NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Raytheon has developed a version of its Joint Precision Aircraft Landing System (JPALS) designed for expeditionary airfields, which it is proposing as ideal for Marine Corps expeditionary base operations.

JPALS is a landing system based on differential Global Positioning System navigation. It is installed or being installed on the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships and U.K. and Italian navy aircraft carriers. JPALS was first deployed in 2018.

CJ Jaynes, executive technical adviser, Precision Landing Systems for Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services, speaking at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Expo in National Harbor, Maryland, said the company has developed vehicle-portable JPALS that could be deployed to a forward base for providing precision landing for aircraft fitted with the JPALS avionics.

The expeditionary JPALS consists of a user display, antennas, and for processing racks, and a power generator. It can be carried in a vehicle such as a Humvee or Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. The system can be set up on site in 60-90 minutes by one or two personnel.

The JPALS uses triangulation to provide precision landing data to aircraft from a distance of up to 20 nautical miles. It can provide information to a fixed-wing aircraft while at the same time it provides the landing data to a helicopter within range.

The system does not rely on precision approach radar or an instrument landing system, said Brooks Cleveland, Raytheon’s senior aviation adviser for Precision Landing Systems.

Aircraft currently configured for JPALS include the F-35A/B/C strike fighters and the CMV-22B Osprey carrier-onboard delivery aircraft and will be installed on the MQ-25A Stingray unmanned aerial vehicle. Installation on the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet is planned for the 2026-2027 time frame.

The JPALS suite for aircraft includes the JPALS waveform, a reprogrammable radio, and computer power.

Raytheon demonstrated its expeditionary JPALS for three weeks in June at Yuma, Arizona. Marine Corps F-35Bs made 50 approaches.

Jaynes and Cleveland said the land-based system at the outlying field also was praised by Marine Corps F-35B pilots because it gave them practice using the system that would enable them to be more ready for shipboard deployment.

JPALS was first deployed on the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp for use by Marine Corps F-35Bs. The USS Carl Vinson deployed Aug 2 as the Navy’s first aircraft carrier to deploy with JPALS. The ship carries the F-35C and CMV-22B on their first deployments.

Raytheon built 12 engineering and manufacturing development versions of JPALS and has delivered 10 of 26 production versions. Raytheon expects to deliver the rest by 2023.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — All hopes of prevailing in the next conflict, if and when it arises, hinge on seizing the advantage in information warfare, the Navy’s chief officer of that domain said Aug. 2 audience at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space expo in National Harbor, Maryland. 

“Technologies that exist today are all about fusing together information faster,” said Vice Adm. Jeffrey Trussler, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare. “Our data, our information, the use of artificial intelligence, robotics — the nation that harnesses that the best is going to have the advantage should we go to conflict. And I’m one of those guys who says we’re in conflict right now.”

Trussler then turned the floor over to Rear Adm. Gene Price, Vice Commander of Naval Information Forces, who described the roughly 11-year-old command as a place under which data from a host of communities is amalgamated.

“Information warfare is a combination of oceanography, meteorology, intelligence, electronic warfare, cryptology, cyber warfare, IT [information technology] — all these things — come together,” Price said. 

By integrating all of these disciplines as one, Price said, the Navy creates awareness, assured command and controlled integrated fires in the battlespace. 

“This is the heart and soul of what information warfare is all about – pushing [data] out to whoever needs it, whenever they need it, wherever it is,” Price said. “Our job is to make sure that the right weapon is in the right place at the right time.” 

Price cited AI/ML — artificial intelligence and machine learning — as a critical area that warrants attention. 

“It’s a data problem, a platform problem, a management problem,” Price said. 

Work on transferring data to AI/ML is ongoing, Price said. He also discussed continuing efforts in the field of LVC — live, virtual, constructive training. He noted that the aviation community has been involved in LVC for years, and that it should be incorporated more widely through all areas of training. The security benefits are tangible, he said. 

“If we go out and practice, we tip our hand to what we want to do,” Price said. “It’s readily apparent to information warfare that we have to have a way to train for the high-end fight in a way that the rates could do their thing without tipping off too much.” 

The capability is being managed mainly at the acquisition level, Price said, where a cross functional team with information forces is developing the command requirements and content necessary to make sure information is readily available in a controlled but usable environment. 

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Littoral Combat Ship program office was able to deliver five ships and begin early construction on six others during the 17 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, a program official said Monday.

Howard Berkof, deputy program manager for PMS 501 (LCS), said at Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space expo in National Harbor, Maryland, that the office was able to progress with shipbuilding despite the challenges posed by the pandemic.

“We have not slowed down,” Berkof said.

Ever since shutdowns began in March 2020, the program has delivered LCS-19, LCS-22, LCS-24, LCS-26 and LCS-28. Additionally, the program began fabrication on LCS-31, LCS-34 and LCS-36, and laid keels for LCS-29, LCS-32 and LCS-34.

The program also conducted acceptance trials and live fire test and evaluation.

Berkof said the average cost of a block buy LCS is 20% below the congressional cost cap, and production hours from the first block buy of ships to the most recently delivered have dropped by 35%.

He added that he has seen LCSs delivered with increasing levels of completion and fewer open trial cards.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The U.S. Navy plans to establish two MQ-25 squadrons to deploy detachments of the MQ-25A Stingray unmanned aerial refueling aircraft on board aircraft carriers. Later this year, the MQ-25A fleet replacement squadron will be established to train operators and maintainers for the Stingray.

The fleet replacement squadron, Unmanned Carrier-Launched Multi-Role Squadron 10 (VUQ-10) is slated for establishment on Oct. 1, 2021. It will be based at Naval Air Station Point Mugu, California.

Speaking Aug. 2 at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space expo in National Harbor, Maryland, Capt. Chad Reed, the Navy’s program manager for Unmanned Carrier Aviation, said that the two fleet squadrons will be VUQ-11 and VUQ-12.

The VUQ squadrons will operate under the administrative control of commander, Airborne Command & Control Logistics Wing — also based at Point Mugu — which also controls the Navy’s E-2 battle management aircraft.

The two fleet VUQ squadrons will deploy detachments to the E-2 squadrons to operate the Stingrays. Each detachment will deploy with five MQ-25As.   

The Navy plans to procure 72 Stingrays. A Boeing-owned prototype, T1, is being test-flown by the company. Boeing is building four Engineering and Manufacturing aircraft, two ground test articles, and three system demonstration aircraft. The Navy is scheduled to receive it first production fleet MQ-25A in 2024. 

T1 made its first flight in September 2019, and first flew with an aerial refueling store in December 2020. On June 4, it made history as the first unmanned aircraft to pass fuel to an aircraft in flight.

“T1 has just been tremendous,” Reed said.

The MQ-25A will be the “first unmanned aircraft intended to connect with a manned aircraft,” he said.

Reed said he is looking forward to taking T1 and the ground control station to a carrier deck for the critical trials in handling control on the deck.

The MQ-25A is scheduled to achieve initial operational capability in 2025. 

Reed affirmed that there is “no requirement in the current plan for armament [for the MQ-25A], but in the future it certainly could [carry armament].”

Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance is a secondary mission for the Stingray.

Four aircraft carriers are being modified with Unmanned Aviation Warfare Centers (UAWC) to control the MQ-25 missions, Reed said, with four more in planning for the modification.

The MQ-25A and the control system are being integrated in the planning for the Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The rapid development of a vast array of new technologies is changing the fundamental character of war and if the U.S. military fails to adapt, it could mean future generations would suffer massive casualties in the next major power conflict, the nation’s top military officer said Monday.

About 40 to 50 new technologies will evolve very rapidly in the next 15 to 20 years and will fundamentally change the character of war, Army Gen. John Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a luncheon audience at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space expo. He cited unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, 5G technology and other concepts that will be available to all major powers. The nation that masters those technologies “is likely to have a distinct advantage,” he said.

Recalling the heavy military casualties that America suffered due to its lack of preparation for both World War I and II, Milley said, it is the responsibility of the current leaders to make the right investments “so that future generations of Americans don’t have a disadvantage in the next war.”

“It’s not about the amount of money we’re spending, it’s what we’re spending it on,” he said.

Milley said he has “a great deal of pride” in the Navy because both of his parents served in the Navy during World War II — his father as a Navy corpsman with the Marines in the bloody battles in the Pacific and his mother as a Wave. He noted that America has always been a maritime nation and the Navy has played a major role in the nation’s military power with its mastery of sea control and power projection.

“That is the role of the Navy and no one has ever done it better. … The Navy today is the best in the world and we want to keep it that way,” Milley said.

 “The decisions we are making today — which are mostly economic — will determine the future of the U.S. Navy, and how we mange sea control and power projection,” he said.

In addition to the challenges of the rapidly changing technologies, Milley said the international order, which has been relatively stable since the end of World War II, “is under tremendous stress” because of international terrorists, crime cartels and the rise of new national powers. He singled out the growing economic and military power of China, which has developed “a world-class navy … China will be a major agent of change to the current international order, there is no doubt,” he said.

Milley said the U.S. military currently is ready for combat and “we have to maintain that readiness. But we most also modernize. Preparing for war is very expensive. But even more expensive is losing a war. … Our task as the military is to prepare for war,” because if war breaks out, “we must be prepared,” he concluded.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – As the entire Department of Defense modernizes technology to enable commands, warfighters and autonomous systems to communicate with each other under the most trying of circumstances, significant questions remain. 

“We’re really about closing capability gaps and building the right resourcing requirement plans [to do so],” said Kelly McCool, acting director of the Navy Digital Warfare Office, speaking during a July 2 panel discussion on netted battlespace at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space 2021 in National Harbor, Maryland.

Joining McCool on the panel were Naval Warfare Systems Command commander Rear Adm. Douglas Small, Northrop Grumman chief technology officer Scott Stapp and L3 Harris Technologies chief technology officer Ross Niebergall. Patrick Tucker, technical editor at Defense One, moderated the discussion, which addressed the Navy’s role in improving JADC2 (joint all-domain command and control). 

Small said the Navy has a long history of expertise in connecting disparate sensors, weapons and command and decision systems. The current climate, he believes, is an expansion of this traditional role. 

“We’re talking about contested environments,” Small said. “How do you get that information to the right place in a contested environment, where every aspect of how you fight is being challenged?”

Stapp pointed out that JADC2, as its name suggests, must be applied across all services and domains as well. 

“It’s how you move that data into all those critical platforms,” Stapp said. “As a company, we are focusing on the integration of new and unique ways — multi-domain and multi-service.”

Niebergall discussed the need to take all the data generated by stand-alone systems and use it as a strategic asset. “We need to put it together into a collection that we can operate on, make sure it’s available everywhere, is secure, accurate and can be disseminated everywhere.” 

 The Navy is accustomed to operating in disconnected environments, Small said, providing commanders with information they need at the time they must make decisions.

“There are certainly areas where we can do a lot better — and we are,” Small said. “It’s more how you take that [data] from a naval platform and expand it out to the joint force.”

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The advances in shipbuilding technology and investments in facilities, training and tools is helping Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) — a Huntington Ingalls Industries (Booth 1323) sector — keep up with the demands of the present and prepare for the future, according to its president.

“We are busier than we have been in my 34 years [with NNS], said NNS President Jennifer Boykin, speaking to reporters Aug. 2 at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Expo in National Harbor, Maryland.

NNS currently is building or overhauling 34 ships, including 27 at the shipyard in Newport News, Virginia, and 14 elsewhere at other sites.

That capacity is enabled by new technology, including additive manufacturing, laser scanning, augmented reality, 5G shipyard connectivity and data analytics.

Boykin said NNS has the capability to use additive manufacturing to produce components of more than 600 pounds. The capability is awaiting certification from the U.S. Navy to use on its ships.

She also pointed out that the third Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier, the future USS Enterprise (CVN 80), is the first aircraft carrier being built by workers using digital tablets.

With these new technologies, Boykin noted that “many refer to this as the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

NNS has invested $1.9 billion in physical plant infrastructure since 2016. Those funds have been devoted to submarine facility expansion, a joint manufacturing and assembly facility, a new 310-ton crane replacement, machine shops, foundry and steel fabrication improvements, new automation, and digital infrastructure throughout the shipyard.

NNS builds nuclear-powered ships including Ford-class aircraft carriers and — teamed with General Dynamics Electric Boat (Booth 1023) — Virginia-class attack submarines and Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarines. NNS also conducts refueling and complex overhauls of Nimitz-class aircraft carriers and depot-level maintenance and refueling of some Los Angeles-class attack submarines.

The shipyard is on track to deliver two Virginia-class submarines and re-deliver the Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Helena to the fleet in 2021.

Asked about what would be needed in terms of shipyard investment to increase capacity to build three Virginia-class submarines per year if so funded, Boykin said significant investment across the submarine construction enterprise — including the supply chain — would be required.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Navy’s massive Large Scale Exercise 2021 kicks off this week and the sea service’s top officer said Monday the exercise represents a “path to the future” for the service.

It’s the “biggest exercise we’ve done in a generation,” and the Navy will benefit from its lessons for years to come, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said while speaking at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Expo in National Harbor, Maryland.

The exercise will involve 25,000 sailors and Marines and will span 17 time zones in the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, and Mediterranean Sea. The exercise begins Aug. 3 and will finish on Aug. 16.

While the Navy plans to test warfighting concepts like it would with any exercise, one of the main purposes of the event is to put Sailors and Marines in a two-week live virtual constructive exercise, Gilday said.

“At an individual level, it allows sailors and combatant commanders” to experiment with warfighting concepts and generate lessons learned, he said.

“That’s the key to this,” he said. “It’s to take this warfighting concept, which is quite frankly going to be foundational to everything that we buy, everything we invest in, and it’s going to inform how we’re going to fight.”

The exercise provides a rare opportunity where service members can train together regardless of their role.

“We think this constructive training is really a path to the future for us,” Gilday said. “You can imagine that sailors and lieutenant commanders and their COs can conduct integrated training — air wing and submarines and surface ships and cyber units. Any time they want thousands of repetitions, we can learn from that, and bring back those lessons to how we fight.”

According to the U.S. Coast Guard’s 2020 “Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing Strategic Outlook,” IUU fishing has replaced piracy as the leading global maritime security threat. Saildrone uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) have sailed more than 500,000 nautical miles collecting valuable data about the marine environment for fisheries research, climate science, and ocean mapping. Now, a new class of Saildrone vehicles equipped with radar, 360-degree cameras, Automatic Identification System (AIS) and proprietary machine learning algorithms makes Saildrone a unique solution for combating IUU fishing, narcotics interdiction, and other maritime domain awareness (MDA) activities, anytime and in any ocean.

The Saildrone Voyager is a 33-foot sailboat-like vehicle predominantly powered by wind for propulsion and solar energy for electronics, communications, and navigation. With an average speed of up to five knots, the Saildrone Voyager can operate continuously in the open ocean for up to 180 days while producing a minimal carbon footprint. Saildrone USVs can be deployed and retrieved from any oceanside dock and transit autonomously to and from the operating area.

Global Fishing Watch uses a combination of publicly available AIS data and satellite imagery to expose areas of illegal fishing activity. The Voyager fuses optical data and machine learning to detect targets that are otherwise not transmitting their position in real time. These detection events are then fused with other data sources — AIS and acoustics — to deliver a fully informed picture of the surrounding maritime domain. Stationed strategically, a group of Voyagers can deliver 24/7/365 protection of marine assets.

Saildrone possesses the world’s largest data set of images of the open ocean. Tens of millions of images, collected by the Saildrone fleet deployed all over the world during more than six years of operational missions, have been annotated with human analysis highlighting anything of interest — vessels, birds, icebergs, etc. With this enormous data set, Saildrone’s ML model automatically recognizes objects in real time, providing unprecedented situational awareness to remote command centers.

In October 2020, Saildrone performed a successful 30-day demonstration of MDA capabilities for the U.S. Coast Guard off the coast of Hawaii. Each week highlighted a specific real-world use case for persistent MDA: general traffic monitoring, IUU fishing, search and patrol and port security. Additionally, Saildrone USVs can conduct long-duration intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions enabling narcotics interdictions.

Saildrone USVs also carry a robust payload of oceanographic and meteorological sensors for continuous high-resolution environmental monitoring above and below the sea surface. Optional sensors include an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP), which can help to identify conditions in which a loitering vessel might drift into a protected area, and multibeam sonar for high-resolution ocean mapping, necessary for improving safety of navigation.

Data is transferred in real time via a secure satellite network. Saildrone data can be viewed in the proprietary Saildrone Mission Portal or linked directly into existing architecture, for example, Minotaur via an API interface. The Saildrone Mission Portal provides a variety of tools — overlays of satellite products, model GRIB files, and ingestion of other assets such as ships, buoys, tagged animals, or other autonomous platforms — for on-the-fly mission analysis and fleet management.

Saildrone USVs are rugged and have a proven track record of performing long-duration missions in remote areas and extreme conditions. The Saildrone fleet has logged more than 13,000 days at sea in some of the most extreme weather conditions on the planet. They have tracked fish in the North Sea, surveyed ocean eddies off Africa, air-sea heat transfer in the Gulf Stream and discovered a shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico. They have crossed the Atlantic Ocean in both directions, sailed up to the Arctic ice edge setting a northern latitude record for an autonomous vehicle of 75.49°N and survived Southern Ocean storms to circumnavigate Antarctica.

The robustness of the underlying core components, a wind-powered vehicle capable of long-duration missions and a machine learning-based approach to vessel detection, makes Saildrone an ideal solution for persistent maritime domain awareness in any ocean.

The Navy requires a single, strategic-scale, sustainable design for supply-chain management, with the right mix of commercial and organic activities to project and sustain the force required for war fighting.

With that in mind, Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) kicked off the newest vice chief of naval operations-led naval sustainment system in October 2020. Naval Sustainment System-Supply (NSS-Supply) aims to unify numerous independent supply-chain functions under the leadership of NAVSUP Commander Rear Adm. Pete Stamatopolous, with the goal of improving end-to-end supply chain readiness and affordability.

As NSS-Supply nears its first anniversary in operation momentum continues to build as NAVSUP and mission partners have progressed through several waves of deliberate transformation.

“The Navy’s supply chains lacked end-to-end coordination and alignment for decades, which has created numerous issues: insufficient and inefficient organic repair capacity, high rates of part cannibalization, an excess of unrepaired parts, a cash shortfall and, ultimately, degraded readiness,” Stamatopoulos said.

“Over the past several years, uncoordinated decisions made upstream were constricting our supply chains and causing significant downstream inefficiencies. NSS-Supply is working to better orchestrate, integrate and synchronize the many functions of our supply chains to correct these issues and deliver higher readiness at lower costs throughout the lifecycle of the weapons systems.”

Grounded in commercial best practices pioneered by industrial companies such as Caterpillar, Delta Tech Ops and John Deere, NSS-Supply elevates supply chain management into the Navy “C-Suite.” Designated as the Navy’s single end-to-end supply chain integrator, Stamatopolous is responsible for elevating the visibility of supply-chain performance by holding supporting functions accountable.

Stamatopoulos leads an organization of supply chain professionals responsible for providing responsive logistical support worldwide, through a global network with a presence in more than 17 countries and 21 states, districts and territories.

NSS-Supply is also moving supply-chain decisions upstream to better shape and design life-cycle logistics strategies for which the costs are lower. To hold the Navy accountable, NSS-Supply has created a cash-based metric to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of its supply chain in the long term. This north-star metric, the Supply Chain Effectiveness Figure of Merit (SeFOM), is the Navy’s first enterprise-level metric that balances readiness and costs. For every dollar put into sustaining a platform, the SeFOM measures the value of readiness generated.

In addition, NSS-Supply is driving unity of effort across six pillars that dissect and transform different functions of the supply chain.

• The Achieve End-to-End Integration pillar.
• The Demand Management pillar aims to reduce demand fleet-wide and increase predictability through improving reliability and maintenance.
• The End-to-End Velocity pillar focuses on accelerating the movement of material and parts in the Navy supply chain by lowering repair turnaround times and repair, overhaul or reconditioning queue times.
• The Optimize Working Capital Fund pillar reorients financial management to a commercial cash flow-centric approach designed to improve transparency of cash allocation, collections, expenditures and pricing for long-term stability.
• The Optimize Organic Repair pillar rebalances organic depot repair volume to fully utilize capability and capacity.
• The Shape Industrial Base pillar, the most aspirational pillar, aims to expand competition and deepen partnerships with strategic suppliers to make acquisition and sustainment more efficient, cost-effective and affordable.

NSS-Supply is a hugely ambitious project for the Navy, due both to its broad scope and the speed at which it moves. While NSS-Supply is a multiyear undertaking, it’s divided into three-month “waves” during which three to five initiatives run simultaneously across the six pillars.

The timelines for the waves’ initiatives are based on an agile framework (another commercial best practice). Each initiative has multiple two- to four-week sprints, with clear outcomes at the end of each sprint that define and shape the work of the subsequent sprints.

Although this is a new approach for the Navy, it’s already yielding positive change and realizable gains since launching last fall. With each wave and sprint, NAVSUP and Navy are gaining new supply-chain competencies and confidence in the effectiveness of this way of doing business.

“These first several months of NSS-Supply have given me great confidence and optimism that we are finally within reach of a decades-long goal of achieving a fully integrated and sustainable Navy-wide supply chain,” Stamatopoulos said. “I look forward to its continued success.”