Ron Tremain hails from Sherwood, Oregon, and is the vice president of Maritime Domain Awareness for Saildrone Inc. Prior to coming aboard Saildrone, Tremain led the maritime business development team at Insitu and consulted on avia­tion programs at Boeing.

Tremain’s history of maritime operational success is demon­strated by his 23-year career as one of the first elite U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmers and by his strong track record of building some of the largest and most successful autonomous maritime programs, as evidenced by the highly successful U.S. Coast Guard ScanEagle program and his work protecting national security and battling illegal, unreported and unreg­ulated fishing; piracy; and transnational organized crime in the U.S. government and international arenas. 

Tremain responded to questions from Senior Editor Richard R. Burgess.

What is Saildrone?

TREMAIN: Saildrone is a company building and operat­ing unmanned surface vehicles [USVs] that are powered primarily by solar energy, with wind being the primary propellent for the craft. Our founder, Richard Jenkins, has set a number of world records in the sailing industry be­fore coming to the autonomy world, and he brought his technologies and his experience into creating a vehicle that has the capability to operate at long range and long endurance with primarily solar and wind power.

We have three difference sizes of platforms: Our small­est is the 23-foot-long Explorer. Our medium size is the 33-foot-long Voyager. Our largest size is the 72-foot-long Surveyor. The carbon-fiber sail on each is more like a wing than a sail but is a sail that can be controlled mechanically and with the wind. Depending on which di­rection we want it to sail, the operator can make adjust­ments to increase the speed, decrease the speed, change course direction as needed. The largest USV, Surveyor, also has a diesel engine installed to augment the genera­tor and to drive an underwater propeller as needed.

The speed of the Saildrones depends on the wind and on the size of the vessel. Surveyor can do at more than 9 knots, Voyager can do 7 knots plus and Explorer typically does up to 4 knots, but it can do 4 knots plus.

What kind of sensors equip Saildrones?

TREMAIN: For sensors, the USVs are fitted with an ad­vanced sensor suite of atmospheric and oceanograph­ic sensors, combined with MDA sensors such as AIS [Automatic Identification Systems], radar. Depending on the configuration, we have either four to 16 cameras that are pointing in a variety of directions but overlap 360-degree cameras to give a complete picture of the vehicle’s surroundings. The USVs also can be fitted with towed arrays.

How is the data transmitted to the user?

TREMAIN: All data coming off a Saildrone is real-time and is on a secure network, so it is mission hardened ready for military applications. The data will be linked directly into systems like Minotaur, which is the mesh network for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other services. The advantage of that means that they don’t have to have a standalone data feed for Saildrone. The data goes right into the existing architecture.

What are some of Saildrone’s operations?

TREMAIN: It’s important to note all three vessels are equipped to be at sea for six months or longer. So it’s a real force multiplier and a game-changer to current op­erations, because it allows an autonomous vehicle to be at sea for extended periods of time and at extreme rang­es. To put it into perspective, not long ago we launched USVs from our site base in Alameda, California, and they currently are conducting fisheries operations in the Bering Sea, tracking and surveying tagged king crabs for a fisheries consortium. We’ve done the same with other fisheries and government agencies. The government and fisheries can do a comparative analysis and determine the best recommendations for a particular fishery.

With respect to the Coast Guard, Voyager fits very well for their mission of countering illegal, unreported and un­regulated fishing [IUU], which has overtaken piracy as a maritime law enforcement problem. In addition to coun­tering IUU fishing, USVs could conduct long-duration intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions to enable narcotics interdictions.

Last year, we conducted an operational demonstration for the Coast Guard’s District 14 in Hawaii, a very good showing of the capabilities and how we can inject into current operations. We also learned that there were some shortcomings, so we went back to the drawing board and created our middle-sized vessel, Voyager, our flagship for maritime domain operations. Our larger platform, Surveyor, was built for the mission of ba­thymetry, surveying the ocean floor. But all three USVs are basically utility vessels and can be configured as appropriate to customer needs based on space-weight-power requirements.

Saildrones have conducted the first eastbound and west­bound crossings of the Atlantic Ocean. They have tracked fish in the North Sea, surveyed ocean eddies off Africa and air-sea heat transfer over the Gulf of Mexico and discovered a shipwreck in the gulf. They have sailed up to and into bands of Arctic sea ice.

Explorer has done several missions worldwide to include circumnavigating Antarctica and then returning to Ala­meda, a journey of over 12,000 miles and 196 days. It has been used for many years now to conduct fishery surveys, bathymetry, NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospher­ic Administration] operations, and other science and oceanographic operations. It’s been quite successful.

Saildrones have been used by NOAA and a university to study great white sharks between California and Hawaii, resulting in a lot of new knowledge about them. We’re also conducting a lot of weather operations, providing real-time weather data feeds from every hour from each vessel to NOAA and to the National Weather Service. Most weather patterns develop over the ocean and are tracked by satellite, but lacking are data on water salinity and temperature, etc. Now, we’re able to provide real-time, accurate reports of weather conditions wherever Sail­drones are deployed.

What business model does Saildrone use?

TREMAIN: A customer could either make an acquisi­tion outright or lease services. COCO [contractor owned, contractor operated] services has been our primary source of revenue. We provide the service and maintain the equipment thereby affording government agencies. As with UAVs, the services model is working quite well for the government because they can avoid the high cost of hiring additional personnel or pose additional risk to personnel at sea.

Customers typically pay by the day for USV services, because we provide 24/7 surveillance and a 24/7 data feed from the Saildrone. That’s a real advantage compared with UAVs where customers pay for so many hours per day.

Can you deploy Saildrones to launch from remote sites?

TREMAIN: It depends on the geographic location, the operation, its duration and what is most cost effective. We can transport out to the location, but for many oper­ations, we launch from Alameda, sail to the destination, conduct operations and recover back. We’ll repair on site as needed and continue the operation. With the current king crab mission, we deemed it appropriate to launch from Alameda and sail them north. For other missions in Alaska, it made best sense to transport them to Dutch Harbor for launch.

How many Saildrones do you have in inventory now? Does your company build or procure them?

TREMAIN: We have about a hundred, based in a hangar at the former Naval Air Station Alameda, which also is the location of our data center. Incoming data arriving via satellite can also be shared to government networks, for example the Customs and Border Protection [CBP] Ca­ribbean Air Marine Operations Center in San Juan, Puerto Rico, or the Air and Marine Operations Center in River­side, California. That allows CBP and all DHS agencies to take that information, inject it into their architecture and then make an educated decision on where, when and how to operate.

We currently manufacture all of our platforms. We did have some assistance on building Surveyor. But the com­pany has gotten to the size where the number of plat­forms deploying is so great that we most likely will have to outsource some of the keels and such to shipbuilders. It’s a good problem to have.

Where do you see Saildrone potentially fitting in Coast Guard operations?

TREMAIN: The Coast Guard is planning for the next 20 years on how to bring autonomy into their operations. Their ScanEagle program is up and running and doing a great job. The Coast Guard stood up a UxS program office last year to build their long-term unmanned system and autonomy strategy for the next 20-25 years.

The Coast Guard always has been a little budget-chal­lenged, priding itself with doing more with less. Provid­ing capabilities like Saildrone allows them to do more with less. It’s a cost-effective solution that provides critical data so they can better make decisions and can better prosecute the missions and more effectively use their personnel. We look forward to doing more work with the Coast Guard and the other branches of the mili­tary going forward. I think the Coast Guard is really going to cross-pollinate their autonomous capabilities — their surface assets with their air assets.

An example: Saildrones conducting surveillance in a particular area can find friendly and unfriendly targets and provide that real-time data back to the Coast Guard. An aircraft like a Volansi vertical takeoff and landing UAV may be conducting a shore based coastal patrol, may be able to intercept and surveil the target of interest, while ScanEagle UAVs continue conducting ship-launched patrols. In theory, the USV and UAV will have the capa­bility to talk to each other, forming a mesh network that expands the search horizon thereby allowing the UAV to track that target well after the Saildrone picked it up as a hot target. Being able to do that and other autonomous operations, I think is going to really increase the effec­tiveness of the Coast Guard.

For search and rescue, if Saildrones track a ship that is in a particular area and then that vessel sinks, having a patrolling Volansi UAV drop a small raft or a data marker buoy to the survivors then ascend to provide safe over­watch while the Coast Guard helicopter or cutter comes out to make the rescue.

Special aviation squadrons conduct developmental and operational testing, as well as scientific research. These squadrons have specialized aircraft along with test pilots, naval flight officers (NFOs), test engineers and other specialists. Qualified test pilots, aircrews and engineers make up a very small percentage of naval aviation, but what they do has a huge impact on the Navy and Marine Corps of today and for many years to come.

The developmental testing squadrons report to the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) and Weapons Division (NAWCWD) — the two warfare centers that support the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR)— and evaluate NAVAIR’s aircraft and weapon systems to make sure they do what they’re designed to do.

The operational testing squadrons — VX-9 at China Lake, California, for tactical strike aircraft (F/A-18s, EA-18Gs and F-35s) and VX-1 at Patuxent River, Maryland, for rotary and fixed-wing antisubmarine warfare and other maritime aircraft and weapons — report to commander, Operational Test and Evaluation Force, and evaluate the aircraft and systems and their ability to conduct the mission.

Further tactical experimentation and validation is done at the schools, such as the Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada.

“The three organizations have a critical role in coming together to communicate to the program sponsoring the capability and helping them make the right decisions,”said U.S. Marine Corps Col. Richard Marigliano at NAWCAD’s Naval Test Wing Atlantic.

Marigliano is responsible for four aircraft squadrons and the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School (USNTPS), which includes the full spectrum of aviation assets from large four-engine jets to tactical fighters to helicopters, tiltrotors and unmanned aircraft.

“We have about 3,800 people within Test Wing Atlantic, including government and contractor civilians, as well as officer and enlisted military personnel,” he said.

The West Coast wing, Naval Test Wing Pacific, conducts weapons flight testing for NAWCWD, but the squadrons in both wings work together. “It’s not fair to say we just do airplanes and they just do weapons, because aircraft today are a very complex systems-of-systems,” Marigliano said.

“We team an experienced civilian project engineer with a pilot or NFO with recent flying experience and who has completed Naval Test Pilot School,” said Marigliano. “We look at complex systems and see how well they are integrated and networked, with all the interfaces and inter- dependencies. The test pilots and engineers conduct the planning, execution and reporting of the tests to answer the question: ‘Did the Navy buy what it’s supposed to buy, and did it get value?’”

In addition to the test aircraft, simulators and shore-based test beds are also used.

“Some things have to be done in flight, and the tests are conducted on ranges tailored for the type of flying that we do,” Marigliano said. “Sometimes we take advantage of fleet exercise opportunities to conduct testing in more realistic environment.”

Focus on the Mission and Aircraft

Capt. Elizabeth Somerville is a naval flight officer and chief test pilot for VX-23, based at Patuxent River. She will assume command of the squadron in July.

“We conduct testing for tactical aircraft, including the F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet, EA-18G Growler, T-45 trainer and the F-35, and we will be receiving the MQ-25 Stingray unmanned aerial refueling aircraft when it’s ready,” she said. “We have a tremendous team at my squadron and at the wing here on the East Coast and the West Coast, involving thousands of dedicated professionals. There is a lot of personal investment in develop- mental flight test.”

Somerville said developmental flight testing differs from operational flight testing.

“We come into the acquisition of an aircraft, weapon or software first, as early on in the life cycle of that product as possible. There has already been a lot of work on that product to get it to this point, and we then take it through its developments and ensure it works and does the job it was designed to do. Our squadron is filled with USNTPS graduates. After developmental test, usually a system will undergo operational test where a squadron will make sure the product meets the mission needs of the fleet.”

The departments in her squadron are focused either on the mission or the aircraft, she said.

“We get projects to test aircraft, systems and software, and they can cross multiple departments. We conduct a lot of ‘carrier suitability testing.’ Not only do aircraft have to be able to land safely on the carrier, but so do all of the systems and components. Everything on that aircraft — each black box, weapon and every little bit of software — has to function in that harsh carrier environment.”

VX-23 has a team of engineers who are specialists in a wide variety of disciplines who work with the US-NTPS-trained pilots and NFOs to develop the detailed test plan, which then goes through a review process. “We have experienced test flight engineers and test conductors who monitor the whole series of events in real time to make sure everything is behaving as expected, we’re getting the data we need, and we’re conducting the testing effectively, efficiently and safely,” Somerville said.

According to Somerville, things don’t always behave as expected. The systems are so complex and have to be integrated and interoperable. “You can’t expect everything to go perfectly the first time,” said Somerville. “We’re constantly learning and discovering things, and it’s important to find things early enough so they can be fixed. We don’t want to pass on a capability to the fleet that doesn’t do its job. We’re here to deliver the warfighter the capability that he or she needs.”

Somerville said her team is always looking for opportunities to take systems in mission-relevant environments, such as fleet exercises, to test under realistic conditions and validate the systems. “We leverage ways to test systems without taking an airplane up. We do extensive lab testing and modeling and simulation when we can, which is safer and more cost effective. It costs a lot less to run a simulator for an hour than an aircraft. But sometimes, there’s no substitute for getting that system and that aircraft airborne into its relevant environment and ensuring that it works.”

VX-31, based at NAS China Lake, also does F/A-18 and EA-18G flight testing. “We work with them extensively,” Somerville said.

Lt. Anup Engineer, an E-2D Hawkeye NFO, is a test pilot with VX-20, also based at Pax River. He served with VAW-113 and made three deployments aboard the USS George Washington and USS Ronald Reagan. He was selected for Naval Test Pilot School, and upon graduation joined VX-20 as a project officer. VX-20 is the primary E-2 test squadron, with multiple variants equipped for different testing.

“At USNTPS we learn about organization, math, quantification of data and writing. We learn how to develop a methodological plan to get the test points completed with a minimum amount of resources,” he said. “There is a meticulous test planning process. We need to tell the people who will be flying our flights exactly what data we need them to collect, and we learn to document everything that we observe as pilots or NFOs, all so we can accurately evaluate the system against the requirement, and what the fleet needs.”

The project teams include civilian engineers and technical staff and industry representatives with a wealth of knowledge and experience. But, Engineer said, he’s often one of the few active-duty military people on a

project. “We bring recent fleet experience. We have a set of knowledge that is unique, because we’ve deployed the plane operationally.”

“When you’re in the fleet, you notice things that could be improved upon to make the airplane better. As a development test pilot, I now have a chance to effect new technologies early on, before they’re too mature to be changed,” Engineer said. “I’m working on the latest generation of software that will make a number of improvements to the weapon system, including the radar, communications and data links. My job is about making good systems work even better.”

MIT of Flight Test

“We train aviators and aviation professionals to manage critically important aircraft programs for all of U.S. military services, the Department of Defense and 17 partner nations,” said U.S. Naval Test Pilot School Commanding Officer Lt. Col. Rory “Pikey” Feely, U.S. Marine Corps.

USNTPS has a very involved training curriculum. “We train over 70 students a year. End-to-end, the school has a 55-week cycle time at a minimum, with 47 weeks here in the building. The typical student is already a very accomplished aviator with one to two successful tours in the fleet and usually an engineering, mathematics or physics degree.”

According to Feely, an advanced diploma in flight test from USNTPS requires 530-plus hours in academics, 100 sorties and about 120 flight hours in applied academics in the aircraft and preparation of more than two dozen technical reports. “By the time they leave here they will have flown anywhere from 10 to 15 different aircraft, from helicopters to tail-draggers to jets to gliders.”

Graduates usually report to one of the NAWCAD or NAWCWD squadrons at Pax River or China Lake, which is why they were selected for USNTPS.

USNTPS has international students and instructors from about 17 or 18 partner nations and provides test pilot training for Army and Air Force rotary wing and tilt rotor pilots. Command of the USNTPS rotates between the Navy, Marine Corps and Army.

“We train a lot of non-pilot engineers,” Feely said. “Our airborne and unmanned students mainly focus on combat systems, and everyone receives some level of unmanned systems training.”

Feely said people think USNTPS has a bunch of really cool aircraft, and it does, “but they are more airborne classrooms and laboratories rather than aircraft. … While some of the USNTPS aircraft are old, it’s not a museum. We don’t do boring. We are doing applied science. We are the MIT of flight test.

“For the capstone project, we tell the students, ‘Here’s your aircraft. Here are the books. Presume you’re the first person to evaluate the aircraft. Write the test plan. Fly the aircraft. Write the report,’” Feely said.

“At the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, we deal with a lot of high achievers,” said Feely. “Everyone here at the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, the students and the instructors, have been competitively selected. Not every student who comes here is the next Chuck Yeager, but 90 of our US-NTPS graduates have become astronauts.”

The Department of the Navy is steward to some of America’s most precious archeological sites as well as natural habitats for migratory and endangered species.

On the archeological front, there are some spectacular examples. At Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, California, the public can see one of the largest collections of Native American Rock Art at Little Petroglyph Canyon, where more than 6,000 images were left by the ancient Coso people of California.

The Foxtrot Petroglyph Site at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and has a variety of different types of rock art, including both petroglyphs (images created through pecking, scratching, or rubbing onto the stone surface) and pictographs (images painted onto stone) at the same site.

Naval Base Pearl Harbor is the site of ancient native Hawaiian fishponds, such as the Okiokiolepe Fishpond, listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Numerous other prehistoric archeological sites in the Western U.S. are protected by the Navy at Naval Air Station (NAS) Fallon, Nevada, NAS Whidbey Island, Washington and NAS North Island, California, and other installations.

Artifacts at the Posey Site at Naval Surface Weapons Center, Indian Head, Maryland, provide evidence of intensive Indian trade with Europeans. NAS Pensacola is the site of one of the earliest European settlements in Florida, Santa Maria de Galve, established in 1698. 

As these examples indicate, Navy and Marine Corps installations are often established located on lands previously occupied by various cultures and ethnic groups in the past.

“It is DoN policy to locate and identify these sites, which number in the tens of thousands, and to protect them and any artifacts and collections that may be excavated or erode from them,” said W. Brock During, environmental program director for Commander, Navy Installations Command.

Moving coral

The Department of the Navy is also steward of a number of sensitive ecological areas, and being a good environmental steward also means restoring, protecting and enhancing the quality of the environment for current and future generations.

In fiscal year 2021, Joint Region Marianas (JRM) expects to spend millions for conservation projects, primarily associated with military construction, military training and ungulate management. For example, a wharf improvement project at Apra Harbor on U.S. Naval Base Guam involves relocation of approximately 4,500 coral colonies. Future projects include plans to relocate an additional 150,000 coral colonies.

The Navy and other DoD services partner with other federal, state and local partners, specifically U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Wildlife Services, to coordinate and conduct brown tree snake inspections of all units and their equipment that come to the Mariana Islands to train. Brown tree snakes are an invasive species that can wipe out native birds and animals.

Ungulate fencing projects on military installations on Guam is protecting native habitats from two specific non-native invasive species — feral pigs and deer — which destroy natural vegetation, increase rates of erosion, contribute to the loss of native plant and animal species and increase the spread of invasive plants.

JRM is working to protect the endangered Serianthes nelsonii, commonly known as the fire tree, endemic to Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Guam’s only mature Serianthes nelsonii tree is located on Andersen Air Force Base. The preservation efforts, including the planting of numerous saplings, are aimed at increasing the Serianthes nelsonii population conserving Guam’s unique limestone forests. JRM’s habitat conservation and watershed management activities are helping to reduce erosion and improve water quality.

“Taking a proactive approach to protecting the region’s natural and cultural resources remains a priority for DoD,” said Rear Adm. John Menoni, JRM commander. “We recognize that the stewardship of the region’s cultural and natural resources is a significant responsibility and it is one we take seriously.”

Helping Habitats

In and around Naval District Washington, wildlife biologists at NSF Dahlgren are conducting Atlantic and Shortnose Sturgeon surveys where the fish are being tagged with radio-frequency identification, or RFID transmitters, to track their movements in the Potomac River.

Yearly bird surveys counting Rufus red knots and great blue herons are conducted at NAS Patuxent River’s Bloodsworth Island Range. NSF Dahlgren, NSF Indian Head and NAS Patuxent River have been working together on a five-year survey of tricolored, little brown, Indiana, and northern long-eared bats.

A number of facilities are creating pollinator habitats to benefit the rusty-patched bumble bee and the monarch butterfly. The bases are also conducting bald eagle and spotted turtle and diamondback terrapin surveys are ongoing at NAS Patuxent River, and NSA Bethesda is conducting species inventories of herpetofauna, small mammals, benthic macroinvertebrates, and avian species.

Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is a safe habitat for endangered species, such as the Hutia, known locally as “banana rats,” Cuban rock iguana and Cuban boa.

In Navy Region Northwest, the restricted access to beaches at Naval Magazine Indian Island at Kilisut Harbor — home to protected bald eagle nests, endangered newts and cougars — and clam harvesting agreements with local tribes have resulted in some of the best tribal clamming in the Puget Sound and Sailish Sea. 

One of the largest old growth forests in the “Evergreen State” is the Navy-managed old growth forest at the Jim Creek communications facility and recreation area near Naval Station Everett. The Navy owns the 4,827-acre property, purchased in 1950, but a paper company owned the timber rights. In 1992, the Navy purchased the timber rights to the land it already owned for $3 million, which at that time was the single largest natural resource conservation project ever funded by the DoD.

Working with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, California Department of Fish and Wildilfe, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and others, the Navy’s California least terns and western snowy plover protection program has protecting nest sites and hatchlings to ensure the survival of these federally protected species.

Once a remote ammo depot, Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach is now surrounded by dense urban development, yet this base, located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, is the only military installation that has a National Wildlife Refuge completely enclosed within the fence line. The 965 acres of coastal wetlands has been a sanctuary for local and migratory wildlife since 1972. 

In the San Diego Bay, the Navy has partnered the Port of San Diego and nonprofits to improve the natural habitat and expand the eelgrass, a fundamental resource for sustaining life in the bay.

‘We care’

Some wildlife protection programs are simple and low-cost. In 1986, it was estimated that the eastern bluebird population had declined by 90 percent in its historic range over the preceding 50 years due to changes in agriculture practices, competition from invasive bird species and loss of nest sites. So, Alisha Sutton of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Explosive Safety & Environmental Branch with her colleagues to establish a nest box trail for eastern bluebirds at NRL’s Chesapeake Beach facility.

Most recently, Sutton and her team moved the nest boxes from fencing to stand-alone posts with predator guards to prevent snakes and other predators from getting into the box and eating the young bluebirds.

NRL is also helping the Chesapeake Bay’s oyster population recover. Oysters play a unique role in the health of the bay by their ability to filter water and improve water quality. But in recent years, the bay’s oyster population has declined dramatically because of overharvesting, pollution, disease, and habitat loss, and with it the health of bay’s ecosystem.

NRL is working in partnership with the Chesapeake Beach Oyster Cultivation Society (CBOCS) to cultivate oysters. CBOCS provides tiny oyster “spat” to sink in cages near NRL’s Chesapeake Bay Detachment docks where the oysters can grow. After about a year in this “nursery,” the cages are hauled out of the water, the oysters counted and then taken to deeper water to be spread on a reef.

“The work is as muddy and tedious as it is rewarding,” said Alisha Sutton. “This summer we spread 7,000 matured spat on the reef.

“The Navy has a lot of acreage all over the world,” Sutton said. “We’re members of the community and we’re dedicated to taking good care of the land which are entrusted with. We care about the land, the water and the air in the environment where we are working.”

Everyone wants accurate weather predictions, but for the military, and the Navy in particular, they can be crucial — typhoons can sink ships and bad weather can force operational delays.

Providing timely and accurate weather predictions and information about the maritime environment falls to the roughly 2,500 military members and civilians who work for the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command.

“Naval oceanography applies meteorological, oceanographic and astrometric decision-science expertise across every aspect of warfare,” said Rear Adm. John A. Okon, who heads the Stennis Space Flight Center, Mississippi-based command. “No other organization across our government, [including] the Department of Defense, applies this knowledge under, on or above the sea in a manner with assured information that can be protected and relied upon in the high-end fight.”

The Navy’s antisubmarine, mine, electromagnetic and special warfare communities all depend upon information the Naval Oceanography Operations Command — which reports to Okon — gathers and processes. Six Pathfinder-class (T-AGS) survey ships and a fleet of unmanned underwater vehicles operate while forward deployed, constantly compiling data.

Buoyancy gliders, drifters, upper-air balloons, satellites and telescopes monitor the operational space from the ocean floor to the stars, providing commanders with real-time understanding of the conditions in which they conduct their missions. The data is processed into numerical models that forecast conditions of the atmosphere, ocean, waves, ice and surf as accurately as possible — and predict how they would affect the performance of weapons systems and fleet operations.

“We use high-performance computing to match with the expert knowledge of our Sailors and civilians — subject matter experts — to develop various certain scenarios that might affect fleet operations,” Okon said.

For example, a typhoon moving through the Western Pacific would certainly curtail surface-fleet operations, Okon said, but offer optimal conditions to conduct antisubmarine warfare. “This is a critical tier that develops environmental knowledge and a predictive advantage to the fleet.”

Round the Clock Forecasting

The Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC) engages in round-the-clock, high-performance computing at all levels of security, from unclassified to top secret. “FNMOC has the nation’s only information-assured modeling capability,” Okon said.

Fleet weather centers at Norfolk and San Diego naval stations can take information from both the Oceanography Operations Command and FNMOC and provide operational area forecasts to the fleet as it is in route, Okon said. Even though such actions ensure a margin of safety, Okon pointed out that “Mother Nature always gets a vote.”

The cooperative effort among the production centers and the fleet weather center provides further information that would keep the forces of nature from wreaking havoc on a mission, Okon said. Additionally, the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., provides the authoritative time reference essential for precise navigation and positioning necessary for accurate computer operation, as well as targeting of weapons and systems.

Okon described the concept of battlespace on demand as a multi-tiered pyramid. The bottom layer consists of observational platforms, with eyes on the oceans, the atmosphere and space. The next tier employs models generated from those observations, providing a functional understanding and prediction of any given environment. The top layer, he said, uses the collected information to determine how the environment would affect performance of forces and systems.

Ultimately, Okon said, the highly trained Sailors and civilians who work under him are experts in disseminating the data and providing the fleet with the predictive advantage they need. The work at hand requires what he calls a highly trained and motivated staff of apprentice, journeyman and master forecasters. “They’re the ones who link the data to decisions,” Okon said.

Much of his enlisted force consists of 975 aerographer’s mates. Some 340 officers are oceanographers, the senior-most of whom hold masters’ degrees in meteorology.

“We also have civilians who have dedicated their lives to this cause — naval oceanography — to predicting the physical battle space,” Okon said.

As technical lead for the command’s acoustics department, civilian Joseph Senne evaluates the effects on the environment as sound travels through water and into sediment. Any naval craft — manned, unmanned, surface or subsurface — will be affected, he said.

“We estimate geologic properties so that fleet systems give more accurate predictions of how acoustics interact with the seafloor as they’re moving through different world areas,” said Senne, a physicist who holds a doctorate in ocean engineering and master’s degree in marine science. While the general approach to the job is not new, Senne said, the work constantly changes as computers become more capable.

Senne and his colleagues work with other organizations in the Navy research community, including the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the warfare development centers.

“We’re more the production piece, making sure that the answers we’re providing around the world are interacting with tactical decision aids and giving correct answers,” Senne said.

The different parts of the ocean change constantly, he said. Salinity, temperature and the water column itself all have an effect on the way sound travels.

“The cutting edge is being able to keep track of the spatial and temporal variability of the water column, as well as taking advantage of new technologies and methodologies to describe the geo-acoustic environment,” Senne said. “Sound that hits rocky outcroppings is going to behave very differently than when it’s hitting mud.”

Getting this information disseminated and delivered to the captain of a vessel can influence critical decisions. Correct information would better enable a sensor to accurately indicate that an object is one specific distance away or moving in one particular direction. Senne and his colleagues are called upon to spend considerable time at sea plying their trade, with productive results.

“We have mounted sensors on our ships that are multi- beam bathymetry and sub-bottom profiling measurement systems,” Senne said. “They’re putting out sound at very specific frequency bands.”

Based on how the sound reflects off of the sediment, the angle at which it is emitted and returned and travel time, shipboard crews can determine the depth of the water in which they are operating.

“We can do that at very high resolutions and are able to map out the seabed itself,” Senne said. “On top of that, on our acoustic surveys, we will trail seismic-type equipment behind us that is putting sound deeper into the sediment so that it’s not just reflecting from the water-sediment interface but from the layer interfaces of the sediment as well.”

Relaying the Message

The command’s Sailors have to be proficient in jobs that require mastery of a complicated skill set and explain its relevant points to people in leadership who must use them to take critical action at a moment’s notice. Chief Aerographer’s Mate Ciera Greene, an instructor at the Fleet Anti-Submarine Warfare Training Center at Point Loma, California, embraces the challenge.

“It’s super rewarding to have your products be valued at such a high level, and [to be] talking directly to the people making decisions,” Greene said. To be effective, Greene at times has to engage in jargon-filled discourse with her professional colleagues.

“When we’re going through our schooling, we are learning the parameters and rules and science of it all in depth,” Greene said.

But relaying relevant information to those who need it requires a different skill set that also must be learned, Greene said.

“When we talk to other people, we want to explain how we got our answers in definiteness [and] build our credibility,” Greene said. “When a weather briefing is due, you have to understand what everyone is thinking about, the things that matter and the things that could help. And you tailor your briefing to that.”

Bogging down presentations with technical jargon could mean a missed opportunity to inject a valuable piece of information into the decision-making process. The meteorological and oceanographic community, Greene said, uses data from its models primarily provide a level of safety.

“To be a part of the mission in a way that can only make it more efficient and effective is huge,” Greene said. “I’m very proud to be a part of it.”

As quick as Okon is to recognize the contributions civilians and Sailors like Senne and Greene, he understands that continued success hinges upon cooperative arrangements that extend both with and beyond the Navy com- munity. Partnerships with government agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and cooperative research and development agreements with industry, are essential to speed emerging technology through the production pipeline and deliver it to forward operators.

“It is a very big deal. These are key challenges for us, in under and on the sea,” Okon said.

Arrangements such as the command’s two-decade partnership with the University of Southern Mississippi and the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, as well as ONR and NRL, are producing results, Okon said.

“The Gulf Coast Tech Bridge Network spans from Talla- hassee to Panama City [Florida], to Stennis Space Center[in Mississippi], to New Orleans,” Okon said. “It’s a collaboration of three Navy commands — mine, the Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division, and the Naval Research Laboratory at Stennis, and it serves as the nation’s regional super connector — tying together government, industry and academia to solve the Navy’s and nation’s challenges in coastal regions.”

International partners also play essential roles, Okon said, by providing vital oceanographic data and access to ports and harbors around the world. The collective effort, he said, is vital in countering the power competition and thwarting the illegal drug trade.

Unmanned Expertise

Additionally, the oceanography community is emerging as a Defense Department leader in the operation of unmanned vehicles, Okon said.

“We are a key component of the Navy’s innovation culture of catalysts, and we must outpace our competition to ensure that U.S. forces retain that technical warfighting advantage,” Okon said.

With more than 20 years’ experience in operating some 100 different unmanned systems, Okon said, only the commercial oil and gas industry has been at it longer. The command has operated these systems in every ocean in the world and has what he described as a significant inventory of vehicles that have logged more than 60,000 miles and 19,000 hours of bottom time in nearly 2,000 sorties.

“We are the only organization in the world to successfully deploy, operate and retrieve the most ocean gliders at one time — more than 100,” Okon said. “We did that from one location, right here at Stennis.”

The combination of human talent and cutting-edge assets, Okon believes, place the oceanography community in a prime role for the continuing effort to maintain freedom of the seas and win wars.

“Wherever the Navy or joint maritime force is,” Okon said, “you will find naval oceanography.”

The world was transfixed with the images of the NASA Perseverance rover landing on Mars in February. Like all space missions, it involved a myriad of partners and collaborators. Even the U.S. Coast Guard plays an important but little-known role in launch operations. In fact, the service is involved in ensuring maritime safety and security for almost every U.S. space launch.

NASA, Department of Defense and commercial space launch sites are located next to the ocean. In addition to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at Cape Canaveral in Florida, NASA and the Air Force also use Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, California, on the West Coast. NASA also conducts launches from its Wallops Island facility near Chincoteague, Virginia, and SpaceX has developed a commercial launch facility at Boca Chica near Brownsville, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico. The Navy has the ability to launch targets from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on the island of Kauai, but these are not orbital missions. Other space ports are planned.

“We’ve been a mission supporter since 1955,” said Cmdr. Jill Lamb, chief of response for Sector Jacksonville, Florida.

When the space shuttle program shut down, major missions departing from the U.S. also wound down. That’s changed, however. The volume of space missions is growing as companies provide more opportunities to launch payloads, and space tourism is becoming a thing. Business is booming.

“We use a local risk assessment tool for each launch,” said Lamb. “It’s scalable, so we can look at all the factors and adjust our force laydown. It might vary, depending on if were dealing with a satellite launch or an astronaut launch.”

The Coast Guard has a memorandum of agreement with the Space Force’s 45th Space Wing. During major evolutions at the space center, the 45th, working with NASA and the commercial providers, will publish the limited access safety zone and establish a command center where the Coast Guard will participate. On launch day, the Coast Guard will monitor and patrol that zone.

Lamb said the captain of the port (COTP) promulgates a notice to mariners and local notice to mariners to set forth those limited access safety areas. In the case of the KSC launches, the COTP is the sector commander at Jacksonville, assisted by the commanding officer of Station Port Canaveral. On the day of the launch, the warnings are broadcast on marine radio channels. The restricted areas are created to keep unwary boaters or gawkers from being under an area where debris or hazardous materials might fall during a launch.

According to Chief Warrant Officer John Chandler, Station Port Canaveral’s commanding officer, the highest risk during a launch is typically within the first minute or minute and a half, depending on launch vehicle, configuration, and other factors. In some cases, flight abort tests intentionally come down shortly after launch.

“As the local unit, we always maintain a standby SAR [search and rescue] posture,” Chandler said. “During those launches that are deemed high risk, or when we receive a request from the 45th for surveillance assets, our vessels would patrol within the launch danger area, ensuring vessel masters are aware of the hazardous areas and CG enforceable limited access areas [LAAs]. Our job with the USSF day of launch is to provide CG authority in the event a boater is causing the overall risk analysis to increase, which can affect proceeding to launch, hold or scrub.”

Usually, the mere act of informing the boaters to clear out is enough.

“No one really wants to place their vessels in any unwarranted danger. But, if our crews encounter vessels within the LAAs, we are authorized by the COTP to provide notification of violation and initiate additional enforcement documentation if necessary. Thus, for those masters who are less than cooperative, we make sure they understand that these areas are under Coast Guard authority and civil and criminal penalties can be applied.”

While space launches were traditionally a NASA show, today’s launch activities are increasing commercial operations.

“We interact with Canaveral Port Authority, Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, and Florida Fish and Wildlife,” Chandler said. “Our launch partnerships include Space Force, Air Force, NASA, FAA, as well as the launch providers themselves, such as SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin, Boeing and Orbital ATK.”

The sector commander also wears the officer in charge of marine inspection hat and, as such, is involved with inspecting and approving vessels such as the autonomous barges used to recover the booster sections and return them to port.

“They use some highly specialized maritime vessels, and we go aboard to ensure compliance with regulations and safety requirements,” Lamb said. “It’s becoming more challenging to learn these new vessels. They don’t fit squarely into the typical ship categories we’re used to, and each of these commercial operators have their own types of vessels. And as the technology advances and their experience grows, the operators are constantly adjusting their procedures and modifying their vessels, which means we need to conduct frequent inspections to deal with the changes.”

Historic Role

From its Cape Canaveral location just south of the Kennedy Space Center and the launch complexes operated by NASA and the U.S. Air Force, Port Canaveral has played a long and historic role in the development and growth of the space industry on Florida’s Space Coast.

Large assemblies and materials such as bulk fuels can arrive by sea at Port Canaveral. The port is an extremely busy cruise ship homeport, and also hosts Navy submarines when they call at the Navy Ordnance Test Unit.

According to Port Canaveral CEO Capt. John Murray, “Public interest in commercial space operations such as crew capsule splashdowns and recovery of space-related assets has grown as the industry’s operational cadence has increased.”

The port worked with the Coast Guard and local and state law enforcement agencies to create the security model for recovery missions off the coast of Florida.

Traditionally, Coast Guard safety zones may not extend beyond U.S. waters. In December 2020, Congress included a provision to expand the safety zone authority from 12 miles up to 200 miles offshore in the National Defense Authorization Act. This gives the Coast Guard the ability and authority to set and enforce restricted vessel navigation zones to protect the safety and security of offshore and at sea space recovery operations.

Port Canaveral also worked with its state law enforcement partners at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and commercial and military space partners to craft proposed legislation that would allow for FWC personnel to come alongside the U.S. Coast Guard in enforcing restricted vessel traffic and access to near-shore recovery operations in Florida’s coastal waters.

A new space port is being established in the Gulf of Mexico. The SpaceX South Texas launch site, also known as the Boca Chica launch site, is a private rocket production facility, test site and spaceport constructed by SpaceX, located approximately 32 kilometers east of Brownsville, Texas, on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Those launches will be supported by Sector Corpus Christi and Station South Padre Island.

The Coast Guard has the additional job of recovering rocket boosters and returning them to port. Due to the trajectories, the boosters are not jettisoned close to the launch sites — in the case of Canaveral launches, they are recovered off North Carolina. This work started in the era of the space shuttle but continues, although now some booster sections are landing on autonomous barges so they can return to port and be reloaded for a subsequent flight.

Now that U.S. capsules are once again returning to Earth, the Coast Guard has worked closely with NASA and SpaceX to plan the recovery of the SpaceX Dragon crew in August 2020. The Coast Guard established a safety zone and warned boaters to stay out of the zone before splashdown. Mariners were alerted to pending hazardous operations within a specified boundary by a broadcast notice to mariners. The zone went into effect three hours before the capsule splashed into the Gulf.

“When a when capsule detaches from the ISS, it’s coming home pretty quick,” Lamb said. “We need to be in the right place at the right time.”

When the two NASA astronauts landed in the water near Pensacola, Florida, boaters basically ignored the safety zone. The Coast Guard was not involved in recovering the crew or the capsule but was helping to keep the area clear. Boaters crowded around the spacecraft while recovery crews tried to get to the Dragon capsule and get the crew safely onto the recovery boat.

The Coast Guard said later that “numerous boaters ignored the Coast Guard crews’ warnings and decided to encroach the area, putting themselves and those involved in the operation in potential danger,” according to a statement.

More recently, an unmanned SpaceX CRS-21 Cargo Dragon capsule came down in the Gulf of Mexico west of Tampa Bay in January of this year. The Coast Guard established the safety zone and warned boaters to stay out before splashdown. The zone went into effect three hours before the capsule splashed into the Gulf exactly on time, and this time there was no interference.

While launches are becoming more routine, Lamb said they’re still spectacular to observe. “It’s a pretty incredible view.”

Last December, then-Navy Secretary Kenneth J. Braithwaite announced plans to bring back the U.S. Atlantic Fleet in a name change that was a deliberate message to the world — in particular the near-peer competitor nations of Russia and China as well as U.S allies — that the Atlantic Ocean and Arctic region were no longer quiet naval backwaters but areas of intense U.S. geopolitical focus.

The previous month, Braithwaite also announced plans to establish another numbered fleet for the Navy — the U.S. 1st Fleet — adding it to the seven other numbered fleets that are the main operational arms of the U.S. Navy. The service, which waged the Cold War with only four numbered fleets, has added three numbered fleets since then.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said on Jan. 11 in a webinar of the Surface Navy Association convention that then-President Donald Trump signed off on Braithwaite’s proposed redesignation of U.S. Fleet Forces Command as the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. A timetable for the change has not been announced, but Fleet Forces Commander Adm. Chris Grady is “putting together an implementation plan for my review,” Gilday said.

Venerable Pedigree

The original U.S. Atlantic Fleet has a long pedigree that began in 1906, when the North Atlantic Squadron and South Atlantic Squadron were combined. The fleet existed in various forms until 2006, when the chief of naval operations renamed commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, to commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command, which assumed the duties of the former fleet plus the mission of the former commander, Fleet Forces Command, which was “to serve as the primary advocate for fleet personnel, training, requirements, maintenance and operations issues,” according to the Fleet Forces Command website.

Sailors who had served in both Atlantic and Pacific Fleets often expressed the notion that the two fleets were like two different navies in their policies, traditions and the way they operated. The role of Fleet Forces Command in part was to standardize administration, manning, training and equipping across the entire U.S. fleet.

The move to the return of the Atlantic Fleet moniker was deliberate. Braithwaite announced the redesignation plan Dec. 2 during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Readiness and Management Support sub- committee, noting the changing world requires the Navy to evolve to meet the threat.

“Our existing structure operates on the premise that we still live in a post-9/11 state, where NATO’s flanks are secure, the Russian fleet is tied to the pier and terrorism is our biggest problem,” Braithwaite said. “That is not the world of today. As the world changes, we must be bold, evolved and change with it. Instead of perpetuating a structure designed to support Joint Forces Command, we are aligning to today’s threat.

“To meet the maritime challenges of the Atlantic theater, we will rename Fleet Forces Command as the U.S. Atlantic Fleet and will refocus our naval forces in this important region on their original mission, to controlling the maritime approaches to the United States and those of our allies. The Atlantic Fleet will confront the re-assertive Russian navy, which has been deploying closer and closer to our East Coast with a tailored maritime presence, capability and lethality,” Braithwaite said.

“It underscores the importance of the Atlantic in a way that the title ‘Fleet Forces’ doesn’t,” Gilday said. “It actually is a testament to recent tangible decisions that we made to increase our power in that body of water, to include bringing 2nd Fleet back, standing up SubGru 2 [Submarine Group Two]. It will also include standing up [NATO’s] Joint Force Command Norfolk, which is focused on the Atlantic. In a day and age when the homeland is no longer a sanctuary and homeland defense is at the fore of every plan the combatant commanders have put together, the name ‘Atlantic Fleet’ always carries some gravitas with respect to defense of the nation.”

He noted the complexity of the redesignation, saying the command “also has responsibilities as a component [command] for [U.S.] Northern Command and the Eastern Pacific that extend up to the Arctic as well as their role as component of the [U.S] Strategic Command. They really have a global responsibility with respect to the command and control of our SSBNs [ballistic-missile submarines].”

Grady seconded the complexity in a Jan. 13 webinar at the convention, noting the “downside “might be that we would lose emphasis on what we do for the homeland.

Indeed, I control forces in both the Pacific and down south [in U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility]. So, we will balance all that, and in the end the name change is an important branding opportunity, and we will move out on that.”

“We are walking through this very methodically and deliberately before we finally execute,” Gilday said.

U.S. 1st Fleet Returning?

Braithwaite, noting the increasing Chinese hegemony in the South China Sea, the increasingly close relationship of the U.S. Navy to the Indian navy and the expanse of ocean covered by the Japan-based U.S. 7th Fleet, proposed a new fleet to cover Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, an area of extensive shipping traffic vital to world commerce.

“If we’re really going to have an INDOPACOM [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command] footprint, we can’t just rely on the 7th Fleet in Japan,” Braithwaite said during a Nov. 17 to webinar of the annual symposium of the Naval Submarine League. “We have to look to our other allies and partners like Singapore, like India, and actually put a numbered fleet where it would be extremely relevant if, God forbid, we were to get in any kind of a dust-up.”

Braithwaite proposed the new fleet be designated the U.S. 1st Fleet, a resurrection of a fleet staff which formerly was based in San Diego and disestablished in 1973 when the U.S. 3rd Fleet was established in Hawaii. (The 3rd Fleet headquarters later was moved to San Diego.)

He mentioned Singapore as a possible site for a headquarters for the U.S. 1st Fleet. The Navy has a logistics group staged there and has forward-deployed littoral combat ships to the base. As an alternative, the 1st Fleet staff could be “more expeditionary oriented and move it across the Pacific until it is where our allies and partners see that it could best assist them as well as assist us.”

“The establishment of 1st Fleet is still in development,” said Capt. Jereal Dorsey, special assistant for Public Affairs for the secretary of the Navy, in a Jan. 29 statement to Seapower.

“Establishing a new fleet dedicated to the Indian Ocean is a good idea,” said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “India is a longtime maritime power that is modernizing its fleet and growing its cooperation with the U.S. Navy and the rest of the ‘Quad’ [Japan, Australia, United Stated, India]. A key question for the Navy to address is the area of responsibility for 1st Fleet. Incorporating East and South Africa in 1st Fleet rather than Naval Forces Europe and 6th Fleet, as they are today, would be a good idea because in many cases these countries have stronger ties to Asian countries than to Europe.

“I think including Australia or Southeast Asian nations under 1st Fleet would, in general, be disadvantageous because of the numerous maritime cooperation initiatives underway between these navies and those of the United States and Japan. However, the fleet has to be based some- where, so Myanmar, Singapore, and Malaysia could be included in 1st Fleet if the fleet were based in Singapore.

“The more important issue is whether 1st Fleet will have a substantial naval presence or any permanently assigned ships. Every other fleet has both. Adding a 1st Fleet but then only deploying forces to it in transit or for exercises may defeat the purpose of having a dedicated staff focused on the region. When the LCS [littoral combat ship] is ready for more sustained deployments, the Navy could implement the rotational crewing concept it intended in Singapore, providing assigned ships to 1st Fleet that would change out every year to 18 months. To increase presence, DoD [Department of Defense] could adjust its Central Command footprint to use locally based air, ground, and naval forces to deter Iran and allow other ships to deploy more broadly throughout the Indian Ocean.”

Changing Realities

The expansion of numbered fleets since the Cold War may seem counterintuitive with the much-shrunken size of the U.S. fleet since 1991, now roughly half the size in terms of numbers of ships. During the Cold War, the 1st and later the 3rd Fleet covered the Eastern Pacific, including the antisubmarine patrols to counter the patrolling Soviet ballistic-missile submarines off the U.S. West Coast. The 7th Fleet covered the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans. The 6th Fleet patrolled the Mediterranean. The 2nd Fleet covered the North Atlantic Ocean.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Navy has disestablished and reestablished the 2nd Fleet and has reestablished the 4th, 5th and 10th Fleets, dormant since the early post- World War II period, to adjust to changing geopolitical realities. The 5th Fleet was established to replace the Middle Eastern Force in the Persian Gulf in July 1995 in recognition of the increased need for forces in the volatile Gulf, Southwest Asia and the North Arabian Sea, and became the naval component of U.S. Central Command. The 4th Fleet was reestablished in July 2008, to serve as the naval component of U.S. Southern Command, to operate in the Caribbean Sea, and in Central and South America.

The 10th Fleet, which in World War II oversaw the campaign against German U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic, was reestablished in July 2010 as the operational arm of Fleet Cyber Command. It commands no ships but oversees the operations of the cyber teams and other units for information warfare operations, including cyberwarfare and signals intelligence collection.

During September 2011, the 2nd Fleet was disestablished in recognition of the reduction of threats in the North Atlantic in the post-Cold War era. But with the resurgence of Russia and in particular its submarine forces, the 2nd Fleet was reestablished in August 2018.

Seapower correspondent John Doyle contributed to this report.

Like a bolt from the blue, the Navy has a new modernization priority — Project Overmatch, a campaign to accelerate delivery of artificial intelligence, machine learning and tools needed to allow the fleet to disperse forces, mass fires, integrate unmanned ships and, in the view of service leaders, maintain maritime dominance in the future.

The project aims to begin delivering the Naval Operational Architecture (NOA), a lackluster name for a breathtaking effort whose results will determine nothing less than the service’s future ability to establish and sustain sea control by integrating network infrastructure, data and analytic tools to provide decision-advantage in a fight.

“Beyond recapitalizing our undersea nuclear deterrent, there is no higher developmental priority in the U.S. Navy,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday wrote in Oct. 1, 2020, memo to Rear Adm. Douglas Small establishing Project Overmatch. “Your goal is to enable a Navy that swarms the sea, delivering synchronized lethal and nonlethal effects from near and far, every axis and every domain.”

Small, who in addition to heading Project Overmatch is head of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, was further tasked by the CNO “to develop the networks, infrastructure, data architecture, tools, and analytics that support the operational and developmental environment that will enable our sustained maritime dominance.”

The two-star admiral says he has committed the memo to memory and, for good measure, carries a copy at all times. Why? Gilday likens Project Overmatch to some of the most important Navy engineering and development challenges ever, including adopting nuclear power, developing the Polaris Missile and creating the Aegis Combat System.

Project Overmatch is not only about technical linkages and new software tools, according to a service official, it aims to speed development of concepts of operations for test, evaluation and capability exploitation of long-range fires, helping pave the way for new fleets of large and medium unmanned ships.

Vice Adm. James Kilby, deputy chief of naval operations for warfighting requirements and capabilities, told an online audience in January that Project Over- match plans to deliver a “minimally viable capability” — including new artificial intelligence and machine learning combat tools — to the Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier strike group in 2023.

Small, speaking at a separate online conference at the end of January, described the effort in broad strokes.

“When you have a project the size of Project Overmatch — connecting everything and bringing [artificial intelligence] and [machine learning] to every- thing — you have to go at it in an agile manner,” Small said. “Step one for us was: Let’s break this thing down into agile chunks and take a look at what are the things that we’re working on currently now that we could take advantage of and grow from there.

“It consists of things like networks that are brought in as part of Overmatch,” Small said. “Certain configurations of networking gear like CANES [Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services], certain sets of management aids and planners and things like that. And then defining data structures right for that first increment of capability. So that’s, that’s the concept behind a minimum viable product … so we’ll take some time to develop that and then get it out as it’s ready.”

Once delivered to the carrier strike group, Project Over- match aims to accelerate user feedback to developers to refine fielding of new capabilities and ensure functionality as new tools are integrated into the NOA. The effort also includes using live virtual events and training to execute and practice fleet-centered design.

JADC2

Project Overmatch is effectively the naval component of the Defense Department-wide effort to establish a Joint All-Domain Command and Control capability, which aims to network the entire U.S. weapons inventory in a manner similar to the way commercial handheld devices are linked, with each able to access an information cloud.

The U.S. military wants combat capabilities akin to Uber, Amazon and Facebook in their ability to scale and serve unique needs of different military users.

JADC2 was spearheaded by the Air Force in 2019; in 2020 the Army announced a similar campaign called Project Convergence. Last fall, the two services signed a joint memorandum of agreement to explore close integration.

While the Navy has not inked any formal agreements with the Army and Air Force, service leaders stress they are collaborating. The Navy, for instance, participated in Air Force-sponsored JADC2 events — contributing a DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and an aircraft carrier capable F-35C Joint Strike Fighter to a January 2020 all-service experiment that focused on defending the United States against a cruise missile attack. Navy leaders were present during the Army’s initial Project Convergence event last fall. And now projects Overmatch and Convergence are eyeing a collaborative event this summer.

Meantime, the Joint Staff is working to establish a frame- work to coordinate efforts of the three military departments. Gen. John Hyten, the No. 2 military officer and chairman of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, estimates that by late spring the Pentagon will issue a new Joint Warfighting Concept to provide an overarching blueprint for JADC2 as well as three other key areas: joint glob- al fires, contested logistics and information advantage.

Building on Experience

“We’re not starting this journey from a cold start,” Kilby said of the complex effort to create new technical linkages across platforms. “We’ve been working toward it for some time.”

For instance, the Navy has developed Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air, an “any sensor, any shooter” capability that extends the air and missile defense battlespace to the maximum kinematic range of weapons for air, surface and strike warfare missions. NIFC-CA allows aircraft and surface ships to pass data that enable shooters to attack targets beyond their organic detection range.

Similarly, the Cooperative Engagement Capability — through connecting sensors and communications tools — makes possible the ability for multiple surface ships and aircrafts to form an air defense network for the pur- pose of sharing radar target measurements in real-time.

The adoption of commercial-off-the-shelf hardware into the Aegis Combat System and the introduction of a common source library now allows the Navy to scale the power of the air and missile defense system across ship classes and land- based systems.

Project Overmatch seeks to replicate these sorts of integrations, but on a much larger scale.

“Our end state: We have to pass the best sensing to the best kinetic or non-kinetic platforms to create the tactical battle network, where the whole system fights as one regardless of how many units are in,” said Kilby. “Great power competition demands that we deliver distributed, networked and lethal naval force. Time is of the essence.”

On Dec. 15, Small hosted a classified conference on the West Coast for defense contractors to explain Project Overmatch. Interest was high: Representatives from 150 companies attended.

“I laid out basically everything that we’re doing, the why of everything that we’re doing, and made specific asks for help,” Small said in January. “One of the specific things that I asked for is imagination.

“We think we understand where we’re headed in terms of the future and the things that you can unleash from a connected Navy,” Small said, but noted that sometimes a new technology’s utility — he mentioned the introduction of the iPad — is not always obvious.

“There’s no user when presented with an iPad back in the day that would have said, ‘Oh my gosh, yes I need this large cell phone that’s between my laptop and my cell phone.’ It would have never hit the market,” Small said. “But the fact is by watching people and understanding the state of technology and what could be needed, the iPad is now this ubiquitous device.”

Small said he is hoping for industry’s help identifying potential in new technologies — waveforms, machine learning algorithms and such — for Project Overmatch.

“This is not something the Navy is at a standstill on,” said Small. “We’ve done some incredible things tying various networks and sensors together. So, we’re taking that to the next level and beyond.”

Lack of sleep is problem that’s long dogged sailors at sea. Insomnia and general fatigue often are blamed for leading to mistakes, mishaps and collisions at sea, some fatal.

It’s not just anecdotal. Recent research studies have found long workdays and inconsistent sleep schedules driven by varying watchbills, undermanned crews, busy shipboard routines and high-operational tempo created fatigued crews. Limited time for rest and even noise and bright lights cut into getting a good slumber at sea.

The problem became obvious in 2017 when guided-mis- sile destroyers USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) ran into a cargo ship and USS John McCain (DDG 56) collided with a tank- er ship in the predawn hours, the latter which resulted in the deaths of 10 Sailors. Then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson told a congressional committee several months later that “both of these accidents were preventable” and he ordered an overhaul of how the fleet trains, mans and operates to prevent future mishaps and bolster safer operations.

Along with recent adoptions across the surface fleet of watchbills providing more consistent periods for sleep and rest, new research projects are using high-tech devices and collecting data to fine-tune those changes and identify ways for skippers and crews to sleep more soundly and perform better, whether at sea, in the air or in the field. Researchers already are finding simple, low-tech solutions to thwart light and sound to ensure a sounder snooze at sea. And the “Crew Endurance” team at Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Cali- fornia, is developing online training tools and videos to help skippers and Sailors become a well-rested, more focused force.

Navy officials “are changing the culture about sleep,” said Nita Shattuck, operations research professor at Naval Postgraduate School, who leads the Crew Endurance team. “It’s been slow in coming, but I absolutely think it’s happening.”

Shattuck has spent more than 30 years studying sleep, fatigue and performance issues in the Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Corps, and her work has led to the recent changes in watchbills. “There’s still more work to be done,” she said, “but I think they’ve made huge inroads.”

Lack of Sleep

Adults need seven hours of sleep, at a minimum, but the National Sleep Foundation estimates that nearly one- third of adults averaged fewer than six hours. There’s a cost to fatigue — especially at sea.

USS John McCain’s bridge watch team, including the com- manding officer and executive officer, averaged nearly five hours of sleep in the previous 24 hours before the collision due to shifting watch schedules and lack of sleep- ing time, the National Transportation Safety Board found. Moreover, the “bridge watchstanders, particularly the lee helmsman, were acutely fatigued at the time of the accident, which impacted their situation awareness and their ability to respond to the perceived steering emergency.”

The collision happened at 5:24 a.m. in the Singapore Strait, a time which NTSB noted was “considered to be a circadian low (roughly 2 a.m. to 6 a.m.), when the body is normally more fatigued and prone to diminished alertness and degraded performance,” and the ship’s shifting watch schedules changed sleep periods daily, “which compounds fatigue related to lack of sleep and circadian lows.”

Circadian rhythms are the body’s internal clock based on the 24-hour periods of daylight and dark, but according to the National Sleep Foundation, “a disturbed sleep-wake circadian rhythm can give rise to serious sleeping problems.”

Undoubtedly, the 2017 collisions — along with prior collision of the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Champlain (CG 57) with a fishing boat and grounding by USS Antietam (CG 54) — shook the Navy. Just months later, Naval Surface Force leaders ordered changes to give crews sufficient rest and sleep.

“The role exhaustion played in the four incidents in 2017 varies from ship to ship; however, there is no debate about the wisdom of implementing circadian rhythm–based watchbills and shipboard routines on surface force ships to provide predictable, protected periods of sleep for our Sailors and optimize alertness and recuperation,” then-Vice Adm. Thomas S. Rowden, Surface Force commander, wrote in a 2018 paper, “Surface Forces are Refocused,” directing all ships to implement those principles or incorporate circadian-rhythm principles.

Shattuck noted the surface fleet moved quickly as it already was working on improvements driven by ongoing research into fatigue and sleep. But previous years’ mishaps had met with little appetite to institute changes, even after earlier studies found links between sleep and performance.

In 2002, a study found shifting a ship’s crew from day to night air operations disrupted sleep and caused fatigue for “a large number” of Sailors, who slept during day- light hours and worked all night. Participants in the study on USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74), deployed supporting combat operations in Afghanistan, wore watch-like ActiGraphs on their wrist that collected sleep and activity data and logged their sleep, work and other activities. The workday ran from about 6 p.m. until 10 a.m. the next day.

After 30 days, Sailors reported less sleep, especially those who spent any time outside. “It is evident that sleep deprivation and fatigue due to the reversed schedule was a major problem for many of the participants in this study, Shattuck and Lt. John Nguyen wrote in the May 2003 paper for the Aerospace Medical Association. They added, “other factors may have contributed to the differences observed in sleep hours and predicted effectiveness, (e.g., working conditions, light exposure levels, type of work performed, health issues and combat stress).”

New Studies

In the two decades since that study, amid higher optempos and combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, military researchers and sleep labs across the services, including NPS, Naval Health Research Center in San Diego and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, have been delving into sleep and operational performance. NPS researchers have more than a half-dozen projects focused on sleep issues and solutions. These include projects on fully manned watches, sleep inertia, leaders and stress inoculation, aviator sleep and video gaming.

In one study of circadian-based watch schedules, an NPS team is collecting sleep data on guided-missile destroyer USS Gonzalez (DDG 66) “to see how are people implementing that,” Shattuck said. The study is looking at the ship’s engineering department, which got additional personnel to round out requirements, “so we are looking to see how does extra manning affect workload and sleep?

“Ships are always undermanned,” she noted, “but we’re looking to see what would happen if they do have the manning that the Navy says that they need.”

Another study focuses on sleep inertia. Someone jolted awake from deep sleep usually feels a disorienting brain fog or grogginess for some time, but that can be a critical decision-making time when out at sea. A study is looking at the problem to find ways to make that transition to full attention and performance quicker, and safer.

“How can we help somebody, like a commanding officer, if something happens in the middle of the night [and] you’ve got to awaken and make decisions?” Shattuck said. “We are monitoring people’s brainwaves with an EEG [electroencephalogram] and monitoring their sleep, so we’ll see when they go into deep sleep, we awaken them.” They then sit up and do a battery of tests and are “either exposed to bright light or to an olfactory stimulus, like a smell like wasabi … that’ll awaken them.”

A study kicked off in early January at Surface Warfare Officers School, where researchers are monitoring prospective COs and XOs “to see how they can help them perform better in case of emergencies, if something happens,” Shattuck said, focusing on leaders and stress inoculation.

The officers will use the wearable titanium Oura ring and armband stress monitors to track heart rate and other data as they go through several trainers and tests. “We’re collecting physiological data in these prospective COs and XOs and basically documenting what they’re doing to them,” she said.

In a study on aviator sleep requested by the Marine Corps, NPS researchers are using bright lights and a flight simulator in the NPS sleep lab to see how they could be used to help adjust aviators’ internal clock by tracking melatonin levels in transitioning between day and night flight schedules. Exposure to high-energy, blue-enhanced white light at their “normal” bedtime will hasten what’s called “Circadian entrainment,” Shattuck said, and presumably help them for that night flight simulating F/A-18 Hornet jet missions of several hours in different light conditions.

“So you’ve been flying days and now we’ve got to transition you to flying nights safely, and how do we do that?” she said. The study also seeks to determine how long it takes to adjust to the new schedule and how flight performance is impacted.

Two new separate studies by NPS will look at the prevalence of video gaming in the Marine Corps and in the Navy. Some recent studies have shown psychological benefits to video gaming but also problems including addiction, insomnia and lower performance.

Shattuck has seen the problem firsthand at sea among Sailors and Marines during her sleep research. “I’ve collected all of this data on ships and we’ve ridden the ships and … here are these folks that are supposed to be sleeping and they’re on the mess decks or they’re in their racks playing video games,” she said. Playing an occasional video game “is totally understandable, it’s just kind of a way to decompress, perhaps. But when you’re doing it to the exclusion of sleeping and having it impact your work and that’s what we’re concerned about.”

Low-Tech Solutions

With noise and bright lights a constant on ship, another study is looking at whether thicker curtains on berthing racks can help Sailors get better sleep. Earlier this year, NPS bought and installed 300 pairs of heavy, flame-retardant canvas rack curtains on the guided-missile destroyer USS Paul Hamilton (DDG 60) and, with the help of wrist activity monitors, researchers are tracking the quality of sleep the crew gets.

The curtains reduce light intrusion and have pockets where Sailors can stash personal items. “Oh yeah, they love them,” Shattuck said. The curtains are made by NavyRackPacks, a small company founded by a Navy spouse and sold online and in some exchanges.

NPS also has distributed to ships’ crews involved in ongoing studies “warfighter sleep kits” that include eye coverings, a sleep mask that is convex so it doesn’t press against the eyes, a set of soft ear plugs and a card with advice about sleep, she said.

“They’re so nice to let us to come out and study the ship and everything, I want to do something nice for the crew,” she added.

Rear Adm. John Korka, Civil Engineer Corps (CEC), is the commander of Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC) and chief of Civil Engineers. He leads NAVFAC’s CEC officers, civilians and contractors who serve as engineers, architects, contract specialists and technical professionals. His command delivers facilities engineering, expeditionary, and acquisition support to the Navy and Marine Corps, Unified Commanders, and Department of Defense agencies.

Korka discussed NAVFAC’s activities with Senior Editor Richard R. Burgess. Excerpts follow:

The Navy acquisition community has pushed contracts ahead of schedule to help industry get through the COVID crisis. What has NAVFAC done to advance contract awards or task orders to help in the current pandemic?

KORKA: At the start of this global pandemic, the CNO [chief of naval operations] and [James F. Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition] did something that I thought was critical. They set the tone and established priorities for operating in the COVID-19 environment. First and foremost, the health and safety of our military and civilian workforces was absolute. Second, we needed to maintain readiness and ensure the Navy does not come to an all stop. Lastly, it was important to support the whole of government approach in tackling COVID-19. Along with these priorities, Secretary Geurts released policy and emphasized our responsibility to keep execution moving forward smartly, support efforts to sustain a healthy industrial base, and to make sure that we did not use COVID as a rationale to stop efforts — I am talking primarily our construction work and sustaining functions to support base operations.  

We used the priorities from the CNO and secretary to quickly move out as a SYSCOM [systems command] along three fronts — safety protocols, operating virtually and ceaseless communications. From the onset we strictly enforced adhering and complying with COVID-19 protocols. We were not going to compromise safety in any evolution, and we also wanted to make sure that our contractors were mindful of these requirements since protocols would be enforced.

The next leap was even more important — our jump into the digital domain. By that I mean we already had a good plan to move into online processing and pressing ahead into the virtual front. The pandemic actually accelerated that effort for us. Since the start of the COVID-19 emergency, we’ve had virtual site visits to accommodate contractors who were restricted in movement; we’ve held virtual safety training to educate contractors on bidding government work; and we’ve established policy and procedures for accepting electronic proposal submissions. All these happened quickly and allowed us to still do things that, typically, would have required a physical presence.

Lastly, we implemented a pretty aggressive outreach campaign with our industry partners to improve lines of communication. We held monthly virtual roundtable discussions with the construction/engineering industry, base operating support services contractors, and small business. These efforts definitely helped us better understand some of their challenges and recognize if industry needed our help with any policy relief. The monthly communication meetings are still occurring and have proven to be very successful.

Overall, I am proud of how everything came together within NAVFAC to continue to award and manage contracts during an unprecedented and challenging period of time.  

Last year you discussed NAVFAC’s efforts to help the Columbia-class submarine join the fleet in the future. What major projects do you have in work right now, particularly in the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP)?

KORKA: In August, NAVFAC celebrated its 178th birthday, and what is interesting is that since the command’s commissioning we have always been responsible for building, maintaining, and recapitalizing shipyards. In fact, that is why we were established as a SYSCOM. Right now, our infrastructure recapitalization efforts remain ongoing, which is at the heart of our heritage, so that is pretty motivating.

When it comes to SIOP — this massive and daunting 20-year, $20 billion plus program — we continue to stay in close alliance with the fleet from a requirements standpoint which rests at NAVSEA [Naval Sea Systems Command], as well as supporting the shore enterprise at CNIC [Commander, Navy Installations Command]. Right now, we are looking at the development of “digital twins” at each of the shipyards [which] should really help us understand the optimal workflow configuration. This initiative will allow us to develop plans and engineering designs for specific projects with the proper sequence. Today, work is ongoing across all the shipyards — Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine; Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia; Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii; and Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington — at each one of these locations, we have planning and construction efforts underway.

We are furthest along at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, where we have over $300 million worth of projects associated with the new multi-mission drydock facility and planning to support the future construction of a super flood basin project. All this work supports the future refueling of the SSN-688 [Los Angeles-class attack submarines]. At Norfolk Naval Shipyard, over $320 million in construction and repair work is going towards drydock and utility upgrades. In Pearl Harbor, we are doing some of the design to support the Virginia class Block V extension for the drydock. At Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, we are doing preliminary design and environmental work. All of this shipyard work is aimed at repairing, modernizing, and returning ships back to the fleet and preparing infrastructure for the fleet of the future.

Without question, this effort is probably one of the most significant and direct contributions that we will be making as a SYSCOM for enabling lethality and maximizing our Navy readiness for many years to come. We are pretty charged up and inspired by the challenges and opportunities provided by SIOP.

With the nation being hit with a lot of hurricanes and an earthquake in the last couple years, what progress has been made by NAVFAC in those recovery efforts?

KORKA: NAVFAC has a lot to be proud of with regard to responding to natural disasters that damaged infrastructure at our Navy and Marine Corps bases over the past two years. We showed our agility and technical know-how as a SYSCOM with these events — the hurricane that hit [Marine Corps bases at] Camp Lejeune, Cherry Point and New River [in North Carolina] pretty hard, as well as the earthquake at China Lake, California — tested our technical and acquisition acumen. Thanks to our responsiveness, agility, and technical and contracting authorities, we were able to get a significant number of construction projects awarded.

To support the surge of construction and repair work, we established two new commands, OICC [Officer in Charge Construction] China Lake, and OICC Florence [for bases in North Carolina] that are solely responsible for directing and managing these efforts. We have about 200 people on the ground today at both locations that we did not have in the past to oversee all the construction work. At China Lake, we are looking to award 18 military construction projects valued at $2.3 billion in total. So far, we awarded nine of these projects at a little over a billion dollars, only 14 months after the earthquake occurred, which alone is an impressive feat. The projects consist of an array of work, from an advanced weapons hangar to a mission integration lab, weapons magazines, an aircraft control tower, and even a new aircraft-parking apron. In fiscal year 2021, we plan to award an additional $1 billion dollars for work in China Lake. The teams are in place, projects have been awarded, and we are making good progress.

For the Hurricane Florence recovery, we have 30 military construction projects underway valued at $1.7 billion. Some of these projects include a Marine special operations training facility, maintenance hangars, service support facilities, a logistics operations school, and an array of troop support facilities.

For both disasters, we greatly benefitted from swift funding support as well as tremendous coordination with the Office of the Secretariat, OPNAV and Headquarters Marine Corps staff, NAVAIR [Naval Air Systems Command], and CNIC for defining requirements. We are pressing ahead even in the face of COVID, which has not slowed us down. I see this as a great testament to our resiliency, commitment, and our technical competence.

What are the trends with building and operating military housing, public and private?

KORKA: Quality housing is probably one of the most important contributions to enabling warfighter lethality. Giving our men and women in uniform places that they can call home and where their families will be safe is something that helps them to focus on their mission while they are deployed. We’ve gotten some unfavorable media coverage regarding the PPV [public-private venture] housing program over the past two years, so we looked at four main efforts to improve the quality of our military housing to ensure that our warfighters and their families live in safe, quality homes.

First, about a year ago we refocused our efforts, exercising our authorities under the Housing Revitalization Act in 1996 to regain the trust of our residents by reinforcing the Navy’s oversight role and responsibilities.

Second, early in 2020 we conducted a thorough review of how we work with our PPV partners to ensure that they were responsive to the residents’ work orders with quality results. We used data analytics, developed a standardized way to measure their performance and took a hard look at the recurring problems to figure out root causes and develop long-term solutions.

Third, we also shifted our focus from just property management to evaluating the financial management of our public/private ventures. This meant improving and standardizing some of the financial reporting and performing portfolio reviews in greater detail to recognize and prevent deficiencies.

Lastly, to address the health of these agreements, we are working with OSD [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] as well as Congress to make policy changes and apply lessons learned from our sister services, the Army and Air Force. In the end, we owe it to our Sailors, Marines and their families to provide them safe and quality homes. It’s important to remember that these are long-term agreements, 30-50 years in length, so effective sustainment and oversight of our DoN PPV housing portfolio must be taken seriously. Regaining the trust of our families is the most important outcome here, and we are committed to success in this area.

NAVFAC has been building and upgrading facilities on Guam and the Marianas to host the Marine Corps forces. What progress has been made in those facilities?

KORKA: My previous flag assignment was as the commander, NAVFAC Pacific, in Hawaii, where I was dual-hatted as the U.S. Pacific Fleet engineer. We had the responsibility of overseeing all the work in Guam and throughout the Marianas Islands, and across the Pacific theater. The posturing of forces is extremely critical in this era of great power competition and the construction work underway in that region is an important element of the strategic objectives in the Pacific AO [area of operations].  We are still doing a lot of the environmental impact statements, and some training requirements are still being finalized.  Work is definitely underway, and our job is to support Marine Corps needs.

In Guam, we have 103 projects valued at $6.5 billion. So far, more than 500 acres have been cleared, we have completed 14 projects, 15 are still underway, and five more are in the process of being awarded. These projects are spread across Andersen Air Force Base, Apra Harbor, Finegayan, and Marianas islands. They cover everything from aviation to sea embarkation, non-live firing training, some off-base improvements in the utility system, and roads. Today, you can now see a base called Camp Blaz that did not exist over a year ago.  

Our Pacific work goes beyond the Marianas islands. We have projects that support the posture initiatives throughout the Indo-Pacific region to include Darwin, Australia, Indonesia and Palau. The bottom line is our SYSCOM is taking on this once-in-a-lifetime construction surge with urgency and flexibility. We’re on the right course and vector to continue to deliver at the speed of relevance for the Marine Corps.

How are the Seabees performing in the COVID environment?

KORKA: The Seabees that were deployed in Guam played a role in the construction of a 150-bed Expeditionary Medical Facility onboard Naval Base Guam for expanded medical capabilities in support of DoD’s COVID-19 response. Their performance personified our “can do” rally cry.

Some deployment cycles were affected in terms of extensions or delays, but in the end, our Seabee units continued the mission our Navy and Marine Corps called upon them to execute.

From a readiness standpoint, we’ve been very disciplined on adhering to the CNO’s priorities and following the established COVID protocols, which has gone a very long way to maintaining our level of readiness.  

Anything else you would like to add?

KORKA: Thank you.  I would like to take advantage of this question to brag a little bit about NAVFAC. As a SYSCOM, we have done a lot this year around the world. I believe that our SYSCOM has shown the responsiveness, resiliency and agility that our Navy and Marine Corps needed. It was a record-breaking year… the volume of work was about $13 billion in contracts — the prior year was only $10.9 billion, the highest since 2009 — and we did all this while facing COVID.  I think that says a great deal about the talent and commitment of the people of this command.

In response to the global pandemic, we were able to assist the Army Corps of Engineers in the conversion of hotels to alternative care facilities. We supported the Corps at 14 locations in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic [states], as well as in the Southeast and Guam.

Over the last 18 months, we have put a special focus on our technical and contracting authorities and capabilities to better enable warfighting and also support of distributed maritime operations and expeditionary advanced base operations. As an example, our warfare center in Port Hueneme, California, executed the first ever landing of the rotary-wing aircraft on a Navy lighterage system. This proved out a viable concept of refueling and re-arming in a contested environment.

Using a Perform to Plan (P2P) approach, we are employing data and analytic capabilities to inform investment priorities and focus leadership engagement … at every echelon around the globe our sights are squarely aimed on speed, agility, and costs in support of fleet readiness. We stood up an analytics office to better monitor and accelerate our performance and to improve our execution. We also stood up a real estate acquisition office to promote projects that enhance warfighting readiness and avoid costs. Overseas, our team designed and deployed two miles of port security barriers for the Navy’s Fifth Fleet within nine months of request.

While this was a big year in terms of business volume, we still have a lot of work ahead of us. However, I believe that we are on the correct vector and we are moving ahead with urgency to support the Navy and Marine Corps. It is a unique period with great power competition and I believe we are adjusting to this in the right ways. It is an honor for me to serve in this command and support the fleet and our great nation.

A native of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, Rear Adm. Paul Schlise is a surface warfare officer and a 1989 graduate of Marquette University’s College of Business. He was commissioned through Marquette’s Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps program. He holds a master’s degree in National Security Strategy from the National War College and was a 2015-2016 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Seminar XXI Fellow.

He has completed nine deployments, participating in Operation Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Southern Watch, Enduring Freedom, Desert Fox and Tomodachi. He served aboard USS Flint (AE 32), USS Antietam (CG 54), USS Hopper (DDG 70), and USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53) and commanded USS Halsey (DDG 97) and Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 7. In 2012, he executed DESRON Seven’s homeport shift to U.S. 7^th Fleet forward-deployed naval forces in Singapore.

Ashore, he served twice on the Chief of Naval Operations staff for director, Surface Warfare. He also served at Navy Personnel Command, Surface Officer Distribution Division and on the Joint Staff, Strategic Plans & Policy Directorate. His initial flag assignment was as deputy commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command/U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain. He then commanded Carrier Strike Group 10/USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Strike Group during its 2020 deployment.

He assumed duties as director, Surface Warfare Division, N96, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations in June 2020.

Schlise responded to questions about the surface force’s drive to increase its lethality from Senior Editor Richard R. Burgess. Excerpts follow. Check out the digital edition of the December issue of Seapower magazine here.

Why is the Navy pressing hard for distributed lethality in the surface force?

SCHLISE: The Surface Combatant Force is the key enabler for the Navy’s Distributed Maritime Operations concept. Enhancing lethality across all of our ships at sea operationalizes DMO and ensures the fleet has requisite capability and capacity to fight and win. Our efforts to up-gun our combatants are directly in step with the Navy’s Naval Tactical Grid initiatives.

What new surface weapons are adding to that lethality?

SCHLISE: The Surface Navy is moving out aggressively to improve lethality across the spectrum of warfare. The Naval Strike Missile is in the fleet providing a multi-mission weapon for our littoral combat ships [LCSs] and future frigates. The SM-6 is a multi-domain missile, deployed on ships today, providing surface combatants improved capability and flexibility against advanced threats. As we continue to procure the SM-6, spiral development of the SM-6 family is ongoing to provide greater range and speed. The Maritime Strike Tomahawk provides versatility over long distances against targets at sea or on land.

In addition to extended missile ranges, we’re also increasing our close-in battlespace lethality. The updated Mk38 Mod 4 Gun Weapon System provides an updated electro-optical sensor system with combat system integration for improved accuracy and close-in engagements against fast-attack craft and fast inland attack craft threats. In the near future, these guns will be paired with other weapon systems for greater lethality against close- in air threats as well.

The surface fleet is also improving terminal defense weapons with spiral developments to the existing Rolling Airframe Missile and Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile. A new Vertical-Launch Anti-submarine Rocket Extended Range is proposed to significantly increase the range a ship will be able to engage a submarine target.

What future weapons are being considered for the surface fleet?

SCHLISE: Versatility in our VLS [vertical launch systems] is important, and we are continuing to look at current multi-domain weapons and evolve them to pace the threat. We are also improving our terminal defense capability with more formidable weapon systems, including directed energy.

What are the goals and prospects of fielding directed energy weapons, including the rail gun?

SCHLISE: As part of a joint effort by the Navy’s Acquisition and S&T [Science and Technology] communities, the Navy Laser Family of Systems is accelerating fleet integration and informing requirements for future acquisition by providing multiple systems that support counter-intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, counter-unmanned aircraft systems and intelligence collection. These efforts include Optical Dazzling Interdictor – Navy (ODIN) – laser systems providing capability enhancements to DDG 51 Flight IIA ships; ONR’s [Office of Naval Research] Solid-State Laser Technology Maturation — a laser system already installed on the amphibious transport dock ship USS Portland and slated for deployment in 2021; [and] Surface Navy Laser Weapon System, also known as HELIOS — a laser system and integrated optical dazzler with surveillance designed for full integration into the Aegis Combat System on DDG 51 Flight IIA ships.

The long-term goal of the Navy’s High-Energy Laser effort is destructive capabilities against missile threats.

Through technology developed under the Rail Gun program, the Navy continues to monitor developments in high-velocity projectiles for the Mk45 5-inch Gun- Launched Guided Projectiles. Similar to directed energy options, each of these systems provide capable defensive weapons outside of VLS.

How will the new Constellation-class FFG add to the fleet’s lethality?

SCHLISE: The new FFG 62 class will be more lethal, more survivable, have greater range, endurance and self-sufficiency than previous small surface combatants. With increased operational availability and enhanced fire- power, FFG 62 will be a multi-mission ship capable of operating independently, as part of surface action groups or with carrier or expeditionary strike groups in contest- ed environments.

The Constellation will be a multi-mission ship, equipped to conduct air warfare [AW]; antisubmarine warfare [ASW]; surface warfare [SUW]; electromagnetic warfare [EW]; and intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance operations.

As an AW platform, FFG 62 will be outfitted with a SPY-6 derived Enterprise Air Search Radar, AEGIS BL10 Combat System, Cooperative Engagement Capability and 32 VLS cells. As an SUW platform, the ship will carry 16 Naval Strike Missiles and a counter-small boat capability with her 57 mm gun and precision guided ALaMO [Advanced Low-Cost Munitions Ordnance] rounds. As an ASW platform, FFG 62 will feature a variable depth sonar and multi-function towed array as an evolution on the proven SQQ-89 (V) 15 ASW suite. The ship’s EW/IO capabilities will include Surface Electronic Warfare Program Block II (SEWIP Blk II) missile detection system, signals intelligence systems and the Nulka decoy system. FFG 62 will also include an organic aviation capability supporting one MH-60R helicopter and one MQ-8C unmanned helicopter.

The “Connie” class will be suited for future weapons/mission flexibility and incorporates room for future growth/upgrades.

Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Mike Gilday referred to “DDG Next.” What’s the concept for such a ship?

SCHLISE: The class CNO referred to as “DDG Next” will be a new hull form to follow the DDG-51 Flight III. This ship is predicted as the next high-end surface combatant and will include non-developmental Flight III program-of-record technologies, including a variant of the SPY-6 radar and Aegis Baseline 10 Combat System, while emphasizing space, weight, power and cooling margins to accommodate future capabilities over the lifespan of the class.

The CNO gave us a brief preview of the projected size of the ship. We expect it to be smaller than a Zumwalt [DDG 1000], but larger than DDG 51 Flight III.

How will the planned unmanned surface vessels (USVs), such as Large USV (LUSV) and Medium USV (MUSV), contribute to the fleet’s lethality?

SCHLISE: USVs can bring additional capacity and capability to the manned combatant force to support distributed maritime operations. Results from our Future Surface Combatant Force Analysis of Alternatives and Future Navy Force Structure study both show the value in USVs and support continuing investment, prototyping and experimentation to mature this capability for future force integration. LUSVs, as a distributed fires platform, can increase the fleet’s missile carrying capacity and MUSVs, as a distributed sensor platform, improve the commander’s battlespace awareness. Our Surface Development Squadron (CSDS-1) is involved in testing these concepts using current prototypes in fleet exercises and experimentation. The lessons learned from CSDS-1 and results from our continued study and war gaming will help us refine concepts and inform further platform development to provide the fleet with a capability that can and increase lethality and capacity.

What plans are there to add firepower to littoral combat ships and amphibious warfare ships?

SCHLISE: We’ve increased the reach and lethality of the LCS platform with the addition of the Naval Strike Missile. We were able to accelerate installation on USS Gabrielle Giffords for her successful deployment to Southeast Asia this past year. The system will ultimately be added to all LCS, regardless of mission package.

In addition, the initial round of lethality and survivability modifications planned for both LCS variants will further enable fleet integration and operational capability with the addition of Link 16, EHF [extremely high-frequency] communications, Nulka and SEWIP [Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program].

Is the Zumwalt-class DDG being considered as a platform for hypersonic weapons?

SCHLISE: The Navy is looking into all classes of ships, including the Zumwalt class, as possible candidates for hypersonic weapons.

What progress, if any, has been made toward solving the need for a projectile for the Zumwalt’s Advanced Gun System (AGS)?

SCHLISE: When the decision was made to reduce the class to three ships, it caused the unit price of the AGS precision-guided rounds to become unaffordable. We have not identified a suitable replacement. But, with our decision to shift the ship’s mission to offensive surface strike, we’re adding other capabilities. This will sustain the Zumwalt class as an integral part of the surface fight.

What has the Navy done to increase the tactical and weapons proficiency of its surface warship crews?

SCHLISE: The Surface Training Advanced Virtual Environment [STAVE] program and Fleet Training Wholeness efforts have been at the forefront of efforts to improve individual and team training. STAVE has transformed training ashore by delivering enhanced electronic classrooms that are instructor-led, using high-fidelity virtual tools combined with hands-on labs.

Approximately 70% of the 850 courses of instruction taught by Surface Warfare Schools Command and Center Surface Combat Systems have been modernized or are funded to be. Combined with the fiscal establishment of STAVE-Network and its integration of students, instructors, classrooms and labs, the STAVE program greatly improves the tactical and technical proficiency of our Sailors and crews.

Through the Fleet Training Wholeness effort, the Navy continues to invest to improve live, virtual and constructive [LVC] training of ships and strike groups. Continued efforts will enable the permanent integration of all Aegis and SSDS [Ship Self-Defense System]-equipped ships to connect at sea and the delivery of high-fidelity LVC tactical training capabilities to all afloat platforms. The results will ensure advanced and integrated training across the strike force level — Fleet Training Wholeness — where carrier air wing simulators, live aircraft and ships can train together in a virtual environment for the high-end fight.

As ever, great training doesn’t happen without a world-class training organization. All of the above programmatic initiatives continue to be brought to the fleet during the advanced and integrated phases by the Surface and Mine Warfare Development Command [SMWDC] and our highly skilled weapons and tactics instructors [WTIs]. SMWDC WTIs continue to “raise our game” with more challenging and realistic training and certification exercises.

How does today’s surface fires capability compare to when you were commissioned in the Navy?

SCHLISE: The Navy has progressed in every dimension over the past several decades. Compared to when I commissioned in 1989, the ability to integrate weapons and sensors across a carrier strike group has expanded beyond my wildest dreams. Our ships are able to coordinate fires across the spectrum of warfare with combat systems, sensors and missiles that are smarter and better integrated with the platforms that operate them. Our Sailors are far more talented and benefit from tremendous virtual multi-domain training capability. To put it plainly, when compared to when I first commissioned, our surface fires capability is like comparing an old “brick” phone from the ’90s to a brand-new iPhone 12 today. We’re smarter, faster and more lethal than ever before.