

JOHNSON-BEY: There’s always an accelerated trend of technology that catches us by surprise, with technology being used in an unexpected way, creating a new set of problems. In cyber, for one example, when you get things too integrated, you actually introduce some vulnerabilities that you hadn’t thought about before. All these things have multi-dimensions to them. I like being in this space, because there’s always a new problem to tackle and it challenges you to think outside the box. And the more we collaborate on these challenges, the smarter we get.

Unmanned maritime systems seem to bring more challenges, from preventing boarding to cyber intrusion and keeping communications, navigation and targeting networks open. How can command and control be sustained in a communications-denied environment?

JOHNSON-BEY: A new book that came out in mid-March — “2034: A Novel of the Next World War,” [by Elliot Ackerman and U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis] — talks about the future, 2034, and war in the South China Sea. It talks about cyber and how we handle it. The Chinese have a capability that we did not expect and that wipes out our comms. How do we deal with that? The reason why I bring that up is because it forces you to think about how we’re pushing ahead with new technology, but what if something just comes out of the blue and we have no comms? The new technology we’ve become reliant upon to carry out missions is suddenly not available. For example, the F-35 [strike fighters] are taken over [by cyber intrusion], the ships at sea are taken over, no comms; so, it’s really interesting.

The U.S. Navy has been thinking about the challenges of operating in a communications- or GPS-denied environment. What do you think of these challenges?

JOHNSON-BEY: A lot of old technology is pretty doggone robust, and it had to be. So, we can’t get too far ahead of ourselves. I’m a technologist through and through with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. I’ve been doing this a long time. But the thing I will say is that we don’t want to become too reliant on our technology or the latest technology, and I think that’s where innovation comes in. You get innovative when you have constraints. If I don’t have any constraints, then I don’t need to be innovative. I can just do what I want to do when I want to do it. But the U.S. and its allies have long been used to using the electromagnetic spectrum to communicate when they want, wherever they want and for however long they want. That’s no longer going to be the case. So, we really do need to think about how we complete the mission in a denied or congested environment. The solutions might not be brand new technology but might be an innovative use of some technology that we’ve had in the past.

Security [of electronic systems] is always an issue and we really look at it from that OODA [observe, orient, decide, act] loop. How do we increase the speed of decision-making for U.S. forces and our allies and decrease if for our adversaries? Part of that is to address it from the OODA loop in the constrained or denied or congested environment. The speed of decision-making saves lives. So, we’re developing and investing in technologies that are looking at the security in that space. We’re also looking at swarms in that space, distributed platforms, AI [artificial intelligence], distributed processing and processing at the edge. So, we are investing in those areas. Jandria [Alexander] actually has led one of our projects in there last year.

ALEXANDER: The key point to your question is what happens in war. We can leverage alternate communication systems, but our goal is the communications at the tactical edge, from platform system to platform system.

As mentioned, complexity and threats increase with mission operations and communications across mul­tiple UAVs groups, as well as unmanned and autonomous systems across domains. Platform systems in air, ground or undersea are critical part of force operations. As such, rapid data processing or sensor and RF data become differentiators. We’ve focused on increasing autonomous processing in a secure manner at the tactical edge and secure cross platform communications, whether they be large or small. If we can provide edge processing in a fashion that’s secure, design against a common architecture that’s driving our solutions, and be able to add advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to process different data sets, in an extensible and modular fashion, we are able to efficiently increase capabilities without having to rebuild complete systems from scratch.

From an operational perspective, we’re able to respond quickly based on the algorithmic results processed on the platform. In a world of increased connectivity, cybersecurity needs to be addressed as an integral part of all architectures and built into the systems, including edge systems. Integrated security provides functionality and assurance that we can detect anomalies in parameters and processing that could throw off the compute cycle and exhaust the local resources degrading or disabling necessary platform functionality. And all of a sudden, we get into a situation where we can’t operate. So, we want to be able to make sure we monitor those inputs, and we look for anomalies in the different types of data input. Once we do that, we can be a little more confident about the processing that’s occurring at the platforms.

For each area in platform systems — communications, processing, algorithms and cybersecurity — there are technologies and best practices that support optimal and modular system development. Booz Allen has taken that problem set and divided it into the various functions bringing subject matter experts together into cross-functional project teams. The resulting systems are then able to incorporate integrating our solutions, third-party solutions and government solutions.

What is edge processing?

ALEXANDER: Platform systems range from manned to unmanned systems, including very large airborne to undersea platforms of various sizes. The platform systems have various sensors and functionality to support the mission. As data is collected on the platforms, edge processing allows for rapid analysis, decision support and specific maneuvering locally without having to transmit the data to a data center for central processing. During contested operations, the tactical asset is the edge. We want to be able to make computing decisions and react to those computing decisions based on what occurs at the edge for onboard sensors on the unmanned system as opposed to sending all the data back to a ground system. The local processing enables autonomous operations at the edge.

JOHNSON-BEY: Getting into denied environments, you’ve got to get innovative, so if you cannot get back to the [data] cloud or if you cannot get [the platform] back or time won’t allow, how do we do that computing right where you need it with information that you need to get the mission completed?

Does this create a weapons release authority problem for the man in the loop if you don’t have the central command there to some degree?

ALEXANDER: That’s right. So, we have to be flexible. We have to recognize that there’s a combination of manned and unmanned systems and decision points. As we become more comfortable and have more results and training our confidence and ability to trust the behaviors [of the unmanned systems] will increase. During situations where the volume of data and the need for rapid decisions are critical, edge processing and autonomy provide options that were not previously available. Systems have matured little by little. It’s not going from totally manned to totally unmanned, but it’s that combination, human in/on the loop, where there’s a recommendation and acknowledgment and recommended course of action.

JOHNSON-BEY: I’ve heard the term “human on the loop” instead of “in the loop.” [Humans] are “on the loop,” where they’re helping to make the decisions as needed. But the way things are moving, we need to be able to, in some instances, operate at the speed of computation because — particularly with things like hypersonics or getting so much data — when you look again at that OODA loop, it could just be that you can’t make a decision fast enough, so you’re going to need some AI and autonomy. You’re going to have some overall decision-making, but you are going to have to have some trust or some delegation of the ability to complete a mission done at the edge or where communication is congested or denied.

ALEXANDER: The other point is, it’s not only the speed but it’s also the volume. We have much better sensors right now. We’re collecting so much data that the time to process has to rely on automation. We have to figure out ways to streamline and synthesize the data to make decisions. Credibility of data also is an aspect. We want to be able to weigh the sources and understand which inputs are most trusted to rate and weigh the results. We need AI/ML [machine learning] algorithms that have been trained on actual and synthetic data sets. In an ideal case, the data processing is based on rich data sets, where we have full information; in the worst case, we have limited and lower quality information. The challenge is to develop an edge processing capability that can optimize operations.

JOHNSON-BEY: One of the things we’re investing in is, for example, the project that Jandria’s been working: platform agnostics, so a system can go on an unmanned aerial system, an unmanned underwater system, an unmanned surface system or an unmanned ground system. That unmanned piece is going to grow if the Navy wants to reach 355 ships or that next-generation Navy capability. So, what we’re looking at is how do we help a naval system grow into the unmanned space so that we can advance our capability, ability to make decisions and our ability to complete the mission with the unmanned aspect.

ALEXANDER: That brings up another good point. Large aerospace satellite systems, for example, used to take 20 years to build and deploy. We are transitioning to building constellations with disaggregated functionality. The key is to build smaller satellites — with more specialized function — that collectively perform complex missions. As we break up functionality, we build systems faster. They can be simpler and more secure. We can then integrate those data outputs from the various functional systems to support advanced decisions and assorted missions. Every platform doesn’t have to be all or nothing across every domain. Edge processing can also help with collecting additional or specialized data sources. Specialized platform systems can collect the unique data source provide it to the processing platform and then as the data gets synthesized, the mission advances.

Are micro-satellites part of the solution?

ALEXANDER: Absolutely. We have many examples in communication systems, with platforms that perform certain functions but may be perishable in the long term and don’t persist beyond short-term operations. As disposable assets, we don’t need them to be as rigorous.  

How is your company supporting Project Overmatch and other programs?

JOHNSON-BEY: Project Overmatch is something that the Navy is focused in on and that goes everywhere from networks like the tactical grid to the infrastructure that deals with computer storage and tech stacks to the data architecture and then the tools and analytics like AI and ML and those different applications. So, what we’re focusing in on and investing in are these specific areas so that we can get some minimum viable products out. As the Navy grows its capabilities, we’re going to be able to provide some of these solutions to them. And then, as we all get smarter, we will continue to improve. It’s about speed, getting something useful out quickly, something I really do believe saves lives. So, we’re focused on being able to make decisions quickly, to field things quickly, to be very nimble in order to get from idea to deployment efficiently. We’re looking at how do we do things in a very quick way and demonstrate it in the marine environment and in the environment in which it will be used. We’re also looking at the challenge in a multi-domain aspect and how to create products to help the Navy complete its missions.

ALEXANDER: So, we’re tracking Project Overmatch very closely. This includes solutions for the enterprise as well as the tactical edge. The tactical edge is exactly the piece we’ve been talking about — the edge processor — that is one piece of the overall architecture and mission. Beyond the technology, is how the technology is integrated into legacy as well as future systems, as well as the training and the governance around it. Those are other parts that will drive adoption ultimately resulting in more successful mission capabilities.

Where is your company’s support to the Navy directed?

ALEXANDER: We support all the Navy echelons. We support the warfare centers focused on technical solutions and prototypes. We support program offices across Navy System Commands, the Echelon II systems commands — Naval Information Warfare Systems Com­mand [NAVWAR], Naval Air Systems Command, Naval Sea Systems Command. Overmatch is certainly one of those programs that is occurring at all of the levels.

JOHNSON-BEY: One other thing to drive home is that we also are working with the Office of Naval Research [ONR]. We have multiple programs there and we are looking to increase our collaboration with them. We think that is certainly important. That’s where you start getting in with the new ideas, new capabilities, the innovation, and we think that’s a perfect place for us to be. We do a significant amount of work with ONR today, and we’re looking to increase that as well as with the warfare centers but particularly with ONR. Fun fact: Our relationship with the Navy goes back 80 years continuously.

ALEXANDER: We are engaged with our clients to provide thought leadership and diligent execution. Critical initiatives have many aspects. There’s often a policy piece, an acquisition piece and a solution piece. We want to make sure that our solutions align with the missions and provide enhanced operations and that the policies consider all of the various stakeholders and the overall strategic intent. We collaborate across our program and functional teams to address mission requirements. This allows us to leverage the perspectives that are needed, collect lessons learned and bring our innovation leads to solve the emerging problems of our clients.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How is the USNIC funded?

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

What types of analysis or mapping does the USNIC do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What agencies are your customers?

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

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

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

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

How do your customers get access to your products?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whether operating in the Euro-Atlantic or Indo-Pacific theaters, U.S. naval forces and their allies and partners must confront constrictions in operations — in both peacetime and crisis — generated by adversaries attempting to apply anti-access or area denial strategies, known as A2/AD.

Such strategies are designed to deny access for U.S. and other forces to key waters and coastal regions by inflat­ing A2/AD “bubbles” around, for example, critical choke points at sea or entry points ashore.

In the Euro-Atlantic theater, areas like the Greenland-Iceland-U.K. (GIUK) gap region in the North Atlantic, the Kattegat and Skagerrak Straits that connect the North and Baltic seas, and the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea region, especially around the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, are examples of strategic areas adversaries could attempt to “bubble” by using mines, anti-ship missiles, submarines or strike aircraft. The East China Sea and the southern reaches of the South China Sea are areas of po­tential A2/AD actions in the Indo-Pacific region.

In any Western naval efforts to deter, defend against or deploy through A2/AD efforts, amphibious forces would play a critical role. Deployed at sea to deliver effect ashore, amphibious task groups and the marine forces they insert provide a capability that is critical to popping any A2/AD bubbles.

“Amphibious capability is a strategic capability — the threat of joint forcible entry remains a strategic capabil­ity,” Lt. Gen. Brian Beaudreault, commanding general of the U.S. Marine Corps’ II Marine Expeditionary Force (II MEF), told Seapower. “We’re still going to need an ability in the future to come from an unexpected direction, seize and hold ground, take something of value, and/or destroy something. Whether it’s a light raiding force or a distributed element of a larger whole, amphibious force remains a threat the adversary is going to have to honor.”

The U.S Marine Corps is the United States’ amphibious force. In the Euro-Atlantic theater, the responsibility of generating amphibious presence at sea and delivering amphibious effects ashore rests with II MEF, based on at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

The Marine Corps delivers its amphibious effect in part­nership with the U.S. Navy. For II MEF, this partnership is based around its increasingly integrated relationships with U.S. 2nd Fleet, based in Norfolk, Virginia, and U.S. 6th Fleet, based in Naples, Italy.

In the Indo-Pacific region, III MEF, based in Okinawa, Japan, provides the amphibious force, supported by U.S. 3rd Fleet, based in San Diego, and U.S. 7th Fleet, based in Yokosuka, Japan.

Integrated Scale

The Marines have always been tasked with exploiting the sea as a maneuver space to deliver amphibious effect across the littoral region. However, with returning great power competition and the naval rivalry it brings rais­ing the risk of more significant security crises, Western navies are increasingly focused on delivering integrated effect at scale. For the U.S. naval force, integration be­tween the Navy and Marine Corps components — known as Blue-Green teaming — is increasingly important in generating and delivering force at scale, whether for simple presence at sea or for inserting forces across the littoral seam between sea and shore.

Another key element in how the Blue-Green team enables force generation and delivery is forward de­ployment. Situated at sea in amphibious ready groups or expeditionary strike groups, Marine Corps forces will often find themselves forward deployed within striking reach of an A2/AD bubble, or even inside one.

Adversary efforts to restrict movement and access at sea is not a new development in naval strategy or warfare. What has perhaps changed is adversary joint forces are creating a layered A2/AD capability threat. In Marine Corps assess­ments of adversaries’ A2/AD strategies and how to counter them, amphibious force plays a certain role.

“What we realized when we studied A2/AD is that we are the inside force,” Beaudreault said. “So, while many others [ask] ‘How do you attack from the outside in?,’ it’s our view — and it’s certainly true in III MEF, day-to-day — that we’re already operating inside the weapons engagement zone. The nature of the problem is not ‘How do you fight your way into it?’ It’s ‘How do you survive and thrive within it?’”

The Marine Corps is addressing this question in several ways. For example, it is developing new concepts of op­erations such as distributed maritime operations (DMO) or expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO).

“The best method of ensuring your survival and effective­ness is to distribute in smaller forces, relying on capabili­ties that are low probability of intercept that still support a kill-chain with massed effects,” Beaudreault said.

The Marines are focused on how the service can enable naval maneuvers at sea through land-based opera­tions, Beaudreault said. This can be done through DMO or EABO, or through using a large continental force. In all such contexts, II MEF and the Corps more widely are assessing how improved Marine Corps sensing and long-range fires capability in particular can help the Navy achieve sea denial and sea control.

Here, the Navy-Marine Corps Blue-Green team will make a significant capability and operational contribution. The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter provides a step-up in sensing capability and will deploy this capability from expeditionary advanced bases ashore and from carrier strike groups and amphibious ready groups at sea. The U.S. naval long-range precision strike inventory includes several systems bringing different capabilities, although the Kongsberg-Raytheon Naval Strike Missile is becom­ing an increasingly prominent arrow in the quiver.

The Naval Strike Missile is deployed currently on three Navy Independence-class littoral combat ships. Navy spokesman Alan Baribeau told Seapower the service is continuing to install strike missiles on Indepen­dence-class hulls, prioritizing fits based on availability schedules and operational commitments. The Naval Strike Missile is also slated for future fits to the Free­dom-class littoral combat ships and is a candidate sys­tem for future frigates and amphibious ships.

“I think the broader recognition is that the change now from before in the A2/AD [context] is that we’re going to be in there, and there are a lot of systems,” Beaudreault said. “When we look at ranges and sensing capability in the adversary, how do we deny theirs and still thrive within? That is the art of where we’re trying to go.”

In terms of building integrated Blue-Green capability, he said the two services have looked at a range of issues including ship survivability and what amphibious capa­bilities any future platforms will provide. In amphibious capability terms, Beaudreault highlighted the Corps’ integrated role with the Navy in addressing tradition­al naval warfare tasks such as antisubmarine and an­ti-surface warfare, and underlined the importance of capabilities like long-range precision fires and of dealing with threats such as coastal-defense cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles.

Aviation Integration

In terms of integrated capabilities that meet the “survive and thrive” requirement in the A2/AD context, assets like the F-35 provide significant increase in effect as individ­ual platforms.

“Those F-35s can hold any target at risk essentially, and that is a huge capability for us when we’re aboard amphibious ships, being able to not just survive but again thrive as that inside force,” Beaudreault said.

Integrated airwings can provide value for operational commanders, and not just for individual operations or for Blue-Green teams, but for the U.S. Air Force, allies and partners.

Beaudreault said Marine Corps experience in recent exercises, such as the MEFEX 21.1 simulated training activity held at command-and-control hubs across the East Coast in November 2020, highlighted the benefits for combatant commanders in having a more integrated maritime airwing.

“It is the efficiencies to be gained by developing perhaps a maritime aviation command element and looking at how we better merge carrier-based aviation with the Marine Aircraft Wings,” he said.

Joint and combined integration of aviation and other force elements can provide wider capabilities, for exam­ple in contributing to integrated air and missile defense, Beaudreault said.

“Ballistic missile defense and air defense remain my No. 1 concern in a European scenario. That is by far the top of the list,” he said. “After we’ve gone through the deploy­ment phases and we’re operating ashore, depending on what the combined force air component commander has or hasn’t been able to achieve, you still want to be able to know that I’m tucked up under a Patriot umbrella from the Army or an Aegis-capable ship from the Navy, and within their coverage.”

U.S. Navy pilots and naval flight officers flying specialized aircraft are helping scientists collect data for airborne research.

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s (NRL) Scientific Development Squadron One (VXS-1), based in Maryland at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, operates worldwide on extended detachments and annually logs more than 400 flight hours.

The squadron currently flies two NP-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft, one RC-12M King Air and one UV-18 Twin Otter, as well as numerous TigerShark unmanned aircraft that operate worldwide on extended detachments supporting numerous projects such as bathymetry, electronic countermeasures, gravity mapping and radar development research. All are uniquely configured to make the integration of systems, sensors and research projects easier.

“While airborne flight test typically refers to developmental and operational testing, a lesser-known aspect of the community includes science and technology research,” said Cmdr. Ian Lilyquist, who commands VXS-1. “We’re not graduates of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, but we are part of the test community doing airborne research.” 

While programs of record that are part of the acquisition process go through the developmental and operational test squadrons, VXS-1 works outside the acquisition cycle.

“Researchers come to us to refine their technologies before they get into acquisition, or to accelerate testing to mature their technology and streamline the acquisition process,” Lilyquist said. “We’re the Navy’s only airborne scientific research squadron. We work directly for NRL and the Naval Research Enterprise, using airborne platforms that provide pathways for early prototyping, experimentation and demonstrations of emerging technology so we can accelerate the Navy’s ability to get leading-edge capabilities to the fleet.”

The P-3 is a heavy-lift, four-engine, long-endurance aircraft conducive to doing projects that need to be in the air for a long time or flown overseas into an operational environment. The RC-12 and Twin Otter are smaller, twin-engine turboprops, with a lower cost to operate, and well suited for some of the smaller projects. 

“We can do projects in the ranges off of Pax River, and the warning areas offshore, as well as on detachments. The most recent example was the deployment of our Twin Otter to Homer, Alaska, where they flew missions for six weeks off the southern coast of Alaska,” said Lilyquist.

“Our unit has the same structure as an operational squadron, but the difference in VXS-1 is that we have a projects department,” said Lt. Michael Benner, an NP-3C and RC-12M pilot. “They plan the work, get the projects installed and ready to fly on our aircraft, and execute the research. It’s the entire reason for our existence.”

Benner said the squadron’s aircraft adapt to meet project requirements. “On the NP-3, we have flown sensors that require very specific pitch, roll and yaw angles to be held for extended periods. On the RC-12, we’ve flown communications components requiring exact geographical distances and strict angle of bank limitations. On the UV-18, we have flown preplanned routes to match the exact time and place of satellite overflight.”

“We use the NP-3 to conduct most of our missions,” said Lt. Cmdr. Brandon Adams. “Unlike the P-3s used for the MPA mission, the interiors of our NP-3s are pretty much empty.” That space can be filled with specialized sensors and data collection equipment to help the scientists conduct their research.

The squadron’s RC-12M is a little faster than the Twin Otter and can operate up to 27,000 feet for five hours. It’s still considered a lightweight aircraft and offers a lower cost alternative to researchers who do not require the large four-engine NP-3 for their work.

Adams said each project is unique, but they all require thorough preflight planning. Safety of flight is always of paramount concern, and before VXS-1 even operates the aircraft with the project installed it must go through a comprehensive Naval Air Systems Command review.

“Because of the uniqueness of each project, we must conduct a thorough examination of what is different about the project and if there are potential impacts to our normal operating and emergency procedures, as well as have an understanding of the desired flight profile and possible impacts. From there, an understanding of the desired flight profile can be achieved,” Adams said.

There’s a lot of crew coordination between the air crew and researchers.

“When we fly, we communicate with the scientists in the back to make sure we’re getting the right data they need,” Adams said.

Adams and Lt. Evan Pappas recently took the squadron’s UV-18 to Alaska to conduct an airborne lidar and camera survey to look at the ocean surface and immediate subsurface in a high wind environment to collect data on the water column in support of NRL’s ocean sciences division.

“We correlated that data with information from [a] buoy station off the coast and satellites,” said Pappas. “The lidar can provide high-resolution measurements of the ocean physical properties. It allows us to measure things like oil thickness in the event of a hazardous material spill and characterize bubbly surfaces to improve our ocean modeling.”

The deployment was the result of a year and a half of planning to determine the best area to conduct the research.

Low and Slow

The UV-18 is the military designation of the DeHavilland DHC-6 Twin Otter. Because the aircraft isn’t pressurized, it’s easier to modify for experiments. The Twin Otter can fly low and slow and linger in an area at speeds around 100 knots. 

For the recent airborne lidar research, Adams and Pappas required a thorough review of the necessary precautions and limitations for conducting testing in Alaska in the winter. Requirements included obtaining required survival equipment and completing a major maintenance inspection while deployed.

“We also coordinated hangar space and preflight procedures that ensured the project’s lidar equipment maintained optimal storage temperature and was rapidly warmed for flight use, despite the below-freezing temperatures,” Adams said.

According to Adams, it’s essential for the VXS-1 pilots to clarify with the project specialist what the significance of each flight parameter holds.

“The recent airborne lidar research required us to maintain 5,300 feet and fly slow, which is ideal for the UV-18. That is what it is designed to do. Ultimately, the more we know about the desired testing parameters, the more efficiently we can complete the testing. By actively engaging with our customers and thoroughly reviewing their desired objectives, together we can develop the best plan for a successful project.”

Because the ultimate goal of NRL research is a capability that can be transitioned to the fleet, the interaction with VXS-1 research pilots and the research team in early stages of a research project is invaluable.

“This helps NRL research, prototyping and testing to remain focused on the mission as the flight clearances and logistics are already following the active-duty processes,” said Dr. Damien Josset, an NRL oceanographer.

Josset, who participated in the recent deployment to Alaska, said the support from the squadron’s research pilots allowed the researchers to collect critical ocean sciences data that can be used to improve numerical simulations and as inputs of ocean models, and better predict the ocean environment for Navy operations.

“No two projects are the same,” Pappas said. “The biggest determining factors in selecting an aircraft for our customers are typically the size of their payload and the flight envelope that they’re looking for. As long as the payload fits on board the plane and the desired flight profile matches the aircraft’s performance capability, we can meet most customers’ demands for instrument and sensor configuration. This capability is what makes our aircraft unique and differentiates them either from their fleet variants or commercial civilian variants. We could have an aircraft outfitted for a project one day, de-install the equipment and any sensors, and install an entirely new project just a few days later with a different purpose and scope.”

Pappas said it’s gratifying to help the scientists take their research ideas and turn them into executable projects that yield results.

“A lot of what we do to help develop and test does not have an immediate application to the fleet at this time, but the research opens up opportunities for the scientists, and they can apply the testing to future applications.”

The U.S. Navy’s MQ-4C Triton high-altitude, long endurance unmanned aerial vehicle has been deployed for more than a year to the Western Pacific and by all accounts is impressing the fleet with its capabilities and is in high demand by regional commanders.

Unmanned Patrol Squadron 19 (VUP-19), the first of two planned Triton fleet squadrons, deployed two MQ-4Cs to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, in January 2020 on the aircraft’s early operational capability (EOC) deployment. The two Tritons are being used for fleet operations and to provide lessons learned to pave the way for future operations off full “orbits,” the Navy’s term for a fully equipped site of four Tritons able to support a 24/7 on-station presence.

“Our operations from Guam are fully integrated into the 7th Fleet mission, from interactions with joint partners, carrier strike groups, and other MPRF [maritime patrol reconnaissance force assets, such as P-8A aircraft] and exercises,” said Cmdr. Michael V. Minervini, commanding officer of VUP-19, responding to questions from Seapower. “Typical missions range from 20 to 24 hours. VUP-19 is administratively controlled by commander, Patrol and Reconnaissance Wing 11 and operationally controlled by commander, Task Force 72.”

Minervini, a naval flight officer with flight time in P-3 and P-8 aircraft who assumed command in April 2020, said the EOC deployment “was established to smooth the supply chain and operate forward to push the airframe and discover maintenance challenges. EOC has been successful at identifying areas for improvement in the supply system and logistics process as well as determining scheduled maintenance inspection schedules and spare parts. These lessons learned will allow for a seamless transition and immediate impact on IFC-4 [Integrated Functional Capability 4] operations forward.”

The two MQ-4Cs deployed by VUP-19 are equipped with the baseline capability, IFC-3, which includes a multi-sensor mission payload — maritime radar, electro-optical/infrared, electronic support measures, automatic identification system and basic communications relay — said Capt. Dan Mackin, the Navy’s Persistent Maritime Unmanned Aircraft Systems program manager, in response to questions from Seapower.

“The next phase, known as IFC-4, will bring a multi-INT capability as part of the navy’s maritime intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting transition plan,” he said.

“Triton sensors are performing to expectations and are providing 7th Fleet, [Pacific Fleet] and [Indo-Pacific Command] commanders with an additive early operational capability and persistent ISR in a vital area of U.S interest. These assets are in high demand.”

Rear Adm. Gregory Harris, the director of Air Warfare in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, told an audience on March 30 of the “good news that we’re getting. We are really excited with what we’ve learned there [operations from Guam], the growth that’s gone on in that program and the early operational capabilities that we’ve seen. So, first and foremost, we’re excited by what we’re seeing out of Triton.”

‘Incredible Capability’

Harris said the Triton fielded “an absolutely incredible capability” and the fleet is “looking forward to having full operational capability in the future.” 

VUP-19 is based at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida, but its Tritons and maintenance personnel are based at Naval Air Station Point Mugu, part of Naval Base Ventura County, California. Minervini said approximately 350 officers and enlisted personnel are assigned to the squadron, but full manning is expected to reach an estimated 600 personnel. 

“The average footprint in Guam is around 40-80 personnel, which varies during turnover and readiness training detachments, when maintenance personnel are forward deployed from Point Mugu to earn their qualifications,” Minervini said. “Maintainers on sea duty deploy for approximately six to eight months with a 12-month home cycle. Unmanned aircraft commanders [UACs/pilots] on shore duty deploy for an average of two to three months once a year.”

VUP-19’s maintenance detachment is scheduled for a homeport change from Point Mugu to Naval Station Mayport, Florida — only a few miles from NAS Jacksonville — in the fall of 2021.

“The relative geographical colocation of our stateside operators with our maintenance team will establish a hub of unmanned operations and ensure success as we expand our operations into other areas of responsibility,” Minervini said.

The Navy plans to activate a second Triton squadron, VUP-11, on the West Coast. Minervini said his squadron expects to “have a significant role in establishment of VUP-11. This will pertain to operations, training and administration.”

The Navy’s program of record calls for the procurement of 68 production MQ-4Cs from Northrop Grumman. Low-rate initial production orders as of April 2021 totaled 15: LRIP-1 (2016): four; LRIP-2 (2017): two; LRIP-3 (2018): three; LRIP-4 (2019): three; LRIP 5 (2020): two, plus one more authorized by the fiscal 2021 congressional plus-up. Three Tritons had been delivered to the fleet by early 2021.

Procurement of the Triton for the U.S. Navy is being paused for fiscal 2021 and 2022. Australia will take delivery during fiscal 2023-2025 of three Tritons.

“The intent of the production pause in air vehicle procurement across the FYDP [Future Years Defense Plan] was to strategically focus on the development of SIGINT [signals intelligence] capabilities IFC-4 Multi-INT [multi-intelligence],” Mackin said, noting that two Australian Tritons were procured in fiscal 2020 and the additional Triton in the fiscal 2021 congressional plus-up “will partially mitigate the effects of a production pause.”

Mackin said the production pause would affect the fielding of the Triton’s planned orbits.

“The Navy plans to deploy Triton to five orbits world­wide,” he said. “MQ-4C will support three OCONUS [out­side the continental United States] orbits by end of 2025. However, due to the production pause, deployment to the two CONUS orbits will be delayed.”

Three prototype Tritons are based at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, as test assets for the program.

One test asset is in the current IFC-3 configuration and “is being used to support sustainment of EOC deployed systems as well as risk reduction for IFC-4,” Mackin said. “The other two assets are being modified into the IFC-4 configuration in support of IOC [initial operational capability] in fourth quarter” of fiscal 2023.

One of the test assets is owned by Northrop Grumman and will be used to test the Multi-INT systems.

Mackin said the main operating base and forward operating base mission control elements for IFC-3 “have been delivered and are performing well.”

Sense and Avoid

Since early in the Triton program, the Navy has been planning for a sense-and-avoid radar (SAAR) for the Triton to enhance its collision-avoidance capability.

“The program of record SAAR engineering manufacturing development is deferred” until fiscal 2023, Mackin said. “The program continues to support SAAR cost, schedule and risk reduction activities including the delivery of a partial capability, prototype SAAR by the end of the year. Traffic Collision Avoidance subsystems are in use as part of the Due Regard alternate means of compliance.”

The Navy’s earlier Global Hawk/Broad-Area Maritime Surveillance – Demonstration (BAMS-D) program continues to shine, despite the loss of one RQ-4A Global Hawk to an Iranian missile in June 2019. The aircraft are operated in the U.S. Central Command area of operations by a detachment of Patrol Reconnaissance Wing 11.

Since the system’s first flight in October 2004, “the system has completed 2,119 sorties totaling over 39,596 flight hours, of which 1,825 sorties, totaling over 37,633 flight hours, are in direct support of overseas contingency operations,” Mackin said. “During the over 12-year period since the deployment began, BAMS-D has been the by-name requested asset for maritime ISR in the theater, surpassing all expectations for the originally planned six-month demonstration.”